Yearly Archives: 2009

Kids and Restaurants: 5 Tips to Eating Out With Kids

October 16, 2009etiquetteKirsetin

(And Enjoying It!)

Start at home. Kids learn about table manners every time they sit down to eat. If you allow them to wander about with their apples and crawl under the table with their cup at home, you can’t expect much better in a restaurant. Sit down and eat with your kids, include them in the mealtime conversation, and teach them good manners at home. It transfers either way, I promise.
Begin when they’re young. When your children are exposed to restaurant settings from an early age, they quickly understand how to behave in that environment. If the budget is tight, you can take them to Panera or another coffeehouse-type of restaurant, where you can enjoy a hot beverage and they can draw quietly with crayons. It’s the exposure–not necessarily having a full meal–that counts.
Bring a bag of fun. Think about fun activities you can bring along to a restaurant and toss them into a spare bag. Cards, books of mazes, blank paper and crayons–anything your kids enjoy that can help them pass the time is fair game (except noise makers – that’s obvious, right?). The bag of tricks is there to help you, and will help your kids pass some of the time. It won’t, however, provide hours of solo entertainment. Most likely, you’ll be using that crayon to play tic-tac-toe. But that’s okay: this is a family meal out, not a date night. When you engage with your kids, they learn that they’re a part of this night out, too.
Use common sense. Don’t visit your favorite 5-star restaurant or make reservations for 8:00PM. Hit Macaroni Grill and beat the 6:30 dinner crowd. You’ll all be much happier, trust me.
Set expectations. Expectations are the key to happiness, for you and your kids.

For the kids: be sure they know ahead of time what you expect. Must they keep their voices down? Stay seated? Will you allow them to drink chocolate milk? Can they get fries? All of these things are important to address ahead of time, so there aren’t any big surprises at the restaurant. Surprises = Not Good.

For you and your spouse: this is not a romantic night out. It most likely won’t even be that relaxing, especially the first few times. But you won’t have to cook. Or clean. And after a few times your kids will be pros. Your reward? Years of fun dinners out with your kids = Priceless.

photo credits: Tanel & Lilla Coelho

Would You Take Your Kids to Great Britain?

October 14, 2009travelKirsetin

Sure, why not?

Well, there’s the airfare, of course, but once you get past that staggering figure, it’s not so bad.

In general my #1 recommendation for travel with kids to faraway places is this: STAY. Stay as long as possible. Get the heck out of that hotel, people. Find a house. It’s bigger. It’s cozier. And it’s probably a heck of a lot cheaper. Once you’ve got the lodging with a kitchen, you’ve just reduced your food bill by a gazillion. And cost is only one benefit. The ease–ease, I’m telling you–of having your own kitchen, living room, and yard!–is priceless. Your kids can roll out of bed and eat cereal without having to get dressed and hauled off to some restaurant. They can relax in a little space of their own during downtime, as can you. They can run around in the yard for hours, and let’s face it, that’s a dangerous proposition in any hotel parking lot.

Here are a few more thoughts for the intrepid family traveler:

Great Britain’s a good starter trip. It’s an easy one with kids, because they speak the same language. I know, I know, they call french fries “chips,” and instead of potato chips, they say “crisps.” But still. Getting around with little kids is fairly easy when you don’t have a language barrier. They may call it the “loo,” but they know what you’re looking for!
Plan ahead. Before you haul your kids across the world, it’s wise to have a general plan of what you’re going to do when you get there. We didn’t have every day mapped out before we left, but we had a good idea of when we’d be where. There were a few things we knew for sure, like when we’d visit Warwick Castle (we needed tickets) and when we’d go to London (needed to catch a train). So have a plan, but be flexible. There were towns we’d never heard of that we ended up exploring for the better part of a day–keep your options open enough to allow for unexpected fun.
Plan for downtime. When we took our kids to Great Britain, we went for 2 weeks over Christmas break. In those two weeks we saw lots of cute towns in the Cotswolds Region, drank with the locals in Frampton on Severn, rode the double-decker red bus in London, went to the London Museum of Art and saw a million other London sites, visited Bath, saw the stone circles in Avebury, toured Gloucester Castle (where some of Harry Potter was filmed!), walked around Shakespeare’s hometown, spent a day at Warwick Castle, spent a few days in Edinburgh, Scotland, and tromped through some amazingly cool abbey and castle ruins in Wales. Still, there were several days where we did nothing, other than walk around our little village and go for groceries! This downtime was essential to all of our stamina–the kids enjoyed not having to get up and go, and we enjoyed not having to get them up to go.
Prepare for jet lag. Do everything you can to start moving your internal clocks to the time zone you’re headed to, but expect the first day or two to be a little tough. We had exciting plans for our first full day in the countryside, but none of us could wake up sufficiently to get going. We started out after lunch instead, and it worked out just fine.
Pack some fun for your kids. If your trip is anything like ours, it will involve a very long plane ride and lots of time in a rental car (on the left side of the road, mind you). While we never once tired of looking out the windows at the amazing sites, our kids were happy to have books, books on tape (for the littlest), papers, and crayons to keep themselves amused. We were glad they had them, too.

And no post about travel would be complete without photos, so here are a few from that fun adventure.

I’m Calling My Mom, Because I Still Can

October 12, 2009family, nostalgiaKirsetin

Some days I just want to call my mom. Do you know that feeling? Do you understand that sometimes it’s nice just to be able to call without purpose, when your shared history is all you need to begin a conversation?

For me, these moments are often associated with memories: the day I am making my grandmother’s spaghetti sauce; the cold mornings when I’m having a hot cup of tea; the days my boys do or say something that reminds me of my little brother, when he really was little—these are the days I pick up the phone.

And I’m very thankful that I still can.

A friend’s mom died from lung cancer last year. Another died from breast cancer earlier this year. My mother-in-law lost one of her dearest friends to the terrible disease, too.

Our days are all numbered, this I know. And I’m thankful that my mom is still here, despite her own battle with breast cancer, and that I’m here, too. I think I’ll call her to talk about that spaghetti sauce on my stove.