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It’s tough, getting ready to go out when you’re a parent. You’re so desperate for your “night off” to begin, it can be tempting to pour yourself a gin at 9am – even though you’re not meeting until at least 8pm, because nobody can get away until after baby bedtime.
What used to be a relatively simple process before you had kids – shower, shave, makeup, dress, go – somehow becomes a fine art. It’s a meticulously planned out, multi-tasking effort that takes only the most experienced of us to get right.
So, you’re going out on Saturday night? In the midst of a pandemic, things are a little different – there’s a lack of dancing, for sure – but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a BNO (that’s Big Night Out, if you didn’t know already).
Whether you’re going round a mate’s garden for drinks, or heading to your local pub, you still want to get glammed up – especially after spending months in your lockdown pyjamas (just me?).
Here’s the reality of getting ready to go out when you’re a parent.
5.40am
“Mummy, wake up! I had a scary dream about a chicken.” You look at the clock and groan: it’s not even 6am. How are you going to stay out until midnight (or beyond) when you’ve been up since the crack of dawn?
9am
You’ve been up long enough to tidy the kitchen and make several rounds of breakfast. You start thinking about that first drink. Trouble is, it’s 12 hours away and you’ve got a two hour round-trip, ferrying one child to gymnastics and back again, to get through first... and a playdate. But here’s where step one of BNO prep commences: painting your nails. You only manage a first coat before you have to get the kids in the car.
Still, it’s the only time it has any chance to dry, because your hands are on the steering wheel and blissfully child-free.
11.30am
You’ve dropped one child off at gymnastics and made it home again, giving you one whole hour before you have to do the exact same trip, in reverse. The multi-tasking skills you’ve learned as a parent kick in.
You sit your remaining child(ren) in front of CBeebies, armed with a peanut butter and marmite sandwich (kids are weird) and dash upstairs. It’s time for a hair wash. After, you slather on a face mask, which must stay on for 10 minutes, so you’ve got enough time to shave under your arms, and maybe a leg, too.
By the time you’re done, it’s 12.30pm: gymnastics pick-up. Paint another coat on your nails, get back in the car.
1.30pm
You’re home from gymnastics, time to give the exhausted child lunch, and the child who’s been helplessly ferried back and forth (without actually doing any gymnastics), a second lunch. By the time you’ve finished answering requests for snacks and drinks, it’s 1.45pm – just enough of a window to dash upstairs and shave the other leg before a 2pm playdate begins.
2pm
Over the next two hours, the house is wrecked, your stress levels rise, the remaining snacks you had in the cupboards are eaten, and your nails are smudged. Accept this as an inevitability. Do not try to fight it. There’s beauty in surrender.
4pm
There is light at the end of the tunnel... once the playmate goes home. Won’t the other parent please come and pick them up? Please?
5pm
The child’s parent finally comes at 4.30pm, and stays for half an hour, chatting. They ignore your hints about needing to get ready to “go out”, because they simply don’t understand what you mean. Is it even possible to have a night out in a pandemic, they’re thinking.
Once they’ve gone, you whack the oven on, tell both kids it’s time to “sit down and watch a film”, and run upstairs to do your hair. You leave your curlers heating up while you race downstairs to put a turkey dinosaur and potato waffle in the oven. The other child wants something different (of course), so you bung some pasta in to boil, run back upstairs and curl half your hair before having to go and break up a squabble – the first child has now decided that they, too, want a turkey dinosaur. Swear under your breath and repeat the process.
5.30pm
Miracle of miracles: your hair is curled and you have half an hour to do your makeup and get dressed. Both kids are quietly eating dinner, and you’re only interrupted two – maybe three – more times to get them a variety of different desserts. On the third trip downstairs, you pour yourself a pre-BNO gin.
You overhear one child saying to the other, “Mummy’s having a 5 o’clock gin”, and some associated giggling. You decide you do not care, because you deserve this.
6pm
You hand your children to the other parent, grandparent or babysitter with a high five and leave the house, smiling at everyone you see on the street.
You’re free. You forget you ever had children (for an hour, max, until you get the urge to check to see how bedtime is going). You meet the ones who managed to escape as early as you did, and wait for the others who are doing bedtime first. You drink, chat, relax, laugh, gossip and swap stories about your children with your other, similarly-giddy, parent pals. You don’t care that you’re two metres apart in someone’s garden – you dance anyway.
You’ve earned this time off, and you tell each other so, repeatedly. “We deserve this!” you tell one another, clinking glasses from a distance.
Midnight
You are asleep.