What to do when the babysitter cancels last minute? I had planned a rare and long-awaited romantic meal out with DH at a local restaurant. I finally had him back this week, after five consecutive weeks (bar one week in the middle) of being overseas on business. I’ve been at home fighting bugs, dealing with the start of school and struggling with cramming my work into shorter days now school has begun.
I was away myself this week on business – only in London, and only one night, but hey it was my turn now! I had a room by the lift which woke me at 6am, after going to bed at 1am after an awards ceremony, but I didn’t care. I felt happy to have escaped the madhouse for nearly 20 hours and have some rare ‘me’ time even if it was for work.
I heard the voicemail message a few hours before the babysitter, our next-door-neighbour, was due to arrive last night. She had the beginnings of a migraine, something I suffer from too, so she had my wholehearted sympathy.
I couldn’t bear to cook, again, and the fridge was bare anyway. I still hadn’t quite recovered from last week’s episode of DH ‘accidentally throwing my takeaway in the bin’ so decided we needed to go out anyway, but how? Then it struck me – we would take the kids with us! They’ve been relatively well-behaved since DH has been back. And it’s been tough on them with him away. And it was a Friday night.
So it was that I ended up cancelling the Cat Inn in West Hoathly (they didn’t do kids’ menus) and rebooking elsewhere. MiniM#1 misheard the name of the restaurant and we didn’t have the heart to tell her it wasn’t called “Pizza Expresso”.
Ok so it wasn’t romantic – DH filled the glasses of water too full and two got knocked over within the first 10 minutes of us arriving. The paper place mats the girls were colouring became sodden (so did my shoes) and had to be exchanged for two new ones (unlike my shoes); one of which had already been coloured, much to MiniN#1’s dismay. So that had to be exchanged for another one.
But I was happy, in a slightly hyper way. I was out and about. The girls were happy (colouring dry mats). And I had a glass of prosecco (kept firmly on the window ledge – I wasn’t having that toppled onto my shoes!)
After much conflicting discussion MiniM#1 was adamant she wanted a kid’s Reine pizza without mushrooms, and MiniM#2 wanted one with mushrooms.
The bowl of olives arrived and DH and I hardly got a look in; I had about three, DH one and the girls scoffed the rest. Three-year-old MiniM#2 also ate the two raw garlic cloves and said “more!”.
The pizzas arrived and MiniM#2 started to cry that she didn’t like mushrooms so we picked them off one by one and put them in the empty olive bowl. MiniM#1 then wailed she wanted mushrooms, so picked them one by one out of the bowl and put them on her pizza.
DH had believed me when I said the ‘our hottest yet’ Calzone pizza wouldn’t be very spicy and was trying to pretend it wasn’t a problem. But suddenly we were all eating together, sat around a table and it felt kind of miraculous, because we hadn’t cooked and didn’t have to tidy up afterwards. Ok so it wasn’t the romantic dinner we had envisaged but the kids were happy.
Happy until MiniM#1 realised the purple crayon was missing from the pot and she really needed it to finish colouring her mat. She couldn’t understand why the poor waitress was prioritising other people’s pizzas, when evidently her purple crayon was far more urgent.
Apart from that it was a pretty successful outing. And at £3.95 a kid’s pizza, a much cheaper alternative to a babysitter. An alternative that we’ll be repeating.
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Calamitous Mummy 