Dining Out

Tonight I tried to go out for dinner with a friend and M. Note that I said tried.

A friend (I'll call her L) from Whitehorse is in town this week for work. Glenn's working tonight and I had suggested she come over for dinner. She offered to take M and I out instead. This is a nice treat and not something we get to do often. She came over to the house, got the tour, we drove back to her hotel, dropped her car and all piled in to my vehicle to head for White Spot. A reasonable choice for a family friendly place and not available in Whitehorse.

We get seated, M's in a high chair, he has crayons and a cool paper menu, we give our order and we have a nice chat while waiting. M starts to get antsy about half an hour into the wait for our main meals. He's drinking apple juice but he's not really interested in our zucchini sticks. Actually he had a couple of vehement head shakes, an "All Done" and then spit it out over the floor. So, we stopped giving him the zucchini and figured he'd eat the french fries when the food came. The stage is set now. One, starting to get cranky, toddler, one very patient friend (who happens to have 2 toddlers) and one slightly panicky mother. I was at that "please don't freak out in the restaurant" stage. You know the one, you're trying everything you can think of to distract them until the food gets there. Banging spoons on the table, handing them the laminated menu, I got so desperate I actually tried a Kit Kat bar. He didn't want it. You know it's not going to be good when your kid turns down chocolate.

I finally take him out of his high chair and let him play in the booth beside me. This seems to work. He's trying to talk to the people in the booth behind us, he's drinking from his cup, he's basically happy he's sitting like the big people. Our meals arrive, mine is wrong. The waiter takes it back to get the proper burger (that would be chicken please, not the beef) and brings back the fries and gravy so I have something to eat while I wait. I hand M a fry because french fries are an ultimate treat to him. He takes a teeny tiny bite and puts it back on the plate. I'm pretty confused because he hasn't had anything other than apple juice and a halloween size Aero while we were driving to the restaurant. And then it happens.

He's standing there, looking at my plate that once had fries on it and he gags slightly. I am on full alert now. I've got my hands on his waist, trying to angle him away from the booth because he has started to spew chocolate coloured apple juice. All over the table. All over my pants and he even managed to get some in L's dinner. I'm now stunned/mortified. L and I are scrambling for napkins. She gets up and grabs some from our waiter who comes over with a cloth (he obviously has no children or he would have just brought us the whole stack of napkins) L made 2 extra trips for more napkins until we had the table cleared off. She was also sensible enough to request my burger to go. Which arrived just as we finished cleaning the table.

L sends us out to the car while she pays. This now requires me to slink through the entire restaurant with a child who has puke splatters all over his front. Let us not forget the very obvious wet spots on my black cord pants and the lovely smell that I'm sure trailed behind us. This was not one of my finer moments.

We dropped L off at her hotel and headed home. So much for dinner. I didn't get to try my burger until about an hour after getting home at which point it was pretty cold and soggy. There is now a quick casserole in the oven because I'm very hungry.

M has passed out after a bath and some Pedialite. Now I'm hoping that converting him back to the crib will pay off tonight and he'll be back to normal tomorrow. Maybe a good night's sleep is all he needs. Maybe it's wishful thinking and I'll wake up to a sick kid but for now I'm sticking with my sleep theory.