Clearly, I have temporary amnesia when it comes to taking my kids out to restaurants. It’s sort of the same amnesia that tricked me into going through labor the second time! I am not talking about the kid-themed restaurants where I am convinced that the pizza is laced with crack. I’m talking about restaurants that serve grown-up people food on real plates.

After trial and error and error and trial again, I now know the best time to take kids to fine dining establishments is never. Never is the best time. Occasionally, my inner selfish devil whispers in my ear the five worst words “How bad can it be?” The answer: When my kids recently started a full-on food fight I hid under the table and pretended they weren’t mine. Needless to say, I hope the server had an awesome night out with the tip I left them.

In case you are childless or you forget what it’s like to have kids toddler age, let me paint you a little picture. Going out to eat with these little people is like going out with a screaming chimpanzee on bipolar meds. To keep the peace, I will always be at their mercy.

Of course I love my kids. They are about as badass as I am. But I don’t see any reason to rush them into the amazing world of fine dining and expect them to act like the Von Trapp family. They probably used duct tape to keep these kids in their seats anyway, total bullshit. Instead my kids are eating salt off the rim of my margarita glass, sneezing from the pepper all over their hands, and I won’t tell you what they do with the ketchup. P.S. I am really sorry about the “wall” incident.
I don’t want to lug a bunch of shit with me either. Unless you want my kids to tag your walls, I will leave the crayons home. Play dough is a huge mess and the smell makes me sick, and legos, ugh, I cringe. And nobody, I mean nobody, wants to hear Caillou, the whiniest little shitbag with four strands of hair on tv. These tricks are only temporary, and by temporary I mean thirty minutes total.

With all the awesome restaurants blowing up all around JC, I have made the executive decision to stay far away from your beautifully decorated, delicious, clean and hip establishments. I’m tired of the “look,” trust me I worked in service, I am secretly one of you. I used to flag my tables or hide when a family with kids would come in.

Instead, I choose to have that chaos at home, well not really but why would I want to pay good money for this. Let’s face it, nobody likes your kid as much as you do. To you they are these beautiful one of a kind snowflakes, but to them they are sticky annoying little shits who cannot appreciate good food, are loud, and will never sit down. Yes, eventually my kid will have to learn how to behave in restaurants, so they don’t grow up weird, and unsociable, but that will take time. There is no magic window that will close if you don’t bring your kids to the latest spot.

So for now this Mom will eat at home with her chimpanzees.