The Evolution of Parenthood (a.k.a. coming to terms with being old)

This past Friday night we hired a babysitter for the first time and went out on a date. Now it’s by no means the first time we’ve been out of the house without Lilo in the past year – we have left her with family on a number of occasions and once with a friend when Lilo was only a few months old. But this is was our first experience with a babysitter that isn’t a friend or family member – and interestingly it was her first babysitting experience as well.

A few months ago, while at Tim and Lauren’s unofficial baby shower, we were chit-chatting with one of their friends, Jonathan, about how we needed to seek out a babysitter in our neighbourhood – a responsible teenager that lived close-by and could come over every now and again to look after Lilo while we sought some freedom. Fortuitously, Jonathan mentioned that his teenaged daughter Katie was looking to get into the babysitting game. Perfect! They live not far away, and we know Jonathan well enough to know that his daughter would be very responsible.

Katie stopped by with Jonathan the next day – Lilo’s birthday party – for a chance to meet her quickly (although with a house full of people, in hindsight this turned out to be a less than convenient first meeting!). Nearly two months went by, and Vone and I couldn’t find a free weekend to get out of the house. Between trips out of town, parties that we took Lilo to, and out-of-town guests, every weekend was booked. A few weeks ago we forced ourselves to ‘book’ a date night – and after confirming Katie was available we jumped at the chance for some freedom this past Friday.

The whole process introducing Katie to Lilo, explaining Lilo’s little quirks to Katie, and running through all sorts of long-shot challenges and solutions was a little surreal. It just doesn’t seem very long ago that I was in her shoes, as the teenaged babysitter, trying to absorb all of the worry-wart points that the parents were spitting out at me when all I really cared about was how to work the TV, and whether I was allowed to drink the Coke in the fridge. Katie absorbed it all, and asked a fair-number of other well placed questions related to care for Lilo (not to the location of snack food, like I would have done). I knew we were leaving Lilo in good hands.

At the risk of sounding melodramatic and stereotypical, it was a little weird to be out of the house without Lilo. It’s not that we didn’t trust Katie, or Lilo, but rather it took some getting used to - that we were now parents that hired a baby sitter. To top it off, instead of doing something cool and hip downtown, we hit a Casey’s Bar and Grill in the middle of a box-store plaza, followed by a movie at the Cineplex Odeon on the other side of the parking lot. Needless to say, I felt old.

The movie was great (“Stranger than Fiction” with Will Farrell – I definitely recommend it). Even if I did check my watch 15 times during the last hour of the movie, just to make sure some dope at the Cineplex hadn’t erred in estimating the movie’s running time at exactly 1 and 53 minutes. We rushed home afterwards and found the while Lilo had tested Katie with one of her late-evening ‘I don’t wanna sleep, I just wanna bang on the drum all night’ moods. Katie had handled it all like an old-pro, and by the time we got home Lilo was soundly asleep.

So now we’re not just parents, we are old parents with a regular babysitter that go out to dinner at cheap chain restaurants in suburban strip-malls and cheesy movies at the Cineplex. And this weekend, we might just be buying a minivan. Stay tuned for my impending mid-life crisis…