Hungover with kids? Not much you can do. Just hope your kids don't find the harmonica or bongos.
Humor Life Parenting

Hungover with Kids (Or Please, Please, Just Kill Me Now)

Hungover with kids? Not much you can do. Just hope your kids don't find the harmonica or bongos.

By Julie Watts of Mummy Spits the Dummy

My husband and I had a rare night off for a friend’s wedding this weekend. Since our amazing babysitter (my Mum, unequivocal legend and child-whisperer extraordinaire) was available to stay overnight, we decided to make a weekend of it and spent nearly 24 hours child-free in total.

We drank champagne, we ate, we drank champagne, we danced, we drank champagne, we laughed, we drank champagne.

We considered going to bed at 10 p.m. just for the possibility of getting ten unbroken hours of precious sleep, but were having such a good time being grown-ups with our friends we just kept on going. We knew the kids were OK, as they were with Nan and we’d left her with detailed instructions for bedtime. We didn’t have a care in the world.

This morning: A ‘sleep-in’ until 7 a.m. (after which point neither of us was physically capable of sleeping anymore thanks to our permanently-adjusted body-clocks). A subdued bacon breakfast with sips of water and a strong coffee. And then the drive home, during which I, for one, completed the transition from “still a little tipsy, maybe” to “yes, that’s definitely a hangover now.”

Nan’s report was that the children had been delightful and had slept 12 hours overnight without a peep. So we were optimistic that we’d be able to engage them in some quiet activities once we got home, and hopefully sneak in a nap around midday to aid in our recovery.

HA HA HA HA HA!

These are the sorts of activities hungover parents would like their children to take an interest in for just one day:

-Legos
-Puzzles
-Dollies and dress-up
-Watching a movie
-Drawing
-Play-doh
-Reading quietly in own rooms

These are the activities that my children were interested in today:

-Smackdown wrestling
-Playing the harmonica
-Playing the bongos
-Playing the harmonica and bongos simultaneously while listening to the Beach Boys
-Licking things. Not to taste them. Just to have licked them.
-Bouncing on the trampoline. But only if a parent bounces too.
-Relieving themselves of noxious gases in my vicinity without warning or apology.
Eating play-doh
-Racing slot cars, having conned Nan into setting the forbidden racetrack up within seconds of our departure yesterday (Requiring constant adult input, including preventing toddler from destroying track, fiddly repairs to track and cars, and mediation of frequent disputes.)
-Hurting themselves and each other
-Crying

Never have I more feverishly anticipated bedtime than today. I actually lied to my children about what time it was so I could put them down half an hour earlier than usual. I’m amazed that I had the presence of mind to a) think of doing that, and b) pull it off convincingly enough that they went along with it.

Normally I’d be saying I could use a glass of wine about now… but not today. It’s off to bed for me, with a reminder to my childless friends to appreciate your childless hangovers. Yes, even the hangovers are something I didn’t enjoy enough before I had kids, as it turns out. Fortunately, the hangovers are few and far between these days. And they’ve still got nothing on morning sickness: a timely reminder for me that we’re definitely done having children.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be hiding in my bed. Good night!

This post was originally published on Mummy Spits the Dummy.

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About Julie Watts

Julie Watts is a caffeine-abusing, snort-laughing, housework-shirking mother-of-two who lives in sunny Queensland. She quit Facebook to remember the real world, and now blogs about her lacklustre parenting ability (among other things) at Mummy Spits the Dummy. You can follow her antics on Twitter.