We had a celebratory birthday dinner this Saturday at DaVinci’s, and Daphne came along for her very first restaurant experience.  (You can do much worse than DaVinci’s as your first gastronomic odyssey.)

Hello Giuseppe.  I’ll have the Osso Bucco puree and a bottle of 1943 Similac Riserva.

She was unbelievably well-behaved for the entirety of the event.  D just sat quietly on her mom’s lap for a good long while, then Grandma rocked her for a bit until she fell asleep.  All told, she went nearly 2 hours without one iota of fussiness.  Granted, at the end she started to get a wee bit surly…  But then again she was the only one of us who hadn’t eaten, and that’s likely to piss off anybody.

I’ll tell you this.  It was an interesting experience being on the other end of the whole, “screeching baby in a restaurant” thing.  Daphne emitted her first unhappy squawks, and the air was instantly sucked out of the place.  The room quieted, and heads turned to stare at us.  I even heard a discontented, “is that a baby in here?” murmur.

We quickly dropped her in the ZEUS carrier and rocketed out the door, so as not to disturb our fellow diners.  However we were so focused on getting out of there that we left a man behind.  Specifically, Melty the Pink Puppy.

That dog has a plan… 

It seems Melty slipped out of Daphne’s hands and fell on the floor.  And in our haste to get out of there we didn’t reconnoiter the perimeter for stragglers and left poor Melty behind.
That’s one story, anyway.
Another, and one I find to be much more likely, is that Mel distracted Daphne on purpose, then leapt to a safe hiding spot where he could escape for a night and party with the locals.

I went back to DaVinci’s the following afternoon and spoke to our hostess.

“Hi.  Did anyone find a small stuffed animal here last night?”
She stares at me like I’m wearing clown pants on my head.
“Uh.  A stuffed animal?  A little… Pink… Puppy?”
“OH!  The puppy!  Yeah, we got him!”

I guess the number of stuffed animals they get in there on a nightly basis is astronomical, and she simply needed me to be more specific.

So I picked up Melty, fresh from his overnight wine bender at the local Italian bistro (and nursing a brutal hangover), and brought him home.

“Ngggh…  Do you have any Gatorade?”

He’s now sitting atop the counter and awaiting a trip through the wash to clean the funk off of him.  I mean, God knows where he went last night…and with whom.

Filthy animal.

j.s.