First date

Rich and I have just returned from our FIRST date since Rafi arrived. Mum and dad have been here for a month but we've either been too busy or too ill to take advantage of their being here. It's also incredibly hard to get Rafi to sleep - and, once asleep, to stay asleep, so timing is everything as we don't want to leave Raf when he is tired and in need of a nap.. it's not fair on my parents. But my folks leave on Tuesday so we decided to see if we could sneak in a date today.

So, after work, I rushed home and took care of raf for a few hours, making sure he got in a nap and had plenty of milkies and when Rich returned home we made a dash for the cinema. We havent been in a year. The last film we saw was the excellent Slumdog Millionaire on Boxing day with our friends Joe and Kim. We'd tried to go before Raf arrived but there was just never anything worthwhile playing. Today there was, as usual, not much on. I wanted to see Shutter Island as we have some friends who are connected to the movie, but we missed that showing and the next showing was to late (7:30pm!!!!). SO we drove into Portland and went to see Chloe Honestly, this wasn't the best film in the world, but it did feature a professor. It's always interesting to see aspects of your identity mediated.. and, no, we can definitely not afford to live in the type of house that this professor lived in! But they also had a teenage son and it was very interesting to me to note how differently I viewed the film as a mama...

Raf had a fine time with mum and dad. They are so attentive to him and keep him entertained the entire time. It must be exhausting!

First date was a great success. We need to do this more regularly, I think. The difficulty is trying to work out how we can do this given Raf is not the type of infant that one puts down for the night allowing a babysitter to come and take care of him in an easy manner. I was imagining putting an ad out along the lines:

"Looking for a sitter.. two crazy dogs who will likely yap all night and annoy you the entire time. Said dogs will bark and run around, trying to impress you. Baby will likely not sleep and you may have to deal with an inconsolable child crying in your arms... $10 per hour"

Any offers :)