I've been excited, for months now, to announce the news of Food Lush. I've been plotting and planning and emailing like crazy to get this site off the ground, and now that it is off the ground, I'm both so proud and so thrilled, but it's not all I'm thinking about today.
Reality has a way of trumping even the coolest of ideas coming to light.
Last night we all went to dinner for Mike's birthday and in my head I envisioned this fantastic family outing, with lots of great pictures for Flickr and rainbows and sunshine for all.
HA!
Kyle was difficult from the moment we sat down, and I spent the last half of the night taking laps around the restaurant parking lot with him but not before snapping at my mom and snapping at Mike (on his birthday!) for breathing or something.
It's nearly impossible for me to enjoy a meal in a restaurant these days with him (Kyle, not Mike). He tries to climb on the table, he tries to get the bread knife, he tries to get down to run circles around the next table, then he starts to screech when I thrwart every single one of those plans and then, finally, he just whines and tantrums his way out to the parking lot where he's happy as can be.
In short: he does not like to be contained.
I can usually control this child of mine or use my Stern Voice and Time-Out Threats effectively but in restaurants.....just no.
I'm seriously considering investing in a portable DVD player to get us to, uh, what age is good for dining out? 18?
What's hard for me is that I feel like such a shitty mom in these situations. I feel shitty because 1) I don't have a well-behaved child in public places, and 2) I'm not a carefree-enough mom to not care what other people think of me not having a well-behaved child in public places.
I have a crazy kid and I care very much about that.
I want Kyle to have good manners, to be good in public, to listen to us when we speak to him, and when those things all fall to shit, I just want to go back and pinpoint where I screwed up and obsess over it but not before boxing up my food, quickly, and hightailing it out of there.
It's embarrassing and hard and, with last night as example, a horrible way for me to spend my husband's birthday.
He's a toddler! This is normal toddler behavior! I can't expect him to act like an etiquette-school graduate when he still poops his pants, I know, but when you're in a restaurant and your child is throwing sugar packets across the table two at a time and you're the fool who can't get him to stop long enough to enjoy a bite of your caesar salad, well, it sure doesn't feel like a normal situation.
It just feels horrible.