Recently, our family went to a restaurant. We generally go out once or twice a month, so our two oldest kids know the routine, each one gets to bring a toy to occupy themselves while we wait for our food to come and while their mom and I drink a beer and pretend we are alone.
As we headed out the door for the nearest Kids Eat Free destination, I threw a diaper in my back pocket (wipes? who needs wipes?) for our little one and off we went.
We arrived at the restaurant and somehow the toy my son brought was a pair of dice. He must have raided the board game cabinet in a rush to find something to bring before we left the house. Looks like our days of playing Yahtzee are over.
Our six-year-old daughter had a book, not that she would sit quietly and read it, but she had something to spill her drink on or to complain about when her little sister took it from her.
This is how we travel to a restaurant.
As we were eating we saw a couple with their baby leaving the restaurant. I could only hope they were going directly from the restaurant to a two-week cross country hitchhiking trip, because that’s the only excuse to justify the amount of stuff these people had with them.
In mom’s hands:
Toys. Have you seen the spinner toy that suctions to the table which allows the kid to quietly and happily play during your meal? That’s how it’s supposed to work anyway. She was carrying one of those. Board books. Four of them. One for each course of the meal I guess.
She was also carrying a high chair cover. The covers are made to keep the high chair germs of other dirty babies from infesting your dirty baby. By the time your baby puts a page of the menu in his mouth it’s safe to say cleanliness is no longer something to be concerned with.
In dad’s hands:
Baby, in the oversized dual-airbag climate-controlled infant car seat.
A diaper bag roughly the size of a Hefty Lawn and Leaf bag, 36 gallon capacity. Since the bag was overflowing, my guess was it was holding approximately thirty diapers several hundred baby wipes, every infant medicine a person could possibly need (tylenol, ibuprofin, snake bite kit), rash cream, butt cream, butt paste, bibs, extra change of summer and winter clothes, more bibs, bulb suction, snacks and MORE board books.
How do I know what was in the bag? Because my wife and I used to be this couple. I’m not making fun of them, I just enjoy looking at what my life was like five years ago.
Back to my family at the restaurant. As I finished off my burger and beer, I noticed a funky smell? Oh great, my daughter had dirty diaper.
“Hey family with the little baby walking out the door, before you go on your cross country hiking trip, can we borrow some wipes?”
-Pete
