When we had Griffon, the adult:child ratio in our house dropped to less than one. When we had Archer, I think it dropped to less than possible. I’m pretty sure they’re planning to tie us up, set fire to the house, and go live at the playground on their bikes.
We went out to eat this weekend. Not a good idea on a lot of levels. Before Archer was born, I had almost decided that taking the kids to restaurants just wasn’t worth it. Griffon would get cranky. Kieran and Anneke would fight. Anneke and Griffon would gag and almost vomit. (Seriously. They both have really overactive gag reflexes.) Brad and I would spend entire meals trying to keep our kids from making a bigger scene than they already were. No talking about anything interesting. No hope of even carrying on a conversation without being interrupted every three or four words. We basically would walk into a cheesy, franchise-y restaurant (because these are the ones that are loud enough for kids), spend an hour trying to put out small fires among small humans, pay at least $60 (because it is not cheap to feed all those small humans, even at cheesy, franchise-y restaurants), and walk out an hour later, flummoxed, exhausted, and feeling like we’d been beat about the face and neck.
Tell me how this is worth it.
Well. Apparently, when you add another small human, it gets worse. Imagine that.
So. We took the kids out this past Saturday. We walked into this one restaurant and decided the wait was too long. Lucky for us, cheesy, franchise-y restaurants often are located in shopping centers, so there were other options that did not involve us returning to the car for the quarter-hour ritual that is strapping them all into their seats, assuring Griffon that we’re still going to eat, calming Anneke down about whatever has made her cry this time, and reminding Kieran that he’s not Anneke’s parent and, thus, doesn’t need to rationalize with her about why said event isn’t worthy of tears.
Maybe 45 seconds after leaving the first restaurant, and on our way to another a couple doors down, I hear, “Excuse me!” I turn around to see a woman I don’t know about 15 yards back with her hand on Griffon’s head. Griffon is looking super pouty: blankie bear in hand, thumb in mouth, cap on head, very pathetic.
We had walked out the door WITHOUT HIM. He got caught in the crowd, and WE WALKED OUT WITHOUT HIM. Take a moment to process this. This woman saw a little boy with no parents — SUCKING HIS THUMB AND HOLDING HIS BLANKIE BEAR (Jesus) — and chased us down to see if he happened to be ours.
Oh.
My.
God.
Luckily, the woman was more interested in telling her harrowing story to passersby than calling CPS.
My poor, sweet Griffy Bear baby. I cannot believe we did this.
*****
P.S. Mom, if ever you read this, I do not regularly lose your grandchildren. This was a one-time event. You only ever had to deal with one child at a time… the first of whom was awesome, I might add, and totally would have been able to go live at the playground on her bike… You were never the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, so suck it up.
