Do you restaurant?

Fionas thread re dinnertimes made me think of this...

Do you take your bubbas to restaurants with you? Have you had good / bad experiences with their behaviour over a different type of lunch / dinner than usual? OR do you leave them at home and would never contemplate taking them to a decent restaurant etc?

We do the food courts, fast foods, cafes and have progressed quite nicely to the likes of the boat club, yum cha chinese restaurants (where the waitresses asked WHEN she was going to come back - def a good sign!!) and last week did a winery lunch - and she is sooo good....and seems to fit her meal with us and doesnt play up...

not to restaurants and def not both of them... when they were smaller. restaurants are for me and hubby to have time together, without kids.

We have taken Andrew out on a number of occations but we have taken him to child friendly places.

The odd time we have taken him to a more "adult" restaurant he has been very well behaved as he has had his grandparents to look after him.

We have taken DD to quite a few resturants, not really fancy ones but we very rarely go there ourselves. It was really easy when she was little - she was always very well behaved, we find now though that she gets bored a lot easier and its harder to keep her sittign still for long periods of time.
I think its much relaxing to go without them, especailly in the evening as you tend to stay up later.

We went out for dinner when Ollie was 2mths old, to a local but nice-ish restaurant. I think we felt fairly comfortable doing it, we just made sure we gave him a bottle when we got there and then he was pretty quiet / sleepy the rest of the time. I think that we have decided that we really want our kids to know how to behave in restaurants as we eat out quite a bit, so we think we will start them fairly young.....(but hey - in reality it might be a different story!!)

 

I take Lily out to cares no worries. We went out with the inlaws to a restaurant the other night and she was awesome, I just made sure her afternoon sleep was later and longer so she lasted. I wouldn't do it too often but regularly enough so she can remember the experience. it is like learning a set ofbehaviour that she needs in a prticular palce, she can only learn it if exposed to it.

But once she is more mobile and less able to sit in the chair and behave, we might have a long break from taking her to preserve our sanity!

man , all this talk about restaurants makes me want to go somewhere nice for dinner!

We do Yum Char a lot too, my kids eat as if they were Chinese I swear, Maya can put away 4 BBQ pork buns and the gremlins love prawn dumplings and spring rolls. We've taken them to other restaurants too, and they've always been good. Our problem is making sure that they have 2 spare high chairs.

I tried when Elle was about 3mths. She screamed from the moment we got in the door...she did that anywhere we went. I ended up driving around and around for 1.5 hours while everyone else ate. We do sometimes go to cafe's now and that is ok most of the time.

We went out last night with Hanny pants and she was really good but get super bored so I usually end up wandering around the restaurant with her and eating 1/2 my meal. Not my idea of a good night out!!

But at least she doesn't try and escape these days. There was a time I could barely leave the house!