Eating Dinosaur

Happy birthday to my little angel!

And because I'm such a good mommy, I decided to celebrate by taking her to her favorite restaurant: Red Lobster. You'd think a six year old would want Chuck E Cheese or some lame kid's place. Nope. She's a regular little epicurean who demanded lobster for her birthday. It's going to take an act of God to get HER married off.

So there we were, enjoying a lovely meal, and I had to laugh, because my kids are total freaks when it comes to food. The baby-happily chowing on salad. And yes, I do mean the lettuce part, too. The birthday girl-passing up everything but the lobster. I was telling her teacher tonight, she has even lectured me for offering her "unhealthy" snacks. I'm telling you, my kids are weird.

I was happily eating my shrimp scampi when the two year old noticed. She demanded and ate the rest of it. So I moved on to my crab legs. Birthday girl is still chomping on lobster, which is good, because she can eat her weight in crab legs. And no, I'm not kidding. Unless I have lobster to occupy her, if we have crab, I end up not getting any because she and her sister eat it all. I pull off a leg, and the baby starts screaming, "dinosaur!"

Personally, I was thankful we'd chosen to eat early and avoid the dinner rush. That whole dining with maniacal toddler thing gets difficult otherwise. I'm trying to crack my crab and get the baby to just shut up so I can enjoy at least one bite of my dinner. That Man is happily eating his steak and shrimp. Teenage child is trying not to acknowledge she's with our loony bunch. Finally, the little terrorist grabs the crab leg out of my hand and starts playing with the claw, gleefully shouting, "Dinosaur!" I tried to explain it was crab, however, she wouldn't accept that it was anything other than dinosaur. The helpful waiter mentioned that crabs probably were around during the time of dinosaurs, so she was technically correct. Lovely.

And then the birthday girl finished her lobster and moved on to the crab. I made up a new rule: Once you turn six, you have to crack your own crab. Maybe then, I'd get a shot at it. Eventually, this led to having to contain the baby, who also wanted to crack her own crab. We don't need to go into the mess she made. But hey, at least it wasn't in my kitchen and I tip well enough to make up for the inconvenience.

My advice: if you teach your children to eat what you eat, don't take them out for seafood until well after puberty. Do the seafood thing on kid-free nights. Otherwise, you may very well find yourself eating dinosaur.