Dating

I was going to avoid any more reeeeeeeally long word-heavy (picture poor) posts for a while, and this one has been sitting in my draft folder for a while... but I have a feeling it might be timely for someone out there so here it goes...

I don't really know a lot about being married, and eight years really isn't that long... but I do know that having young children, especially during stressful times (like, oh, being pregnant and taking the bar exam four days before your child has major surgery) can put a strain on your relationship. And I have just one piece of advice there: have a date night every month.

I remember the first date Davis and I went on after Amelia's birth. We hadn't really spent alone time together that year before, just because things were so busy and our focus was so much on Sophia and her surgeries. We were also broke from the trips to Texas, and I was pregnant and couldn't drink (so that hardly makes getting a sitter worth it ha!)

Anyway, so we went to a restaurant (Doe's - yum!) We sat down and ordered beer and steaks and potatoes. We had the conversation that we always had when we sat down for dinner at home (you know, what are we doing this weekend, did you pay the electric bill, how many times did Amelia poop that day...) and after fifteen minutes we were done. At home, 15 minutes is the end of dinner - that's when Sophia would start climbing out of her high chair and Amelia would start crying to be nursed and we would be shoveling the last of our food into our mouths while clearing the table and feeding the dogs and starting the bath water.

Well, at Doe's, not only was fifteen minutes not the end of dinner... our food hadn't even arrived! So we sat there, and we looked at each other, and we stared at the walls, and we started peeling the labels off our beer, and we both though what on earth did we ever used to talk about?!

If you had been sitting there at Doe's that night, and you had seen us, you would have felt really awkward - like you were watching some horrible first date between two people who had absolutely nothing in common. We kind of felt that way. We were both thinking I think maybe we should head home to check on the kids.

But we went downtown and had a few drinks and then took a long walk along the river, and slowly we started remembering what we used to talk about. We started remembering the things we had in common that had nothing to do with dirty diapers. We started reconnecting and laughing and just being together. I'll leave off the rest of what happened on that walk. But I will tell you that at the end of that date we were thinking we have to start going out more often!

Since then, we have tried really hard to have a date night every month. Occasionally we can't find a sitter and have a movie and popcorn date on the couch. When we're extra broke we might just pay a sitter and then go get some pizza and take a walk rather than a fancy dinner or a movie (when did movies become a really expensive date?!)

This month we're actually exchanging babysitting with some good friends of ours - one night I'm going to their house to babysit their kids while they go out, and then my friend is coming over to babysit our kids while Davis and I go out. Free babysitting!

It's hard sometimes, when I work all day, to give up time in the evenings with my girls. But I think it's important for them to see us taking the time to be together and making our marriage a priority. It's so interesting too, that I can notice a difference in our marriage - when we've gone too many weeks without a date, we are more snippy with each other and there are more misunderstandings, and we're generally not as happy together as when we make that time to be together. It's so worth it.



I love how date photos are always dorky and bad... my goal for our next date: get a decent picture of the two of us together!