A visit from Laura and the Ihop Incident

Friday night, after all the daycare end-of-year celebrations and after-party activities, I drove to the airport to pick up my good friend Laura, who would stay with us for a brief, two-night visit. When she lived in town, she would be a frequent visitor to our house, but had moved back to DC a year ago. We'd kept in touch with phone calls nearly every week, but she hadn't seen the kids in a year. She hit it off with them right away.

On Saturday, we took a traditional walk on the greenway near dragon park, while Zac stayed at the park with Alice. After the walk, we all headed to Ihop for lunch.

The lunch started out fine--the restaurant was busy and noisy and Simon was content to sit in his own chair. He soon tired of the crayons and high chair, so he moved to my lap and busied himself with putting the sugar packets in and out of the container.

But then our food finally arrived, so I put him back in his chair, so we could all eat. This was completely unacceptable to Simon, who was by now past nap time. He started screaming and protesting. Not wanting to give in to his tantrum, I alternated between ignoring him and calmly encouraging him to eat his food. The restaurant was noisy, and I kept telling myself, despite any evidence, that Simon would soon calm down. Although I was miserable and embarrassed, I persevered: I didn't want Simon's tantrums to control my life.

I need to digress into an analysis of my cognitive load at this point. I was in a social situation: trying to visit with my friend. I was also in a teaching situation: trying to mold Simon into a functional human being that was not rewarded for tantrumming. Due to this high cognitive load (I'm terrible at multitasking and social situations, even with good, close friends, require a lot of effort for me), I failed to fully consider the larger context: we were in a public space, sitting in close proximity to other people.

Soon an old lady comes over. She leans in to say something and I honestly think for a split second she's going to say some benign old lady thing about children and pancakes, commiserate with my plight perhaps with an anecdote about taking her grandchildren to lunch, or offer some encouragement, saying don't worry it gets better. But instead she says what everyone around us is surely thinking which is "It's hard to enjoy our meals when he is screaming like that."

I just mumbled "sorry" then disentangled screaming Simon from his high chair and took him outside. A walk around the building finally calmed him down. Although I was annoyed with the lady for not showing more sympathy, because I clearly wasn't enjoying my meal either, I was more mortified that I'd let it go on so long. Before having kids myself, I'd occasionally be in a restaurant with a screaming kid and I always told myself if it were me, I'd take the kid outside rather than disrupt other people's meal.

Zac quickly finished his lunch and came outside to take custody of Simon so I could go back in and finish my lunch. I was quite frazzled, but still managed to enjoy my hashbrowns, eggs, ham, and blackberry peach cobbler pancakes with slightly melted ice cream on top. On the bright side, Alice behaved herself quite well in the restaurant, so I have hope that in two more years, we will finally be able to go out to eat with the kids and have a positive experience.

That afternoon, while the kids napped, we played Scrabble, then had a nice supper of Zac's lasagna. That night, Laura and I went out to see "Far From the Maddening Crowd" at the theater. All in all, a great visit if you just crop out the Ihop incident.