Dining Out

We went out to brunch with Jack this morning, celebrating his grandpa's birthday at a nice old inn in Norwalk. Eating out with Jack is always interesting, in part because we never really know how into eating he'll be, how well he'll behave, or if we'll get to finish a meal we start.

The good thing about brunch is that there is usually a broad selection of fruit, which thus far has been the one food that can occupy Jack's attention for quite a while. Well, that and donuts. Another grandpa story is that he usually attends Jack's swimming lessons Saturday morning and brings donuts for afterward -- or rather, he brought them once, and that became the routine. So now Jack sees grandpa on Saturday morning and although he's always happy to see him, within the first few seconds comes the question: "You bring donuts?" Grandpa's birthday was Friday, and we wanted Jack to wish him a happy birthday when he saw him Saturday morning. "Jack, what are you going to say when you see grandpa?" "You bring donuts?" Um.....

So anyway, dining out is usually me shoveling in food while Emily entertains Jack, her eating while I entertain Jack, or both of us wolfing it down while Jack eats fruit. And then of course he gets interested in eating off our plates, drinking our milk or juice, or (if we're lucky) some other baby or one of the Rosenfeld girls, and then we both get to eat at a semi-leisurely pace. To our credit, at least, we're starting to learn some lessons about the whole thing.

1. Bring other snacks. We love Mexican restaurants, because they usually bring chips and salsa quickly and he's into those things. Most other places don't bring the bread quickly enough, so we're glad to have a little thing of cereal to occupy him. Yes, most parents probably figure this out right away, and it took us quite a while, but whatever.

2. Bring activity books. Some restaurants have things to color and so forth, and they're great. Some don't, so we've recently figured out (yes, we're slow, we get it) to bring along a coloring book or something. We did today, and it bought us 5-10 extra minutes at the end of the meal before he was pretty insistent about going. Plus there was a big sleigh out on the porch that he wanted to see.

So dining out ended up being okay. And although this has nothing to do with anything, pretty much doing anything with Jack is entertaining these days, because he cracks us up. He sings kind of a lot, either the Backyardigans theme, or Twinkle Twinkle, or This Old Man, or a particularly amusing one, which requires interaction, where he says "And on this farm he had a....?" And then there's a long pause, him hanging on our answer with a big smile on his face, and we'll say, "Cow," and he'll say "Cow!" And then we'll start in with the "Moo Moo here," but he's already moved on: "And had a....?" Very entertaining.

Thursday we went to the Aquarium in Norwalk. That was also fun, as Jack was into the crabs (which he got to touch, even though he wasn't sure about it, and then another toddler was willing to, at which Jack changed his mind: "Want to touch it!"), and fish, and sharks, and octopus. Even though we couldn't see the octopus -- it might have been an empty tank for all I knew -- but I told Jack the octopus was sleeping, a fact (or guess) that he repeated for the rest of the day, as if for assurance. "The octopus was sleeping?" Hours later, talking with Mommy about the aquarium, he turns to me: "The octopus was sleeping?" And who knows, maybe it was.