Dinner at Pei Wei (a Chinese restaurant) is quite an experience with a five and a seven year old along. On a good day, which is what we had this past Saturday, the kids are feeling experimental. Suddenly, all those ordinary foods that we barely even notice become magical and new.<\/p>\n
Noodles are slurped or turned into lassos. Chopsticks become crab claws. Lettuce wraps become, well, lettuce wraps.<\/p>\n
After the meal, we cracked open our fortune cookies. My youngest’s said “There is beauty in everything, but we don’t always see it.”<\/p>\n
The little guy turned very contemplative after reading that, and as we were leaving the restaurant, he tugged on my hand. “It’s really true, Daddy! Everything is<\/em> beautiful.” That’s my little guy – the world’s oldest five year old.<\/p>\n “What?” his older brother said. “What do you mean?”<\/p>\n “Like momma,” I said. “She’s beautiful, but we don’t always pay attention.”<\/p>\n The boys looked at me uncertainly. My wife turned around to look at me with that flat expression she’s worked so hard to perfect.<\/p>\n I did what all guys do when they’ve dug themselves into a hole. I kept digging. “Momma’s beautiful, right? But we don’t always notice.”<\/p>\n The boys looked at their momma.<\/p>\n “Am I beautiful?” she asked.<\/p>\n “Well,” my oldest said, gesturing broadly with his hands. “Not right now.”<\/p>\n And suddenly, just like that, I was out of the hole I’d dug for myself.<\/p>\n He’s such a good kid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We can’t all be beautiful all of the time, can we? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","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":[118,122,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-n","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-b8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690","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=690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}