Entourage

Today we were going to a restaurant in Schaumburg called Entourage for my aunt's 60th birthday celebration. Any time we go somewhere that involves fancy seating or eating, I go into planner mode. It's typical of me to make lists and timelines to keep on track, so that's what I did in order to get us out the door. I was still stressed out, but we managed to leave 10 minutes later than I had planned. We didn't miss the surprise portion, thank God! Both the boys behaved very well during practically the entire lunch. Nikko didn't want to sit in the high chair or the regular chair, so he sort of stood by his place setting or wandered back by the stroller. Luckily we sat in a corner next to Pat and Anna and Jovy, so we didn't look too out of place with roaming kids. Ronin sat well during the entire lunch and ate his [expensive] chicken nuggets. Nikko didn't wander far from the table and was happy when the main dish of chicken strips and fries came out. He was all about the fries, of course. And he handled dessert rather well, eating the ice cream/brownie mixture as I gave it to him. He signed More for that one really well. After the slide show, the kids were let loose to wander the room and the hallway beyond. The boys liked having a balloon to tug at, and this entertained them for a while. But after Audrey's diaper change, Denis told me that all Nikko wanted to do was go down the stairs and play with the waterfall in the lobby. I saw that the waterfall ran alongside the stairs, and Nikko was able to stick his hand through some slots to touch the waterfall. That wasn't so bad, but he was becoming very enthusiastic about it, which triggered a meltdown when we hauled him away from the stairs. TIME TO GO! We had to strap Nikko into the stroller kicking and screaming, and nothing really calmed him down until we were well into the car and driving off. He fell asleep on the way home after more whimpering and discomfort (a full diaper? It didn't leak). At home, Nikko returned to normal and was even happy during dinner. He didn't finish his food (he ate a lot at the restaurant, but the mealtime skewed an earlier dinner) but was running back and forth in the kitchen. Notice that I didn't say he was crashing; when he crashed, he goes full speed from the wall by his chair to the "front" door and slams into the door with both hands. Tonight he was twirling around the carpet area while Denis was making chilli. He looked like he was off in his own world, but wasn't exactly stimming off of anything, to be honest. He was also crawling around on the rug, inspecting the baseboards under the sink, and lying flat on his back for no reason. I don't know why he was doing all this, but for some reason it didn't seem like a bad thing to me. He just seemed happy to be with all of us.