Date Night?

My wife and I had a date night last night going out to dinner and the movies. Well, dinner consisted of Der Wienerschnitzel (keep in mind she's still pregnant) and the three dollar movies to see Couple's Retreat. The movie was worth the six bucks we paid for it, I would've been angry if I shelled out a twenty. The dogs were exactly that, dogs. They fell down your throat like long tubular bricks until they slammed into the bottom of your gut and then sat there for the next eight hours. I can still taste them as I sit here writing this.

Anyway, it's the whole concept of the Date Night that I want to talk about. I love the idea of taking a night to be with your spouse whom you haven't spent much time with throughout the past couple weeks because of work or life or the constant need to keep ourselves busier than we ought to be. The tricky part is not letting the date fall into the same patterns of life-as-usual, the daily goings-on, the coming home talk about dinner talk about the day fall asleep on the couch and go to bed separately kind of pattern. If that's what you'll end up doing on your planned Date Night, save the six dollars and indigestion stay home watch a redboxed movie and fall comfortably asleep knowing your night only cost you one dollar.

Having said that, my wife and I need more time together. And not necessarily more Date Night time either. Just the kind of time where we sit down at the table and eat without the TV on and comment on how good the food tastes. The kind of time where we watch a movie or show together that one of us doesn't feel obligated to watch. The kind of time when the TV is off and we sit and read peacefully together sharing passages with each other that we find to be interesting. And the kicker, the kind of time where we go to bed together sleep together and wake up together. One of us has literally been on the couch for the last two months because my wife has the pregnant snore.

That snore has done more to physically separate us than anything else I can remember, even our fights. My hope and prayer is that once Levi is born, that snore goes away (or at least diminishes) and we can get on doing our next "kind-of-time" together, raising and caring for our son. I am actually looking forward to the feedings poopings cryings and awakings in the middle of the night simply because we will be doing that together. I am not naive about how hard this can be, Levi will be my fourth after all, but it's the together that counts.

It is not the what; it is the who with.