Designate a Date Day

Remember what it used to be like before kids when you could wake up on a weekend morning and know you had the whole day ahead of you to play around with your spouse or partner? You could sleep in. You could fool around (wink, wink) in the middle of the day. You could go out for a leisurely lunch. You could take in a movie without worrying about rushing home. You could get out of the house and the day-to-day life management stuff and just enjoy being together…for an entire day.

Why not do that now? My husband and I had a date day on Friday. Yep, an entire day. Well, from nine in the morning until four thirty in the afternoon, but when you’ve only had a few brief hours alone over the course of months, nearly eight in the same day feels like an entire day.

How did we do it? We both took the day off. Yep, he took the day off because he knew he was going to have to work over the weekend and, being self-employed, I cleared my own calendar for the day. After dropping the kids off at school and day care, which they would have been going to if we were working, we started our date day together.

Did we feel guilty? Mildly.

Did we do it anyway? You betcha!

And what did we do? Well, after kissing in the car wash (yes, we felt like teenagers), we spent the first three hours of our date day negotiating the purchase of our car at a dealership. Were we thrilled with the length of time we were there? Not necessarily. But we were happy to be there together taking care of something we needed to do without two young kids in tow. (Can you even imagine trying to entertain an eight-year-old and three-year-old at a car dealership for three hours?)

After that it was off to a relaxing lunch at a restaurant we’ve been meaning to try. The hostess must have known that this was a special day for us as she sat us at the back table for two, tucked away from the noisy crowd. We’re use to being put in the back of a restaurant, but it’s usually because we have the small kids in tow. Not this time. In fact, not only were our kids not around, but no other kids were either!

Next, we killed some time wandering through a bookstore before heading to a movie. We agreed that we could easily spend an entire afternoon browsing through a bookstore, especially without children asking to buy things or climbing up the shelves.

And then there was the movie. We got a good chuckle when we walked in to an entirely empty theater. Hmmm….perhaps another opportunity to steal some kisses? Not quite, because a few others did show up, but the thought made us both smile.

I can honestly say that I really did feel more connected to my husband at the end of the day. We held hands more. We kissed more. We talked more. We definitely laughed more. And we came home feeling happy about our day, happy about our relationship, and exhausted from a day spent focused on us.