Dinner out...

SKG and I are heading to dinner tonight with my family and Deanna's family. I know we are heading into that age where it's getting increasingly difficult to go to dinner w/ her. I hope that this experience is better than the one we had last week...

We took Scarlett to dinner last week, we had a gift cards that needed to use it by the end of June…it was an adventure/nightmare. We made many mistakes. I asked for a kids menu, they didn’t have one…our first mistake. Anyplace that does not have a kids menu, doesn’t want your kid there...makes sense. They said they had "kid friendly" items...osco busco perhaps?
We were on constant defense trying to anticipate what she was going to throw, pull or eat next. At one point I reached down to get the napkin, looked back up and she had the knife in her hand and was swinging it around…almost took out my eye…that was totally my fault. Jason put blueberries on a bread plate for her and I told him if he was going to give her a plate it was his responsibility to watch it…well he looked away and sure enough she threw it down and it shattered everywhere. Totally his fault. We also ran out of blueberries...as mentioned below she's a freak for the blues. She was pretty satisfied up until that point, once the blues were gone...well, i think that's when the plate hit the floor...our version of "the shit hitting the fan." Now we always bring 24 hours worth of blueberries with us wherever we go.

Surprisingly there were several families in the place doing the same thing we were…trying to have dinner but really just desperately entertaining their kids so they won’t have a meltdown. One 3 year old came over and to say "hi" and the mom said she “escaped” from their table. The girl was sweet except she took Scarlett’s face in her hands and gave her a big ol' smacker on the lips…OMG. We took her to the same restaurant last year but she was only a few weeks old and it was so easy so we thought sure we can do this again… we’re fools. So we have this to look forward to for the next couple of years?

SKG ended up eating part of my "kid friendly" short rib ravioli w/ browned butter sauce. Sounded and tasted much better than anything a kid's menu could offer anyway.