This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

After running half a dozen errands today without a single meltdown, we decided to treat Kelsey (and ourselves) to a nice dinner out to Saga. Kelsey had a treat for us, tonight, too.

As soon as we got in the restaurant, she was captivated by two fish tanks, one filled with bright red cichlids, and the other with a lone albino Oscar. When we were seated, she started to have a fit – she wanted to return to the fish tank. She grabbed my pantleg and tried to pull me out of my seat, while low-grade hollering.

 

When she was bored with that, we came back to the table and got in our drink orders. Service was kinda slow, so that pushed the temper dominoes faster than we would have liked.

Kelsey refused to sit in her seat, and had to be on my lap. She pummeled the seat behind me, getting hunger-wired and hyper with her new toy truck. I gave her a handful of sunflower seeds to put in and take out of the truck bed, and that kept her occupied for a few minutes. By the time our soup appetizers came, she was in full crazy mode.

Out of retaliation, I’m sure, the person sitting behind me kept hitting the seat hard enough to jolt me forward a bit and Kelsey kept bouncing around. She split my soup and had a couple bites of David’s dumplings but only after loudly proclaiming NO over and over so the whole restaurant could hear of her disapproval.

 

Appetizers were gone way too soon, and boredom set in. It felt like an eternity for dinner to arrive while Kelsey bucked against me to get down to the floor (barefoot), tore apart the diaper bag, took out my wallet and started to remove its contents until I took it away. More whining and more NO.

 Finally dinner came, and she greedily snatched an Alaska roll off my plate (which is made of avocado, cucumber, and smoked salmon) and tried to take bites. When that failed, she tore it apart and ate all the ingredients, then tried to stuff the strip of seaweed and rice into her mouth and began choking. Then she spit it out in a great mess onto her lap and grabbed a second roll.

 

 Eventually I sent her to the high chair before she could destroy my entire plate. Things went well for a few minutes. She usually does great with sushi, eating all the separate ingredients with gusto. Tonight wasn’t any different for a while. Then she took way too big of a chunk of salmon, stuffed it in her mouth, realized it was too big and threw it to the floor. “There goes money,” I said. Then went a piece of David’s dumpling. Then went a handful of noodles. A chunk of rice. A strip of seaweed. Loud proclamations of NO and whining. Going boneless and trying to slide out of the highchair. And she kept pointing to the group of people seated behind us and shouting “NEIGHBORS!” over and over.

 

Kelsey demanded a sip of her juice, which was in a lidded styrofoam cup. She insisted on holding it herself, but I knew she’d tip it so I held on to it. A struggle ensued, and ended when she punched her thumb through the styrofoam at the bottom of the cup and poured freezing cold raspberry tea all over herself, the chair, and the floor. The cold made her immediately start screaming.

I whisked her out of the chair, said some things under my breath, and carried her screaming, boneless body to the bathroom where she had to be changed into the crappy diaper-bag-outfit, which was just a poorly prepared onesie that was too small for her, no pants, no shoes, and she was sticky from head to toe. When we got back to the table, David was already paying and had the leftovers boxed up. I apologized to the waitress who was stuck cleaning up the whole thing, and we slunk out with a nearly-naked baby into the chilly night.

She screamed most of the car ride home, except for the times I contorted my arms backwards to tickle her in the backseat. Got her a bath, threw her in bed, and we collapsed. Kids are the worst, man.