Parenting is hard. It’s so hard that from work to kids (to gym) to sleep you can’t believe how fast the week has gone by and you did nothing but slave away at what can feel like an endless routine.

Remember when we had friends? Especially friends who didn’t have kids? Remember sitting around talking about dating and gossip and sex? Remember sex? Remember when we used to watch our favorite TV show without having a full season stacked up on the DVR?

I don’t know how it is with one kid, but the need to juggle two kids, work, and our hobbies – and with my partner and me wanting to split equally the duties of parenting, we came up with a magical solution: An evening off.

It sounds so simple, and yet when we started to tell other parents (especially parents with more than one kid), they looked at us like we’d just discovered electricity. ‘How come we never thought of that?!’ One evening a week, just one of us “does the kids”: makes the dinner, gives them their bath, and gets them to sleep… while the other one… well… WHOOOPIE!

With us, I take Tuesdays off and Alex takes Wednesdays off. And what do we do in that time? Basically anything but parenting: have dinner, spend time with friends, sit at Starbucks and chat with random people or sometimes even go to bed as early as 8pm (okay, I’m lying to look less pathetic – sometimes it’s 7pm). And believe it or not, it’s refreshing. Not only refreshing, it also gives you a sense of support from your partner, who’s got your back to let you have some time for yourself once a week. How romantic is that?!

Try at home at let me know how did it go.