When Ruth was a baby my wife met a lot of people while attending every baby activity on the planet, rather than staying home and going slowly insane. We’ve stayed friends with many of the people we met then, but two of the families are especially fun to get together. All the adults and all the kids actually seem to like each other. Did I mention we ended up with 7 daughters among us?!
Well, Saturday night the whole group went out for dinner. Except me. I stayed home because I was not feeling social. (The cause of my grumpiness might be a story for another time.) Anyway, when my wife got home – an hour or so past the kids bedtime – and I asked how it went, she said “Fine, until it was time to leave and Ruth had a meltdown.” (Apparently Ruth wanted everyone to get ice cream cones, but it was too late.)
Well, I was emailing with one of the other parents a couple days later (Is emailing a verb?) and this little nugget arrived… “Too bad you were cranky on Saturday. We had a nice dinner. ’Til your kid had a meltdown and ruined it. Just kidding of course. The dinner wasn’t that nice. :-)”
Ahh, the joys of parenting. One of my “favorite” videos is of a dance performance by Ruth, and the screams of Miriam being carried out of the theater can be heard receding into the distance.