For the first time since moving to the Grand Duchy, yours truly is attending a theatre play tonight. Which also means that after years of begging, Marko finally agreed we are both ready for it. I guess our French has truly come a long way!
The occasion got me thinking about the different courses of action we’ve taken throughout the years to attain the possibility of an occasional date night. This time we are enlisting the help of a babysitter but there are a few other options available, even if you live a thousand kilometres away from the most obvious choice – the grandparents.
OPTION #1 The most obvious answer is hiring a babysitter, which we have done a couple of times now that our children are a bit older but never felt at ease with the idea when they were really small. Although a wonderful option, it requires a colossal leap of faith to leave your tiny baby or toddler with, essentially, a stranger. Also, if you add up the costs of dinner, drinks, and cinema-concert-theatre tickets, it becomes an awfully expensive kind of an affair, all of a sudden. Therefore, use the option responsibly.
OPTION #2 Mark my words, newborns are extremely portable! So taking them along to a restaurant, bar or the cinema, if allowed, is the easiest of things and we did so on multiple occasions. It is admittedly easier in the summer when you can use the restaurant’s garden instead of wheeling the sleeping baby in, uncover, undress it and wake it up in the process. A barely 1-month-old Mia celebrated Marko’s 35th birthday with us in the only non-smoking bar in Luxembourg at the time and had a blast! Which means she slept throughout the celebrations.
OPTION #3 When grandparents are visiting, make every evening count! Just recently, a dear friend of ours had his mother fly in for a visit and managed to consecrate 8 evenings to socializing with friends and colleagues during her two-week stay. Rumour has it that it was legendary. Having said that, the pressure to take advantage of the free evenings suddenly available to you is tangible. Trying to squeeze into a week everything you would have otherwise done in a course of a few months, does leave you drained. 🙂
OPTION #4 Throughout the years, friends and
OPTION #5 On the other hand, our friends having children of their own, also means SLEEPOVERS!!! Obviously, managing a sleepover for two children at the same time, be it at the same house or two different houses can prove to be a bit tricky at times but absolutely feasible. Children as young as 1 year old have been known to have sleepovers, while their parents enjoyed a quiet night in, early bedtime and a bit of a sleep-in the next morning.
OPTION #6 Day dates are just as wonderful as their evening counterparts. Leaving the children in day-care a bit longer or occasionally sending them there on your day off while spending time with your spouse in the local park, catching a drink in the sun or a matinee at the cinema should not make any parent feel guilty. Our latest adventure of such a kind involved a half-an-hour wait for a morning singing performance by Mia’s class, which meant a 30-minute one-on-one conversation in the sun with my better half accompanied by some very pricey capuccinos. You can’t have it all, I guess.
OPTION #7 All-inclusive resorts are not my preferred choice of holidays for many different reasons but sometimes it is exactly what my family needs! It commonly comes with a Kids’ Club, full of fun activities for the little ones. The first time we did it, Jakob had just turned two, while Mia was a few months shy of her fourth birthday. While we spent the afternoons together as a family, the children passed their mornings at the resort’s Kids’ Club with me and Marko enjoying our time at the much quieter over-18-only pool, reading at the pool-side or just bathing in the glorious Spanish sun!
Although there are shortcuts I would not take in order to gain some kids-free time, I truly believe in the importance of socialising, spending time with friends and, even more paramount, alone with your partner. Preferably out of the house. It’s curious and inexplicable how a different environment sparks different conversation topics; true at least for Marko and I. While at home we always get caught up in conversations about the house, children and logistics plans for the following day, getting out of the apartment somehow leads us to deeper conversations about life, our view of the world and current events, about our dreams and hopes. I usually get to know my husband from a different angle, learn new facts about the person I chose to marry. In a certain way, it truly IS a date – it propels us to the time when we were dating, when uncertainty was running high but so was the excitement of getting to know each other and deciding whether we could function well as a couple. It makes me remember while I chose him; not only why I fell in love with him, which is the first step, but what ultimately made me want to spend time, all of my time, the rest of my time, with him.
Ultimately, only happy parents can bring up happy, well-adjusted children, which I believe is the goal of all parents.