Eight, nine... ten kids?

Since having a baby, certain things in life have become more difficult. I can no longer pop down to the shops to pick up a few groceries with my younger kids. I now have to time my supermarket visits, so they don't clash with feeding, changing, pooping or sleeping time. We can no longer have loud music playing throughout the day. Instead of yelling "Woo! Let's party like it's 1999!"*, I am instead yelling at my kids to turn things down or stop yelling because the.baby.is.sleeping! Of course, me yelling at the kids to stop yelling is totally ironic. But, whatever. It's a case of 'do what I say and not what I do'.

One thing I was determined not to do was miss out on good quality family time. As my teens are growing older, they like to do their own things on the weekend with their friends or girlfriends/boyfriends. I respect that, but I have made sure that at least once a month we go out for dinner as a family. Each child** gets a turn at picking where we go.

I let my three older children invite a friend along. In total their were ten chilren. Ten? Yes, ten. AND A BABY. I must have been feeling braaaave that night. We went out to a large Italian family restaurant.

Passeggiate! Lo amo la cucina Italiana!

As I rang up to reserve our table of 12, the lady on the phone assumed it was a booking for two or more families. I know this because basically every time we book a table somewhere, we are known as a "group" booking.

As we walk into the restaurant, I can feel the looks. Every person in the restuarant turns to us and their eyes say to me "Oh, no. Please, God - don't let that large family of whing-y, whiney kids sit near us."

We got sat next to a lady (around my age) and her adult daughter. I thought that maybe, just maybe this lady would have some sympathy for me, should my kids act like total nightmares. She turned to her daughter and said VERY loudly:

"Oh. My. God. Seven... oh, wait. Eight..."

"No, there's another one. That's nine. Holy Cow!"

"You forgot the baby. Oh, so ten. TEN KIDS! Faaaaaark!"

Mmmmm. Classy. My baby started grizzling. Cue eyerolls.

My kids were amazing. Yes, they mixed little pepper and salt sachets into their drinks and blew bubbles. Yes, more than one of them didn't like their meal. And yes, one of them went under the table and had a tantrum at my legs, but overall it was very succesful.

As we were leaving, I looked back to the lady and her daughter and heard:

"Wow. Those kids were actually alright."

Yeah!

Oh, and obviously the photo of the pizza isn't what we actually ate. I mean EW, it has all of this yucky red and green stuff on it!

*Kidding, obviously. I was too busy having babies for partying.

**This is always fun - except for when it's one of my daughter's turn to choose. We go to McDonald's every.single.time. This would be all well and good, except for the fact that my eldest daughter and I stopped eating fast food more than a year. *sigh*