I am in this new relationship by one day and I have a baptism by fire.

Tomorrow is Julie's daughter Nicole's 6th birthday. Tonight we took all four girls to Golden Corral for dinner. My own son is about to turn 17, so it has been that long since I was in a restaurant with a toddler and here I was with 4 little girls from 7 to 18 months.

It is good to know that, after all these years, I still have my parental reflexes in tact and still have the eyes in the back of my head. To be able to catch a glass of tea before it tumbles over to drench all of the plates on the table while at the same time stop a piece of chicken from being airborne I was still able to keep the girls either at the table and well behaved or following their mother on an almost never ending parade to and from the ladies bathroom and eat my own dinner at the same time.

Golden Corral, for those of you not familiar, is a large, inexpensive buffet restaurant on the lower end of the price scale. It is the place that fills up on Sundays after the Baptist churches get out and serves never ending troughs of all of wonderful comfort foods that put me on the road to gastric bypass.

Speaking of which; while I realize I have slipped back since my surgery I am still able to spot hypocrisy and downright idiocy in other people. While waiting for our table an older man who was easily twice the size I was at my heaviest wheezed his way past us leaning on a most unfortunate cane which strained as it assisted his shuffling steps. His wife whined to the hostess that he needed to sit as soon as possible because he couldn't stand very long and needed to sit as soon as possible.

In my own glass house I thought to myself that possible a few less visits to Golden Corral over the years and he would be able to move around easier than a pachyderm in shackles. And just so you don't think I was a complete hypocrite myself for just being at a buffet restaurant; I usually now only eat what would be considered a normal portion and usually do no more than one pass over the buffet.

The girls were well behaved and, since the place is always crowded and noisy, any of their behavior, which in a smaller restaurant would be distracting, was lost in the din of the surrounding overstuffed masses.

So I have passed my first BIG parental test with flying colors. Actually, all of the girls seems to like me very much. Emily, 7, has Asburgers Syndrome and does not take to people easily welcomed me right from the start. Nicole, 6, and Ashlyn, 3, are always fighting for my attention and Ash is always saying that she is going to marry me. Olivia, the baby, seems to put up with me as much as she does with every other adult; so we'll have to see how that develops as she does.