Day 825 - Hectic Birthday to Me

Today is my birthday. Even as a kid, I always had an awkward feeling about birthdays because I hated being the center of attention. The gifts, the singing, the congratulations. What is there to congratulate? If you want to thank someone, you should thank the vagina that brought me into this world. But when you have two 2 year old kids, they will gladly take the reins and become the center of attention for you.

The main event for tonight was going to be dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. Lisa and I think the restaurant is pretty kid-friendly since they have kid menus and the place is noisy enough to cover the screams of boredom from toddlers.

As with any dinner outing with kids, you must get to the restaurant before it gets too busy. This means you end up eating with a restaurant demographic of 50% couples with kids and 50% elderly couples. This also means that 75% of the restaurant is wearing diapers.

We got to The Cheesecake Factory around 5:45pm and got seated within minutes. Good start! The kids sat down, and we gave them some crayons to use in their coloring books. Still good! And then the kids started fighting over each other's crayons. Not good. Emma got angry and started to throw her crayons on the floor. Bad.

I took Emma out of her chair, carried her outside, and brought her back inside.

Our waitress brought a basket of bread. Terrific! We gave the kids pieces of the wheat bread which they ate. Super! Emma spit out the wheat bread and wanted the white bread. Umm...okay. Pretty soon the kids started to eat way too much bread, so we took the bread away. Andrew screamed. Bad.

I took Andrew out of his chair, carried him outside, and brought him back inside.

We ordered our food, and the waitress said she would bring out the food for the kids first. Great idea! Emma started to get bored. Oh-oh. We gave her a Magna Doodle board. She pushed it to the ground. Not good. She started to shout, "I want sink! I want sink!" We stupidly looked around for a sink, but realized we had no idea what she was talking about.

I took Emma out of her chair, carried her outside, and brought her back inside.

The food for the kids arrived. Thank you! The kids happily began to eat their pasta and chicken. Thank you, thank you! And then our food arrived. Delicious! But the kids were done with their food. Oh crap. The kids started to fuss. Crap crap. The kids wanted out. Crappity crap crap. There was no way for us to eat our food. We asked our waitress to pack up our food to-go.

I took Emma and Andrew out of their chairs, tried to carry them outside with my increasingly weak arms, and dragged them back inside.

The food was packed up, I got our parking validated, and we drove home.

As I was in the car driving, I realized we paid $8 for valet parking and tipped the waitress $10. So instead of ordering take-out, we decided to eat out so we could technically spend $20 for a stress test.

Honestly, I was a little bummed out when we got home because dinner was such a wreck. But after dinner, we all sat around our tattered sofa to open up some presents. As Lisa was taking pictures, Emma and Andrew were excitedly helping me tear the wrapping paper. The kids were also able to say, "Happy birthday, Daddy!" -- although it came out sounding more like "I pee birdies, Daddy!" And as we put the kids in their cribs to sleep, Emma said without prompting, "It your birthday, Daddy! Yay!"

It ended up being a pretty good birthday after all. Yay!