Pre-Thanksgiving Chipotle
The night before Thanksgiving, my wife did not want to cook dinner because she was cooking for Thanksgiving. Understandably, we were going to eat out and she suggested Chipotle. She wanted me to take our 1 year old son L and leave our other two kids at home (since they could play together more calmly), so off I went into the night.
Chipotle had a random buy one get one special and it was an in-store promotion only. I decided to wait in line when I got there because it would be about a 10-15 minute wait from the looks of the line. Little did I know, people were going crazy on the promotion and ordering tons of meals per person. What was suppose to be a short trip ended up taking over an hour.
I had a nuclear 1 year old in L on my hands and needed to entertain him. It was easy at first and we were both in good spirits because I thought the line would be moving and he was enjoying the people (and car) watching. After 15 minutes, we were in it for the long haul and I needed to amp up my game with L because he was getting fussy.
He was carrying cars, so I ended up driving it all over his body while he was laughing. I was also trying to teach him that when the cars have both their rear red and white lights on, they were ready to come out of the parking spot. He seemed to understand that. Now we were about 35 minutes in and those things did not work anymore.
It was time to switch into throwing him in the air and catching him. Then came swinging him and spinning him around. Of course I didn’t bring his shoes, so I was holding him the whole time. Surprisingly, my wife and kids at home did not complain about being hungry, so I was committed to getting this meal - tired arms and all.
After about 50 minutes, I made it to the side wall right before we could start ordering. Thankfully there were some interesting patters and I was showing L whether his cars or his fingers could fit in certain places. He was laughing a lot and I felt like I weathered the storm really well. We ended up having a lot of fun and then it was our turn to order.
I placed my usual order and then grabbed the food to go home. When I got back, the bag almost ripped as I opened the door to the house. That would have been a disaster! Luckily, it did not and my wife ended up getting a lot done since we were gone so long. It turned out to be a fun experience with L after the fact and I’m glad we went through that to spend some time together (and to get some Chipotle).
