Dear Chantilly IHOP Patrons

I'm sorry.  Sorry that today at IHOP, that kid was my kid. He was hungry.  And, seriously, it's IHOP so the visit really isn't complete if you don't have a screaming kid somewhere.

It all started when they seated us in the rear dining room.  The rear dining room with no heat and the sad stuff they were trying to pass off as heat was merely cold air coming down the wall and down my back. So we moved tables, still in the rear dining room but closer to the front and hopefully the warm air.

And then the hunger kicked in.  The screaming hunger consumed my child.  He refused every snack we offered.  He threw his sippy cup.  He finally decided to follow Mommy's lead with dipping the peanut butter cracker sandwich in jelly.  Bad, I know, but it worked.  It was soon decided that the cracker was just slowing him down so he proceeded to take a spoon and scoop out the jelly and eat the pure sugar.

BTW - awesome server guy, thanks for offering up anything to help.  Crackers, no.  Expedited order, no.  Nothing.  You kinda sucked.  But you finally brought his meal, shortly before ours.  And it was kinda cold at that point.  I hate to imagine how cold it would have been had it sat there while our food was being finished. Of course when the food was served to us in the arctic climate of the dining room, it was cold within a minute, so cold that the butter never even melted on my pancakes.  Boo IHOP.  Boo. 

So,  to everyone around me, especially those of you with little ones.  Thank you.  Thank you for the kind, knowing looks.  We've all been there.  I just hope that Ricky's fit didn't cause distress for your children in any way. 

And if it did, um, sorry you won't get a lot of sympathy from me.  Because, really, my kid was having a total meltdown and nothing was working and I was*this* close to freaking out myself. 

But I didn't.  Because I'm cool like that. At least today I was.  And today, today was just the beginning.