Making Time

Last night Evan stayed home cleaning the house with Gloria while I ran to the post office to have a date with Liliana.  Evan and I try to each have our Liliana one-on-one time to remind her how special she is to us.  She LOVES this time with us.  She's a great helper at the post office too! :)  On my way home we stopped at Kroger to get some chips and I decided it was a great evening to rent a movie and cuddle on the couch with my man.

Cuddle nights on the couch are one of our favorite pasttimes.  We're BIG on putting the kiddos to sleep and making us time.  Lately we've really focused on getting the kids down for bed at a decent hour so that we can spend time together SANS kiddos.  I realize this isn't the easiest task with a two year old and a two month old, but I must say, we're excelling!  The girls took naps at the same time on Saturday AND Sunday and both were asleep by 9 pm each night. This means we get LOTS of time together as a couple (I mean that in the hubba hubba way and in just the fun sitting on the couch watching a movie way).

I rented a movie I had been wanting to see for a while called "Friends with Kids." The movie is your typical decent romantic comedy: 6 friends (two of them couples) .... 2 of them having kids, those two couples seem miserable.  The two single friends decide to have a kid together but not be togheter. Spoiler alert: they end up falling in love with eachother. WHAT?  Didn't see that coming! ; )

Anyway, the movie really focused on the miserable aspect of having kids and the number it does on a marriage.  This kinda pissed me off.  It doesn't HAVE to be like that.

YES the kiddos are time consuming.  YES Evan and I have less down time than we used to, but it DOES NOT consume our lives.  We have a 2 month old and a 27 month old and both work full-time jobs (his counts as two jobs actually).  And yet, we still MAKE the time.

One of my pet peeves is when people say they don't HAVE the time to do something.  "We don't HAVE the time to clean." "We don't HAVE the time to workout." "We don't HAVE the time to ...." you get the picture.

NONE of those statements are true.

You HAVE the time.  You just don't MAKE the time.

Honestly I don't MAKE the time to clean our house often enough.  I've realized it won't be spotless and the vacuum will be run about every week and a half.  And that's as good as we're going to do it because I would rather have a cuddle night on the couch with my husband.

We MAKE the time to be together.  Having kids hasn't changed the hubba hubba time AT ALL ... it's just as strong as ever (TMI sorry!) and same with just watching movies etc.  We make it a priority.  If we have work to do (be it the etsy shop or Evan's job since he not only has to work 80 hours but is required to write papers as well), we say "we'll work for 30 minutes and then we're done and will spend time together."

One BIG change we've made since having kids?  We're on the internet and on our phones SO much less.  Our computers don't get turned on for DAYS sometimes.  We used to surf the internet while sitting next to each other but now, our time is more limited since we do have the kids taking more of it so we MAKE the time by putting the laptop away and spending time together.

We spend time together by reading books side by side, by playing games (cards, board games, or even a 2 player game on our tablet that we've been particularly addicted to lately), by baking together (which often results in flirting by putting brownie batter on each others cheeks etc).

During the movie, Evan had his arms wrapped around me and told me something that he says frequently but I never get tired of hearing:

"You're my favorite."

I love when he tells me that.  I'm his favorite.  And he's mine.  And that is  SO worth making time for.

Having kids doesn't have to kill your relationship.  I don't even believe it has to slow it down.  You just work with it. And if you're lucky, like we are, you find so much joy in your new found family that you're happier than ever before.