Octo-Children. AKA 'Eating Out.'
Tot (aged 2) and Little Babe (6 months) seem to be using their arms in a way lately that makes me feel like I have about 5000 children instead of two. And that's of course meant in the loveliest way: they're just growing up. But I feel that I would actually benefit from 5000 arms instead of two.
Last weekend we thought we would go out for dinner early evening: my husband and I, with our two girls. Well, when we arrived at the pub it was absolutely blowing a hoolie. The rain was slashing it down. Sky waterfalls. This was not an ideal situation, even if it was mere meters from car park to pub!
My husband and I had to form an 'escape' plan, which involved pulling both girls from their car seats to the front of the car, coating them in macs, and forming a 'collective evacuation.' My husband said this was to 'save time' (anyone else confused?)
Anyway, I went along with it because it sounded like a good idea, and we prepared as if we were about to enter a blizzard forever. Some of you may know that trying to put rain coats on children in a confined space is a challenge: why do their fingers always get stuck in the stupid inner material bit?! (It's amazing A&E departments don't see more young children with broken fingers via Entanglement of Macintosh.)
Then- like a family who could've been mistaken for Silver D of E Award (maybe??!) - we ran across the puddles to the pub.
Half an hour passed just searching for a 'good' table (whatever that was.) Tot was already trying to pull her raincoat off the minute we entered the pub- which just ended up with her in a plasticy tangle crying, "Mummmmyy!"
Little Babe had disappeared under her hood. It was probably 10 minutes later when I realised this and that dreaded Mum Guilt convinced me I was a horror-story-mother for not even realising! Nevertheless, she's a funny baby, and when I lifted her hood she was there just staring vacantly into space- as if I'd disturbed her Under-Hood-Zen.
As we sat down, Little Babe came out of her 'zen-zone' and started grabbing at the menus: lurching at them with her octo-arms, knocking them over; going for them again; grabbing at them; flapping them.... She then started sucking on them at which point we confiscated them and turned the changing bag upside down in the middle of the pub... I knew I had a toy in there "somewhere!"
Tot, on the other hand, wanted to do "runnin."
Fifteen minutes in, we had: changing bag unearthed across the table; menus on the floor; baby windmilling; and rain macs hung from the back of the chairs, peeing. Then Tot started a runner!
TIME FOR PLAN OF ACTION ARRGGYYWHYOHWHY!!!!!!
I scooped Tot up and took her to the bar. I was going to order! No idea what I was going to order, but I was GOING to order and that was that!
However, as I approached (with toddler wedged under arm,) I noticed a very shouty: 'NO CHILDREN AT THE BAR' sign. Yeah, try explaining that to a two year old! Cue tantrum because she'd seen some aged Rupert the Bear charity tub resting on the side that she wanted. She doesn't even know Rupert the Bear- what is he, like 1990s?!? Why was he even there?!
Anyway, I deposited Tot back to our table and I ordered us all something or other. Once the meal arrived it was a RELATIVELY NORMAL (?) eating experience...
Until..... Tot polished off her own dinner and then reached for my husband's plate, heading for his chips. Whilst doing this, she sunk her arm into the bean juice left across her plate and you'd think we'd descended into some sort of Call of the Elephants. Errrnnn. Eerrrrrnn. Errrrrrn, she went, flipping her arm about just to make sure the bean juice got the ride of its life. She was waving her arm around helplessly, looking up at us in REAL DISTRESS. You'd think she'd dipped her arm in hot lava or something! (Fortunately, the Power of Baby Wipes struck again, and we were soon able to resolve Tot's beany arm.)
By this point, Little Babe was up to a right old fidget. We tried to distract her with toys. But all we ended up with was a unicorn in the onion rings and a Pooh on the floor (Winnie.)
I would say that what we've learnt from this eating out event, is just to get a Take Away next time. However, we did that last week- we got a right old dirty Dominoes (not actually dirty #justsayin,) but Tot chose that to be the one night of the week not to go to bed. After it became clear she was definitely going to demolish the entire pizza if she stayed up, we took to hiding it and tag teaming eating little chunks, like sneaky, pepperoni-starved mice. She finally went to bed 9pm and we found ourselves enjoying the cold, more cardboardy, version of the pizza. Ho hum. It was still good, let's be fair.
So the moral of the octo-children story? There isn't one. But we are just sat here chuckling about it.... so.... HO HUM ONCE MORE!
