I hear it all the time, “Joules, you NEED to make time for yourself” but let me tell you that when you work full-time and you’re a mom full-time you don’t really GET time to yourself.
Errands with an (almost) 2 year old are their own special brand of challenging. Forcing myself to exercise at 6:30 in the morning is darn hard when my body would prefer to sleep and my tummy would rather be filled with cookies. Even my sleep is interrupted by an 8 pound fluff-ball trying to snuggle into that little area behind my knees.
My mom usually watches Jack three days each week, so I don’t feel comfortable asking her to do any more – especially an overnight slumber party. However, the perfect storm lined up where my mom had almost three weeks of a babysitting break (due to my work vacation) and my husband had a Saturday off of work!
So we did something CRAZY… we had a 24 hour date!
Just us. No toddler. No dog. Just US.
And it was WONDERFUL!
6ish
My husband was able to get off of work a little early and we checked into the 1840’s Carrollton Inn at 6:00 pm. The parking garage was a few blocks away, so he waited in the truck while I did the registration thing and threw our overnight bag into our room. From there, we parked in the Old Bay garage (got to love Baltimore!) and walked around Little Italy to find somewhere fun for dinner.
7ish
We wandered up to Amicci’s and hung out in the bar for a little while until a table was available. I had the Pomegranate Martini and it was delicious…like lick the glass kinda good.
And yes, I may have licked the glass. It would seem by the yummy noises coming from everywhere that everything on the menu was amazing. We had an appetizer of The Pane’ Rotundo, which was basically a huge hunk of Italian bread covered in garlic, shrimp and a creamy scampi sauce. So. Darn. Good. I had the Chicken Marsala for my meal, while the hubby had Penny’s Tortellini. For dessert, I insisted on a homemade cannoli and I’m not going to lie…I ate the whole thing because Travis didn’t want any. Worth it.
9ish
After stuffing ourselves so full of delicious Italian food that we practically had to roll ourselves out the front door, we walked back to our B&B. We finally had a chance to check out the room and bathroom and HOLY MOLEY was this place nice. The room was HUGE and the bathroom…well, that was huge too!
The bed was so incredibly comfortable and I kind of wanted to shove it out the window and take it home with us. The huge Jacuzzi tub was amazing too… and we (of course) had to keep calling it a Jacuzzzzz like on How I Met Your Mother.
8ish
Before we went to bed for the evening, we had filled out our breakfast menu and chose to have coffee delivered to our room at 8:00. We had a nice little seating area on one side of our room, so we didn’t have to worry about balancing coffee on our laps and spilling it all over the bed.
Normally at a B&B, you would be sociable and eat breakfast in a main dining room with the other people who are staying there. However, we decided that we weren’t letting anyone bother us on our 24 hour date and had them deliver our breakfast to our room at 9:00. Honestly, I expected to be blown away with an amazing breakfast (as we have been at other B&B’s), but this one was just…fine. I mean, there was nothing wrong with it, but nothing that made it extraordinary either.
11ish
We hung out in the room until 11am, when we had to check out. Once we left, we just walked around Baltimore for a while and I picked up a few things from Anthropologie, while Travis patiently waited on the “husband’s couch.” After getting my shop on, we decided to grab sushi at one of our favorite places, Ra. We’ve been there a few times and every time we leave in a satisfied sushi coma. Hmm… I realize now that most of our date has been eating…
2ish
Since we rarely are able to see movies in the theater, we went to see Anchorman 2 at the Baltimore Landmark Theater. It was funny. I mean, I laughed pretty hard at different parts of the movie, but I also was wishing it would go a lot faster at other parts. That’s kind of what you expect with Anchorman though, right?
4ish
Eating again. Travis wanted some ice cream and there is a Haagen Dazs right next to the theater. Okay fine, it’s not like I just WATCHED him eat ice cream, I had one too and it was yummy. After ice cream we walked back to our truck in the Old Bay garage and by time we got back up the road, it was almost exactly 24 hours after we left!
It is amazing how just 24 hours away from real life felt like an actual vacation. We actually had the time and energy to just enjoy ourselves. While Jack is a master at eating out in public, it is still so much more relaxing to just have a little grown up conversation once in a while (without picking up a discarded fork off the ground, occupying a kiddo with crayons, helping him sip from his cup without drenching himself in water, and sharing any piece of my food that he decides he wants). We had so much fun and hopefully will be able to do it again sometime. Sometime sooner than two more years!
Did you have a chance to get away at all when your kids were young? Where did you go and what did you do?
