Toddler Dinners: Restaurant Eating Part 2

Well I have delved into restaurants with toddlers before. You should really check out the post because there was so much great advice in there. Promise.

But since that post, I can say  that we are WAY more easy going about eating out. We have an arsenal of ways to entertain him as well as work on manners. This is also through the trials of potty training. We visit a variety of places and really don’t have many problems. We haven’t had to pack up in leave…so I am counting that as a success.

I thought of this tonight when we were eating out with my inlaws. We were there for more than an hour. here is how the evening transpired:

  • Booster seat set up in chair, happy toddler inserted. Tip: We have moved to a booster and have found that chairs work WAY better than booths for getting him close enough.
  • Crayons provided by restaurant (Crayola too!) and he begins requesting us to draw.
  • Food ordered and he is given his phone to watch. TV zone in full effect.
  • He is given cut up green peppers and carrot sticks I have brought from home. Tip: If they are going to get antsy for something before, make it something healthy. This way if the food takes a long time, they have at least filled up on something healthy. This works well too when they are really hungry.
  • Multiple requests to potty. He goes A LOT each time. Later we realize he drank the 8oz water/apple juice mix in about 2 minutes when we got there. Oops
  • Food comes and he eats all his fruit and eventually decides the hot dog isn’t evil. Eats all of it.
  • Finishes quietly and watches phone while the adults chat.

Dinner success all around. High fives little fella.

*note when we got home, a demon entered his body and he began demanding everything and got sent to his room within 15 minutes. But hey, at least he was full!

So how are you fairing with restaurant outings? Better? Worse?

Here are a few dinners from the week:



Toddler Dinners is my weekly series of posts to explore the world of feeding munchkins. Each Monday I will post our previous week’s meals and a rating on how they went as well as discuss numerous issues we all face. Find out more here.

Also be sure to follow me along throughout the week with your creations on Twitter and Instagram with the hashtag #toddlerdinners.

2 thoughts on “Toddler Dinners: Restaurant Eating Part 2

  • July 5, 2012 at 1:34 pm
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    H isn’t quite satisfied with coloring yet (at least, not all the table) but we have a little bag of “cars and choo-choos” that we carry around in the diaper bag. This has evolved into cars, trains, dinosaurs and a bunch of other random things, which we try to change up every so often. But this bag is something he only plays with while we’re out, so he gets excited about it. He will spend a long time lining them up and pushing them around. Sometimes he’ll throw one (and then it gets taken away) but generally it works like magic.

    We have a similar bag that we keep in the dining room to use once he’s done with his dinner. At some point we’ll probably need to stop that, but it keeps him at the table and interacting with us longer so for now we’re okay with it!

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  • January 8, 2014 at 2:19 am
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    We bring snacks too but not too many so he doesn’t fill up, but we are lucky as well my LO is an awesome eater, 15 months and pretty much eats everything. We tend to walk around wherever we are at too and let one parent do all the ordering and walk around the restaurant or outside until the food is almost ready so we aren’t just sitting there waiting for the food.

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