Committed: The Ties that Bond
with Angella Dykstra
I'm a mom of three, a professional accountant, and an amateur photographer and writer. I am not a marriage expert. But my husband and I take "Til death do us part" seriously, and here I'll be sharing how we keep our marriage strong while we both do that insane work-life juggle.
Check out my Work It, Mom! profile and my blog, Dutch Blitz.
My husband and I have three small children and while they are wonderful and amazing in all of their mind-blowing awesomeness, they can put a little damper of the romance. It’s kind of hard to be all sexy and seductive when you are wiping bums and yelling at the kids to STOP FIGHTING ALREADY.
My husband and I have been huge proponents of regular Date Nights in order to (keep our sanity, and) have time to reconnect. Sometimes having a night out is not in the cards (or the budget), but there are other ways to keep your relationship from drowning in the current of Life With Kids.
This article from CNN lists a number of ideas, and we practice many of them into our daily lives.
- Implement early bedtimes. I know some people who have young children that stay up until nine or ten every night. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Our kids are in bed at eight. No ifs ands or buts. Then it’s our time.
- Share the load. Those who know me know that my husband more than shares the load. But when the kids are in bed, we work together to deal with laundry, make school lunches, get organized for the next day. There may or may not be butt pinching involved.
- Schedule sex. While nookie on a whim may have more of an air of romance, it’s not really practical when your kids are small and underfoot. We’re both pretty literal people, so a standard. “Are we getting it on tonight?” is usually sufficient enough to let one another know what is on the agenda.
Do you have any tips to child-proof your marriage? I’d love to hear them.
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I wholeheartedly agree on the 8 pm bedtime. I usually say, are you kidding me, when people tell me their kids are up until 10.
Kami | August 4th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Since I don’t have any kids, I have a thought I’m sure is do-able for most people. My best friend has a 1.5 year old son and I take him off her hands for FREE anytime since I love the little bugger so much. Free babysitting, out of the house, for some good lovin for my friend and her hubby!
Shelly | August 4th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
AMEN!! I agree with ALL 3 points.
My kids are in bed at 7pm. It may seem early, but our evenings are precious and I won’t compromise on that one.
Scheduling sex is a necessity sometimes. It doesn’t have to take away from the romance at all, in fact I think it’s quite exciting to know early in the day what is going to happen later!
Hannah | August 4th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
For a lot of families, I think an attitude change is the biggest necessity. So many parents spend all their time worrying about what is best for their children, rather than what is best for their FAMILY. If you focus on doing what is best for your family as a whole, you will have more success in your marriage and your parenting. The nitty gritty practical details, such as bedtime or date nights, are helpful once the attitude has been changed. Not only that, you get those date nights guilt-free!
LMJN | August 5th, 2009 at 10:47 am
OMG - I so wish we could do an earlier bedtime…beause she DOES NOT SLEEP before 8:30 PM…no matter what. We run her tush off during the day, we tried skipping naps (big fat FAIL), we’ve tried everything. We finally came to the conclusion that an earlier bedtime = 5 AM wake ups (which is totally unaccetable to mama) and/or her acting like a cracked-out squirel in her room until after 10 PM. We ran the course for months and finally went back to the later bedtimes because…ugh. But both my husband and I both wistfully look back to the infant days when we had 7 - 11 PM as “our time”.
kakaty | August 5th, 2009 at 2:56 pm