Date Night

I'm a little late in publishing this post, but... oh well. :)

In April, Z and I started having "date nights".  Sometimes we go to dinner, a movie, gelato, a picnic in the park, an outdoor concert, or a combination of any of those things.  Sometimes we make a big deal of wearing nice clothes and sometimes we don't.  Just depends on how much time we have, how much energy I have, and what happens to be going on.

And why, you may ask?  I mean, surely if you know us you know that Z and I spend loads of time together.  Is it weird to set aside a special time together for a mother-son "date"? 

And its true... we see a lot of each other.  But a lot of that time is spent with both of us doing chores, cooking, cleaning, driving to and fro, and basically just taking care of the day to day tasks that need to be taken care of.  I try to incorporate "quality" time in there - doing things together, teaching my little guy how to do stuff, incorporating fun into mundane tasks, and I'm never against taking a momentary break from housework to read a book or pull out the glue for a quick project - but trust me when my mommy guilt gauge goes off on a very regular basis.  I have found that for me, its easy to get caught up in being nearby my kid, but not being WITH my kid. 

Another thing I try to keep in mind is that my cuddly, sweet, lovable mama's boy isn't always going to want to spend his every waking moment on a step-stool with his presence in my every move.  He is growing up at an intensely rapid pace and in time that will come along with more independence and less making cookies with Mommy on a Saturday night. :)

And finally, I love my people.  You know who you are.  When you have good people in your life -and we are insanely blessed with many of them - you want to keep them around.  You may not call as much as you want to, or remember to send cards out for every birthday, or you may be separated by miles and miles or a miles-long to-do list, but you carve out time for them when you can, when its important, and they know you are their people, too.  And I want to model that for Z.  I want him to get the message that when you love someone, you make time for them.  Someday its going to be important to make that effort, whether it be for him and I to go see the newest G rated film (or, egad!, probably PG by then!!) or for him to foster the other relationships he has accumulated in his time, and I hope that our little date nights are setting up the foundation for those relationships to be fun, caring, and lasting.

Plus, Z gets so stinkin' excited when we talk about date night or get ready for date night, its almost unbearable how much I want to squeeze him.

Most of these pictures were taken from our very first date night.  It was our traditional Earth Day movie event, and we turned it into date night and threw in dinner and gelato and fountain watching too.  He gets so excited when he sees these pictures, and immediately starts planning our next "date night".  So cute!