The things I miss pre-children

In my nearly five years of being a parentOpens a new window, my memories of the way things were before kids are becoming a bit foggy.

I would be lying if I said certain aspects of life weren’t a whole lot different since children entered the story.

Be it a simple pleasure or an effortless task, I’ve developed some sort of adaptation to incorporate my kids. Anyone who has little ones can probably relate.

But although you adapt as a parent, there are some things that you can't help miss from your pre-child world. Here are mine:

1. Listening to my favourite songs in the car at max volume

I’m pretty sure back in high school I blew the speaker in my mom’s Toyota Sienna minivan listening to Heartbreaker by Mariah Carey while cruising down the highway with a van full of girls. Windows open, fresh air through the window, singing along to our favourite songs. I still remember a few songs off the mix-tape we listened to all the way to a sketchy, cheap, motel we’d rented at the beach one summer.

Being the music lover I am, I would love to have the opportunity to blare my favourite tunes while driving along a country road, but I’m rarely driving without a tiny passenger, so the volume has to be capped and the language needs to be censored.

These days, my top 40 has been replaced with an array of children’s songsOpens a new window. I actually don’t mind sharing songs I used to love in my childhood with my kids and there are some newer soundtracks I’ve come to love - Moana is a great one! The kids have even been known to request a classic John Denver or Guns N Roses song so I’m here for it!

It’s fun to play my kids’ requests and see heads and arms moving to the music as we drive to our destination.


2. Leaving the house

I’m 100% sure I took for granted how good I had it when I could slap on a jacket, throw my purse over my shoulder and hop into the car. Rarely were there extra items to pack if it was a quick trip to the grocery store or the mall I was making.

It’s in my nature to be late for EVERYTHING, but these days I have a valid excuse: toddlers fighting to put their shoes and jackets on, buckling all the buckles, packing all of the snacks, the diapers, the wipes, the changes of clothes. If I send a text that says I’ll be there in 10, I’m not actually pulling out of my driveway until 15. If we’re meeting somewhere, we avoid committing to a time, it works best to send the driveway text! The trip has to really be worth it to leave the house.

This new found challenge has actually encouraged me to work on my organization. I have become a lot better at collecting everything I intend to bring and placing it by the door. I usually get the car packed first and then tackle the children because it’s hard to carry a shoeless toddler at the same time as three water bottles, a diaper bag and a cooler of snacks.


3. Travelling

I’m talking over-nighters this time with car rides or plane rides. My two-door Honda Civic used to have plenty of room and was great on gas. I could throw a bunch of clothing options into a bag, throw the bag into the car and leave at any time of day I wanted. I could drive as long as I wanted, stop as many times as I wanted or even take a detour to check out some scenery.

Travelling these days, I’m packing not only my own bag, but bags for all the kids. Can’t forget the high chairOpens a new window or the baby swing!

There might not be age-appropriate toys to occupy the kids at our destination, so those are getting packed too. The two-door sports car no longer has the capacity to fit all of our gear so it has become a seven-seater SUV. But even it is still busting at the seams because the car seats and the stroller take up so much room, not to mention, the cost of gas has increased significantly.

Often our departure time slips later than planned and we find ourselves with a cranky toddler or baby. We end up putting down said child for a nap at home instead of the nap in the car that we had planned for, meaning we forfeit that precious quiet time on the road.

Stopping is a huge dilemma because if one of the kids has fallen asleep, opening the doors will surely wake them, but if the preschoolerOpens a new window has to pee, there’s no way around it.

If we are travelling and leave later than planned, as we so often do, we end up running into an unplanned road dinner. Then we are forking out money to pay for fast food for the whole crew which isn’t healthy, nor cheap!

Despite all of the effort it takes to get to a destination with the kids, we still love to travel. Every trip is a time to remove our focus from the endless chores that await us at home and, instead, focus on each other. It’s an opportunity to spend precious time together. I want the kids to have an innumerable amount of fond memories from their childhoods just as I do.


4. Having a night out

When it was just my husband and I, how I loved having a spontaneous night out. Whether my husband and I decided to meet after work for drinks and appetizers at a restaurant somewhere, or we found a great deal on concert tickets, we didn’t have to worry about anyone else.

Nowdays, there is no room for spontaneity. Everything has to be planned in advance and it has to revolve around whether we can get a babysitter or not. Just recently, I had my eye on tickets to do an escape room with some friends, so I found a date and a time and got to texting everyone to make arrangements. When everything was settled and I went back to purchase the tickets, they were already sold!

Accounting for the total cost of a night out now includes how many hours we are going to need to pay a babysitter for, it’s no longer just the cost of the tickets, meal and cab.

Luckily we do have two sets of grandparents who are willing to step in for a night here and there which we are so grateful for. It gives them some time to spend with their grandchildren and it gives mom and dad a break from the parenting game. Win win!


5. Sleeping in / sleeping through the night

It has actually been so long since I slept past 8am, I’m not sure I can accurately describe what that feels like anymore.

Admittedly, I hadn’t really considered the amount of times I would need to be up at night beyond the infant stage. To my surprise, our four-year-old is sometimes up just as much as the baby, whether it is to pee or due to a bad dream.

Sometimes, on weekends, the kids are allowed to stay up a little later. You’d think this might mean they could sleep in, even if just for an hour, but not in our household. By 7.30am, all three kids are up and full of energy.

One thing I can appreciate about waking up early is that I never have to miss the day. I remember in my teens and early 20s, waking up after sleeping in and feeling blue that I’d missed half the day. It’s not such a bad thing, getting all of that extra time with the cutest alarm clocks in the world.


Children are only children for such a short time and these changes we’ve made are only temporary.

Someday they may want to sleep in for half a day and I’ll be sad I missed those mornings I could have gotten more time in. Someday they will have a late night out and I will anxiously wait up for them to return home.

Someday they may choose to stay with a friend instead of road tripping with their folks and I will miss the memories we could have made together. So for now, I’ll chuckle at the things I used to take for granted and happily make these modifications to include our babies for time is surely fleeting.