About the Toddling Connoisseur

Before our daughter, Zoey, was born in July 2013 my husband and I had dinner out at restaurants more often than we had dinner at home.  I don't enjoy cooking.  He does, but he is rather slow at it and with our busy schedules a nice dinner out just made sense more often than not.  When we decided to have a baby, I wondered how this part of our lives would change.  She was born pre-mature and had some minor breathing issues, which led the NICU doctors to instruct us not to take her out to public places, such as restaurants, for the first 8 weeks of her life.  Let's just say, I was going a bit nuts with not being able to go out to dinner or even the grocery store without finding someone to stay with her.

After this experience of staying home for far too long, I decided that my baby was going to get used to eating in restaurants from the beginning.  So once she was able to get out and about, we continued something relatively close to our pre-baby routine.  Now let's be honest, we weren't getting a lot of sleep.  So some nights a bowl of cereal and heading to bed early turned into our big dinner plans!

The baby year was surprisingly easy for going out.  We took her in her car seat and she slept through most meals.  I had a bottle or baby food ready in case she woke, but most of the time she snoozed away.  She loved that car seat!  But fast forward 20 months and now we have a rambunctious toddler, who doesn't want to sleep through anything.  I have tried researching local restaurants before we go someplace new to see how toddler friendly it might be, but haven't had much success in finding this information.  So I decided that I would share my findings as we venture out to new places with you here.  So as Zoey, the Toddling Connoisseur, tries new places I will be updating you on our successes and failures.  The best kids meal values and those places that just aren't a very good value for a toddler.

Introducing the Toddling Connoisseur...