Family Time

Shiela and I have come to the conclusion that we do the majority of our "serious" talking during the 2 hour trips down to Connecticut and back. Since my parents have moved, we are making that jaunt less, and are therefore having fewer "serious" talks. By "serious".. I don't mean bad.. I just mean talking about us as individuals and as a couple and a family and what we like, don't like, etc, etc, etc. Time tends to fly by and we all continue to grow up in some ways and it sure helps a marriage when you coordinate things once in a while.

Life with a toddler is hectic. Life with two cats and a toddler is hectic. Life with two full time jobs, two cats and a toddler is hectic. We look forward to sleep.. but then when the time comes, we can't sleep. We embrace every second that we spend with our son (even while wrangling him into time out) and occasionally remember to embrace one another during this journey.

In short, we are probably two of the most in-sync people I've known.. we laugh ALL the time. I absolutely love spending time with Shiela and Ben (and the cats).

The topic of conversation last night, on our drive back from CT.. hit a number of topics, but one of those was the fact that we're flat out all of the time and it feels like we're barely keeping our heads above water in just about all aspects of our life. Work is work; nuff said. The time we're not working we spend grasping for time with each other and our son and trying to keep up with laundry (which is what I should be doing now instead of blogging) and dishes and the cat litter. Throw in a presidential election and some stirrings of current financial.. um.. what does Bush call them.. oh yeah.. "adjustments".. and we wake up running and fall into bed at night surprised that we're all still intact.

We decided to try a few things.

1. We're going to go on a real Date (capital "D") at least twice a month. This will include getting a babysitter and doing something other than going to a movie and spending two hours in silence. We can still go to movies.. but those don't count as "us" time. This will be time to spend together doing something that one or both of us enjoy (we're pretty in sync on these types of things anyway) and allowing ourselves to sort of check in with each other during a time when we're not responsible for doing any housework and the phone isn't ringing and Ben isn't losing his mind while we're calmly trying to wrestle him into his carseat after a trip to Target.. you know the scene.. that kid throwing a FIT and the parents saying quietly "please honey.. don't do that". I always walked by those families thinking "man.. MY kid wouldn't act like THAT". Uh... what the heck ever, man. Now when I see those families I stop and look at the parents and can see one familiar thing. EXHAUSTION.

2. Shiela and I have decided that the TV in our bedroom is not for TV. I've had that TV since I was about 15 and it has lived a good life. It is a boat anchor and we've gotten into such a habit of turning on something.. anything.. as background sound/light, while we try to detox from the day and work toward sleep. Occasionally we'll watch a movie or something, but usually it's just some random documentary or the second half of some 80's movie that we half pay attention to. At some point, usually in the wee hours of the morning, one of us digs the remote out from under the covers and will shut the stupid thing off. No more TV in bed. If we want to watch TV.. we have a perfectly good TV in the living room. end of story.

as an update to this one.. we tried this last night and it was VERY relaxing. shiela seemed to fall asleep better than I did.. i felt like I was awake forever and i kept checking on ben and having to pee. but eventually I did fall asleep and the world didn't come to an end.

3. We're going to try something new. One night a week we're going to have a family night, which, in itself.. isn't that new of an idea. The twist that we're adding to shake it up a bit is that it's a "lights out" family night. No electricity.. when the sun goes down, it gets dark. We'll light candles (we'll buy candles that we can keep toddler proof) and no TV, no radio, no computer. Anything else is fair game.. we can cook, we can read/play/whatever. But it will be like we lost electricity without things in the fridge going bad and the phones not working. Don't worry.. I'll blog about it. I can't guarantee that the pictures will be any good by candlelight.. but I'll give it a whirl.

Now.. big group hug...