Nothing highlights the change in your lifestyle more than having every Saturday for the foreseeable filled, not with fine dining, art exhibitions and museum visits, but with soft-play parties, bouncy castle parties and pass the parcel.
My husband Matt flew back from Chicago on Saturday. After a week of dealing with the threesome on my own, I was very happy to see him. However, our reunion was short-lived.
Sofia had a fifth birthday party to go to in South West London that day. Matt was jet-lagged and the twins went down for a nap, so it was a case of divide and conquer with just Sofia and I making the 30-minute journey.
On Sunday, Sofia had a new school friend over for a playdate to make up for the fact that we can’t make her birthday party as we’ve already RSVP’d to another two 5th birthday parties on the same day.
I didn’t go to NCT classes as we had private antenatal classes at home (this didn’t cost any more than NCT). They were great, but I didn’t gain the big network of NCT mums to hang around with after my daughter was born. However, I quickly started attending new mum and baby classes and soon had a great group of mum friends. They all knew each other from NCT and I was the cuckoo, although one that was made to feel very welcome. It meant that Sofia had a wide circle of friends from the word go and almost five years later those early friendships are still going strong. The problem is all their birthdays fall within weeks of each other.
I’m all for the children having an active social life and I love to see how much fun my four-year-old has at parties. However, we have nine childrens’ parties to go to between now and Christmas. It’s pretty exhausting, not to mention expensive, and as siblings (understandably) aren’t invited to most of these bashes, it looks like Matt and I will be spending many more chunks of many more weekends apart.
I think Matt and I need to plan a much-needed date night very soon; perhaps if only to galvanise ourselves before Sofia’s own party in early December! At least we’ll all be at that one though.
