Our family now has a new rule when entering a restaurant. No more highchairs!

On Mother's Day, we called Texas Roadhouse immediately after morning church to be put in line for a table. They told us it would be an 80 minute wait. No problem. We live 45 minutes away, so we stopped off at home to change our clothes and to pack up a snack for Liberty. 70 minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot at TR, willing to wait another ten minutes to be seated. We checked in, and the hostess told us the wait would be approximately 15 minutes. Not a problem.

Liberty perched on a nearby saddle and bounced up and down for three minutes. Then she ran over to the jukebox and pointed emphatically at the wonderful, amazing, incredible, brilliant flashing lights...for two minutes. Then she tripped over to the hostess station and began making friends with the girls on duty. This lasted a very long time because they paid attention to her.

She then decided to make friends with the diners. She ran off amongst the tables, happily scattering her smiling "Hi"s to all who glanced at her. I stayed pretty busy, running after her and trying to keep her distracted. So I did not realize how long we had been waiting.

"Two hours," Jeremy informed me when he heard my tummy grumble over the background noises.

I approached the hostess station with a smile and explained to them how long we had been waiting. "Oh, I know," the hostess replied, "but we haven't had a table come available that had enough room for a highchair to be placed with it."

"Pshaw!" I replied. "We can eat without a highchair. Do you have a booster seat?"

It turns out they did, and we were shown immediately to a table. "If you had requested a booster seat from the beginning," the hostess explained, "we would have been able to seat you right away."

Too bad they didn't tell us that in the beginning!

Jeremy and I looked at each other in disbelief, and a new family rule was born.