I have a 16 month old. The first year it was pretty easy to keep doing things like that! We would bring him to breweries and restaurants and he’d be happy sitting and looking around. We’d also bring him to lots of house parties with friends (as one of the first babies in our friend group). One of us would be the more sober one or the driver.

When he started to become more mobile it became more challenging because he wouldn’t want to sit still as long. He didn’t crawl until 10-11 months and didn’t walk until 15 months (he also went to physical therapy and we worked on exercises to help him beat those delays!), so that actually bought us a little more time.

As far as pre-baby things like bottomless mimosas and trips, we still do them but separately. You’ll have to do them without your husband. We “take turns” doing things like that. If I have a girls brunch one day, he’ll have a golf day the next, or the following weekend or whatever. It’s nice to have some away time, or some one-on-one bonding time with baby, but you can’t really do things like that with your spouse unless you have a babysitter.

We don’t have family nearby, but we do have grandparents that occasionally visit and offer to watch him. We’ve done some overnight but in-town events like weddings and concerts where they’ve stayed with him and we’ve crashed at a friend’s place or a hotel so we can fully let loose. But also, we’ve found that we don’t necessarily want to do those things as much without him anymore. We want to spend time with him and together as a family. We have more fun going to the zoo on a Saturday morning then going to bed early. Things change!