Wednesday, November 21, 2007

More like Terror-yaki

It's a catch-22 with eating out. We hardly ever go out to eat these days, and then when we do, one or both kids act up, so we think, "This is why we never go out!" But then I feel guilty, like we're not preparing them by practicing proper restaurant behavior.

We only went to teriyaki, for Pete's sake. My husband had a half-day of school, so we both picked up The Boy from preschool and went to his choice of dinner, which was his favorite teriyaki place, where the owner/chef and his daughters love him and always come say hello.

I'll give him the fact that he had a long day of school and tomorrow is Thanksgiving and he's very excited to spend the day with his cousins. But it went downhill the minute we walked in the door. He got weirdly shy when the woman at the front said hi and commented on how tall he's getting. He's so self-conscious lately--things that never used to bother him cause the weirdest reactions now. Then he threw a slight fit about not getting a Sprite. (We never get Sprite there)

And the manners--oy! He got several warnings, but when he pretended he was in a pie-eating contest and tried to eat the rice without his hands, by slurping it off his plate, he got a one-way ticket to the car with Daddy.

Bitty Girl didn't help, either. She shrieked for crayons, shrieked for a water with a straw, shrieked while the rice was cooling down, wolfed down a few bites and then shrieked to get out of her chair.

On the way out, we noticed it's almost a full moon--that's not helping anyone either. We have enough Thanksgiving craziness without the pull of the tides.

Overall it was a lovely dinner. We're hoping that they are saving all their good manners for Thanksgiving. But we're not holding our breath.

1 comment:

Bea said...

It had actually never occurred to me that I OUGHT to take my children to restaurants for educational purposes. It's an interesting question - what things do you try to teach children, and what things do you just assume they'll do automatically if you give them enough time? (I've been doing the second with toilet training, and wondering if I should rethink my strategy.)