Bye, Bye, Baby(sitter)

Something happened recently that I like to brag about to my friends with young children. I like to tell them the story, and then watch as their eyes glaze over and they start drooling and then some of them start crying with envy. Some of them get angry but then I point out how jealously doesn't become them and then they put down the knife.

The story I tell them is this: My husband and I left our girls, ages 11 and 13, at home and then we went to dinner. And a movie. Without having to find a babysitter or beg our friends to watch them. That's right -- we've reached the fabled light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel, the sweet life, Oprah's aha moment -- whatever you want to call it, we've reached the time when our kids are actually able to watch themselves. You may not be jealous this second but wait until you see the commemorative plaque I'm getting engraved.

I know for some parents this milestone has already occurred, but to be honest I had no idea when it would happen for my husband and I. It seemed like a myth, some faraway goal like winning the lottery or size 0 jeans. I thought it would happen when I stopped worrying so much about them, which by my husband's calculations would be right around my youngest's 40th birthday. He figured even then I'd still be calling home to make sure that they 'went' before they tucked themselves into bed.

It's a widely debated topic -- when are kids old enough to left alone? I've heard it all; many people tell me they were babysitting other kids at thirteen and I know friends of my girls who were left by themselves at ten years of age. Then there's always the rebel who brags that their eight-year-old was bravely holding down the fort alone, but then they're also the same one who claimed that their one-year-old could already microwave popcorn and use Twitter.

But for all my boasting, I can't say I'm all that anxious to do it again anytime soon. It was fairly nerve-wracking, what with all the texting and crying and anxious phone calls. And that was just me.

The girls were actually so nonchalant about the whole thing I was certain that they'd had something planned, one of those wild teen parties you see in the movies where the kids can't wait for the parents to leave the house so they can roll in the beer keg and start making out with bad boys from the swim team. They barely looked up from the TV as I went over all the emergency numbers, warned them to keep the doors locked and gave them instructions on what to do in case the house caught on fire (grab mom's iMac, the espresso machine and then run like crazy.) Why, if I didn't know better I'd say that after that 90-minute lecture they almost seemed happy to see my husband and I depart for our evening out.

In spite of it all, my husband and I did manage to have a good time, in between all of my texting and phone calls. I texted them before we went into the movie, called them after we got out and then texted them a few more times when dinner was taking longer than we expected. I thought it was interesting how the replies seem to express their growing exasperation; It started with, "We're fine! Watching our movie!" shortened to, "Fine, have fun!" and at the end of the evening finally turned into, "yep" without any punctuation. I took it as the equivalent of an eye-roll and a sigh.

When we got home, we found the girls on the couch, exactly as we left them. After we hugged them my husband and I high-fived each other and talked about how we would spend the $60 we just saved on a babysitter and fantasized about our next outing, when we would do dinner, a movie and coffee. In around five years.

This is an original post to LA Moms Blog.

When she isn't exhausted with worry, Marsha posts on her personal blog Sweatpantsmom, does reviews on Views From The Pants, skewers celebrities over on FameCrawler and dissects pop culture on MamaPop.