So I missed out a lot this weekend, because of my bonspiel (curling tournament).  It’s one of the rare times where I take “me time” in such huge quantities, and wasn’t conducive to my being either on Twitter or here.

But, after the bonspiel was over, I headed back to hook up with the family again and to head out to dinner with my wife and the kids.

Obviously, with a 1 year old and a 4 year old, we’re going mostly to family restaurants, and more so since we’re working through birthday coupons for meals.  For this occasion, we went to Fuddruckers – the wife and I are happy enough to eat burgers, and they have hot dogs with, frankly awesome, awesome buns for the Monster.

In the morning, I missed going to an event with the Autism Society of America’s local chapter – a trip to Build-a-Bear for the children to build little friends for themselves.  (I went to go make sure the wife wasn’t overloaded while getting both kids inside while her mother got there to take up my slack, since I was running down to the curling rink for my game, but couldn’t stick around.)  So the kids spent the afternoon with their grandparents, and then I headed back up and we went out to dinner, planning to get everyone home at a reasonable hour so the Monster could get to school this morning.

Interesting didn’t come in while we were waiting in line to order, or while we were trying to figure out what the Monster wanted to eat for dinner – a hot dog or chicken fingers.  Interesting didn’t come while trying to wrestle both kids into the booth to wait semi-patiently for the food.

Interesting was, frankly, watching the Monster start to dance in place in the booth to “Call Me Maybe”.

The bad news:  He dances like his father.

The good news: It was wholly spontaneous. Neither of us was doing anything to encourage him to start doing it – I was still talking about my game – and suddenly he was just bouncing up and down in place, swaying a little bit from side to side and pumping his fists up and down.  Kind of the ‘seat-dancing-white-boy-shuffle’ if you will, but he was doing it and smiling and keeping time with the music from the speakers overhead.  With a little encouragement, he did it for a few other songs as well, keeping him busy at points through the meal.. but there he was, dancing in his seat, all on his own…