By LIA SPENCER
IT’S not often my husband Michael and I go out for a nice dinner or movie anymore.
It takes a lot of pre-planning with a one-year-old. We go to a drive-in when Isla is sleeping, go to dinner when she is hungry, or organise a babysitter in advance – and usually spend the entire time worrying about how she is acting when we are away.
We recently decided to go for a nice Sunday drive to Mornington and have lunch there, but Isla was a little restless and we didn’t have enough snacks and toys packed to occupy her until her lunch came. When it did arrive, she gobbled it down and wanted to play, just in time for our meals to come. She wiggled and screamed until we released her from her high-chair, then she kept trying to escape our table and venture to other patrons to say hello. After that, we vowed not to go for restaurants anymore until she got a little older and a little more patient.
But this weekend, after Michael’s parents asked us to join them at a Southbank restaurant for lunch, we decided to throw caution to the wind and go. Isla slept the entire way to Melbourne so I knew she would be good and hungry when she woke up. I packed heaps of snacks and we decided to go Yum Cha, where the atmosphere was a little louder and she could pick at the constant stream of food coming to the table.
Isla didn’t care much for the dumplings or prawns; she much preferred to eat the yogurt and apples which I had brought from home. But after sitting quietly throughout the entire lunch and nibbling on prawn crackers, we decided to treat Isla to a bowl of ice cream. She loved every bit of it, and could have licked the bowl clean if we had let her. Everything was going perfectly – almost too good to be true. But everything went pear-shaped after Michael decided to let Isla have a small taste of hoisin sauce that came with our last plate of Peking Duck.
She scrunched up her nose, stuck out her tongue in disgust and shook her head. It was quite normal behaviour when she tasted something she didn’t like. But here’s the kicker. As we all laughed at her funny faces, she opened her mouth, and in what I would compare to the infamous Lard Ass scene in Stand By Me or the classic vomitron in Problem Child Two, every last drop of her ice cream came shooting out with powerful force. It may have lasted only seconds, but it seemed like lingering minutes in our mind. I caught most of it in my hand, and Michael caught the remaining bit with the warm hand towels we were just given two minutes prior.
We all picked our jaws up off the floor, quickly wiped Isla’s face and the table, Michael went to the till to pay and the rest of us made a bee-line for the exit. We are pretty sure everyone in the restaurant was oblivious to the projectile spew and no-one’s lunch was disturbed. Thank God.
Luckily, the entire incident didn’t seem to faze Isla, as she continued to giggle and baby talk the whole way to the car, where she fell back to sleep on the way home.
All in all it was a nice Sunday outing, with good food and company and another story to tell at Isla’s 21st.
