friday night. i was actually excited because steve and i decided to take the kids to dinner and bowling - something the kids have been asking to do and something that steve and i both enjoy (or at least that we enjoyed while extremely intoxicated in college). so we loaded up the kids and headed to loco's - about a ten minute drive. it was raining, but i was in a good mood - excited to be excited about having a family night out. we parked the car and i opened mac's door to let him out and realized he wasn't wearing shoes. immediately, my mood soured. i was mad as much at myself as i was at him, since he does this about 5 times a week and i should have checked. but, we decided to go in anyway. we took mac into the restaurant with his feet bare. i was painfully aware of everyone that noticed his dirty wet feet - and i saw them look directly from the feet to me, the mother of the child with no shoes on in a family restaurant.
as soon as we got menus, things went even further down hill. amelia recently got a massive orthodontic appliance in her mouth and her diet is limited. i had promised her there would be soup on the menu. there was not. and now her mood had soured too.
after the meal, that i will describe as mildly unpleasant, we drove to the nearest store to purchase shoes and socks for mac. forty dollars later, we were on our way to showtime bowling. we arrived and got our lane and shoes. they asked our children's ages and pointed out that they would only do bumpers on the lane for ages 10 and under - i.e. mac but not amelia. amelia handled this news surprisingly well - at first.
we started bowling and i was all over the gutter for my first 3 turns, putting me in last place, then amelia, then steve and mac in first. but as the night progressed, my mediocre bowling skills came back to me and i moved ahead of amelia, who had by this time become familiar with both gutters. she was totally frustrated and following each attempt, she would storm back to her seat and say crappy things. mac, who threw the ball with all that he had (which isn't much) and ran back immediately to look at the scores on the screen, had fallen into second place and started crying because he was no longer winning.
steve, meanwhile, had had it with amelia's bad attitude and told her we were leaving and for her to come with him. as they walked over to pay, i tossed amelia her shoes and as luck would have it, one shoe hit the ground and then bounced up and smacked her right in the face. she burst into tears and stormed off to the bathroom. i coaxed her out of the bathroom and then explained to her that while the shoe in the face was unintentional, she deserved it because she was acting like such a brat. so we loaded both of our crying kids in the car and headed home.
next time, i vote for getting a sitter, drinking heavily and maybe skipping the bowling altogether since it might just bring back memories of all that family fun.
