Sunday, March 25, 2007

Notes on a Dinner

While DH's parents were here, they took us out to dinner to Carrabba's, my favorite restaurant. It's a nicer, more expensive place than I would normally try on my own, but when there's extra adults I figure we have better odds of it turning out not to be a waste of money. And the food is so great that even if the kids don't do well, whatever I have to take home to eat because we had to leave before we started a riot will make an excellent lunch the next day. The dining room there is generally dark, you know, moody, but the table where we were sitting was right under some nice lights. After a while I thought the lighting could be coming from the heavenly beams shining straight down on the three angels masquerading as my children, who were behaving so perfectly it was almost unbelievable. It helped that we were sitting with one adult in between each child, so no one had to deal with too much. Boy #3 sat and colored with his artist grandfather, #1 played tic-tac-toe with me an DH, and won the majority of games that weren't a tie, and #2 actually ate every single bite on his plate without complaining. He didn't know what to order as a side dish, so I ordered some broccoli for him, which he generally likes. When he saw it he said, Hey, I don't want this, so we told him, Don't eat it and someone else will. Before I could look again, though, he had eaten all of it. They were just fantastic from start to finish.

Speaking of finish, though, here's a word to the wise for anyone who could be dining with my family. If you are lucky enough to make it to dessert, and actually want to eat something delicious, don't share with Boy #1. I made the mistake of ordering a Chocolate Dream, which is a brownie, covered with a layer of chocolate mousse, then whipped cream, chocolate shavings, another brownie, more mousse, and more whipped cream. The whole concoction is sitting on a pool of chocolate syrup. If it sounds fantastic, it certainly is, and that is a sentiment that apparently Boy #1 shares. From the moment the plate was set in front of us, the Chocolate Dream started disappearing as if he was a contestant in a decadent dessert eating contest. I would say that he inhaled the dessert, but that would imply that a breath was taken somewhere in the middle there, and I'm pretty sure he didn't come up for air once. Naturally, this only spurred my competitive instincts, and I knew that if I had any intentions of "sharing" this dessert with the Human Vacuum Cleaner then I better step up my game. Fork in hand, I went after what remained of the dessert with the kind of gusto that only a pregnant woman can muster.

Keep in mind, that we are now about 45 seconds since the waitress had set the plate down, and it was about half gone. I wasted a few precious seconds giving DH a bite, but dug right back in myself without missing a step. Boy #1 was like a man driven, and I can only hope that he puts this much effort and dedication into finishing his college education someday. It took about 2 minutes total for the entire dessert to be devoured, and I can honestly say that as delicious as it was, it's no fun to be that rushed. I barely had time to savor the chocolate, because I had to be so concerned about just skewering the next bite. I did get a little bit of a break right there at the end, when #1 was trying to scoop everything onto his fork that was left on the plate, but started choking on his current bite, causing him to drop a little bit back off his fork onto the plate which I immediately claimed as my own. Surely someone else could have handled the Heimlich if need be, I was enjoying my one contest-free bite!

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