{"id":176,"date":"2006-06-07T11:34:19","date_gmt":"2006-06-07T11:34:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2006\/06\/07\/my-magic-trick\/"},"modified":"2006-06-07T11:34:19","modified_gmt":"2006-06-07T11:34:19","slug":"my-magic-trick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2006\/06\/07\/my-magic-trick\/","title":{"rendered":"My magic trick"},"content":{"rendered":"

Taking toddlers out to a restaurant is an exercise in creative distraction. That\u2019s not something I\u2019ve had too much of a problem with in the past. Now, however, the banging<\/a> and the singing<\/a> are starting to lose some of their appeal and I\u2019m having to stretch a little bit more to keep the kiddos engaged and interested.<\/p>\n

The other day we were at a restaurant when I found myself alone with N. He was having a tough time staying at the table, and even though the other patrons were very understanding, I wanted to reel him back in. I was also trying to keep things happy.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, I had been practicing\u00a0a magic trick\u00a0for just such an occasion. I snuck a curly fry off his plate and palmed it in my left hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey little guy!\u201d I whispered urgently, \u201cwhat\u2019s that in your ear?\u201d<\/p>\n

Okay, so it\u2019s not terribly creative. Still, as long as it\u2019s new to him, it\u2019s all good. He looked at me, sort of tilting his head to one side. \u201cear?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCome here! Let me look!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEar?\u201d He raised his hand up to his ear and walked over to me.<\/p>\n

Trying not to smile I reached out with my left hand and said \u201chere, let me see what that is\u2026\u201d I touched his ear gently, gave it a little tug, and then produced the french fry. \u201cLook at that! You had a french fry in your ear!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo! No French Fry!\u201d<\/p>\n

I showed it to him. \u201cYep, here it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

His little hand reached up and\u00a0grabbed it out of my hand. I didn\u2019t know he could move that fast. \u201cNo, No French Fry!\u201d he said – and started stuffing it back into his ear.<\/p>\n

Uh-oh.<\/p>\n

Frantically, I tried to get the french fry out of his hand (and ear). He ducked my grab and kept pushing it in, all the time saying \u201cNo, no, no!\u201d. I heard a few chuckles from the other restaraunt patrons as I just about tackled the little guy. He\u2019d stuffed it in pretty far, but I got all of it. I hope so, at any rate.<\/p>\n

I lifted him up and was putting him in his chair when his mom and\u00a0older brother returned from the bathroom. \u201cEverything okay?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cYep,\u201d I said. \u201cIn fact, I was just showing him some magic tricks.\u201d There was more chuckling from the tables around us. I think I even heard a guffaw.<\/p>\n

N, meanwhile, shook his finger at me. \u201cNo! No French Fry!\u201d He shouted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s right, little guy,\u201d I said soothingly, \u201cyou don\u2019t have to eat your french fries if you don\u2019t want to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Note to self: in the future, stick to banging and singing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Taking toddlers out to a restaurant is an exercise in creative distraction. That\u2019s not something I\u2019ve had too much of a problem with in the past. Now, however, the banging and the singing are starting to lose some of their appeal and I\u2019m having to stretch a little bit more to keep the kiddos engaged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[123,122,120,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-cute","category-daddytales-n","category-daddytales-embarassing","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-2Q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}