Boy-crazy

It's been a bad week at work and I didn't want to think about cooking, so we went to Friendly's for dinner last night. This was one of the first times we'd taken Chloë out to a restaurant by ourselves when she was going to eat table food, and we didn't think to bring her sippy cup or plate or fork. We will next time. But she did great; she took water from my straw, and then learned how to suck from the straw itself. She seemed to like it, though she got a shocked expression whenever she got a mouthful (it was ice water).

She explored the table, and my purse, and then started looking around. There was another child in a high chair down the way, a boy maybe two years old. She pointed. "Dah!" she exclaimed. She struggled to get out of the chair. So I lifted her out, and we walked toward the boy.

"We're here to say hi," I said to the boy's parents when we got there, and they smiled and told their son, "Can you say hi?" He said, "Hi," obediently, and I asked Chloë, "Can you wave?" She did, a bit, but seemed more interested in staring at the boy and trying to touch him. After a minute or two she seemed to have her fill, so I told her to wave again and they told the boy to say goodbye ("Bye," he said, possibly with more enthusiasm), and we walked back to our table.

She was thirsty again and the food was there, so we got her her own little cup with a straw, and the waitress brought us a plate to put food on for her. She got bits of bun and veggie burger and beef burger and mushroom and tomato and mozzarella, and kept stealing fries from Eric's plate. I offered her a taste of fry with ketchup once or twice, but she seemed to like Daddy's better. Eventually he wised up and turned his plate around. She also kept staring at the little boy and pointing in his direction. That stopped momentarily when we gave her little bites of our strawberry-shortcake sundae, but one of the last things she did was point again and say, "Dah," very definitely. That, I take it, settles the matter.