Eating out

Eating out with 3 and 7 year old boys is always an adventure. Today, my wife was working late,so I decided to take the kids to a nice local diner. Of course, conflict begins as soon as we need to choose the seating. One wants to sit at the counter, the other one at a booth. We settle with the counter, because the main source of discontent will be quieter that way. We order mac and cheese for both of them, to split becuase the portions at this diner are enormous. The food arrives and as I split of the heaping pile that would feed some villages in this world, the 7 year old declares "where's mine?" My answer, of course is "right in front of you." Alex then insists this food is his brother's and pushes it away. Several rounds of this later, I relent because he said he ate hios whole portion last time. Fine, another round of mac and cheese. It arrives and when he eats less than half, Alex corrects me that he said he "may" eat all of it. Silly me. Next, Alex asks for ice cream with chocolate sauce and whipped cream (a sundae, as it's know in the vernacular.) Said sundae is ordered and upon arrival its deficiencies and errors are quickly pointed out. First, I did not specify chocolate ice cream. (I should have remembered he is the one who likes chocolate.) But, tough, eat it I say. A second later he's picking off the multi colored sprinkles off the whipped cream one by one. Again, no request for sprinkles had been made. And since he's on a roll, he wanted chocolate "sauce" not fudge. Fine. Eat or that's it. I start tatsing the fudge to show him how delicious it is, and realize I can do some damage to it, so OK, a new small sundae with chocolate ice cream, chocolate sauce, and absolutely no sprinkles, waitress, if you please. I won't be surpised if next time out he orders a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, jelly on the top, peanut butter on the bottom, spread on second after the jelly, and applied using a counter-clockwise concentric circle pattern, cut diagonally, not straight through the center, served with an odd number of potato chips. Shaken, not stirred.