hush

"for the comfort of our guests, we kindly ask that you do not allow your children to create a disturbance in the restaurant. thank you."

or, in other words, tell your damn kids to shut up.

dining out with my two-year-old at our favourite friday night haunt can be a challenge at the best of times. the sign above should give you some idea as to why. here's just a sample of what can go wrong:

one, she absolutely refuses to eat what's on her plate. my plate, yes. but her plate... never.

two, she never seems entirely satisfied with the crayon selection that comes with her colouring sheet.

three, after her two hundredth order of grilled cheese sandwich, you'd think the kid would have figured out by now that it's the grilled cheese that goes in the ketchup and not her shirt sleeve.

four, there aren't enough sugar packets in the world to keep a two-year-old distracted for more than a few seconds at a time.

and five, and most importantly, when the situation calls for silence, silence is not what you should expect. in fact, sometimes i think that on restaurant fridays, my youngest spends the entire day saving up her energy just so she can release it on an unsuspecting public come dinner time. and the more we discreetly tell the little one to keep it down, the more she seems to act up. it's almost as if she knows that there is nothing her parents can do at that moment to effectively reprimand her. i mean, we can't exactly send the kid to her room. and we can't exactly threaten to take away her food. because we just paid an arm and a leg for it. nor can we threaten to take away her sugar packets. because there are another two dozen or so at the next table and the kid is not above asking her neighbours for them when the need arises. and finally, we can't exactly raise our voices at her. because of that sign. that damn sign.