Date Night

Date night is not something that Mr. O and I do regularly enough. I need to heed some of my own advice and make more time for me and the Mr.. Last night was "Parent's Night Out", sponsored by Wauwatosa Girls Soccer. (Team? We couldn't figure out if it was ALL of the Wauwatosa area high schools, or just Wauwatosa West.) Either way, it was a wonderful little "event" for the kids to learn some soccer moves with 90 minutes of planned soccer activities, pizza dinner with cookies and brownies for dessert, and then a movie. The fee was $25 for 3.5 hours and if you have more than one child it was only an additional $5 per child. Quite a steal by today's baby sitting prices. We don't have a teen aged babysitter, someone in the neighborhood on call for us, as many of the other families we know do. Part of it up until this point has been affordability, as well as our lack of regular social activities that require childcare. There are plenty of kids, and teenagers around, but we don't really know anyone. We do, however, have a pretty awesome Grandpa who 99.9% of the time we ask, is available for childcare, and that is better than any "kid" watching my kid, any day.

So, Mr. O and me finally went to this Italian restaurant that moved to our side of town several years ago, and we just never made it in there until now. It was delicious. I haven't been out for Italian food in years, and I ordered a traditional spaghetti with meat sauce and it was wonderful. A glass of wine, a nice appetizer, some quiet conversation without interruption and good company made for a really pleasant evening.

What was even more wonderful was being alone, in an adult setting with my husband. I forget how to dress up and hold adult conversation. Oh, you can laugh, but the ability to think about things other than whether or not the kid is safe, if she's eating, or warm enough, did I lock the door, did I remember to mail that check, we're all out of clean underwear, etc...the ability to discuss something aside from when it's OK to watch Sponge Bob Squarepants, or play video games slowly erodes over time if you don't keep yourself practiced in the social arts.

We had 3.5 hours to kill though...It wasn't quite the right timing for us to catch a movie, and I didn't dress appropriately for the dropping temperatures, otherwise we could have participated in the village "Art Walk". After we went for scoops of ice cream at Baskin Robbins, we meandered home, with over an hour before we had to pick up Sophia. It ended up where we were anxious about going to get her, because our desire to simply get back home, get into our own jammies and fall into the comfort of home was all we really wanted to do . Even when we ask Grandpa to babysit for us, we laugh at how early we find ourselves returning from our night out. With dinner and a movie, and no time limits, we typically will be back in the house within 3.5 hours, after stretching our minds toward what we could do with ourselves and the "free time". We're not big drinkers, so, the bar scene usually doesn't draw us in, there's not a lot of live music that appeals to me in the bars, so, again, that's not going to make us stay out. If anything, we would be more apt to have more fun, staying in and having Sophia shipped off for an overnight somewhere.

One could argue that we've become creatures of habit, or routine. In some part, this is true. When I think about my home, all that it holds, all the comfort and warmth it envelops my family in, the outside world has very little allure by comparison. I've been around the block, and my little city lot feels just right.