Samuel Jerome and Richnightder

Samuel Jerome and Richnightder
Our boys in Haiti

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Parental alone time, or lack thereof

Marc and I had a sort of, kind of date today.  We intended to ride our horses together after church, alone, just the two of us, but Madison some how tagged along.  Three is most definitely company.

While it's not that her company was bad, it's just that Marc and I are never, Ever, EVER freakin' alone.  Well I can't say never as most nights between 11PM and 5AM we are alone in our bed, but even then it's often interrupted by a kid who has a bad dream, can't sleep, has a bloody nose, has a blah, blah, blah!  It's hard to have time alone together with 4 kids and a Noah's ark load of animals to care for.

Marc and I crave time alone together.  We need time alone together.  It's virtually impossible to discuss important aspects of life while being interrupted by the incessant demands of the kids.  We need to get away and spend a few days just being Marc and Geralyn and not mom and dad.  While I know we will be mom and dad until the day we die, it would be kind of nice to revisit the qualities that initially attracted us to each other.  Of course, Marc was attracted to my intellect...bahahahaha....and I was drawn to his carefree, throw caution to the wind attitude....bahahaha...NOT!  Initially he was attracted to my youthful zest and sorority girl giddyness and I was attracted to his pensive, goal-oriented plans for life.  Um, yeah, totally polar opposites.  But whatever.  It's worked for almost 21 years and we are damn proud of it.

But back to the freak show we call our life.  Marc and I need to find a way to be alone.  We don't know how to squeeze that into our busy, warp, speed- of -light kind of life right now.  Each kid is busy with their own activities and that has both of us running kids to opposite ends of town at the same times.  Somewhere, somehow we gotta figure this out.  I'm a nicer person when I get to spend time with my best friend and even though we cohabitat, we still are not spending any time with each other.

I don't know what the answer is.  All I can tell you is that I better not have to wait until Jerome goes off to college to have a date with Marc.  That's not very promising either as Jerome often tells me that he's going to live at home with us forever, to which Marc just groans and grunts.  I provide the obligatory smile and hug and roll my eyes over his head because as sweet as my baby boy is....he's gotta fly the nest sooner or later....right?

3 comments:

Denise said...

Well, if you ever figure out a solution, let me know! We are definitely in the same boat! An adoptive mom who has older kids just told Nick how important it is for he and I to spend time together. I told him he should have asked her HOW! We have kids coming in and out of the bedroom all night long, and we also have the one who says he's going to live with us forever. Woo hoo!

Tifanni said...

I feel your pain. Everytime Mike and I have a millisecond for a private conversation, our nosy child is right there to figure out what's going on, and by the time we get all the rugrats to bed at night, we just sit and nod due to exhaustion. If only Alice would show up and do something around here :)

Anonymous said...

Maybe, to facilitate 'date nights' you could/should leave all the kids home...y'know, put on your best, date-worthy clothes and leave the house with all the kids in their rooms or otherwise engaged...just making a suggestion. Having Kristen and Harper with us, we find we need to be rather more creative. We're so accustomed to being able to, I don't know, run around naked and screaming, that having others sharing space is challenging. Fortunately, Art has had several conferences lately and we can always go downstairs if we really need time away - but that would probably lead to popping the cork on a bottle that isn't ready yet...