With three small children under 6, opportunities to go out sans kids are few and far between and opportunities for wifey and me to go out together are even more limited as baby sitting isn’t exactly cheap.
There are two or three evenings a month where I go out. I go down the pub on the second Friday with my buddy and I go to a book group on the second Tuesday. I’ve recently re-started five a side footy at the tender age of 38 because it’s fun, even if I am a bit of a fat knacker.
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| Me, as a 2 year old. Social life much unchanged to this day it would seem |
The one thing that’s predictable though is the behaviour of the kids when I go out. Often I’ll find the boy tucked up on my side of the bed when I get home. If I’m lucky he wont be in a pool of wee either. The worst interrupted nights sleep also happen on a night where I’m out. Wednesday was football in minus 4 degrees. It was also the Danger night time marathon as the wee lad refused to settle and decided that purple, rigid and crying was the in thing.
The year before last also saw book group greeted with a feeling of dread every month because invariably that was the night for some sort of major illness, usually involving copious amounts of sick. One infamous time, when wifey was out at a course, the sick actually coated my brother who was babysitting and I came home to see him wearing a full set of my clothes. Thank goodness the pub has no mobile phone reception whatsoever.
I’ve checked on this, when I was little I was a pretty solid sleeper. It took me a while to get to sleep, and it needed my dad lying on the bed next to me to achieve this more often than not, but I was a pretty solid sleeper all told. When the boy only started sleeping through at about 8 months we felt frazzled. Fifi only started doing it at two and a half(!) and Danger is now flirting with the idea at one. The problem is, with 3 kids, the chances of someone having a disturbed night sleep are much increased.