Hard lessons to learn

I love Ainsley. She is a sweet and usu sally caring sister. She is a leader, full of confidence, has an imagination like no other child I have ever seen, is incredibly bright, and yet she is old enough that I feel she should be able to start to overcome a couple of her minor short comings. Maybe it's my non-patient pregnant self talking, but two of her habits are starting to drive me crazy. The traits I'm talking about are her LOUD talking and whining, and her abnormally messy eating.
Okay, I know the eating one might sound a little weird, but seriously, I rarely see a child her age that makes more of a mess at the table than my daughter...come to think of it, I don't know that I ever have. We talk about table manners constantly. You will regularly hear John and I at dinner time, "Eat over your plate." "Get your hair out of your food." "Use your fork, not your hands." "Wipe your hands on your napkin not on the table." "Wipe your hands on your napkin and not on your clothes." "Chew with your mouth closed." Etc....etc...

But it seems like we talk until we are blue in the face with no change at all. I can plan on an incredible pile of food under her chair after every meal. A much larger pile of food than I find under her younger brother's chair, mind you.

It may seem like a petty thing, but I can't help but think she's getting to the age where a little more might be expected if she is eating at someone's house, or next year when she will be eating lunch at school. It's one thing to feed a toddler, one expects a large mess, but as kids get older the mess should start to diminish right? Am I wrong? How do you teach table manners? I'm seriously at a loss! I'm not expecting perfection, just decent eating habits for a 5 year old.

The other lesson John and I are trying to teach Ains is to speak at a normal volume. For a while now I have seriously been worried she had a hearing problem due to her incredibly loud speech (they have since tested her hearing at school and that theory has been disproved). I've even had several other mothers comment to me (not in a rude way, more in a comical way) about how loud Ainsley is. Her voice carries like none other. And unfortunately Ains also has the very common trait of 5 year olds called,"talking non stop." My daughter doesn't seem to have a volume control on her voice. What really pushes me over the edge is when she whines in her really loud voice. The whining has definitely been a learned behavior for her, boy does it get our attention! It's just so loud and piercing...I can seriously only take so much of it before I am pushed to my limit. We have tried charts and all else to teach her to be a little more calm and quiet, but I don't think we have had much success yet.

While I'm desperate for her to change these behaviors, I don't want to be constantly shutting her down. What's a mother to do? It's been interesting to watch Owen's behavior when Ains is at school, he's much quieter. Not so much competition I guess. The volume level in our home is high because it has to be if you want to be heard over our sweet daughter.

So now I get to figure out how to decrease the noise level in our home, and hopefully before we have a newborn. I guess I can't expect my kids to be perfect...I'd definitely rather be dealing with these little annoyances than others I can think of that would be far worse. So, while I might be happy that we've got the issues we've got, I'm still working out a game plan to minimize our issues!