This is How We Do It: Date Night

--> This post is part of a link up hosted by my friends at the Boutelle Family Blog and Grace Mountain Diaries. You can find that link up here and here.

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When my son was little, I bought him a onesie that said, “Mommy needs a date night.” And it was true. Sometimes you just need to get out of the house.

But the more kids we’ve had, the more complicated it’s gotten for us to be gone at bedtime. None of our last three kids were great about taking a bottle, and they were all born so close together that we’ve had a Baby That Was Hard To Put To Bed in the house for more than five years. There are also a lot of them, so I feel bad asking people to put my kids to bed alone when I struggle to do it alone.

We do get out for some longer dates sometimes, and have even managed to do some overnights here and there. But a lot of times, even if we get out, we grab dinner and try to be home in time to help put the kids to bed.

More often than not, though, we have date night in. I’m really ok with that. It’s nice to get out, but the goal of date night for us is staying connected to each other through this demanding season. So sometimes date night in is just us sitting at the kitchen table catching up and talking about the things that we're thinking about over tea. A lot of times it's catching a show on Netflix while we fold laundry or getting a movie at Redbox (which sometimes takes three nights to watch). I assume that a little further down the road date night will be easier, but for now, we spend time together. We talk. We stay friends. And that’s the most important thing.