I have a short memory.

Short memories can be useful, on occasion. They say, for example, that women purposely forget how painful childbirth is so that they may actually decide to go through it more than once. I can attest to the truthfulness of that statement, as I distinctly recall having an "Oh, right. This is what agony feels like." moment during my labour with Seth. I seem to also have a short memory when it comes to being wronged by others...occasionally some moment from way back when in high school will come up in conversation and someone (usually my mom) will say "Remember when so and so did/said ______? You were SO upset.", and they answer is almost always no. I figure that's a really good thing, as we're supposed to forgive and forget. Clearly I've got that going for me. ;)

I also seem to have a short memory when it comes to eating at a restaurant with my small children. I haven't been feeling great the past couple of days, and my kitchen is a mess as my sink has been backed up (with what turned out to be long dark hair. HAIR. In the KITCHEN sink. I don't even know what to say to that one.). So when James got home I announced that I wanted to go out for dinner, and he obliged. Now, normally when we eat out it's fast food, preferably in the car where the kids have no choice but to remain strapped down, but for some reason tonight all common sense left my brain and I decided that we were going to eat at a REAL restaurant, with menus and real cutlery and everything!!

Here's the highlight reel:

-Seth CHUGS a large (almost adult size) glass of chocolate milk in literally less than 5 minutes. I ponder whether it's too late to cancel his dinner order. His food came like 2 minutes later, so yes.
-Seth reacts to me trying to feed him ravioli like I'm trying to poison him. We're talking flailing around in the high chair, howling and trying to throw anything within his reach to the floor for full dramatic effect.
-Seth decides he's too full for food, but still has plenty of room in there for crayons! Not unlike Smarties, red ones are his favorite.
-We take the ravioli away, but not before he has a chance to dip some of the crayons in the sauce, and then paint his colouring sheet with that.
-Since I finish my meal first, I offer to take Seth for a walk to burn off some energy. Cue Emmett meltdown. So now I'm trying to herd both of them around in the same direction while James finishes his meal and orders some previously-promised ice cream.
-Seth discovers if he takes a spoonful of ice cream, holds it in his mouth until it melts a bit and then leans his head back, he can make a melted ice cream volcano out of his mouth!! He is VERY please with his new discovery. Thankfully, Emmett was way to engrossed in actually eating his ice cream to notice or copycat.

Yeah, I think we're going to go back to solid diet of Wendy's, in the car. Just for the record, we DO correct the bad behavior when it happens, and the fact that Emmett sat nicely, ate his meal, said thank you to the waitress and was completely fine other than the "Mommy can't go somewhere without ME!!" upset gives me hope that someday going out to eat won't be a freaking circus.