Tag: dinner out

children, happiness, humor, kids, kindergarten, mommyhood, motherhood, parenting

Here’s Hoping…

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The IHOP logo
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I’m feeling nervous.  I have been cracking down on the boys and their behavior and frankly, the only thing that is close to cracking is me.  But that’s not why I’m nervous.

I told Full Speed and T.Puzzle that they need excellent reports from school so we can go to IHOP for dinner.  No exceptions.  I need a ‘blue’ day from Full Speed, blue being the absolute best mark you can get in kindergarten, and I need an excellent report from T.Puzzle’s teacher.   If not, no pancakes no how.

So you see I’m nervous because I don’t want to have to follow through with my threat.  It’s not that I’m jonesing for pancakes for dinner.  It’s that I’m jonesing for my kitchen to remain mess-free.

However, I guess the real punishment if I get negative school reports won’t be so much that the boys won’t go to IHOP and my kitchen will be messy, but that I would have to cook for them.

Poor dears.

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children, mommyhood, potty training

Teach by Example

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I took the boys to IHOP for dinner because they were well-behaved for their hair-cuts (sort of) and my kitchen was clean and I wanted it to stay that way. It was basic insanity at the restaurant as usual but we managed to have a good time.


That morning I had decided to try little T.Puzzle in big boy underpants again to see what would happen. He had a couple of accidents including an unfortunate incident involving a good length of his train tracks, but caught on to keeping his pants dry pretty quick. Of course the pooping is a whole different matter.

As we were finishing up our dinner little T.Puzzle starts emitting some squeaky sounds from his nether regions and I could smell, I mean I could tell, that he was going to need to potty soon. When we arrived home I took a less than compliant T.Puzzle to the bathroom. As I’m about to place him on the potty, Full Speed busts in and says, “T.Puzzle, I gotta poop, let me show you how it’s done.” He hops up on the pot and states, “See that brown stuff coming out of my booty? That’s how it’s done!” Apparently little T.Puzzle just got ‘schooled’. It was highly entertaining.

Once it was little T.Puzzle’s turn he cried and complained and refused to go. I decided to ignore him. Partially because Full Speed needed my attention for something and partially because I am so tired of the power struggle of poop, I sort of locked myself into a pleasant denial bubble. My logic was if I tuned out his complaining then it must not actually be happening.

About five minutes later little T.Puzzle shockingly announces that he ‘POOPED!”

I was so excited I almost passed out.

What does that say about my life?

Please, don’t answer that.

children, marital blissishness, parenting

Dinner Out

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I remember a time in our early couplehood, Mad Dog and I could make plans on a moment’s notice. We could go where we pleased when we pleased and our leisure time was golden. When Full Speed entered the picture our carefree ability to make plans nearly vanished and then once we added in T.Puzzle, vanish completely it did.

This is not a complaint, it is a statement of fact. Of course early on I was so overwhelmed and shocked by the demands of motherhood that I would have complained incessantly about this loss of freedom (had I any energy). Now, I’m a little older, a little wiser and while I still get frustrated, I have slowly accepted that plans of a social nature were made to be broken.

Despite the fragile nature of plan-making, as parents you still have to make the effort. Sometimes you hit the jackpot and you can have a fun, child-free night out. Mad Dog had the brainstorm idea to go to a nice resort for New Year’s Eve as a family. We would participate in some family activities during the day and hire an on-site babysitter so Mad Dog and I could have a nice dinner to ring in the New Year. Then before plans were definitely made, T.Puzzle slimed me and all bets were off. Instead we spent the days leading up to this New Year’s Eve hoping T.Puzzle would recover (he almost has) and keeping an eye on Full Speed to make sure he wasn’t next in slime (you know what I mean and so far so good).

Since our grand plans never got off the ground, we did manage to get a short dinner out last night. We thought we may even try the movies but T.Puzzle was so over-the-top emotional arising from his afternoon nap, I had a very difficult time being away from him. It took immense will-power not to text our babysitter forty-seven times while dining. Mad Dog was patient with my anxiety and calmly assured me that T.Puzzle would be fine. He doesn’t know when he excused himself from our table for a moment it took Herculean reserve on my part not to pick up his cellphone and dial our sitter (I had made him leave it on the table so we could hear it better if she called or texted).

I never in all my life thought a dinner out would feel so complicated. We ended our night early of course and skipped the movie. That decision ended up seeming surprisingly simple. Too bad motherhood in general can’t be like that.