Ever have a meal like this with your kids?
I went with my boys to their favorite Japanese place for dinner last night. There was some debating in the car with my older son about why I order them brown rice sushi when he prefers white rice sushi. I explained that brown rice has more “muscle power” than white, but that we can order one order of brown rice avocado sushi and one order of white rice sushi and that’s a good compromise. He seemed okay with it.
Cut to dinner…
I split up the two orders of sushi so that he (white rice-preferrer) got mostly white rice sushi and his brother got mostly brown rice sushi, since the younger son doesn’t ever seem to discriminate and likes both equally. Or so I thought… Older son eats all of the white rice sushi first and tries a brown one which is apparently so distasteful to him that he refuses to swallow it and points to his full mouth indicating that he’s about to gag because it’s so disgusting. Okay.
So he spits out the brown rice sushi onto a napkin (grossing out his little brother) and I tell him he can enjoy his miso soup and vegetable tempura and tofu steak instead but that I’m not ordering more sushi. (Plus, we had already had french fries as a snack at the mall so I knew he wasn’t going to be terribly hungry.) Then younger son decides he also hates brown rice sushi. Okay.
The tofu steak and vegetable tempura comes and I’m frantically cutting up tofu steak and tempura yams and younger son–the former brown rice-preferrer–declares in his sweet little voice, “Mama, I need poopy.” Sigh. Okay.
So I take him to the bathroom (which is only made for one, so I’m hoping no female customer needs it in the next 10 minutes or so) and I prop open the door with my foot while keeping an eye on older son who is eating his tofu steak across the restaurant. I bounce between checking on younger son on the potty and checking on older son, and this goes on for about five minutes. I softly shout across the restaurant to the older son to see if he’s doing okay and he declares matter-of-factly, “I’m done.” Okay.
So now I haven’t even eaten, younger son is singing and enjoying himself sitting on the potty asking questions about the wallpaper and saying, “Mama, why are you rushing me?” and older son is done eating and ready to go home. Younger son finally finishes on the potty and I wolf down my tofu steak and tempura and ask for the check, sheepishly smiling at all of the customers who I fear will never want to have children after seeing what it’s like eating out with two of them on your own.
That was dinner. I’m exhausted.
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