It’s been quiet here not from lack of stuff to say – just ask anyone that knows me and they’ll tell you I enjoy my own words tremendously – but rather a lack of time.

Sunday, or should I say, Saturday night began what appears to be three months of pure pain and agony. I didn’t get home until about 7:30 am Sunday morning after working all night. Monday was another 18 hour day and I will have two more by the end of the week. This will continue until about the middle of June. Lots of work for me.

At least I was able to take Tuesday off for recuperation. But God has a sense of humor and bestowed even more energy to our two year old than normal on the day I get to sleep in. It was amazing! He got up just after 6am and ran continuously until about 11:30 am when he finally crashed for his midday nap. He woke up about 1:30 and continued to run around the house and the store when we went shopping. I asked Melissa if she had been slipping caffeine into his sippy cup, but she denied doing so. The older two wanted to dine out but I was in no mood to sit in a restaurant with the ZoomBoy of Doom.

It should be illegal to bring children of a certain age into a restaurant. They are just incapable of sitting still for the entire duration, leaving themselves, their parents, and everyone around miserable and cursing. You’ve seen it, I’ve seen it, and I’ve experienced it from the parents’ side a few times when I wasn’t paying attention. We try and not put ourselves in that situation for our own sanity and out of politeness to others.

When my oldest, soon to be twelve, was about 18 months or so, we tried to go out with my mom and my in-laws, who were visiting us at the time. We were young parents, poor, and stupid. Now we’re old parents, better off, and still stupid but back then we weren’t about to turn down a free diner.

But the boy had different ideas and refused to sit.

At all.

He wiggled. He squirmed. He crawled under the table and would have crawled under all the other tables too if I hadn’t stopped him. And of course he screamed when I did. In short, he left me miserable and cursing. I was unable to eat or have any sort of interaction with our other family members. I finally bundled him up, put him in the car, and took him home. As I was leaving I said to my wife, "You stay and enjoy your family and get a ride home with them." Oh, I was furious.

"Why aren’t we staying?" asked my son. (It may not have been that articulate, but that was the meaning.)

"Because you’re a terror," I replied.

I don’t think we went out to dinner for about three years after that.

Eventually, both older children grew up and we’ve enjoyed the occasional meal at someplace fancy like Friendly’s. (Hey! When you have kids, Friendly’s is fancy. Trust me.)

But now we have a two year old again and I think it’s time to excuse ourselves from public eating for a little while. They say discretion is the better part of valor, and cowardice is the better part of discretion. Therefore we will hide ourselves away until such time as this little fiend calms down.