Comedy Hour: Family Date

Joseph and I went on our first date in 2007. It was a real, unmistakable, sweep-her-off-her-feet date. Now, I thought he asked if I wanted to "hang out" (like with some friends) rather than "go out," so I, embarrassingly, was in jeans, sneakers, and a hoodie the whole time. But he'd had enough of being just friends with girls and beating around the bush, so when he showed up at my door, he was in a tie and carrying flowers. He opened doors for me and took me to dinner at a nice restaurant where we talked for a while before going for a walk in the moonlight. He even asked to hold my hand! After that we went to his apartment to watch "The Quiet Man" and he asked if he could put his arm around me. At the end of the night, he gave me a hug and thanked me for a nice evening. And that, gentlemen, is how a date is done.

It's now been eight years since our first date and every year on February 26 we go back to McGrath's, the restaurant where we had our first dinner together. Once we had to take a young Diana with us because we remembered that it was the 26th right before dinner time. But mostly it's been a night when just the two of us go out and remember our awesome first date and other happy memories together. This year, because Joseph has a cold, we weren't able to get a babysitter lined up. No worries, we thought, we'll just make it a family date!

SO,
Joseph was feeling a bit out of sorts because he had a cold and had been busy with work all day. I suggested he get in a short workout while I brought the kids to a park. Joseph felt refreshed after a swim and the kids got some energy out at a wet, sandy playground. I was prepared with an extra change of nicer clothes for all of us, so while Joseph was in the locker rooms at the gym, I changed all three kids out of their wet, sandy clothes in the back of the car.

We were quickly seated in a relatively deserted section of the restaurant. When we had one child, I might have been insulted, but now I prefer it that way. Matthew began shrieking obnoxiously loudly so we quickly sanitized all the surfaces we could reach and started laying out handfuls of Cheerios in front of him, which seemed to satisfy him. While he stuffed Cheerios in his little chipmunk cheeks, Joseph and I hurriedly scanned the menu while Liam tried scaling the dividers between booths and attempted to get the attention of the people on the other side of the restaurant by peeking over and yelling "HEY!!!" Choosing what you'd like to order when you have kids along is a ten minute long process of scanning the menu over and over again for appetizing keywords and/or pictures while being attacked on all sides by questions, forks, crayons, and demands for water and French fries. I estimate that at any given time during those ten minutes, only as much as 5% of your brain power is actually devoted to figuring out what you're going to eat. Usually right before the server comes to take your order or deliver food, someone has to go potty, and our night out was no exception. So by the time we'd been in there 30 minutes or so, Joseph and I had the chance to actually make eye contact and at least try to begin a conversation about two or three times. Yes, having kids along will change things.

Now, as a side story, Matthew had been having some, well, digestive issues and hadn't made a dirty diaper in a couple of days. So when I saw The Face, I knew we had an impending disaster of Biblical proportions on our hands. (Parents, you know The Face: suddenly staring pensively into the middle distance, becoming red and straining...) Of course this happened AS the food was being set on the table. So I left Joseph and the kids and took Matthew out through the nearly freezing drizzle to find the diaper bag and change him in the back of the car. It was as harrowing as I feared. Fortunately, I had enough wipes. UNfortunately, I had only brought one change of clothes for each child, and Matthew had just rendered his unusable. His other clothes were soaked and sandy. Liam had wet his pants at the park, so those were out of the question. Out there in the chilly darkness, I had to sort through to find the least objectionable clothes to put on my nearly-naked (but clean!) child. The best option was his sister's mildly sandy pants from the park and his brother's shirt.

So we returned, with Matthew dressed in girls' pants and a mismatched shirt that were both two sizes two big. We fed Matthew French fries and Cheerios and rice, but for some reason what he really wanted were Joseph's roasted vegetables. I'd forgotten to buckle him down after bringing him back from the car, so he tried standing up to grab them and swipe at the check while Joseph was trying to pay, prompting him to observe that it was "like having a demented old man sitting next to you," which made me nearly choke on my food.

So I was trying not to choke from laughing while eating and I was leaning across the table to wrestle Matthew back into his high chair while he grabbed at roasted vegetables and Joseph tried to hold the check out the way and calculate a tip. Liam had seized Joseph's phone and was holding it up to his ear yelling "Hello? Hello?!" while Diana was admonishing me because she had just been informed that we weren't getting dessert. It was a perfect little circus of hilarity. It looked like something out of a sitcom. While it was chaotic, neither Joseph or I really minded the madness. After all, when we went on our first date eight years ago, we liked each other very much. The way he tells it, he knew pretty soon after we started dating that he wanted to marry me, and I just wanted to be with him. What could be happier than two people who after eight years together have a happy marriage and three healthy, energetic kids? It was fun going back to where it began with the three people who are now part of our family. (Though we agreed that next year, we are definitely going to find a babysitter.)

But that's not all! While we were packing up, Diana noticed a fingernail that needed to be trimmed. Her middle one. So she kept flipping her middle finger up and sticking it in my face while chattering about how it needed to be trimmed when we got home. When she had finished with that, she pulled up her dress and flashed people absentmindedly, as little girls do. We got the circus under way, but in the entrance to the restaurant, Liam began doing an exaggerated cowboy waddle and complaining suddenly that his diaper was falling off. Our hands were full of leftovers, Matthew, and holding Diana's hand, so we told him to just hoist it up until we were at the car. Once at the car, we fixed Liam's diaper, got everyone strapped into their seats, and climbed in ourselves, at which point Matthew sneezed rice everywhere. Apparently he'd been holding it in his mouth the entire time for just such an occasion.

It's a happy, wild, messy little circus we have. But we wouldn't change a thing.
(But seriously, if anyone is free next February 26, please give us a call...)