How To Be an Adult (for a weekend).

As you may have been able to glean as an avid reader of this little corner of the interwebs, the Klahn household revolves around a certain 3 foot adorable, but stern, ruler of the roost. We simply wouldn't have it any other way. While raising her to be a valuable and hard working member of society is important around here, the "life change" - by which I mean, yours becomes theirs - of having a child was a very welcome and planned for one around these parts. We love taking Delaney new places (and old ones), incorporating her into our plans, and doing our best to make sure her life is pretty much awesome a great deal of the time. The non-awesome part of the time, well, we try to make sure that is saved for stuff that we deem relatively essential to her raisin' up: see also, potty training, bedtime, nail trimming, and other things toddlers would just as well skip if you left the raising up to them.

All that mushy stuff said, our marriage is first priority to us, and we both work at it constantly. I should add here that work in this context is not so much as a chore, as a concious choice to try to make our marriage the best it can be. For us, dates are an important part of that dynamic. We make a big deal out of things like anniversaries, and we make a small deal out of things like a dinner out together. Its fun to get a little fixed up, go out, and concentrate on each other. We've been doing date nights from the beginning of our marriage, but now that we have someone else to think about, those nights are a little more planned out and on the calendar well in advance.

A handful of times, we've spent the night without Delaney. Once, we've taken a quick weekend getaway without her. This weekend will be our second time to leave her for a couple of days. Do I miss her? Are you kidding me? She's my girl, my princess, my favorite pal. Of course I do!! Her daddy misses her a lot, too. But any break from the normal is nice, and a chance to recharge our batteries and have some fun as footloose, fancy-free (what does that even mean?) grown-up people is pretty great, too.

For those who haven't taken the plunge to do an overnight without your little one and are thinking about it, here's a couple tips from me. Sidenote: obviously I have loads of experience, didn't you read I've done this an entire handful of times?? Ahem.

• Leave them with the next best you. If your babe is in good hands, you won't be worrying about what's going on - although that's not likely to stop you from thinking about it anyway. We are very blessed to have both sets of grandparents nearby, all of which Delaney absolutely adores. This makes it easy for us to say goodbye, because we know she's getting to do all sorts of special fun things without us.
• Know thyself - can you handle the truth?? For me, I can. I love getting picture and text updates and seeing Delaney have a great time, and it helps the "what are they up to?" wonder fade away. If you'll turn into a ball of tears on your romantic dinner out at the sight of your little one, maybe ask for no picture updates, just a quick "went to bed happily!" text. Even when we're just out for the evening, I feel like I can really relax once I know Delaney is happily in lala land for the evening.
• It's ok to think/talk/purchase about/to/for them. Also, there isn't a limit to the number of slashes you can have in a sentence. Not on this blog, anyway. I never like articles that tell you to talk about something other than your kid - hello, its my kid! And the person I'm out with? Yeah, its his kid too. That means, Delaney is going to come up in conversation. I like to call before we get going in the mornings, and before Delaney's bedtime at night, just to hear her voice. For us, she is having so much fun with her grandparents (aka, those four people on Earth that cater to her every whim), she likes to say hi, love you, bye, and go right on back to playing. If this will upset you, or worse, your kidlet, see #2 and just stop yourself before you sad-dial.
• Have FUN! And remember that your little darling is too. Be in the moment and remember that whoever you are out with - your girlfriends, your husband, or a few couples - these are people that like you and that you like (Hopefully. If not, well, I wouldn't waste a night out on them.) Try to remember a little bit of what the "old" pre-kid you was like and laugh, joke, and even try to stay out past 10pm.

Hopefully this was helpful to someone, and make you laugh a few times. It always helps me when I'm away from Delaney to remember that one of the best things I can do to influence her life in a positive way is love her daddy and let her see the happiness that we share. To keep our connection strong, a few date nights and weekends away are a wonderful thing. Here's to the weekend - go call the babysitter and take your husband out!