Ladies Who Lunch (And Bring Their Kids)
Mom, this would look better on your shirt.
Morehead City recently opened an Olive Garden and my friends and I were dying to try it out. Living here you have your choice of country diners that spell their “country” with a “K” or outdated chain restaurants that still reek of cigarette smoke (love you No-Smoking Law!) In other words it’s slim pickins when it comes to dining out. But now that we have Olive Garden all our problems have been solved. Seriously, the thought of breadsticks alone is enough to make me drool a little.
We went for lunch one day and all together we were three adults and 5 children: a three year old, a 4 month old, a 3 month old and 1 year old twins.
After our little excursion I thought I’d share some tips for other Ladies who lunch and bring their kids:
1. Understand that your baby will sleep the whole way TO the restaurant and wake up as soon you arrive AT the restaurant, no matter how much you tried to make it so that they would nap so you could eat in peace.
2. Embrace the noise. Become one with the noise. Kids will freely exercise their right to make noise, complain, cry or throw things, regardless of where you are or who’s around so just learn to accept it and pretend others will too.
3. Your Baby will be perfectly content until your food arrives, at which point she will begin to scream her head off until you have to take her to the women’s bathroom and nurse her standing up in the handicap stall.
4. Push your plate, drink and all silverware an arm’s length away from you because while you’re holding your baby in your lap, she will, and I repeat, she WILL knock over your diet coke and/or dip her hands in your spaghetti sauce so that she can express her artistic abilities all over your crisp, white shirt.
5. Don’t be embarrassed to ask for more breadsticks because every time you look away, your child will pick up a fresh breadstick, take one bite out of it, put it down then do the same thing to all the other breadsticks.
6. Forget about having a conversation that lasts longer than 3 seconds. Of course, if you’re a mom you’ve already perfected the art of nano-second dialogue.
6. Lastly, you WILL get dirty looks from other patrons because your kids are being too loud. Get used to it. In fact, every time the waitress goes to seat the table beside you, they’ll take one look at your table and request to be seated elsewhere.
What nuggets of wisdom do you have when you’re at a restaurant with your kids?
