on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It doesn’t matter if you take the time to work out, write, or sleep. If it’s your day, you do what you want and no diaper is going to get in your way. It is so much easier to have this default schedule than to have to negotiate the early morning time slot on a daily basis.
Nurture Your 5 Simple Marriage Strategies By Pam Moore
A
newly wed friend and her husband came over for brunch recently. I asked them what the rest of their day entailed.
“We’re not sure,” she said. “Maybe we’ll walk around and do some shopping downtown?” “I could go for a nap,” he said. My husband and I stared at them, in awe. It was as if they told us they might take a rocket ship to the moon. They had time to do whatever they wanted. They could even be doing different things at the same time. And it didn’t require any forethought, planning, or communication. I really hope I didn’t say “Enjoy it while you can” out loud. I find one of the greatest challenges of being a mom of a baby and a toddler is juggling my roles as mom, 16 MendoLakeFamilyLife
wife, and me. The precious hours I have to myself each week are few and sometimes unpredictable. My husband and I both realize, though, that we aren’t much good to anyone—ourselves, our kids, or each other—when our own needs haven’t been met. My husband and I are still working out how to best manage all of the competing demands on our time. Here are some strategies that help us get our needs met, both within the marriage, and outside of it. Have a standing schedule. For example, on Monday and Wednesdays between 5:45 a.m. and 7:30 a.m., I manage the kids while my husband does his thing. The roles are reversed
Use a shared online calendar. Before we had kids, the only time my husband and I considered each other’s schedules was when we wanted to do something together. When our first
Babysitters are great resources for date nights—whether you’re on a date with your sweetie or with yourself. child was born, we had to check with each other about virtually everything, to ensure someone was home with the baby. It’s much easier to manage our lives now that we have synched our calendars on Google. Plan dates. Maybe you reserve Saturday nights for each other, and twice a month you hire a sitter and twice a month you do something fun at home. Whatever your system, find a way to carve out time together to do something you both enjoy, or that one of you enjoys (seriously!). Without a plan, it’s too easy to get distracted by piles of laundry or the blog post you’ve been meaning to write. That stuff may feel urgent (ok, not Facebook), but it’s not nearly as important as nurturing your marriage. Use babysitters. If you don’t have family nearby, or someone else that you trust, be open to meeting someone
February 2020 www.mendolakefamilylife.com
