James's blog: The Weekend

Some time ago my wife mooted the idea of the two of us having a weekend away; just the two of us, without our daughter.  I must admit that I can't quite fathom why she would want to spend time with her stressed, sleep-deprived, grumpy husband but, as the proverb goes, there's no accounting for taste.

At first, I was quite resistant to the idea of leaving our daughter overnight for the first time.  Although she's two years' old now, I still felt guilty at the thought of doing so.  Nevertheless, as part of my wife's Christmas present I chose a hotel in a city not too far from my in-laws and booked us in for a couple of nights.

Fast forward 6 months and, following a number of enforced changes to our booking, we finally seemed to have a weekend that was free from work commitments for us and also worked for our babysitters, Grandma and Grandad.

I don't work on Fridays, and had booked the Monday off work to allow us a leisurely weekend after taking into account travel.  My wife doesn't work on Mondays and had taken the Friday off.  Having already worked until the early hours of Friday morning I had to join a work call at 10am.  One hour later I was on the tube to work, having been dragged back in.

My wife and daughter headed off to her parents' house without me, hoping that I would join later that day.  Unfortunately, I was only able to join them on Saturday, and even then had a mountain of work to do which would either require me to work over the weekend or cancel my time off on the Monday.

I wasn't going to be defeated by work, however, and so my wife and I did manage to escape together for a bit of quality time.  We managed just under 24 hours in each others' company before I had to head back to London, arriving back late on Sunday evening having spent some 10 hours driving over the weekend in order to enjoy that brief period away.  The weekend may sound like it was a disaster, but it was anything but.  With the demands of work and childcare, it can be really difficult to make time to spend with my wife.  But she is the one who made our little family possible and who has made sacrifices in her career to make it all work (even if "making it work" seems like chaos at times)!  So, when the opportunity arises, you have to take it and make the most of it.  We managed to have a lovely meal out, chat about the important and not-so-important things that we rarely have the time to discuss, see a beautiful city, and spend time re-connecting.  And, of course, our little one had a fantastic time at her grandparents' and barely noticed that we were gone!  Time to start planning the next weekend away, I think...

James is in his early 30s and father to a beautiful two year old girl.  He now works four days a week at a City law firm, spending the fifth day of the week colouring, playing dolls with, and looking after, his daughter.