games parents play

When I was pregnant, I thought I missed drinking. Not that I've been much of a party animal these past few years - okay, for about a decade - but whatever. When you can't drink for 9 months, you kind of look forward to cutting loose again.

In the past few weeks I've said a number of times that I'd like to sit down with a bottle of wine or a case of beer and just get drunk - and so far nobody has taken me up on the offer. Did they think I was joking? Or, maybe I was just fooling myself because with Christmas and kids at home for the holidays and a new baby and all of that - there wasn't really a good opportunity. But goodness knows with these -40 temperatures being trapped in the house with four kids for days and weeks on end could drive anyone to drink.

But this week - an opportunity. A good solid excuse to have a drink or twelve. My sister-in-law turned 30. Right in the middle of the week - my husband is home because he works the next day, the kids are all in bed by 8, why the heck not put on my snow boots and my winter coat and pack a bottle of wine in the diaper bag and my baby in the Snugli and walk right across the backyard to her house, and have a few drinks? Why NOT? So, I did.

It was a successful night of drinking - I drank some beer and a whole bottle of wine and didn't get home until four in the morning. The baby is usually up around 4 so it didn't seem to disrupt his schedule at all, but I can tell you I wasn't feeling fine when the alarm went off at 8. I managed to get the kids up and off to school and a pot of coffee made to avoid a hangover.

So the weekend rolls around and we decide that since nobody was hung over, maybe that was just a warm-up, and we should try to have a proper birthday celebration. One where the adults significantly outnumber the babies, maybe. So yesterday afternoon we remembered how to make Jell-o shooters and bought a case of beer and a bottle of wine, and dusted off the old game of Pass-Out. We invited my sister and brother in law over to our house, and attempted to play.

FINALLY, a game that FORBIDS me to play with my children!!

NOT intended for use with alcoholic beverages? How fun would that be?

When I was in University, I had the most awesome roommate. She arrived on a train from Ontario in the middle of the night, with a giant blue trunk full of clothes and a game of Pass-Out. On any given weekend night - and maybe sometimes on weekdays, we'd bring out the game and get a case of beer or and by the time we'd traveled around the board a time or two - we were feeling pretty darned good. Of course, that was usually just to get primed up to go out to a party or bar somewhere and have an actual good time. But when you're over 30 with kids and minimal opportunities to drink, let alone leave the house - the game IS the good time.

a few cans of beer and a mighty stack of empty jello shooters

Anyway - we finished off the Jello shooters, made a few trips around the board, finished the beer, moved on to the wine - laughed, cried, massacred tongue-twisters, started forgetting whose turn it was, or what direction we were playing in - and then realized morning was going to come to early for all of us, and the sitter needed to get home, so we shut it down just after midnight. It was fun, we'll have to do it again sometime - but its just soooo much work to have that much fun. So tired.