Lunch Date

Since Trey was born Jay and I have been on a total of 4 "real" dates. Yes you read that right. We went to 2 plays at Barter Theater in 2010 courtesy of Uncle Mark and then we went out to dinner one night last August and out to lunch on my birthday in December. Now I know that this may send some of my friends into a frenzy that this is not healthy in our marriage, and I do understand where you are coming from. But right now we both work, live a good 45 minutes from any "date" type places, plus our closest babysitters Grandma and Grandpa watch our kids every week day, so they need a break too.

For the first six months of Trey's life we had netflix courtesy of Uncle Mark (are you seeing a trend here?) and so we would put Trey down to bed or a nap and pray he would sleep longer than 45 minutes and watch a movie together. Later right before Charlotte was born we would have make spending our evenings together a priority as he had a 7 pm bedtime. After Charlotte was born our "together" time was extremely diminished. She didn't sleep for a VERY long time and the amount of work it took to keep our household pulled together, our meals homemade from real food, and running on 3 hours sleep left no time to think about going on a "real" date.

About a year ago Jay switched to a different job within the division and now works at my school 1 or 2 days a week. Those days we eat lunch together in my classroom. No one needs a nose wiped, or is throwing food and while not the most romantic place, it gives us a chance to chat and just focus on each other. Sure there are days I am trying to create a flip chart or Jay is on his cell phone dealing with a computer problem somewhere else, but I really look forward to lunch on Fridays with him. Especially now that I am not pumping milk during my lunch break.

In life there are seasons. While I miss the dates every weekend, just spending time together whenever we wanted season before we had kids, I wouldn't trade the be woken up at 6:30 to B-I-N-G-O shouted beside your pillow, crawl out of bed at 2:00 am to find a paci season that we are in right now. Yes both those things happened last night.

Sometimes you have to roll with the punches and be creative to find time together. That's what we do right now. And I look forward to 11:25 on Fridays every week.