Scenes from a Restaurant

You know how you go to a restaurant, and you bring along a bag of board books, Hot Wheels cars, rattles that suction to the tabletop, Polly Pockets, crayons/coloring books and even (dare I say it) some Smarties, and then you order for the kids and ask the waitress to bring those meals out as quickly as she can; then you play cars and read board books and shake rattles, trying to keep the soda consumption to a minimum so no one fills up on Sprite before the entrée arrives; you see the underside of the table more times than you ever thought possible to pick up a fallen shoe/book/pacifier/menu and then you start blowing your bangs up in puffs of air of frustration and you start to think this really just isn’t worth it, when thank goodness the kids’ meals arrive and you can relax for a few minutes while they dig in, and then, of course, your meal arrives just as they are finishing theirs and you realize the error in your strategy, so you eat fast and entertain, cajole, soothe, etc. until you decide it truly isn’t worth it, you hunt down the waitress for the check, and you skedaddle as quickly as you are able, which is really not that fast, considering you need to pack up a toy box’s worth of playthings, dress three children in coats and hats, and grab your supper to go…

We had 3 children under age 6 at one point.  But we’d still go to restaurants (occasionally) because sometimes you just have to get out of the house.  Or maybe we were just crazy.  Probably a combination of both when you have three under 6.

How times have changed.  Dave was gone last Friday night so I took the kids to Pizza Hut (he’s not so fond of Pizza Hut) to use Jack’s Book-It coupon.  Please excuse the quality of pictures from my phone.

Did I feel bad that they played on electronics the 10 minutes we waited for our pizza?  No!  Dude.  Did you read that first paragraph up there?  I have earned this.  I was also busy snapping pictures of them and emailing them to Dave who emailed me back telling me how cool I was to be emailing him pictures from Pizza Hut (he was being sarcastic because I just learned how to do this).   And then the pizza arrived and the electronics went away and we had a very nice, relaxed meal, and then we packed up and headed home, and it was totally worth it this time.

Maybe in ten more years a trip to a restaurant will be because they’re home from college and missed us and can’t wait to tell us all about their studies and their amazing professors and the good selection of books at the campus library and about this new strain of bacteria they’ve identified and named after me and that will be even better. 

But now is a good time.  I like now a lot.