I live about 15 minutes from my parents, and to my surprise, while they love my children with a total and adoring love and talk endlessly about how cute, smart and well-behaved they are, they don't really want to "baby-sit" them on a regular basis. No fault to them. They have lives (which is great) and they are really busy. My mom takes care of my amazing Grandpa (who can no longer really walk, talk, etc) and my dad has a pretty stressful job, not to mention he walks around with this huge broken heart. My oldest (younger) brother struggles with some pretty significnt substance abuse issues and it just kills my dad. It hurts everyone, but especially my dad. Ughhh. I really wish I could "fix" people. I mean change their hearts, not spaying or neutering, although sometimes I wish I could do that too :)
While my parents will try to rearrange their schedules and sacrifice time together to help me when I need it, I've learned to only ask when I really need help. I see that their plates are full and I don't want them to ever view being with my kids as work. When they are with my kids, they give them their full attention. They get down on the floor, they play silly games over and over, they feed them ice cream, read books, etc. They are exceptional grandparents and they really love the boys. Every time I am getting Levi dressed, he talks in this cute little voice and says, "Grammy got this for you..." Which, about 99 percent of the time is true.
Given this situation with my busy parents, coupled with my desire to have a little regularly-scheduled kid-free time in my life, I've gotten creative. Every week or two, my friend Josephine and I trade kids for dates. Her husband is a doctor who is in his first year of residency, and they don't have any family in town, so they need time together too. It's a super even trade, because they have two girls who are almost exactly the same ages as our boys. Our dates are usually 3-4 hours long and the days and times are different each week. She'll call and say, when do you want to do dates this week? Sometimes, they'll go out for a Friday night and we'll go out for a Saturday morning date. We've had some great dates.
Now we are upping the ante a bit and are going to try a mom's day out. Three mommas with two kids each are switching off every Thursday starting with me this Thursday. So, I will have four additional little ones at my house for four hours, and then the next two weeks, each of those momma friends will be watching my boys for 4 hours. I think it'll work well for the summer. What will I do with four uninterrupted hours, I really don't know. But, it will be wonderful.
I don't feel bad at all for not wanting to spend every waking second with my children. Believe me, we spend a lot of time together :) I find that when I take care of myself, I am in a better position to give them more love, more patience, and more of all of the things i want to give them. I think I need a pedicure :)
Love,
Kate
We too do this with another family. I think it is a great idea. The family we trade with has four children all the same ages (within a few weeks) of our children. So when we trade, one of us has 8 children! Unfortunately our great family of friends is moving to Texas soon. We're searching for another family brave enough to take on all of our kids at once! I love your Thursday trade off day, what a great idea... I need to find somebody willing to do that too!!
ReplyDeleteOh no, that stinks that your friends are moving. It's hard to find someone you know will take excellent care of your kids and that has a similar parenting style and really loves them. Hope you find someone soon :) I was talking to Zach today about how the more kids we have, the harder it is going to be to go out on dates. But that wont stop us :)
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