Since DS was born DH and I have only been out together without him for an evening three or four times. Although each of us has been out separately a few times too.
Usually my sister comes up from London to stay over night but that requires lots of planning. On one occassion we had one of his nursery assistants, who happened to live on our road look after him. But she has now moved (and though she still works at that nursery DS goes to a different nursery now - so the contact has been lost).
We want to get our pre-DS life back. Not partying or anything - just going out for meals, theatre, cinema at least once every month or so.
I have two friends locally who DS has regular playdates with their respective children, but the moment one is writing up the final draft of her Phd! And his other regular playmate - DS has kind of gone off him and refuses to go there and TBH I would not leave him there anyway, although she has offered lots of times.
We have no family or old school friends in this town (we moved here 5 years ago) and the people we know here either have very grown up children, are elderly or don't have kids. A few of them have offered to babysit. But I am very nervous about leaving DS with people I don't know that well.
So, apart from waiting till my friend has written up her Phd (not too long now), spending the weekend at one of my sisters in London and leaving DS while we go out (an option worth considering - since we have to be in London once a month anyway to visit DSD).
In writing this I realise I have partially solved my problem in the previous paragraph, but how do I get a babysitter on standby here where we live, that we can just pay, go out, come home, babysitter leaves and we wake up in our own house!