The Brazilian steak house was a hit. The meat hangover was not so bad on Sunday but it may have been masked by the lack-of-sleep hangover. Somehow the kids didn’t seem to care that we didn’t get in bed until 3:00 on Sunday morning. Oh no! They were still up at 6:30 on Sunday morning wanting to watch cartoons! And eat breakfast! And other such nonsense!
So, the restaurant was pretty cool. (BTW: Cameron thinks that ‘cool’ is the ultimate word for awesome things. You can’t say that something is nice or pretty or neat. “You mean it’s cool, mom?”) Best service I’ve ever had! We never had to ask for drinks or more rolls or anything. Lots of meat. Most of it was really good but there were a few things I didn’t really care for. And…I’m one of those well-done-lovers which I’m sure is frowned upon by actual steak connoisseurs. Whatever. Overall, it was great and I would go again for a special occasion or with a group of people.
After dinner we headed to a smokey bar (WTF, right? I thought almost everyplace was smoke free now.) to see some great rock ‘n roll! The show was awesome but there was that unfortunate incident where the lead singer apparently felt I wasn’t rocking hard enough (AKA: jumping around like crazy and doing wild air guitar/drums like the rest of the people there) and he actually called me out in the middle of a song. He was actually very funny about it and gave me his guitar pick as a peace offering after ‘picking’ on me. I really was having a great time and totally enjoying the show but 1.) I was completely sober, and 2.) it’s just not really my style to dance with reckless abandon (especially when I’m sober). Of course, I spent the rest of the show trying to demonstrate that I was, indeed, rocking out and felt like I was being critiqued by not only the band but the people standing around me. Great fun!!
We did it! We didn’t eat out for the entire month of January! A couple of observations. Not dining out isn’t a 100% savings. It seems like our grocery bill went up. Although, we did manage to stretch our meals each week. Lots of leftovers were consumed this month. We ran our dishwasher A LOT this month. I would guess that it needed to be run at least every other day. Not that it actually got run that often…lots of dishes piled up in the sink this month.
Now what? I proposed this morning that we our goal for February should be to eat EVERY meal out this month. Yeah…probably not a good idea for a couple of reasons. We would spend way more money on food than we did in January (although February is a short month!) and it would completely undo all of the weight loss progress we’ve made recently. I’m going to pat us on the back right now. I’ve lost about 8 pounds this month and have you seen Jason lately? Seriously, he’s lost so much weight! I think his total weight is nearing 30 pounds over the last three months! So proud of him!
We talked briefly last week that we should set a new monthly eating out limit of one pizza order, one family meal and one lunch out each month. I think we can stick to that pretty easily.
For the record…we’re getting pizza tonight. Not just any pizza. The BEST pizza ever!
Do you remember the seagulls from Finding Nemo with the “mine, mine, mine?”
Replace this with “Bite, bite, bite” and you’ll know what it’s like to eat around Cameron. The kid will eat anything if we’re standing in the kitchen or the sitting on the couch but sit him at the table and he wants little to do with his own plate. Food off of my plate is completely desirable though.
Every time Cameron eats I’m a nervous wreck. The boy is a stuffer. For some reason he feels the need to cram as much food as he possibly can into this mouth. He’ll grab an entire handful of peas, for example, then open his mouth (I’m pretty sure he unhinges his jaw somehow) and puts his fist in his mouth and then tries to drop the whole load in there. Many times he ends up gagging on his hand or choking on the unreasonable amount of food in his mouth. Too many times I look over at him during dinner and his cheeks are bulging so much that he can barely hold his lips together while he chews. He does alright about taking bites of bigger pieces of food but once the piece is smaller than his hand he tries to shove the entire thing in his mouth. I don’t get it and I don’t like this! I’m terrified that he’s going to choke on something so we end up doling his food out in tiny little portions.
Lily was never a stuffer. We could lay a whole pile of food out for her and she would just eat it one piece at a time. I even remember commenting that I thought it was hilarious to watch her eat peas one at a time until they were all gone. She did go through a phase when she was about 20 months old where she stopped chewing her food. That was LOADS of fun! I remember we would give her a bite and make these really exaggerated chewing motions to remind her to chew her food. Luckily, she outgrew that pretty quickly.
Maybe Cam feels that he needs to stuff food into his mouth to prevent us from snagging it. Maybe he likes to hold onto it for later. Actually, I know that he does this because I’ve found him walking around the living room 20 minutes after lunch and he’s still chewing on a piece of grilled cheese sandwich or something. Whatever his reasoning I hope he outgrows this soon. I don’t think my heart can handle the stress of mealtime with him for much longer!
“Lily, are you done with your dinner?”
“No, not yet.”
“OK, well keep eating please.”
“I know you I walked with you once upon a dream!”
“Lily!”
“Huh?”
“No more singing until you eat three bites of that.”
*deep sigh* “OK”
5 minutes later…
“Are you done?”
“I ate Cam all gone!”
“OK, but are you done?”
“Yes.”
“OK, go wash your hands.”
Jason and I glance at each other and it’s clear that we’re both after the same thing: the half eaten slice of pizza that Lily declined to finish at dinner. We’ve been eyeing it for awhile now…ever since Lily’s third chorus of assorted princess songs that seemed to signal she was getting tired of sitting at the table. I make my move under the guise of clearing the plates from the table but he is too crafty for me and swipes the slice before I can sink my claws into it.
Please tell me I’m not the only one who eyes my kids dinner plate ready to pounce on whatever she doesn’t eat? Mind you, I don’t do this with every meal but I definitely had my scope set to the half of her PB&J that she didn’t finish at lunch yesterday at Panera.
