date night

It's 7pm. Jared's still at school and I just laid the baby down. Do you want to know what my first thought was after having my arms free for the first time in 6 hours? "Hot-diggity-dog, I can't wait to get my hands on that carpet spray and dab the heck out of those dirt stains!" Seriously, I have never come across a carpet cleaner so legit. It will get anything out. And I really do get that excited to spend my evening on my knees in the companionship of a Folex bottle. Which now has me thinking about how drastically different my definition of "fun" is now in comparison to 8 months ago to 5 years ago.

The other day when Jared and I were driving along the Potomac, we saw kayakers cruising along the gentle rapids of the river. It looked like fun. We both chatted about all the outdoorsy stuff we could get in to here - mountain biking, kayaking, hiking, camping, etc. The trees are so lush they practically force you to fall in love with them and beckon you to lay beneath their branches and live in the woods forever. But then we heard someone babbling behind us and we both reasoned that maybe we won't get the opportunity to experience all that we want to in that department. That would require a babysitter, free time and money. After feeling a little bit sad for ourselves, we decided to have a date night of our own at home. The date began with crawling lessons, followed by lullabying our beautiful baby sleep, making chocolate chip cookies together and cuddling up watching one of my all time favorites "Lars and the Real Girl." The evening wasn't much different than any other night for us really, except for the fact that Jared helped me make the cookies this go around and that we told ourselves that it was a date. And honestly, I think that made all the difference - mentally telling ourselves that we were on a date. Is that nuts-o or what? And truth be told, I'm glad that I get to have my hands full of dirty diapers rather than movie theatre popcorn, find comedy in little giggles rather than on screen, get excited about Ev trying out creamed corn for the first time rather than me having my mouth full of a tasty restaurant dish, and that the most dressed up I get these days is for church and not an evening out. But still... I think if Jared and I continue on our path of date-night cookie dough eating extravaganzas followed by 2 hours of sitting on the couch, we could very easily find ourselves looking like dough, and not in a mouth-watering way either. We've got to find some things for us to do together at home to qualify as date time besides blotting stains out of the carpet and watching youtube videos. Can just two people play games?

I'm off to blot carpets. Atleast listening to Adele while doing so makes it sound cooler, right?

So movie epic. Girl at home alone. Head banging, screaming and dancing her heart out with a broom in hand. Except I will have headphones in, there will be no head banging but lip syncing and a spray bottle in hand rather than a broom.