The other day I contracted a stomach virus that I had been nursing my boys through, and during my morning shift with the littles, I laid down flat on the floor and tried to live. My stomach was all knotted up, and all I really wanted to do was take a nap. But all the boys wanted was lunch. So lunch it was.
Husband and I haven’t had a day away from our children in much too long. Months without even a date night start weighing on a parent. Parenting is relentless. It’s hard on a marriage, hard on an individual, hard on a life. There’s no day off—even when you’re sick, you have to address behavior issues, keep boys out of the refrigerator, and listen to them complain about the dinner you cooked in between your retching.
Every now and then, though, Husband and I are fortunate enough to take a weekend away from the kids, because our parents start noticing our wild-eyed looks and decide maybe it’s time to step in and save us (thanks, parents!). Every parent needs this temporary time away, because it’s a time of blissful rest when you don’t have to buckle kids if you decide to go somewhere and you can talk to each other without a hundred voices tripping over yours.
Here are some of the things Husband and I do outside of our kids’ presence:
Sleep.
Most of the time we’re so exhausted that even though we would like nothing more than to sit up late and talk the way we used to do pre-kids, we settle into our bed for good conversation and are promptly snoring—or at least I am. And the sleep is nice, because there are no children who may potentially burst into our room in the middle of the night and make me think someone’s come to murder us—which is always where my optimistic mind goes.
Talk.
We actually get to have a normal conversation when we’re not immediately falling asleep. This conversation is so efficient, compared to all the others when a kid will interrupt a train of thought with a polite but annoying, “Excuse me, Mama” or “Excuse me, Daddy,” as soon as we open our mouths to download what’s been circulating in our brains. I have no idea how children know when their parents are about to talk about something important, but they do.
Read.
When the kids are gone, I can read one page one time, instead of one page five times. I can immerse myself fully in another entertaining world. I can crack open a book without fear of a boy cracking open my head when he decides my lap looks like a nice landing place for his leap off the couch.
Take a shower.
There are so many things that can happen when a parent steps into a shower—no matter how short it is. Once, when I got tired of my greasy hair, I decided I’d take a two-minute shower (even set a timer), and returned downstairs to find my kids seated around Monopoly, Risk, and Go Fish, all the pieces arranged in a fashionable board game throw rug. After I sliced my toe on a Lord of the Rings Risk goblin figure and discovered that there were also, delightfully, ten pounds of bananas gone and the 6-year-old turned to me with a blue face and told me he had no idea who had eaten the bananas or the blueberries, I decided that even a two-minute shower wasn’t worth it. Next time I’d spray down my hair in the kitchen sink.
Eat out.
When Husband and I don’t have the kids at home, we will eat out nearly every night they’re away. We do this for two practical reasons:
a. Once you’re used to cooking for a household of eight people, you forget how to cook for two.
b. It’s the only time we can do it without slapping down our entire grocery budget for the month, because feeding eight people a restaurant meal is not cheap. We’re cheap, though, so we save the restaurant meals for when kids are gone.
Sit down for more than two seconds.
When I try to sit down while all the kids are home, someone will tell me I forgot to pour them milk this morning, someone needs a diaper change, and someone else wants the hidden LEGOs out. Not to mention, as soon as I sit down I fall asleep. You don’t want to see what kids do when a parent accidentally falls asleep on duty.
Take your time.
With kids, it seems that everywhere we go is hurry, hurry, hurry. This is because kids do everything slowly—especially putting on their shoes (if they can find them in the first place). But when Husband and I are on our own, we can not only leave the house in record time, but we can also linger over the museum display without worrying that one of the 4-year-olds will wander off into the indigenous people display and come back wearing only a loincloth.
Talk about the kids.
Everywhere we go on a kidless weekend, we talk about our boys and how much we miss them, even though as soon as we pick them up we’ll be ready for the next weekend away. But this is part of the treasure of weekends without children—we remember why we love each other so much and we remember how very much we love our boys.
Mostly we remember that we would not want our life any other way.
