Anders' Favorite Restaurants

One of the advantages of Anders not being entirely comfortable on his feet is that he feels like he's gaining a good bit of weight. His knee walking has become quite prodigious, but he just doesn't burn the calories that a walker would. He's got a little gut now and his thighs are starting to thicken. This happened before on the brink of crawling, and that weight went away after he started crawling.

Tonight we took Anders to Abrio's Brick Oven Pizza. Anders tried to go in the back and greet the staff like Bill Clinton did at the Decorah Culver's. He was also making eyes with two girls on a double date. He started picking his nose in front of us with a shit grin that said, "Wait til those girls get a load of what I do..." So he jauntily turned around with his index finger half way up the nostril.

The point?... Abrio's has a good child preserve. It's an old Damon's, so at the bottom of the well where the big Damon's TV once sat is a great place for Anders to play. It has a lot of space, but they don't seat people down there often.

Friday night in Athens can be a though time and place to find a table, but for whatever reason, not at Abrio's. Abrio's isn't the best place, but it's far from the worst. There are much worse restaurants that are always slammed. I don't get it. Oh well, it's always a place to go. The childlife preserve is the highlight of Abrio's.

China Panda is a good Anders spot as well. The staff there love kids. We often get a table out in the middle of the action, which Anders loves.

We returned to James Waite's Chinese last month, five years after the infamous pen cap incident. I don't think we'll be returning. It was dark and cold in there. The service was slow. Even the top guy from James Waite's has defected to China Panda. For Ping Center vets, he's the balding guy who used to always beat the Japanese professor at Ping Pong in the morning.

Chipotle is also an Anders pick. It has much traffic, a lot of action behind the counter, and he likes the food better there than anywhere else.

Bear is another of the "B" words that Anders says. He is now saying "Lady." I didn't want any Athens are feminist to get mad at him for calling her a "girl." When Anders sees an androgynous woman, he usually says "man" anyway. Anders has already angered the toddler community of Athens. Anytime he sees a toddler, he points and says, "Baby." He had a little boy hopping mad for this reason at Walmart the other day. It's funny to start seeing these tiny people as "big kids" compared to Anders.

One other thing I realized tonight is that I do something with Anders that my aunt Marilee used to do with me. When Anders is heading for an outlet, plug, or some other "no-no," I whistle "woo-hoo." For literally months I have wondered why I do this. Then, tonight I remembered that Marilee did that when I was doing something I shouldn't do. Well, Marilee couldn't really whistle, so she sort of shouted "woo-hoo." It's really interesting how such things lie dormant until you reuse these things on your own kids, even if it's stuff that's hard to place. Remembering such idiosyncrasies that Marilee and Grandma used to do is a great way of remembering them now that they are gone.