Date Night in Memphis

This is a reader-suggested post. What do DF and I do for "date night"?

LOLOLOLOLOL

Ahem <cough>, sorry, let me catch my breath here. People, we have two babies, er, toddlers. Two VERY ACTIVE little toddlers who would love to destroy your house/store/restaurant/pet store/etc and giggle while doing it. Hence, we very rarely take them anywhere that isn't super baby friendly, unless they can be constrained in their stroller.

We live approximately 800 miles from their nearest grandparents. We do have some very nice friends here who have offered to watch the boys, but we know how exhausting watching the boys can be, so we try not to wear people out too much. (Also, see note above about their destrucive tendencies to explain why we don't really want to bring them over to someone's house for babysitting.) The kids take some time to warm up to new people. They are also very skilled at screaming to delay bedtime. If you let a volunteer babysitter listen to too much screaming, they may not be so eager to volunteer again...

Hiring a babysitter to come over to our house is a possibility, and we actually have done so before. The going rate around here seems to be at least $10/hour. So if we're planning a traditional dinner + movie date, we have to decide if it's actually worth it to tack on an extra $30-$40 to the cost. I know, I know, everyone says you should do it, that hiring a babysitter is money well spent. And we can afford it if we want to. But we have to reeeeally want to do something. Plus I tend to worry about the boys a lot when I'm not with them, so I have a hard time actually relaxing and enjoying myself.

All that being said, DF and I actually do get some time to ourselves once in a while. We send the boys to Mother's Day Out twice a week. They stay for 5 hours, and they always seem to have fun. DF is usually off work twice a month on MDO days. Since we're already paying (a very affordable rate) for childcare, we've tried to make the most of these day dates! We tend to go out to breakfast and/or lunch and maybe do something else fun. One day we went to the Rock 'n' Soul museum. Another time we went shopping at Babies R Us and had lunch at Red Lobster. I felt very suburban that day, haha. This week, we voted then caught up on DVR'd episodes of The Big Bang Theory.

Here's my latte from one of our recent breakfasts - at Tamp & Tap