a family date

We have been looking forward to it all week--an evening when David didn't have to work until 9 or later. We thought we might all three do something together, a family date night. We decided on Prattville because the little person in the family has been making noises about visiting Bass Pro Shop. We took him to CiCi's Pizza for supper, a place that he has also been asking to visit. All-you-can-eat pizza, pasta, salad, and dessert was delicious and rendered us a family of blimp-like objects, stuffed and occasionally letting off some air pressure. And sometime during the meal, we became the parents of That Kid. You know the one. He screamed uncontrollably because his cup was GREEN and Daddy had a RED cup (kids cups are green and have LIDS--very important for dining out), and it almost ruined his evening. He was flapping his arms in protest, red-faced, and he managed to flap the slices of pizza off the plate I was holding for him. Grrrr. When faced with the choice of lemonade from the green cup or water from my clear one, he got over it and the big tears rolling down his face slowed to a stop. This is the first time we've had this big a public meltdown, especially over something so small, and we had a serious talk with him (and seriously considered cutting our evening short). And then we noticed all the other kids his age in the place, many whining, lots of tears, and just about this time, the 4 year old behind us threw her (green) cup onto the floor and it exploded Sprite all over (some on me). The Dad was busy apologizing to me as I caught a glimpse of Dennis flailing in David's lap--his flailing knocked another kid's plate of pizza out of his hand as he walked by us and landed a couple of slices of pepperoni on the floor. Sigh. We decided we couldn't leave soon enough, and rushed Dennis to the car as he tried unsuccessfully to zip his jacket correctly.

He was good in Target except for the shopping cart acrobatics and the pretending to be a shark that lunged in to fake bite one or the other of us. And he wanted to go to Ross to look at more toys, so we went there briefly before concluding our evening in Bass Pro Shop. Here he ran straight to the toy section and hum-laughed loudly as he explored all the stuff, practically vibrating with exhausted silliness. We spent time climbing on the boats with Dennis opening each little hatch on each vessel, checking it all out. He worked the throttle on each boat as well, pretending to navigate us around some precarious rocks in whichever body of water he was pretending we were in.

Leaving Bass Pro, he kept asking when we'd get back to Alabama despite us repeatedly explaining that we'd never left our state. Then he insisted we were in Clanton rather than Prattville, and then launched into a series of "are we there yet?"s. He sang some of his preschool songs to us and then asked again if we were there yet, following the question immediately with "I'm really tired. Can I go to bed soon?". And though I thought we'd be home free when we indeed got home, he talked to himself loudly after we put him to bed. I went in to check on him and he said he was just really afraid of bad guys getting in his room to get him tonight. So he came to lie on the couch and watch me work out for an hour. He conked out between the two workouts, so I carried him back to bed.

In retrospect, it was a nice time together. Even though he was completely amped up, he was fun, and it was special for the three of us to be somewhere together. I can't wait for our next night out. Well, I can, I guess, since I could probably use a few days to get over this one!