Weekends- Before & After Kids Part I

  Before being blessed with two children (BK-Before Kids), I didn’t know how good we had it on the weekends.  If I woke up, let alone got out of bed before 9am, I thought I was missing my beauty sleep.  🙂  After getting dressed and ready to go in about 15 minutes (compared with usually an hour after kids) Joe and I would go out to breakfast at our favorite spot.

We didn’t care if the wait was an hour- we brought our newspaper with us, and could leisurely read the paper and drink coffee while we waited for our table.  After we had a nice breakfast, we would go home and do a few chores around the house. 

When you don’t have two small monkeys boys, cleaning and maintaining the house takes about thirty minutes a week.  When you have two small monkeys boys, it takes about 10 hours a week.  (Not exaggerating on this either.  On Friday it took me from 10 am to 8pm to clean the house- and that was leaving a bathroom undone.  But that is another post.)

Back to our weekends before kids.  Usually on Saturday afternoons, I would visit friends, go shopping, garden, exercise, or just hang out and read a book.  Sometimes I would cook dinner, and sometimes we would go out.  (If you are keeping track- NO cooking so far.) If we went out, we weren’t there at 5pm, in order to beat the dinner crowds- we didn’t need to time a meal down to the last millisecond, before one, or both kids had a major public meltdown, and the restaurant’s customers were treated to a baby’s shrieking cries, or a toddler screaming at the top of his lungs, “I want to go NOW!”

No, we had all the time in the world.  If the restaurant wait interfered with our plans to go catch a movie afterwards, now that was cause for concern.   Otherwise we were fine.  Oh, and the movies.  We used to love going to the movies.  We didn’t have to choose between the 4pm showing that would end before our boys’ bedtime, and oh- that is your only movie time choice as a parent.  If you go to the early evening movie after having kids, you usually aren’t home until 10pm, and you can hear the wailing coming from the house, as you turn your car down the street.

When you arrive home, you realize World War III has started in your living room.  Oops- that is just the two boys that absolutely will not go to bed for the babysitter, and the only way the sitter could calm them down was to let them drag out every toy they have- even the 1,000 piece Lego’s pack.  Which, you have just stepped on, and are trying not to let out a few choice words in front of the sitter, and the two very tired, sleep deprived monkeys boys. 

At this point the boys monkeys (yes, they have turned into monkeys now) are climbing on you, crying, and wailing that only mommy can put them to bed.  Two hours later, past midnight, you finally have achived the task- getting overtired children to bed.  You curse the d**n movie and wonder why in the world you just put yourself through that.  No movie is worth the war battle you just went through- all to get a night out.

On Sunday mornings BK,  Joe and I would sleep in again (really, I used to sleep?!), and then hang out some more, go grocery shopping (yes, we usually grocery shopped together), read the paper, and had a lazy Sunday, or hung out with family.  I liked cooking on Sunday’s, so I would make a nice dinner.  We had no time constraints, or demands on our time from the children.  Our time was completely ours, and as I write this, I can barely remember it.  Was it really only four years ago?  It seems like a lifetime ago. 

This is going to end up a pretty long post, so I am breaking it into parts.  Check back later in the week for Weekends Before & After Kids Part II.