The little Spreadsheets have been to plenty of restaurants.

They love In’N’Out, Chick Fil-A, Firehouse Subs (for the drinks), Rosa’s, and sometimes Phil’s Ice House.

All of these places have one thing in common- no waiters.

On the off chance that we go somewhere with a waiter, the little Spreadsheets are both confused and annoyed.

They cannot understand why we have to wait to pick out food, wait for the food to be brought to us,  and then wait for the check at the end.

To be honest, the way they whine and complain you’d think that In’N’Out had slow service, so you can only imagine their frustration at the waiter concept.

This weekend we joined our good friends, the Goldilocks, for a weekend away. We had 4 parents and 6 kids, ages 7 years to 8 months. We knew going into any meal that things were going to be complicated. Because it was a weekend away, we went to restaurants with waiters, some of the most delicious restaurants have waiters, sometimes you have to make sacrifices for deliciousness.

The little Spreadsheets were a NIGHTMARE at both restaurants. I’m hoping that I am exaggerating and that both Mr. and Mrs. Goldilocks thought they were fine or didn’t notice their behavior.

At one point during brunch,  AsthmaMan had a screaming fit over bacon.

Bacon!

We had had a conversation about ordering bacon prior to the incident. He was insistent that he did NOT want bacon, that he would not eat it, that he only wanted a pancake.

When the pancake, which looked delicious by the way, arrived, he flipped out that there was no bacon.

Ten minutes before, he had been on the verge of tears, insistent that he would not eat bacon.

Seriously?

He was whining, crying, hitting, trying to steal from other people, it was delightful.

We went through all manner of “stop right now!” and “You have until I count to three”, and pretending he wasn’t misbehaving, at one point I offered him five dollars to stop… which he didn’t.

We left that meal fairly certain that we were terrible parents.

Both the Princess and Harry Potter kept it to together fairly well.

At the end the Princess started to knock cups and silverware on the floor, and Harry Potter and his best friend started some strange game of musical chairs, but for the most part they were manageable.

AsthmaMan was… not.

As we were sitting through these mostly nightmarish meals I came to several conclusions:

1. Thank goodness for good friends in the same stage of life! Yes, the little Goldilocks behaved infinitely better than the little Spreadsheets at the restaurant. They mostly stayed in their seats, ate their food, and kept their hands out of theirs and everyone else’s cups, but this might not always be the case. Even if the little Goldilocks are incredibly well behaved there are still moments when they are children. And children can be disobedient, defiant, and down right embarrassing at times. Other people with small children know it’s rough and tend to judge less than the general public.
2. Meals out with my kids are neither fun or relaxing. Seriously meals out with the kids are a race against the clock. Not only do you have to fit it within their time frame, but their patience with the meal itself is about 4 minutes. I wish all restaurants had a kid play area. I also wish that all kid food was ordered at a counter fast food style. That way I could feed my kids quickly, and then send them off to play while I enjoyed my meal. I have to say, I’d probably spend more money, maybe splurge on an appetizer and dessert, knowing that they were safe, happy, and not sitting with me.
3. My efforts to teach table manners, hand hygiene, and general social graces have been wasted. Let’s hope this is just the case for this phase of life and not forever, but seriously, people were putting their hands in the water glasses!