Restaurants proclaiming to be family-friendly: did your target audience matrix include the Toddler-Pre-Pre-Schooler? I'm sorry, but your place is not 2 or 3 year-old child-proof. Traits include lightning-quick reflexes, canine-cringing vocals, nerve-melting neediness, perspiration-causing whininess and full capacity for destroying your place of business when all the parents want is a break from making the pancakes themselves that morning (crepes, actually, I like the blueberry crepes.)
Naturally, if you stick a shiny stand displaying four different kinds of yummalicious maple syrup right on the table, it's going to get messed with. Convenient - maybe, but our 3 year old thought it was some sort of musical instrument, with it's fancy color-coded handles and tinny sounding sign (that's the noise it makes when you hit it; when yanked out of its holder, it's more like a frying pan falling to the floor.) Plus, could the surface area of the tables be any more 'efficient'? You see the crap we carrying into your eatery... with our purses and diaper bags and back-packs and sippy cooler-caddies and Thirty-One organizing totes full of crap to keep our kids quiet during coffee time??? Put a DS and a coloring book on that table and there is simply no room for re-fills of chocolate milk, OK. NO room. How are we supposed to accommodate four plates of grand, grinning griddle cakes?
We chose said eatery because of its many hints that it likes families and children. We'd surely be welcome and accepted. What with its chocolate chip and banana cream wonderments being enjoyed in the commercials by families of four like ours, smiling and laughing. What we did not realize is that number one - other people without excited, expressive children also frequent this establishment and number two - those people left the house, giddy, imagining a relaxing morning filled with delicious breakfast dreams, not a straw or half a crayon or a Skylander whizzing past their head. Sorry. I am truly sorry. When you get the sympathetic 'I get it smile' from parents with older children, you know it has happened. You officially look like you don't have your *stuff* together.
At this point, almost as if on cue, my husband mouths to me: 'Why do we do this?' I smiled and pretended that I had not understood his attempts at miming. Promptly I received payback when out of the corner of my eye, I saw our 3 year-old reach out and touch the behind of the server taking an order at another table... the organic reaction that I produced was one those half laughs/half cries/half gasps. It was not a slap (thank gawd) but more of a slow-motion, deliberate touch, as if to place one's hand on a window or glass at the zoo or mirror in fascination. When I tried to mouth (through laughter/embarrassment/who-knows-what) Hubbie decided that he did not understand my attempts at miming. I hear that there is a mime festival coming to Cleveland this month (Jennifer imitates the action of laughing with mouth open, toothy smile; holding side and slapping leg). Maybe they could help with our apparent lack of communication.
Why are our children the only lovely little wackadoo loonies in the place? We knew we were gambling, having just taken them out late Saturday night with family and then letting them play until they fell asleep sitting up on Sunday. We were sitting at my brother-in-law's favorite restaurant at around 8 p.m. Saturday evening. Barely having napped that day and high on sugar from his birthday party, the 3 year-old was on a roll in that goofy, talking-way-above-an-appropriate-decibel-level-kind-of-way. To be more specific, 'I. DON'T. WANT. DINN-UR! says he. And repeat.
I tried to avert my eyes from the stares we were getting from unassuming guests waiting on their meals. 'Free entertainment?' I fantasized about joking to the couple sitting most near our table. Diners at this joint are only looking to do one thing and one thing only, order the house special and not be disturbed while enjoying it. Oops.
This was our local, very low-key family-owned place that had been around for decades. The kind Guy Fieri would showcase on Triple D. It had a jukebox - light-up button nirvana to a 3 year-old. I was sure that our child would be the one who broke the 1960s gem and we'd get a bill for $2000. In chair, out of chair, in chair, out of chair. Pound. Pound. Pound on the buttons. Extra snugly hugs and rapid fire thoughts recalling his birthday party to keep him still and sitting.... yeah, we all know that does not work. It really only exacerbates the situation and draws this reaction. STOP! LET! GO. OF. ME! Sweating. Unattractive.
Some very helpful teen working as a bus-boy appeared with a high-chair and a booster seat. I laughed and thanked the sweet lad because while our little guy is about a year past fitting in a high-chair, the booster is almost catapulted to the level of dangerous on the restaurant safety meeting agenda. I pictured it being kicked out from beneath us and tripping some server just as she rounded the corner with clam chowder. But, alas grandma produced something very cool from her pocketbook and we were able to divert attention for a bit.
We were only saved but for the grace of a kind older cousin who walked our little man around and let him pretend to play grab-em games for a half an hour. Schwew. And then the food came. He ate one french fry and said, 'I'm gonna be done now, mom.' Exhausting. And sweaty. The stress-induced mommy-trying-to-contain-her-child hot flashes never fail. But the crab bisque was a bit spicy.
I could really benefit from the super-human stretching ability like the mom on The Incredibles. My arms are unusually long. Might save me some back pain from twisting and wrenching around in one swift movement to heft a kid back onto a restaurant chair, chase them through Target in heels and a skirt... how ridiculous must I have looked clomping across the kids section after a much-speedier toddler?
Sidebar: I cannot help it, dear, sweet Target, that my boy is a Houdini and your semi-tractor-trailer carts that he insists on riding in don't have strong enough shoulder straps to keep him in. Oy! Those were built for the Duggars or Kate and her 8 or some family who cannot comfortably fit into a conversion van. Target: you're my BFF and I love you. You get half of my paycheck. Please listen when I say that parents will NOT be upset if you require .50 cents and a minimum child count to use these carts. Think of how much touch-up paint you'll save on from me always banging into random end racks and corners and such... just a thought.
My children sound like animals, but they are truly polite and kind and lovely. They just really don't do well in stores or restaurants. We do much better camping, in the water, at parks, fairs, carnivals, zoos and... oh.
I have a good friend with kidders a few years ahead of mine in age. She'd always say, 'Yeah, my kids don't do shopping...' and I was aghast. She is a genius.
Flip-flop back to flap-jacks... just when I had asked our newly-minted 3 year-old to please stop making chocolate milk raspberries at his brother and breaking Crayolas, our angel server arrived with a huge, genuine smile and what seemed like 15 plates of food, asking if we needed anything else. Turns out she has three boys herself.
Perfect. Timing.
Never again is what we said the last time. Cheers!
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