Date Night? My, You've Changed!

These days, a typical evening with my husband is a multi-step process that always starts the same with dinner and eventually ends the same with bed time.  Throw in a little chaos, hyperactivity, pandemonium, and, if we are lucky, a little peace and quiet, and you've got a typical night at Chez McLeod. With two children under the age of two, it's really hard for us to get more than an hour of time to relax together. Usually, we are both exhausted and just want to veg out on the couch, every now and then sharing an anecdote about our various dealings throughout the day. However, I came to my senses this week and asked Grandma if she would be willing to babysit for us this weekend so we can visit our dearly missed friend, Date Night.

It's a sad realization, but unfortunately we haven't had very many good old fashioned date nights in the past year. So many factors are involved when planning an evening away from home that sometimes it seems more worthwhile to just stay put. It's made us completely re-visit the traditional date night and come up with our own 'at home' version. We still haven't ironed out every detail to completely suit our needs, but what we have discussed is something we are both looking very forward to enjoying on a regular basis in the future.

Since my husband works long and erratic hours, sometimes during the week he isn't home until after the babies are in bed. Because of that, we decided that Saturday evening works best for us for our new version of date night. We are going to switch it up from time to time, probably depending on the Canucks schedule, but our at home date night will look a little something like this:

• Put the babies to bed at their regularly scheduled bedtime
• Get dressed up, just like we would to go out 
• Turn on some music, light some candles
• Cook our own dinner together (usually we eat as a family and only I cook, so this is fun for both of us and very nice to enjoy a private dinner with no interruptions from the babies)
• Enjoy dinner and wine together
• Dance to our favorite songs on the iPod OR
• Watch the hockey game together

One thing that we have learned as newlyweds with young children is that it is very important to keep the flame alive, and going out of our way together to show each other that we care and enjoy each other's company is not only fun, but necessary! Of course, there is nothing like a REAL date night, but our modified version is not only something for us to look forward to all week, but it gets us that good-quality adult time together that we both desperately need.