Double (Play) Date!

We were scheduled to have an “adult evening out” (nothing racy – just our monthly dinner club!) this past weekend, but as I am sure happens to many parents, found ourselves without a babysitter! We ended up having a few good friends over that we don’t get together with as often as we should. One of these was my officemate, who brought her 7-year-old daughter (the other smiling, 3-D glasses-clad girl from the Hannah Montana movie photo below), and my other friend brought her toddler – so both of my girls had friends to play with.

What started out as an impromptu evening, salvaged out of cancelled plans, ended up being a really fun time with good friends! And best of all, the adults got to hang out and enjoy adult conversation, the 2 little ones enjoyed playing until we put them to bed (mine in her crib, my friend’s in a pack ‘n play in our bedroom), and the older girls kept themselves entertained late into the evening! My officemate and I were commenting on how relaxing it was to not have to worry about the girls – they had their dinner and a few snacks, they played Barbie’s, Polly Pocket’s, baby dolls, and had a short dance marathon to the High School Musical and Hannah Montana cd’s.

I may have said this before (I’ve found that some of the side effects of having children is loss of memory and a tendency to repeat myself…), but before we had our kids, my husband and I went out nearly every weekend – out with friends, out to dinner, out to the movies, out on wine tours, you name it. When I was pregnant with my first daughter, I had a minor panic attack partially brought on by a (well-meaning?) relative who told me that once I had kids I wouldn’t have any of my current friends anymore and basically made me feel like we would lose our social life. Well, certainly it has changed – we still have the same friends that we had back then, but most of them also have kids now – we go to family-friendly restaurants or wait until we have a babysitter to go to the movies or out to a “big person” restaurant. But, we still have a great time with our friends and we especially enjoy the fact that we can get together with our friends and their kids, like this past weekend, and have a “double date” with our kids!