Recently, we took the girls out to an early dinner at 5:30pm to a great pub near our house. It's so popular there was a 20 minute wait at that early hour. The girls probably could have handled the wait, but I couldn't - I was too hungry :) So, we opted instead to sit immediately at a high top table in the bar. I wasn't sure how other bar goers would take our young family sitting in their area, but we sat anyway. We quickly ordered their dinner, an app for us and our dinners. There were TV's nearby, and lots of people around that thankfully the whole area was sort of noisy and I figured any outbursts would be less noticeable!
For the most part, our girls are usually pretty good when we eat out (which we probably should do more often, so they get even better at it! ;) Even still though, I'm always a little nervous with fingers and crossed that we can get in and out without any big issues! We can count on the girls for about 45 minutes of good behavior at a restaurant, depending on the time of day, and their moods. I like to hold off resorting to phone-watching for as long as possible, and maybe all together when we can. But, sometimes it really is a life saver and I'm not ashamed of that at all. So, we started off playing with the trinket the restaurant provided and we were off to smooth sailing.
While we were waiting for our dinners and the girls were munching away, I started to notice a middle aged man sitting very close by at the bar by himself. He was drinking a beer flight and chatting with the bartender. Every so often he would adjust and smooth out, his very well groomed handlebar mustache. I even nodded to Brian to check it out, because it was so unique. He seemed like a regular, hanging in the corner of the bar chatting with everyone. Every so often the girls voices would escalate to unnecessary levels and I was worried about annoying him in particular, since he wasn't fully in conversation with others the whole time, and looking to relax at the bar.
Meanwhile, our food comes, the girls start to get a little antsy as they wrap up their dinner, and we turn over our phones. Instantly, a little calm comes over our table, and we chat and eat. As we are waiting for the check, Mr. Mustache gets up from his seat and pays us one of the nicest compliments we've received in recent memory. He says he 'has young nieces and nephews, and he knows what its like.... our kids are the best behaved kids on the planet. They're cute, sweet and so well behaved.' We just sort of smiled in shock and said thanks and he was very persistent 'no, I mean it.... whatever you are doing, you are doing something right. Honestly" I nearly had tears. Our kids are far from perfect, and this parenting thing is no joke... more often than not these days, I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing. Not to mention, at the very minute that he was paying us this compliment, both girls had our phones less than 5 inches from their noses... and still he kept going. So whatever possessed him to be so kind, I'll never understand but I appreciated it beyond comprehension. It was a big old pat on the back that I think I really needed :) I feel like I walked out of the restaurant with my head up a bit higher and feeling a little relieved... maybe we're doing just a
little something right...?
