When You Can't Party Like it's 1999
We knew that having kids would change our social lives, but knowing something and actually living it are two totally different things.
Gone are the days of summer patio drinking with friends, staying out all night, and sleeping in until the booze wears off. No more last-minute plans, no more impromptu parties, no more sweaty dance-offs in the night clubs. When I swapped out my strapless bra for a nursing bra, I effectively killed my social life.
Not everyone goes through this transition. Some new parents are blessed with grandparents who can drop everything to come care for the little one while they unwind in a bottle of tequila. If you are one of those lucky few, go call your family and thank them! Thank them for everything they do! Thank them for staying over all night while you and your partner go spend time at a hotel room and have ridiculously loud sex. You have been given the best of both worlds and I dream of the day that I will be in your position.
For the first year after having a baby, I found the loss of my social life horribly depressing. No longer did I dress up pretty and spend hours gossiping about all the fun stuff that went on during the week. Instead, I sat home in my crusty yoga pants, rocking a baby, only leaving my recliner when my boobs decided to leak and drench my shirt. Wet t-shirt contests are sexy? Just wait until you’re a party of one and the only person getting excited over your exposed boobs is the little guy pooping himself in your lap.
For the most part, my friends were great. I knew my new life wasn’t exciting to them, but they made an effort to keep me involved. When we had a chance, the hubs and I would play split shifts and attend parties separately, each getting a little face time with the only connection to our old, childless life. On the rare occasion that we managed to get out together, it was hard to really enjoy ourselves because we knew that there was a babysitter waiting at home, anxious to return to their life. These were our kids, our responsibility.
Eventually, it just started to become too difficult to get out. After a week of getting four hours of sleep a night, the weekend would roll around and both the hubs and I would pretty much collapse from exhaustion by the time 7:30pm came. The thought of getting ready to leave the house would seem daunting. Just because we decided to have kids didn’t mean parties would start early and end early. Most nights, it would be 10:00pm before the party would even get started. In order for either of us to even see our friends, we would have to stay up way past our newly established bedtime. After a while, our joy of seeing friends and catching up just couldn’t counteract the overwhelming need to get as much sleep as possible before our 6:00am wake-up call.
Since having baby #2, our social life is pretty much dead. We still love our friends dearly, but life is just not letting us get out the way we use to. Arranging a babysitter is more difficult than it’s worth these days. Once you factor in the cost of going out, the cost of a babysitter, and all the other incidentals, it doesn’t make sense to blow half of the week’s grocery budget on a few hours out and about. Even when we have the night perfectly planned and one of us is ready to escape for a well deserved break with other real live adult human beings, shitty luck always pops up its little ugly head.
Just last night I had to cancel on a bachelorette party with my dance girls thanks to a bout of food poisoning from what I can only assume originated from my pre-packaged salad. (Eat healthy, they say! Have your greens, they say! F#ck you, I say!) I spent the night getting texts of penis pictures and dirty leather fetish stories from my girls, while lying in bed with my cramps and bad TV. If it isn’t sickness, it’s teething, or gas, or constipation, or growing pains, or nightmares, blah, blah, blah. The list of things that can go wrong with a kid on the weekend is insane. We’ve both just come to expect that at 5:00pm, every Friday, one or both of the children will experience some type of volcanic body eruption that will leave us exhausted and dripping of child matter by the end of the night. If the kids are happy, it’s one of us. It’s overtime work, family drama, body malfunctions. There’s always something.
It’s all cool, though. I keep in touch with everyone thanks to texting and Facebook. I happily scroll through your party pictures and imagine what I would have said if I was there. I even plan parties for the future! When my parents move home, the Hubs and I are going wild! You know, the kind of wild that cause people to wonder if we’ve taken up a new drug habit. Drinks will be had, conversations about poop and Toys ‘R’ Us will be a thing of the past, and we will dance in the middle of a bar, embarrassing all the young’ins with our carefree flailing. Yes, it will be a glorious time.
Until then, however, we will stay at home and plan our little wild family nights that consist of bubbly bath times, old episodes of Transformers, and extra servings of cheesies because that shit is the bomb. If we get real wild, we may even plan a night out in the tent! IN THE BACK YARD! Like, seriously, Bro. Someone’s gonna have to hose these bitches down because we are getting craaaaaaaa-zy.
To our friends: Thank you for still inviting us out even though we have to decline 85% of the time. Thank you for not ditching us just because we created miniature body doubles. Thank you for the silly texts, the pictures, the play-by-play party updates. You may not have kids yet, but once you dive in to the world of no-big-girl-fun, you’ll understand just how much it means to all the parents out there that you still make time. We may be boring now, but in a few years you’ll be practically kicking us out at the end of parties.
Born and raised in Eastern Canada, I was surrounded by humour and raised by a ridiculously funny family. I always knew I wanted kids, but when I left a museum manager’s position to become a stay-at-home-mom of two little boys, I was in for a whole new kind of life. I learned quickly that you can love your life and family, and still being honest about the unglamorous parts. I prefer using humour and satire to express my truth. You may not like what I have to say, but I always welcome you to take a glimpse in to this crazy place I call home at Cold Coffee Confessions. You can also find me on Twitter.
