We've been parents for 12 years, hard to believe! We've never been good about taking time away just for the two of us. Maybe that's an only child problem. Maybe when you have more, you need to escape more!
Sam is such a good kid and we know that our time with him living at home is very precious, so it always seems right just to take him along with us. Plus, we really like him. But, we've found, that as he gets older (and we do too) that he doesn't always want to hang with us anymore. This is somewhat more shocking to me than I will let on. Having been told by a couple of his friends that we're "cool for parents", we assumed that he would feel the same way.
"Yeah, well..." he said when he and I talked about this. Point taken.
Normal preteen behavior. And, although my apron strings keep getting shorter, he needs me more now than he did when he was little. Just in a different way.
(On a side note, when his first friend, unprompted, told me we were cool parents, I blushed and thought he was just an anomaly. The second kid who told me was barely out of the room when I "John Travolta Saturday Night Fever" strutted across the family room. I turned around just in time to see Sam dumbstruck at my appaling behavior. "Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhm." Thankfully, his friend was nowhere in sight. Sam was saved from humiliation.)
This Christmas break, our house was a revolving door. In Sam, out, in Sam's friends, out...repeat. He and his friends are doing more and more things just on their own and so we have a lot more time on our hands.
Finally, after 12 years of saying we're going to make the time more often, we're having date nights. Our neighbors, who are inspiring to us in so many ways, have had date night every Friday night for many many years. Our goal is to get at least one in a week. Or 52 this year.
Darren has already figured out that we'll have to cram in a date a day starting on November 11 in order to fit them all in. He's a procrastinator and good at math, not a great combination. I refuse to do the math and instead am challenging him to be accountable here on this blog. Feel free to remind him that daily dates might mean rationalizing what a date actually consists of. No, a trip to Home Depot does not count, nor does folding laundry together.
So, we'll take pictures when we can. Not THOSE kind of pictures, come on. And we'll try to keep track. I think once a week or as Sam's schedule allows is a pretty doable goal.
Here's to date night!
Sam is such a good kid and we know that our time with him living at home is very precious, so it always seems right just to take him along with us. Plus, we really like him. But, we've found, that as he gets older (and we do too) that he doesn't always want to hang with us anymore. This is somewhat more shocking to me than I will let on. Having been told by a couple of his friends that we're "cool for parents", we assumed that he would feel the same way.
"Yeah, well..." he said when he and I talked about this. Point taken.
Normal preteen behavior. And, although my apron strings keep getting shorter, he needs me more now than he did when he was little. Just in a different way.
(On a side note, when his first friend, unprompted, told me we were cool parents, I blushed and thought he was just an anomaly. The second kid who told me was barely out of the room when I "John Travolta Saturday Night Fever" strutted across the family room. I turned around just in time to see Sam dumbstruck at my appaling behavior. "Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhm." Thankfully, his friend was nowhere in sight. Sam was saved from humiliation.)
This Christmas break, our house was a revolving door. In Sam, out, in Sam's friends, out...repeat. He and his friends are doing more and more things just on their own and so we have a lot more time on our hands.
Finally, after 12 years of saying we're going to make the time more often, we're having date nights. Our neighbors, who are inspiring to us in so many ways, have had date night every Friday night for many many years. Our goal is to get at least one in a week. Or 52 this year.
Darren has already figured out that we'll have to cram in a date a day starting on November 11 in order to fit them all in. He's a procrastinator and good at math, not a great combination. I refuse to do the math and instead am challenging him to be accountable here on this blog. Feel free to remind him that daily dates might mean rationalizing what a date actually consists of. No, a trip to Home Depot does not count, nor does folding laundry together.
So, we'll take pictures when we can. Not THOSE kind of pictures, come on. And we'll try to keep track. I think once a week or as Sam's schedule allows is a pretty doable goal.
Here's to date night!
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