Every morning I drive our redheads to school. We bicker over the radio stations, discuss homework, I get to hear about this person or that person and the most recent drama, sometimes I have to lay down a "law", I stop and get them treats every so often if we leave on time, and we sing along to the Disney station when nothing else is on. For 30 minutes every day the redheads and I are captive to one another - some days we are all quiet, other days we are all clamoring to be heard above the other. On these drives I have had some great discussions with them - individually and all together. Some days I groan, we all do actually, about the drive but really every day I am more than happy to have this time in the car with my teenage redheads. These years are scary and wonderful for all of us and these morning drives give us all a measure of comfort I think.
There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment.
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