So, Dad was here yesterday and he took us out to lunch at Kyoto's, a local hibatchi place.

I love hibatchi. So does Kevin. We just have to be a little careful and ask the rest of the table (since they won't sit you in seperate groups) if it's ok to have any shellfish orders cooked last so that Kevin's food won't be exposed to any allergens. I've never yet met anyone who wasn't cool with this idea (what are they gonna do, anyway? Insist that Kevin die at his end of the table?) so that's fine.

The group sharing a table with us was a bank area manager and some of his employees and I think a girlfriend. It was a very educational discussion, as they were talking primarily about bank robberies that had been attempted and what had happened to the various perps. I saw Kevin restrain himself several times from asking questions, and honestly, there are a few questions I would have liked to ask as well. Guess we're playing just a little too much Shadowrun recently.

The girlfriend had never had tried sushi and said so in a hesitant little voice when asked, so of course, the manager had to order a huge sushi sampler and forced about three pieces of sushi on the girlfriend. She was... not really happy about this. However, I think I was the only person who noticed she spit a piece of tuna into her napkin and let it fall under the table. I only noticed because I had to keep bending over to collect Jess's toy.

I had an order of fried tofu as an appetizer. I know a lot of people don't like tofu (including my dad and husband) and I don't try to force it on anyone. I, however, really enjoy it. Somewhat to my surprise, I gave a small piece to Jessica, who also really liked it. She ate about half of one of my blocks (there were three blocks in the appetizer).

"Do you really think you should be feeding her that?" my dad asked. I looked at the tofu which Jess was happily chewing up.

"Why on earth not?" I responded.

"Well, she might be allergic to it."

I stared at him, then shook my head and continued to feed the baby bits and pieces of tofu. "I seriously doubt that, Dad. She drinks soy-formula instead of milk-based formula."

This was the first time my dad had ever been to Hibatchi, so when the cook showed up to do the show, he was quite impressed. I was mildly less than impressed, but I've seen very good shows (of course, I've seen a few really bad ones, too) and this guy was about average. He did do the onion volcano well, however, and I've seen that one botched several times, so I guess he wasn't too bad.

Jess seemed to enjoy it as well and for the first time, she waved bye-bye to someone. The cook. Hmph. (The pediatrician last week was sort of astounded that Jess didn't wave bye-bye, but we haven't been making any effort whatsoever to teach it to her either. It hadn't occurred to me that it was anything important. Jess shakes her head "no" and will almost always come to me if I ask her to "come here", so it hadn't occurred to me that bye-bye was a developmental milestone we were missing. Jess rarely sees anyone say bye-bye. I mean, Kevin's off to work before she's awake, and I so rarely leave her with anyone else... ah well, shows what we know, huh? Anyway....)

Kevin and I took turns feeding Jess pieces from our lunch - chicken bits, carrots, clumps of fried rice, scrambled egg bits, small pieces of green beans and zucchini - all of which she enjoyed immensely. It was the first full meal she's had that didn't include any baby-food at all. And she seemed pretty happy with that.

It wasn't until the bank-manager and his party stood up to leave that one of the girls in the group noticed that we had a baby with us at all! Heh.