Lesson of the Week from Landon

This past week was full of Lessons Learned from Landon so I am trying to decipher the best..........A difficult task I must confess because they are all equally important and I want to share them all but I guess I will go with the lesson that never seems to stick with us and we continue to learn this lesson every time we go out to dinner.

Landon was a very pleasant restaurant patron from newborn to six months but as soon as he started crawling and became mobile he lost all interest in sitting patiently at a restaurant. He would be nice for the first few minutes, happily coloring, pretending to pick stuff off the menu he wanted to eat, he then would push that aside and start playing with his cars and other miscellaneous toys we brought for him and then after a good 15 minutes, after we already ordered our food and committed ourselves to the restaurant, he would start shuffling in the high chair, crashing his toys into our drinks, pulling our our straws from our drinks, flinging water all over the table and then the screeching would begin and there I would be digging through my MOM BAG for something to entertain the "Gracious KING of our World". I would find something neat like a chap stick or my germ infested car keys and that would keep his attention for a couple more minutes and then we started all over again. Finally and to the pleasure of the people surrounding us, our food would come, he would eat his food in record time and then be ready to leave.....And.....when Landon wants to leave, everyone in the restaurant will now! So one of us and I can't remember who, had the bright idea to let the child out of the highchair and have him sit either in the booth with us or on our laps......big mistake!!!!! This only gave him more room to "act a fool". When we sit in a booth he loves to chat to the people next to us, most of the time they crack up at him but on one occasion, he almost grabbed some nice old ladies hair with dirty PIZZA hands! When he sits on our laps, he requires a taste of every bite of food on our plate which isn't bad but if you accidentally skip a bite, he freaks and starts throwing his body about. He's embarrassing!!

Lesson Learned: Get a sitter, don't torch er yourself by taking your child to a restaurant and if you have to take your child to a restaurant leave him in the high chair no matter how hard he tries to escape or how vocal he becomes. At least he is contained to one area and will not inflict bodily harm to anyone!