Next time, we're going straight to ice cream.My husband has been out of town for two days for a business trip and since his absence fell over a weekend I wanted to do something special for the kids so that they would miss him a little less.
I decided that it would be fun to take them out for dinner and ice cream, along with a stop at Target (their favorite store) to pick up a birthday gift for the 5 year old birthday party they'll be attending tomorrow... and a few little race cars while we were at it.
When we got to the shopping complex I told the boys, "You decide... we can go wherever you want... bookstore, toy store, Target, restaurant... the only thing that MUST be last is the ice cream. We'll do that right before we go home."
Surprisingly they were in total agreement about what they wanted to do. "We want to eat Mexican food first, then go to Target, then get ice cream."
"Great, sounds like a plan."
We unloaded the lightweight double stroller from the car with diaper bag and jackets, got everyone bundled up and strapped in, and then headed to the 'fancy' Mexican restaurant that the boys chose... really more of a mid-level place. Nice enough that there is a ton of brightly colored Mexican art and sculpture decorating the walls and ceiling - economical enough that the plates run about $12 for an adult meal and $6 for a child meal. For us, it was a splurge... and since we rarely go out to eat with the kids (for reasons that will soon be demonstrated) the boys were excited and nervous. "Mommy, I don't like this restaurant," said my eldest. "It's too nice."
"Oh honey," I said, "You guys deserve this. It's been a long week and besides, we almost never go out to eat as a family."
A festively skirted hostess led us to a booth right at the front of the room, a really prominent one that could be seen from every corner of the floor. For a moment I thought about asking to be switched to something less visible... something on the side, say, behind a big plant. However, the kids had already clambered into the booth and were busy messing around with their silverware so instead I thanked her and took the menus.
"I WANT THAT!" my little son said, pointing at a photo of a party platter ($25). "THAT LOOKS YUMMY."
"You're right, that does look really good - but it is actually not a dinner for little people. That is more food than all four of us could eat put together! Here," I handed him the children's menu, "these are all foods made especially for kiddos your age."
"BUT I WANT THAT ONE! I WANT IT!"
"Honey, please don't yell. I wish that I could get you such a nice big platter of food. You must be so hungry. Why don't we look at the children's menu?" I forced a grin and danced the menu invitingly across the table.
"What does it say?" the older boy asked. I began to read through their options, omitting such delicacies as "chicken nuggets" and "hamburger" which really have no place at a Mexican restaurant.
"Oh no, mommy! Look at our sister!"
Looking to my left, I was sorry but not surprised to see that our favorite nearly two year old feisty princess was covered from head to jeans in red salsa. "MORE!" she cried. "MORE!" She pointed at the tortilla chips in the boys' basket, ignoring the four or five chips sitting right in front of her.
"No more," I replied, "Not right now. Dinner time. We don't fill up on chips."
By the time the waiter returned with milks for the kids, my daughter was standing next to me rubbing salsa into my hair. I grabbed a napkin and tried to wipe it off, chunks of tomato and cilantro dropping onto the bench seat. Sigh.
"Can I take your order now, senora?"
"Yes, thank you -" I looked up at the waiter, a slightly annoyed looking man in his sixties and we both tried to pretend that my hair was not covered in salsa. I then proceeded to order carne asada tacos for the lot of us.
"Will you be ordering any more milk, senora?"
"Oh no," I replied, "I'm sure this will be plenty. After all, you just brought them."
The waiter cleared his throat politely and I looked around the table - realizing that in the span of one minute my sons had drunk about ten ounces of milk each. Their plastic bottles were totally empty.
"Boys? Wow. That was A LOT of milk. I hope you're still going to have room for dinner."
"We will, mommy!" they assured me. The little brother burped loudly, then began to giggle.
"Will that be all for now, senora?" Our waiter seemed quite eager to get to the next table.
"Of course. Thank you. Oh... when you get the chance, could we please have some more napkins?"
Meanwhile, the squirmy little girl to my left had begun to bounce, causing little bits of salsa to fly off of her hair and shirt - splattering across the table and all over my jacket.
"Sweet girl," I intoned in my mommiest of mommy voices... "Let's get you cleaned up." I pulled a wet wipe out of the diaper bag.
As my wipe equipped hand neared her face, she began to giggle hysterically and then to scream. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" she cried. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO KEEEEEEN MEEEEEEEEEEE! (No clean me)"
With a few furtive passes over her face and hands, I decided to let well enough alone. The women at the booth in front of us were already staring me down, presumably because they could not hear themselves speak over the din coming from my daughter.
"Mommy," said my son, "I don't think our sister is ready to go to eat at a restaurant yet."
"You may have a point," I agreed. "But here we are, so let's make the best of it! I'm sure it will get better once her food arrives."
I scrounged through the diaper bag looking for the books that had been there a few hours prior, then remembered with frustration that I had pulled them out when I cleaned it before we got into the car. "Darn, I don't think we have any books or toys with us right now."
"What about coloring?" asked the little brother. "She might like to color."
"Great idea!" We waved down the next waitress to come our way. "Excuse me," I asked, "Would you have have crayons here for little people?"
"No," she replied and gave us a little smirk. It wasn't quite a smile, but it wasn't a frown either. "We don't have those things."
"Oh dear," I turned back to the boys. "Let's see if mommy has a pen."
My daughter was now jumping up and down in the booth. Fumbling through my purse, my hands hit something thin and plasticky. "Yippee! A pen!" I smiled and brought it into the light. "Hey girl," I turned to the fussy jumper. "Do you want to draw on a napkin?"
"YEAAAAH! MEME WANNA DWAH! YAAAAAYYY!" She grabbed the pen from my hand and lurched toward the table top, poised to draw on the table itself.
In a deft arm movement worthy of some kind of medal, I thrust a paper placemat under her descending pen just in time to save the table from irreparable scribbling.
"That was close!" the eldest laughed. "She's pretty crazy tonight."
"I WANT TO DRAW TOO!!!!!!!!!!!!" announced the little brother.
"Oh sweetheart. I'm so sorry. I only have one pen."
"BUT I WANT TO DRAW. I WANT TO DRAW RIGHT NOW. IT ISN'T FAIR THAT SHE CAN DRAW AND I CAN'T!" he stood up indignantly on the bench seat he was sharing with his brother. I glanced down to make sure my daughter was still drawing on the napkin, and not the table.
At which point the older brother, annoyed, apparently tried to pull the little brother back down... and managed to pull off the little one's pants and underwear!
"MOMMY!!!!!!!!!! HE PULLED DOWN MY PANTS!!!!!!!"
"What?" I looked up from tending to my daughter who was drawing to see my nearly four year old son standing half naked on the bench seat across from me in the booth, his booty and other associated parts hanging out for all the restaurant to see, with his pants around his knees.
"Oh my gosh, what are you doing hon?"
"HE PULLED DOWN MY PANTS!"
"I DID NOT!"
"YES YOU DID!"
"Please pull your pants back up right now! My goodness." I turned to the eldest. "Did you do that?" His eyes began to well with tears and he shook his head violently.
"Look, you're not in trouble. I just want you to tell me the truth. Did you pull down his pants?"
"I was just trying to get him to sit down." His lip began to wobble. "This is a fancy restaurant. It is too nice. He shouldn't be standing up."
"Okay. I understand. Please don't do that again though. Next time you can let me take care of it. Remember, that's my job. I'm the mommy."
The five year old's entire face crumpled and right in the middle of the restaurant he began to cry loudly. "WAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!"
At this point, I lost my appetite and realized that taking the kids out for a nice dinner was probably not going to turn out well. Sucking in my gut I resolved to do whatever it took to get us out of the restaurant in one piece, without anyone breaking something, fighting or losing their dessert.
I began to pray that dinner would arrive.
I prayed and prayed and prayed but the Divine must've had a sense of humor last night because dinner did not arrive, at least not before one of my sons had head-butted the other one and lost his dessert.
By the time the food hit the table, acid reflux from stress was already burning up my esophagus and my shoulders felt very tight. "Oh good!" I said, tightlipped. "Here's our food!"
"I DON'T LIKE THIS DINNER," announced the little son, poking at his taco. "THERE'S CHEESE IN THERE."
"I DON'T LIKE MINE EITHER," said the big son.
Right then, the salsa covered daughter apparently decided to rub sour cream all over her face and then nose dive into my brand new red shirt. Sigh. (*This* is why I don't buy new clothes. Ever.)
Clearly, the situation at hand was rapidly devolving. What had seemed like a wonderful dinner plan just one hour earlier had now begun to resemble a Chevy Chase movie - except I'm not that funny. "Okay guys," I said. "I'm not going to make you eat something you don't want. Just know that anyone who doesn't finish dinner won't be able to enjoy dessert with the rest of us."
"You already took away his dessert mom," the older boy reminded me.
"BUT I WANT DESSERT! I WANT IT!" cried the little one.
Drats, I had already forgotten that he'd lost his dessert ~ meaning that I'd lost a lot of leverage at the dinner table. "Well, we'll see about that," I improvised. "You lost your dessert for head-butting your brother but that doesn't mean your brother might not offer you a nice big bite of his ice cream; OR, if you *really* want ice cream, I suppose you could pay me from your piggy bank. Maybe I can loan you the money to buy a cup of ice cream and you can pay me back when we get home."
This seemed to perk the little guy up considerably. "Okay!" he chirped, and began to tuck away the despised taco.
Exhaling, I wolfed down a carne asada taco and waved dynamically at the first passing waiter. "Check please!"
"Mommy, I'm full," frowned the oldest boy. "My tummy hurts." He clutched his belly but gamely tried to take another bite.
"MEME WANNA MORE!!!!" screeched the toddler, grabbing across the table for her brother's dinner - leaving her own dinner untouched.
"I'M FULL TOO!" whined the little brother. "BUT I STILL WANT DESSERT!!!"
"Ahem," said the waiter - and handed me the check.
"Thank you," I whispered, choking when I saw the $50 tab. "Gosh, $50 seems like a lot of money to pay for beef tacos and milk," I thought to myself, handing him my check card. "What a waste." I realized to my chagrin that I could have made the identical meal at home for less than $10.
It nearly took an act of Congress but at long last I was able to get the children back into the stroller, pack up our meal, lamely apologize to the busboy for the salsa and sour cream stickily coating the booth and trudge with my three children back into the late afternoon air - feeling like I'd just survived a battle.
Even though I was very ready to go home at this point, we still had to go through Target to get the birthday present... which entailed another hour of pep talks and mediation between whining and fussing children as I tried to navigate the entire crew through the store's wide aisles while pushing the stroller in one hand and pulling the shopping cart with the other. (While we were there we picked up other household staples like diapers, wet wipes and laundry soap.) My sons nearly got into a knock-down drag-out fight over who got to help push the cart.
Finally we made it back to the car, no simple feat while threading both the shopping cart and stroller through a sea of cars that had descended upon the shopping mall. I had just lifted the last Target bag into the back of our car when my younger boy screamed "MOMMY!!! ICE CREAM!!! WE NEED TO GET ICE CREAM!!!"
I stared at the lot of them... their fussy, tired, pale faces. They looked worn down and more than a little sad. They stared back at me, hopefully. "Please, mommy?" asked the eldest, adding "You SAID."
I envisioned the misery of our 40 minute drive home with a carload of cranky, screaming, tired children. I wasn't in a rush to get to that point.
"Oh. Hmmmmm... All right. I did say we could do that. But you (gesturing to the little brother) will have to pay for your own ice cream since you were unkind to your brother."
"YAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY!" he sang out.
The sky was growing dark and the children were very quiet as we strolled over to the ice cream shop on the other side of the parking lot. Perhaps we were all just conserving our energy, recovering from the tense hours we'd just spent together. As we approached the ice cream shop its large glossy photos of ice cream cones beckoned to us.
"Mmmmm.... cake batter!"
"Yummy, mommy! I want the blue ice cream!"
"Oooooh - chocolate!"
"MEME WANNA I QWEEM!"
Their little eyes widened in awe as the high schooler behind the counter swiftly scooped several snowballs worth of flavored sweet cream into small paper cups. To them, she was a goddess. They showered her with their most radiant smiles and thanked her profusely without being reminded.
"Thank you!" the eldest son glowed.
"Thank you!" grinned his little brother.
"MEME WANNA I QWEEM!" said the baby girl.
"Do you boys need napkins?" I asked, and then looked up bemused to discover that my sons had gingerly seated themselves at a table and were inhaling their ice cream with intense focus. And giggling.
"This is yummy!!! I love it!!!"
"Thank you mommy! My ice cream is so good!!!"
"Nummeeee!" echoed the toddler, who took turns getting tastes from her brother's ice cream cups.
Despite the major frustration of our late afternoon adventure, I had to smile. After several hours of good intentions, missteps and wasted funds, in the end all it took to make the children feel loved and happy were two "Kid's Cups" worth of blue and pink ice cream.
My brood fell asleep in the car on the way home and went through the bath and straight into bed without complaint as soon as we got home. I slumped into the couch in exhaustion and stared at the wall in silence for thirty minutes until my brain recovered from the stress of the afternoon.
There are probably A LOT of morals to this story, but in the end here are my main two takeaways:
(1) It doesn't take spending a lot of money or going somewhere 'special' to make small children feel happy... in fact, little treats may make them even happier than large ones.
(2) Ice cream has the power to transform even a rotten evening into something magical and memorable.
The next time my husband leaves town, we're going to skip all of the fanfare and expense. We're heading straight for the ice cream aisle.
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