Restaurant FAIL

On Tuesday our family plus our staff team (1 other couple and another male and female staff) went out to dinner at Jose's Noodle Factory (sort of a Tex Mex style restaurant).

Noah had been having an off day - not really eating much, starting to get sick, not listening but we went anyway because generally Noah is really good in restaurants.

It's obvious from the title of this entry where this story is going, but I'll just write it out anyway.

So we get to the restaurant and Noah sits in his highchair for all of 5.7 seconds and then he's done. At first he just walks around and visits the other staff at our table, but then he's crawling into other booths (no one is in them of course), crawling under tables, and then he starts doing his loud call - HELP MAMA! HELP DADDY! when he finds himself standing up on the booth "unable" to get back down (or probably unwilling).

At this point we have all ordered and have received our food and have just started to eat. Noah starts screaming and making a scene and I know it will continue for the rest of the meal (luckily Jude is doing amazing despite this being his cranky time of the day). At this point I've already taken him to the women's washroom and told him that the next time he screams we are going home.

So true to my word (I don't like to threaten unless I am willing to follow through) I have to ask the server to pack up my food and so Noah and I drive home.

I am frustrated.

Angry.

Embarrassed.

We get home and I just let Noah play with his toys while I try to explain to him what happened.

"Noah. We are at home because you were not behaving properly for the restaurant."

"Yeeeaaaaah."

"You screamed and ran around in the restaurant."

"Yeeeeaaaah."

"You didn't listen to Mommy & Daddy."

"Yeeeaaaaah."

*sigh*

I know that at this point that spanking is NOT the way to go, so I let it drop and when he brings up "Baby Jude" and Daddy being at the restaurant I just continue to say that we left because he wasn't obeying Mommy & Daddy and so we left because it's not okay to behave like that.

He gets an early (and much needed) bedtime and is asleep by the time Jamie, Jude and the rest of our staff team arrives to hang out for the rest of the evening.

I'm not sure what the lesson is, but I think I would do the same thing all over again if I could. I would have given him the opportunity to eat dinner with us, but he probably would still be unable to handle it and so I would have left with him again. But...it's always worth a try I think.