Spontaneity. A word many moms have forgotten but one that I am trying to rediscover through this Mommy Break Project journey. The opportunity to exercise spontaneity presented itself this past Friday evening. A quick trip to the hairdresser turned into a great start to my weekend. 

I was running late getting out of the hairdresser, not totally out of the norm.  I knew that my husband wanted to go over his best friend's house for a friendly game of bags, dominoes, and beer (try to contain yourself Moms) but after talking to me at 6:30 and realizing I was not going to be done any time too soon, he decided to take the kids with him. #SCORE

I call him around 8:30 expecting him to say that he is home getting the kids down only to be informed that he is still at said best friend’s house having a good time and not too worried about bedtime since it was Friday evening.  NORMALLY, I would have totally pounced and fussed about the importance of keeping them on schedule, but I did not.  I quickly realized that the stars were aligning for me to have an “instant mommy break”.   I was in the trendy West Loop neighborhood surrounded by fabulous restaurants. “HELLO, Nicole … HANG OUT”.    So I responded to my husband (in my most pleasant unbothered tone), “Ok, babe I will be home soon, please try to get the kids home at a decent hour”.  With that I walked down the street to one of my favorite Mexican restaurants Cruz Blanca

On my walk there I felt like, “this is too good to be true…I must share this opportunity with someone”.  Called a fellow Mommy girlfriend who wasn’t feeling the spirit of spontaneity, so I decided to enjoy myself by myself.  Once there, I had an amazing watermelon margarita and steak and chicken tacos.   After enjoying that I decided to over-indulge, a problem that I am working on, and get a donut from Do-Rite Donuts.

Sacrifice.  A word Moms know all too often.  We often sacrifice our self care and me time to put the needs of our family first.  Sacrifice is also what I had to do make my “official” mommy break #15 happen.  

Have you ever wanted to really really go somewhere but not have one babysitter option?  Yep, that was me and my husband on Saturday, July 15th.  Called 3 sitters and a cousin.  No dice.  The mommy break:  one of the biggest FREE street festivals of the summer:  The Silver Room Block Party.  It's one of those events where EVERYBODY goes to enjoy great music, the arts, food vendors, and support local businesses.  I have never experienced it in my 13 year Chicago tenure and I surely was not going to let my first experience be with my children! The next best option:  barter with my husband (good thing I was not a butt hole the night before about having the kids out late).  After fussing about who dropped the ball on finding a sitter in advance, we decided to split the day.  I would go from 2:30 - 5:30 and he would close out the evening.  

I sacrificed having a great time all day with my friends to have an abbreviated mommy break and practice the golden rule: “do unto <my husband> … uh I mean others… as you would have them do unto you.. “. I knew that if I pretended not to hear the “Babe, I am here, lets switch off" phone call, that it would cause major problems later on  … and for what?  To walk the 5 blocks one more time to see if I could see a new face I hadn’t seen in the previous 3 hours?  Not worth it.  Instead, I focused on another positive deposit made in the mommy break equity bank 😃