From now on, it's PB&J's

Restaurants can be a daunting place. Especially if you have your children with you. I've learned to stick to certain, less formal restaurants. That lesson was learned fairly fast when we took our pleasant, happy children to what we thought was your average Chinese restaurant. Our children were no longer pleasant and happy once we were seated. And the amount of breakable statues surrounding our table was quite scary. Little children who are tired of waiting don't sit still. At all. This is why we now stick to more family friendly places like Denny's. Not Lenny's, Denny's.

Until now.

I think my children, or at least the boy, might be banned from eating out in public period.

The other night the husband had a get together with others in his line of work. I can cook for four people, but anything more or less and I screw it up. There's either way too much food, or not enough. Because of that I decided to take the midgets out to dinner. Denny's kids' menu is just awesome and they're always excited to go there.

Our waitress sat us in the back section of the restaurant at a booth in the corner. She must have known something I wasn't yet aware of.

Little Dude wanted to have one whole side of the bench to himself. I figured why not. There's no arguing with that boy anyway. Trust me, I've tried.

Our service was phenomenal, but even with that, there is still some waiting involved. The cooks can't just snap their fingers and have the food magically appear. Trust me, I've tried that, too.

As soon as we sat down, my boy started. His feet were everywhere but under the table. His voice was anything but quiet. Once his food came, it was anywhere but in his mouth. First he wanted to eat his pancake whole. Wanting to have a peaceful meal, I decided to go with it.

When he didn't touch his pancake for 15 minutes, I finally asked if he wanted it cut into smaller pieces. He did. Then he had to recut everything. I guess I did it wrong. Then the raspberry sauce needed spread around. This boy did everything he could think of to not eat. I did everything I could think of to not take him out of the restaurant. Had another adult been with us I so would have marched his happy ass outside!

Thank goodness there weren't a lot of people sitting in that section of the restaurant, but those that were there? I could sense their annoyance with him. Hell, I was annoyed with him as well.


I am always one of the first people to give advice on how to keep your kids busy, but behaved, in a restaurant. Crayons, small toys, books. Now that my boy has proven me to be a liar, I think I'll stop giving advice. I might also stop taking the kids out to eat.



Until next time...