Dads don’t babysit. Dads are parents too. We can do this parenting thing just as easily as moms.

Yet the looks still happen when dads drop by “Mommy and Me” sessions at libraries, or take kids to parks, or spend a week without their spouse around.

How will he manage? Did you have to do everything for him? Will you be worried?

When my wife was humblebragging to her friends she was off to Italy for the week as part of her job in wine sales, her friends immediately chimed in with a “oh, tell him to call me if he needs a break!”

No thank you.

Sure, I can appreciate doing “all the things” on your own as a parent is exhausting, but we’re talking about 6 and 9 yr old boys here, not triplet infants.

Single parents have been juggling parenting responsibilities forever, I can do it for a week. I’m a dad, not incompetent.

Okay, that’s a bit of a lie. I am incompetent when it comes to laundry and I needed a descriptive rundown on how the laundry machines worked.

It has nothing to do with my laziness and more to do with the division of power in our household. I cook, she cleans. So I needed a little cheat sheet to know how the laundry machine worked, big deal. I still did it – and did it well, I might add.

The week was pretty uneventful, to be honest. While my wife was doing Barolo flights and foraging for truffles beneath medieval castles, I was doing dad things.

I took my son to soccer practice. I took my son to dance class. I escaped to the mountains and took them on a long hike. We did all of our homework. We brushed all of our teeth. We had baths. We cleaned up. We made lunches. We watched hockey. We chased Pokemon.

So on this final night before my wife comes home, I didn’t need to scramble to clean and ‘debachelor-ize’ the house. Instead I took the boys out to Boston Pizza to  celebrate our collective boys’ week experience (and cheer on Team Canada at the World Cup of Hockey).

We had much to toast.  It has been a week where they had the leash to look after themselves a little more than when mom hovers over them. It has been a week where I learned to do laundry. It has been a week where I got to spend the best time any parent can spend with their kids – alone time.

I think taking solo vacations as a parent are so important to your personal sanity. I take off to spend a few days with hundreds of dads each winter with the Dad 2.0 Summit, my wife gets to head off with work every year to drink all the things and learn about wine. We get away from the routine and stress a family schedule provides, and we get to just let loose with none of the worries.

So while my wife got to eat all the gelato and drink all the wine, I smiled to myself as I watched my sons scribble away at their menus. We had pizza, sliders, and pasta, and at the end of the meal I pulled out my Boston Pizza Kids Cards to get their meals for free.

Our Kids Eat Free night was a random Wednesday in September to celebrate boys’ week, you might have another equally awesome reason. It doesn’t matter. When you have a BP Kids Card, you can hand it over any night you want to celebrate.

This post is sponsored by Boston Pizza

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