No More Eating Out for Me!!

I’m absolutely done with taking the family out for dinner. Done! Can’t stand it any longer…

It always begins with deciding where we’re going to go. The boy wants pizza and the girl wants chicken strips.

The boy wants sushi and the girl wants chicken strips.

The boy wants Subway and the girl wants macaroni and cheese…with chicken strips.

During this riveting debate is when we’re eagerly shepherding the little demons to get shoes on. This is essentially the equivalent of trying to teach a cat to sit while someone’s using a laser-beam to play with it.

After a spirited race to the car, always won by the boy because he elbows the girl sending her cart wheeling to yet another scabbed knee, we wait while the daughter spends 10 minutes gathering every essential toy scattered throughout the vehicle before getting buckled.

I’ll spare you the drive because it’s just too damn painful to recount.

Then alas we arrive and make our grand entrance. This is always the best part of the night. The second they walk in, they quiet down, put their hands by their sides and take in the scenery.

Diners gaze upon their young innocent faces, smile, and nudge their loved ones usually saying, “oh look…he looks just like Opie and she’s just a princess.”

Little do they know that in the time they’ve uttered those words, both kids have managed to figure out the first 12 ways they’ll make us both cry, pay-off the cooks to spit in my food, and waged a bet on who can make me say, “guys, stop it!” the most.

Then the menus come and they want nothing that’s on it.

Then I order three beers at once which gets the typical waitress response of, “Oh, will someone else be joining you?” as she reaches for more menus.

“No, it’s just us. So again, we'll take water for the kids, margarita for the wife, and I’ll have three beers. Thanks!” This is when the waitress either tells me that’s illegal or slowly backs away from the table.

Almost immediately the daughter hands me the little piece of paper holding the napkin and silverware together and says, “daddy!! Paper airplane.”

“Say please sweetie.”

“Yes ma’am!” And that’s always followed by giggling from both kids and it goes from there until dinner is served.

This is when both kids begin an intellectual discussion about life, the names of all the presidents, whether Barbie poops at night while they’re sleeping, what we should name the daughter’s first tooth she loses, and why daddy wants to do serious harm to Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Twenty minutes later the wife and I have finished and the kids haven’t even taken a bite of their food.

All and all it could be significantly worse. And there are occasionally good eating experiences.

But after last night’s escapade of my daughter mimicking the Italian busboy to the point where he’s contemplating shoving a spork in my jugular. I’m done…

Now I’ve moved on to the phase of just throwing a pile of sushi and chicken strips on the floor, turning the TV on, and slowly escaping with the wife to the back porch to drink beer and chill in silence.

I'm a Selfish Prick

The family and I took a stroll through downtown Chicago yesterday to snap a few photos of my boy’s Flat Stanely for his “what Flat Stanley and I did during Spring Break” homework project. As we’re walking around Millennium Park I notice a family with four kids come strolling by.

My normal response to seeing families with three or more children is to drop to my knees and give big props to the magnificent creature who thought-up the procedure to make a man’s testicles incapable of producing baby-batter ever again.

After completing this feat, I dusted off my knees and continued to watch in amazement to see how this family would deal with four young kids in a tourist-infested area. And what I saw was the wife, slowly, strategically backing away from the family and then disappearing into the crowd. It was absolutely magical.

I so badly wanted to call her out on it…but in a cool way—like offering her a beer to celebrate her efficiency. You know…while the wife and kids continue on and I promise to catch-up later.

The wife and I always wanted kids and knew we wanted them while we were still young so that when we got into our early 40s they would hopefully be moving on to college; or signing their multi-million dollar football deal; or marrying some incredibly rich dude who pays me to never work again so I can hang out, drink with him and make him laugh all day while my daughter makes us meals.

We were amazingly fortunate and able to crank out two little nippers pretty quick and thus the journey began.

I feel there are two majorities of people out there: those who LOVE children and were born to raise them, and those who love children, enjoy raising them, but subconsciously can’t freakin’ wait till they’re 18 years old.

It’s not really something you 100% know about yourself until you have a kid or two of your own. Then it hits you out of the blue and you realize which majority of people you fit into.

A couple months ago the wife and I were riding in the car, alone, when I reached over, grabbed her hand and said, “thank you for letting me pay that nice young doctor fellow to take a knife to my coin purse.”

“What are you talking about now?”

“I love our kids more than anything and you know that. But I can honestly say that I’m way too selfish to ever have more than two kids.”

I cringed because I’d just crossed that line of things you should never say out loud. We clearly already knew we were done after two, but we never revealed to each other why.

A reassuring smile of relief crept across her face as she held her hand up for a high-five and said, “me too!! Waaaayyy too selfish. I love my sleep, my blanket, and my quiet way too much. But I do love the kids…don’t get me wrong. I really really love them!”

“Oh yeah, no…that’s a given. We have stupid love for them…but still…can you imagine more of them?”

“NO…no…I can’t.”

We made love later that night. She made me wear a condom… “just in case.”