I would rather poke my eyes out.

What am I talking about? Well, I'll tell you a little story. It's called "Why we don't Take our Son to the Restaurant". The main character is a three-year-old boy with an incredible abundance of energy, a little boy whom most people say, "oh, he's just three", but after five minutes, realize that they have never encountered such a boy with THIS much personality. The boy is very much loved and he is funny and social (I would say over-social, if there is such a term); however, there are certain times in public when this boy becomes too much to handle.

Moving onto the main story here. So, we decided to brave our favorite restaurant with the kids last night. The last time we went out at a different restaurant, Andrew was actually pretty good. He stayed in his seat, and wasn't too disruptive. Elise is always good so we never have to worry about her. To set the mood, our favorite restaurant a quiet, family style venue (nothing fancy, but it's no McDonald's). The food is damn good and the bread is all baked right there. It's to die for.

Anyway, we get seated and the first thing he does is start rolling the crayons onto the floor (I need to remember to just tell them, "no crayons! He doesn't use them!"). The table next to us was placing their order and he tossed a crayon in their direction. I believe it landed in the woman's purse, but I can't be certain. So we get the crayons away from him.

Then, our server comes and gets us our water. In the meantime, Andrew is turning around in his booster seat and talking to EVERYONE. The table behind us -- and elderly couple -- he says, loudly, "hi!" As our waitress is walking away, he says, "bye! bye!!! BYE!!!" loudly, until she answers him. He also asks fellow patrons questions and tells them that he's going to his grandma's (no, he's not).

While we were waiting for our food, Andrew declares, "I WANT BUTTER.", pointing to the butter packets. We tell him we have to wait until they bring the basket of bread out. While waiting for our food, Andrew says to each passing waitress, "hi! I want food!" They really don't know what to think of this odd boy.

There is an upstairs to this restaurant that you can see from the main dining area and there is a waitress up there, and Andrew shouts, "HI!!! I SEE YOU! I WANT WATER!" The people seated at the three tables around us kept looking at us. I kind-of wanted to die. I should have maybe said, "he has Tourette's" or something to that effect.

Our soup arrives and Andrew is good while he eats. I am spooning some to Elise and she is happy as a clam, cute as can be.

Andrew randomly points out things around the room: "look, there's a furnace! There's another furnace over there! There's snowmen! Look, there's Santa!" He's so loud. At one point he says, "Santa is dancing with his butt!!" (OMG, mortifying.)

Fifteen minutes later, our food arrives and she hasn't even set the plates down and Andrew is reaching for a bun off one of the plates. He says, "I want cheeseburger" (we had ordered him fish and fries). The waitress is very patient with us, and I tell her to just ignore him and put his plate in front of him.

The rush to eat and get out of there is the game we play every time we go out to eat, and it's in full swing at the moment. Finally, when Andrew was full, Hubby decided to just take him out of the car (well, first he took him to the bathroom, and before they went to the car, Andrew dashed back over to the table before being carried out. The last I saw him, his arms were flailing). I got our food boxed up, paid our bill, left her a good tip, and got the heck out of there.

No more eating out with Andrew for quite some time. I am pretty sure that the staff at our favorite restaurant have a picture of our family in the break room with a "Warning" stamped over our faces.