Last night, my husband and I snuck out for a date night for the first time in a while. We have a 4 year old, a 2 year old, and a 3 month old at home, so any time away for the two of us is treasured, and I literally mean “snuck out”, because our 4 year old was distraught that she wasn’t invited.
To be clear, we’re currently in a season where we get the kids down, finish cooking dinner, clean up the house, and eat on the couch. Most often one of us is rocking the baby throughout each step. Because of this, we’ve been working our way through our favorite show to rerun binge; The West Wing.
This is a pattern for us – three times in now; we have a baby, we watch WAY more TV in the evenings (every evening we’re home, for about 1-1.5 hours) than we would in another season of life. But we’re tired. And the consistency gives us a chance to connect that requires little to no energy. It doesn’t bother me because I know that it’s temporary, and as our infant begins sleeping longer stretches, we too will get our time back. In a few months, connection might look different, for now, it’s reruns. For everything there is a season, and this is the season of West Wing on the couch.
With that being our norm, I’m writing this because I needed a reminder that I got last night, and thought you might too: it’s still important to get out of the house. It’s important to entrust someone worthy of the responsibility of caring for your kids. We went out last night to celebrate my birthday. All day, I was thinking how silly I was to request the date night, when all I really wanted to do was sleep! Why did I sign up to be out in the world when I’d rather be in bed? I had to get dressed, to get out of leggings, and put on real shoes?!
We had a sitter who has come in the past and is awesome, but is also clearly overwhelmed by 3 kids. So we planned to get our kids to bed, knowing that 2 of them would likely require more care for her when we left. This means we did all the normal work of the evening, and then started another round, instead of collapsing on the couch, as per usual.
But we went. We did it. We talked about our lives. We talked about work, what we’re learning, what’s making us laugh. We talked about how this is a sweet, beautiful, hard season, and as much as some days, we never want to stop hearing toddlers whisper “I love you” and grab our hands, we also can’t wait for the seasons to come – where heading out for a date night won’t feel like such a huge deal. We talked about what we’re learning from one another; as parents and people… the ways we’ve evolved this last year.
We talked about how we’re doing – really. We shared about what it’s like to have been in this vortex for a long time, and not knowing when our normal 7am-7pm time “off-the-clock” will return (aka – when will the baby sleeps through the night), but knowing that at some point, there will be an end to the constant demands. We had an honest conversation about how 3 kids has been exponentially harder than we expected, and how some of our friends might have been wise to stop at 2 ;).
I shared about how I’m beginning to feel the capacity to dream again – to come up with ideas and adventures that genuinely sound fun and engaging to me. For me, so much of pregnancy and postpartum, it just feels like a marathon and it takes too much out of me to have an open perspective. I’m just trying to take the next step. It’s like my brain is understandably at capacity. But now, I’m starting to come back to myself – to think about what problems I want to solve, dreams I have for our family, ideas for connecting to new and old friends, trips that I want to take, and businesses I want to build. It’s like after looking down and focusing on each step to make sure I don’t fall off the cliff for a long time, I’m at the top and I’m enjoying the view. There’s nothing wrong with the focus; it got me up the mountain. It was necessary caution to make it through the last 6 months. But man, does it feel nice to have the climb behind me.
On the drive back, we sat quietly in the car, and my mind wandered. I was reflecting on what felt so good and came to this conclusion: there are things that come out through conversations that are uninterrupted by snack deliveries, requests for “one more book”, or rocking a baby back to sleep for the third time that we don’t access when were climbing a mountain, operating in our everyday life. We have been together for 13 years, but because of what this season is requiring of both of us, we don’t often make the time to do what we did last night: connect. And catching him up gave me a chance to reflect on what’s different, how I’m changing, and the areas of growth still left. I like him more than I did yesterday. I feel like we are on the same team again, and, I’m looking forward to The West Wing tonight.
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