A year or so ago, in a moment of temporary insanity and empty cupboards, I took my children out to dinner. By myself.
Pulling into the parking lot I felt empowered. They were getting older, only one runs from me the minute I let go of his hand and sure, all four of them can switch to full-on meltdown mode faster than I can say “pass me the salt” but I had hope.
Let me just share a few things that I learned about the family meal while dining out:
- The amount of noise coming from your table does not cause the food to magically appear.
- Stickers, crayons and the entire cast of Toy Story can be launched impressively far by a small nap-less toddler.
- Trips to the bathroom dramatically increase when you get to walk past a dessert display.
- Even four year-old motor skills are capable of flipping a scoop of long-awaited ice cream into the hood of a sibling’s jacket.
- No use crying over spilled milk does not apply to four year-olds and ice cream.
- Skip your daily exercise routine. Bathroom visits, crayon fetching, child chasing and ketchup-mustard-sugar packet-guarding burns more calories than you consumed in the one bite of your food you managed to eat.
- You can spend an entire meal with a sticker of a hamburger on your boob and a piece of straw wrapper in your hair and no one will say a thing. They already assume you are crazy.
- Someone is missing out on a huge market of barely sane parents by not creating a drive thru with food that can actually be digested.
- Never underestimate a homemade meal that can be cooked in less time than it takes to drive to a restaurant.
- It’s okay to have spaghetti five nights out of the week if it saves you enough sanity to make it to the teen years.
Thank goodness Ragú® is helping keep family mealtimes a priority with easy to create meals. With 11 tomatoes in every jar, Ragú® Old World Style® Traditional Sauce is their richest, thickest recipe ever!
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This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Ragú® Official New Tra-Dish. The opinions and text are all mine.
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