My husband and I have never really left our son (19 months) for more than a few hours. In the past year, nobody other than us has ever put him to bed - when my parents babysit we put him to bed and then go out. He's spent the day with them a few times when he was sick and couldn't go to daycare and has been fine for meals and naps.

In a month, we have evening plans for my husband's birthday - dinner and a comedy show. This requires us to be downtown (45 minutes away) by about 6:30pm on a Friday. My parents are babysitting, and have already asked to have him stay home from daycare that day so he can spend the day with them, which is no problem. My dilemma is this - do I go to work, in which case my son spends the whole day with his grandparents including dinner and bedtime? Or do I stay home so that he spends the day with them and me, and then I leave them to do dinner/bedtime? I'm just worried about him basically not seeing us for 24 hours - is that too much when he's never done bedtime without us? Should I see if they can come down for a day sooner and do bedtime/bath without the whole day?