Do You Date Your Kids?

In the spirit of “purpose”, I decided to have an adventure day with Eggroll last week. (OK, also in the spirit of “let’s try to get to one nap a day which should happen more easily if you’re not at home during the typical first nap time.”) The original plan was to go to the museum, but a girlfriend had a baby the evening before and needed some support and supplies. Eggroll and I were on the case!

The two of us went out to Brookfield to go shopping. Since she’s just now walking, it was the first time I was able to let Eggroll out of the cart. Yes, of course she did take everything off the shelves and managed to wander away into the next aisle causing me to panic. That’s just a part of the game, right?

After a few stores, we went to lunch at Stir Crazy, a sit-down restaurant that was big enough I thought we wouldn’t disturb people there for business meetings. Turns out business doesn’t happen in the 11 am hour, so we were in the place mostly by ourselves. Girlfriend was a delightful lunch date! She wasn’t too loud and didn’t make too much of a mess. She ate her food perfectly and was relatively patient while I ate mine.

Finally, we went to the hospital to meet the newest little guy on the scene and to see how my friend was doing. Then off to home. (Where, in fact, she did NOT take a nap. Too much excitement?)

I only checked my phone periodically. I wasn’t sidetracked by dirty dishes or blog posts that maybe I could write while keeping her busy with a pile of toys. Eggroll wasn’t a nuisance since I was 100% focused on her. Neither were the million other things I could have been working on since I consciously left them at home.

It was an amazing day.

The past few weekends, I’ve been lamenting to Randy that we really need to get out of the house as a family of three and this adventure day showed me why. At home it is so easy to get sidetracked with the minutiae of life; to quick fold a load of laundry or go through the motions of fixing and eating lunch without thinking about what we are doing.

Conversely, since we stepped away from routine and tried something new, it was easy and fun to focus on Eggroll vs. get frustrated that I wasn’t getting anything else done.

Will our adventure days always go this perfectly? Of course not. I’m sure there will be plenty of hiccups when I try to recreate these days in the future, but I’m definitely still going to try! Hopefully, I’ll get Randy out for the next adventure day, too.

Do you take the time to do something unique with your kids (spouse, parents, life VIPs, etc.) every once in awhile?

I challenge you to give it a whirl if you can’t think of your last date. Four hours away from home gave me such a different (and better) perspective of this motherhood thing that was looking pretty dire after the previous week of being stuck at home due to weather. I bet it could do the same for you.