When I had a baby, I thought it would be a short time before we could start leaving her with a sitter or a grandparents so that we could go out and have fun once in a while. I figured, my life would change, but it wouldn’t have to change that much, right? We could still keep our friends and make plans once in a while; we’d be parents, but we’d still be us, you know?

In the end, my perfect vision for what life would be like post-pregnancy was way off base. Not only did we sort of lose contact with most of our friends, but I found myself not even wanting to go out. I didn’t want to leave my daughter. It was hard enough when I was forced to go back to work because we needed the money, so, as you can imagine, the idea of leaving her with someone to go have “fun” was kind of a terrifying concept for me.

Over the course of Boo’s seventeen months of life, I haven’t had a single night out. I’ve kind of forgotten what it’s like to have real-life friends to hang out with, but we finally had a chance to hang out with a couple of them yesterday evening at an event in a neighboring city. (It was actually today since I haven’t gone to bed yet, but since it’s after midnight now, I guess it makes more sense to say it was yesterday. It took me about five minutes to decide which term to go with.)

It was so, so, so nice to get out of the apartment for a while and spend time with new people. I had actually forgotten what a social life actually was. Boo had a pretty great time, too, in spite of the fact that she skipped her afternoon nap.

We’ve all been having a pretty good week with the holiday, actually. My fiance’s schedule gave him Monday through Thursday off, so we’ve all been able to spend a considerable amount of time together. It’s been a nice change from the ordinary, since he spends so many hours at work normally. We went swimming on both Tuesday and Wednesday, which was a lot of fun. It was Boo’s first time in a pool and she loved it!

My fiance goes back to work Saturday, sadly; until then, we’re going to cram as much family time in as we can. If we can manage to get ourselves up in the morning, we’ll be heading out to see the Independence Day parade, and in the evening, we’re planning on taking Boo to see a fireworks show. (Not her first show ever, though. We actually took her to see fireworks last weekend as well.) He doesn’t know it yet, but I’m going to try to convince him to finish up season four of “The Walking Dead” with me once Boo is down for the night. I’ve been dying to finish the last two episodes for days!

…get it? “Dying”?

Okay, so the joke wasn’t that funny anyway. I guess that means it’s bedtime.

Happy July 4th, everyone!