The one and only piece of advice I give first time parents is that they should try and eat out as much as possible when their new baby is born. With the baby. Why? Because until that baby is, say, 4 or 5 months old eating out with him or her is a snap. They are too young to require any food of their own, even when crying they are relatively quite, they are uber-portable, and if you are lucky, they'll fall asleep in the car seat on the way there and remain so for the duration of your meal.
But once you hit a certain age, all bets are off. We learned this the hard way with Sam when he was about 7 months old.
In Atlanta, at least for a while, we didn't have a babysitter. We tried to eat out early so that we could take Sam. Plus the restaurants usually don't get busy until 7-ish, so if you show up at 5:30 there are fewer people for your kid to potentially annoy.
One night we were feeling bold and decided to try a new, upscale causal place. SOB had heard from a friend at work that it was family friendly, so we packed Sam up and headed out for our early bird special. With traffic and parking difficulties we didn't get into the restaurant until almost 6:30. We were nervous, but they staff was kind and seated us way in the back. Unfortunately the place filled up right quick and soon Sam was terrorizing the hell out of us and everyone nearby. He was throwing puffs, toys, spoons, anything he could get his hands on.
Needless to say, we took our desserts to go.
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This post was written for Parent Bloggers Network as part of a sweepstakes sponsored by Burger King Corp.
