Monday, July 19, 2010

Dinner FAIL

My brain is fried from the mental energy I expended last weekend on our first road trip with Girly. Details to come when I am coherent again.

In the meantime, let me regale you with another tale of poor memory and parenthood failure. Remember when I sought your advice about eating out with your kids? Well, it must have all gone in one ear and out the other, because we tried again and it wasn't pretty.

One evening a couple of weeks ago we were having the 'dinner showdown' in our kitchen. You know how it goes ... everyone gets home from work / school and you stand around debating what you are going to eat. It was early on a Friday night and sushi sounded like a good idea. I decided our option was to walk 2 blocks to our local sushi place with Girly at 5:30pm, or wait until she went to bed and get carry-out sushi.

Oh, why not? Let's take her! She'll love sushi!
Just because she dresses like it doesn't mean she'll eat it.

It was a disaster. I probably have higher standards than most - it wasn't like we were kicked out - but it was un-relaxing, un-fun, and un-appetizing.

And, the worst part is that it was mostly my fault.

I overestimated the chance that Girly would eat sushi. California rolls? No go. I brought a banana as a back-up that lasted about 4 seconds. I had only one toy that occupied her attention for maybe 4 more seconds. I forgot that instead of just being restless, she now deploys a high-pitched scream when annoyed.

Once again, I set her up to fail because I didn't prepare well enough. We just aren't at the stage where we can spontaneously run out of the house to dinner and I need to be OK with that. I am OK with that, but I just need to remember next time.

The chopsticks were a help when Girly wasn't sticking them in her ears, and the oranges at the end of our meal bought us just enough time to pay the bill and get out of there. We'll ask for those first if we ever try it again.

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