Garden City Mummy ~ Post 3 ~ a romantic soirée, avec bébé

Unlike most of the mainstream media, and some corners of the blogosphere, I have so far avoided posting anything about the desperate situation of Madeleine McCann and her parents. And if this introduction gives the sense that this post will be lamenting their parenting, or speculating on her whereabouts, then it's misleading. I intend to do neither, but something we did last night got me thinking.

If I am honest, it had been a particularly fraught sunday. Picture the scene: two grumpy older kids, a teething and very grumpy baby, a sleep deprived and wife deprived dad/husband, and a sleep deprived, me-time, and housework help deprived mum/wife. Things didn't improve when Dad left the house with the two older kids to begin their 3 hour journey home to their mum. Cue much upset for baby who hero worships older brother and daddy, and despair for dad and kids who have to battle with the worst of the rail network at the weekend. Any British readers will know what I mean...

So, as I went through the motions of getting the youngest member of our clan ready for sleep, I decided, since it was such a lovely evening, that it would be really refreshing, and enjoyable to pop the 5 minutes into town to grab some food al fresco. In other words, grumpy husband and grumpy wife would seek to assuage said grumpyness by having a nice romantic meal together. Something we haven't done since january. Yes, you gotta believe it!

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not about to launch into some kind of self indulgent and subtly glib McCann criticism about well what do we do with the baby, do I do as 'THEY' did? or follow my mummy instincts?

No. It was already a given baby would be coming with us. I'll state now that although I have a point of view on the situation, I do not wish to join in the debate here. What I will say, is that I belong firmly to the camp that takes baby (and for that matter, the two older kids) with me wherever I go unless there is trusted childcare in place - and that's my choice, not a value judgement on others who may do differently.

So, back to the meal....

Rather, what I wanted to say was that, when we arrived at ASK with baby in his lie flat buggy, snuggled up with his blankie and a book, freshly breastfed and primed for sleep, we found ourselves sat next to a large family, the youngest of whom was very cutely gnawing at a pizza in her pyjamas and slippers. How nice, I thought, that sunny evening, with a cold beer in hand, that we're not the only ones who think it's ok to bring young kids to an evening meal in a restaurant. Safety in numbers and all that - they wont mind if he screams, or chucks a bit of garlic bread on the floor.....you know the score...

Let's be honest (yes, this is turning into a polemic) Britain is not a country where kids are cherished massively by joe public. People huff and tut at kids taking up seats on trains, or playing in shops, or ambling along a pavement, and our employment law does little to send a strong message that motherhood, in particular, is valued as an career path equal in importance to sitting on the board of a bluechip. The trickle down of this prevailing ideology is that we parents feel often quite self conscious about bringing kids to places where adults traditionally reign supreme, and, on the flip side, we are rarely welcomed into them with open arms: restaurants - I think, are a particularly good example of this.

And yet, our little boy, and the toddler opposite kept themselves to themselves, did not create a disturbance or a mess, and ate nicely. But most importantly, WE felt as if we'd clawed back a bit of time for us, we'd had a meal together, we hadn't had to go through another cycle of cook, clean, dishwash, and My GOD it felt good. It also felt good, for me, the mum, because I had my boy there, safe. I didn't have to worry about a babysitter. I also think my son enjoyed the slab of garlic bread he gnawed on, and the staying up time.

So how does this link to the McCann's ?

Well, I hope that one of the implications of the appalling loss suffered by the McCanns will be a greater understanding of the need for parents to, on a daily, or weekly basis, be able to do adult stuff, without having to face the kinds of decision making which was a preamble to their loss (not a cause, you note).

I for one, hope any parent reading this, will, the next summer evening they want to go out, spontaneously, and have no available babysitter, just take their kids, rock up at the restaurant, and expect to be treated like any other paying customer, and have their kids also treated as customers. If this were more commonplace in the UK, a lot of us parents would feel a lot less like we needed to 'get away from it all' on holiday, and we'd foster a society more tolerant to the needs of parents, and more tolerant to the fact that sometimes, because parents need to do something which is about them, and they need to do it spontaneously, without military planning for weeks, that the kids come along to the restaurant, say, as part of the package.

Now of course I am not talking about Le Gavroche, or Claridges here, but your average pizza restaurant, or chain restaurant. Let's face it, who wants to go to Giraffe, or McDonalds for a romantic evening meal.

As for husband and me, we've decided that this will be a regular fixture to our sunday evenings, weather permitting, although for anyone wanting advice as to how to make it work REALLY well, I suggest leaving with infants already ASLEEP, rather than on the cusp of sleep, since our little one had a very disturbed night's sleep last night perhaps because of being allowed to stay up too late. I know - the routine led parenting brigade will be flaming me.....Bad mummy and all that - rod for my own back etc...but at least I feel as if we did something romantic!