$5 Date Night

Okay…so $5 might be a bit of a stretch. The whole idea is to get creative and appreciate the power of the often elusive date night. After the birth of my daughter, I was absolutely terrible at making time for myself much less our marriage. I became a 24/7 mom. You might be thinking “aren’t you always a parent?” Of course this is true, the point being I was afraid of trying to be anything or anyone else. I thought that if I spent more than an hour or two away from my tiny, helpless, pink bundle of joy that our mother-daughter bond would suffer. Little did I know that it was I who would suffer.  After about 8 months (and this is a very generous estimate), I realized that if I continued down this road I would be teaching my little girl dependence not the independence.

I digress…more about mommy guilt, parenting and independence later. Today I am focusing on the sanctity of the much needed and often underappreciated DATE NIGHT!  Even though the thought of leaving your babies with someone else might be absolutely terrifying…do it! Enlist the support of fellow parents, a friend who loves kids, or steal that perfect sitter away from your neighbors. Make sure you tip her/him well! The extra money spent is well worth the happiness of your kids and the potential to come home to a house that is might be a little less messy than when you left. (Side note…if you are looking for the perfect new mom gift, offer to clean her house. She will love you forever!)

My husband and I are working very hard to incorporate date night into our weekly habits, but this is such a challenge for us. Not because we don’t want to spend time together, but it is just so hard to find a few hours when we aren’t exhausted, are actually both at home, or the kids aren’t crazy! Most of the time this happens at the last minute, and we are frantically trying to hunt down one of the babysitters we trust to watch our kids. We only have a handful but they are awesome! If you live in my town, bring me baked goods or gifts of wine, and I might just share their numbers with you.

Most of the time, we enjoy a dinner out sans kids menus, temper tantrums, milk spills, or our daughter standing in her chair singing her most recent arrangement of songs (the child NEVER stops singing). If you are ever in need of some free, weeknight entertainment just stop by our house at dinner time. This should probably be required if you are thinking about having kids anytime in the near future.

 In our relatively small town, there are only so many restaurants to frequent or other interesting things to do. Hence we created the $5 challenge. After one lovely dinner out, we weren’t quite ready to head home and face reality. We were both secretly hoping that even though we had said we would be home before the kids needed to go down for bed that they would actually be so tired from all of the fun that they would pass out early. Rule number 1 of date night…never expect your kids to be asleep when you get home! Even when you get home hours past their bedtime, they will wake up moments after the babysitter leaves. Back to the challenge…being the witty and clever woman I am, I jokingly said to my hubby “Let’s go to Walgreens and with only $5 pick out a meaningful gift for each other.” To my surprise, he agreed and 15 minutes later we were exchanging our “gifts” in the car. Normally I would share more details of our gift exchange, but I promised my husband that I wouldn’t embarrass him too much on my blog. We ended up having a blast and shared quite a few laughs. I have a feeling that this is only the beginning of our date night challenges.

So this is where I need you! Comment below with your own version of the $5 challenge.  I’m (almost) always up for a new adventure. I’d love to try out a few of your ideas. This post has already gotten a little longer than I intended so tomorrow…well really later this week…I’ll finish up with a few more creative date night excursions!