Moms Never Win!

Graham has been out to dinner about 97 million times since he has been born.  It's not really healthy, it's just the nature of how our family functions and I've learned to accept it.  By now I am pretty accustomed to the restaurant routine... We sit down, I immediately pick up the menu and pick something for Graham to eat.  This way when we order drinks,  and crayons of course, we can get his dinner started.  In the 30 seconds I am glancing at the menu Graham proceeds to do this: touch the ketchup, spill the salt, take all the sugar packets out, unwrap all the silverware and beat them on the table, spill the pepper, touch squirt the mustard and  mess with any other condiment left, thow the sugar packets on the floor... it's just ridiculous! 

No matter how many times we talk about manners or about not touching/ opening/ spilling everything on the table, it comes down to the fact that he's 2 and apparently this is just what he's going to do.  I can't stop it and trying just ruins the whole dinner experience. So last night was really no different.  We went to Red's Ale House in North Liberty.  We sat down and Graham began his usually screwing around and we ordered drinks and his meal.  No sooner did we order and Graham decided to touch the light bulb on the lamp in out booth... game over!  He burnt his poor little finger to a crisp and no matter what we gave him, he just kept screaming.  So my date night/ dinner out became getting our meal to go and all three of us eating it at Graham's Little Tikes table in the living room while watching Horton Hears a Who for the nine millionth time.  (It was the only way to make him stop wailing!) 

So after dinner we began talking about what we learned from this whole fiasco.  About how we shouldn't play around at the dinner table and never, never, never touch the lamp etc.  All he got was don't go near any lamps, which means he is now terrified of the lamp in his room.  Great, now we don't want to sleep in out room thanks to the scary lamp.  Moms never win, just write it down!