Saturday, October 27, 2007

Is that? Could it be? A light!?!

I have posted before about our adventures in restauranting.

And that post was at the top of my mind tonight when, on a whim coming back from a Halloween party at the local YMCA with the kids, we decided to stop in at one of our favorite grown-up restaurants to see if we could squeeze in for dinner.

This is definitely not a kid-friendly restaurant. It features live jazz and pretty tables with teeny little tea lights and water served in tippy glass goblets. Plus, it is after all Saturday night, a night when people should reasonably be able to go out for a nice dinner and not worry about being hit by a flying piece of chicken thrown by the toddler sitting at the next table.

But we were feeling brave. Brazen. Strong.

Plus, back in the day when we were child-free, we went there often and the owner still remembers us. And, it was fairly early by Saturday dining standards – just barely 6 p.m.

Mark ran in first to make sure it was OK. The owner welcomed us. “Bring them right in,” he said to Mark. “We’re not busy tonight.”

I’m not sure how he figured the restaurant was “not busy” since within 10 minutes of us sitting down, every other table filled up. But OK. Whatever. We were seated and my kids needed to eat - they were stuck with us.

So there we sat, Peanut in her pink froofy Sleeping Beauty costume and Loaf wearing a bright blue fairy costume complete with fluttery wings. Loaf insisted on drinking water every 39 seconds from on of those tippy goblets and Peanut let out a couple of really loud giggles (the jazz band doesn’t go on until 7 p.m., so don’t worry), but otherwise? They were incredibly, beautifully, fantastically well behaved. If I wasn’t looking right at them, I would have possibly worried we’d snatched up one of the other Auroras or fairies running around the Halloween party (there were dozens of each), but nope a second inspection confirmed that they were definitely my kids.

We ate fast with the goal of getting out of there before they fired up the music and made it just under the wire. All the way out to the car I praised their behavior.

“Mommy, does this mean I can have a treat when we get home?” asked Peanut.

Babydoll, after that? You can have any-freakin-thing you want. Unfortunately, she fell asleep on the way home and failed to collect on her reward, but tomorrow I plan to make good on my promise while I munch the leftovers of a most satisfying meal.

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3 Comments:

Blogger Amy said...

It was a Halloween miracle! I'm jealous.

9:35 AM  
Blogger Colleen @AMadisonMom said...

Sounds like you had a great time.

We skipped the Y party to go to a friend's party instead. Was it fun?

7:36 PM  
Blogger XUP said...

Good for you and your kids. I've always taken my daughter to nice restaurants since she was an infant and she learned early on that certain environments require extra good behavior. I think it's good for kids to spend time in "grow-up" places so they learn to moderate their exuberance when appropriate.

8:23 AM  

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