Dinner Apart

We had a family conference on our bed late this afternoon.   The subject was what to do for dinner.   There were a lot of conflicting opinions, entirely among the children about where we should go.   My son repeatedly shouted out, “P. F. Chang’s” and “Pei Wei” until he was cautioned agains more outbursts, pending disciplinary action.

My daughter wasn’t particularly helpful, saying no to almost everything.  She did come up with some good suggestions and then almost gave in to her brother’s heavy bias towards P. F. Chang’s until he came up with some altogether new additions to the dinner restaurant option list.   The new ideas suited my daughter well, what with her deciding Olive Garden was exactly where she wanted to go.   Only this wasn’t P. F. Chang’s.

We told them they would have a few minutes to decide together and if they hadn’t come to an agreement by then, the decision would be made by my husband and me and there would be no additional discussion about the matter.

It was at this point that my daughter had an idea: dad would take her to Olive Garden and I would go with my son to P. F. Chang’s.  My husband and I looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders, “why not” and that was that.

On the way to the restaurant my son told me everything we were going to order, some of which was specific like, “the steamed pork dumpling appetizer—six, not four” and others which were less so such as, “and you get the beef thing and I’ll get the lo mein and the chicken thing.”

The last time we were there we had been with six people and had ordered lots of different entrees to be shared.   I had to explain to him that we weren’t going to get an appetizer each and also two  entrees each: it was too much food.   He still wanted to tell me what to order, but we worked it out and got plenty of food.

As we were leaving he was doing the most absurd walk out the restaurant door.  I said questioningly, “what in the world are you doing?”  He told me it was his entry for The Ministry of Silly Walks  (from Monty Python).  I had to take a video of it for him in case we ever figure out how to submit an entry for admission.

The Big Boy Update:  As we were leaving dinner tonight we were exiting a busy car park with cars moving all around us.   My son observed, “guys with cool cars like to drive slow so the girls can look at them.”   There was a slow-moving convertible sports car in front of us my son told me was very cool.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My husband and daughter had a filling dinner together tonight.   My daughter ate all her salad, pasta, fruit and two breadsticks.   She said she even had room for dessert.  My son and I had to bring food home from our meal, although we did get a lot to eat.