Happy Tuesday! The day after I announced the Bare Necessities of my blog for 2015! Sex, love and washing clothes everyday for the whole year! I sit here as I have towels in the laundry and after a great evening with The Hubs, we had hot buttered rum in the hot tub and then a nice kidless night at home! I love my kids but really we are so much more relaxed when they are at Grandma's. Imagine that, two less people to manage and there is less stress in the house. It's not insensitive, it's truth, a mathematical truth. The Hubs said to me last night can we just be like this all the time even when the kids are here (for the record he was talking about the relaxed mood not the nakedness and/or loud sex, just so you know). My response was a resounding really loud YES!!!
Notice: this was a little more heavy and serious than I had planned and it's not even 2015 yet but I just go where inspiration takes me! I am incapable of not being real and honest and following my heart
Kids create a lot of added stress. Forgive me for being real here but sometimes as adults as much as we love our children, adding two more lives (or however many each of you have) it is a challenge! And in my opinion it is okay to say it out loud! One big thing parents need to do for their kids is to love the person they are parenting with. I realize in this day and age it is not always the biological parents. For ease of my writing I will probably use "Mom" and "Dad" but please know that I know sometimes the family is not always conventional and I respect that and think this applies to you as well so please insert mom and mom or dad and dad if and when needed. If you are parenting alone you need to take care of you!! You still have to be happy and healthy and putting everything into your kids, single parents, is not healthy either...balance, it is all about balance.
Kids come first, yes, when it comes to saving them from a sinking ship and all but sometimes it is okay for mom or dad to come first. Putting life on hold for the kids will only grow you apart from your spouse, and probably grow the children into selfish adults. Kids need to get to practices and rehearsals on time and homework done and yes you will be sacrificing a lot for your little bundles of joy. (NEWSFLASH: don't stay little!) They grow up and move out eventually! So we as parents have to make sure of 2 important things 1. That we model how to work together and love our partners and 2. That when they move out we still know and love our spouse and still have something to connect to when we don't have kids.
I am not a trained parenting expert so I will try to avoid giving advice. I will just tell my story. I am a parent and a wife and I love my kids they are primary in my life, but not always. Every week the Hubs and I have a date night. Every few months we have weekends away that don't involve kids. In my daily life The Girl (10) dances competitively (eh...a source of stress with the amount of money it costs ...we could buy a small island with how much it costs... it is what it is) and The Boy plays sports (a source of stress with the amount of time volunteering and coaching my husband and I put in ...it could be a full time job especially during certain seasons). With all that being said our kids are very successful in their activities, and most of the time we are right there by their side. They enjoy their activities and enjoy us going to watch and look for us in the crowd or on the sidelines. It means a lot to our kids having us supporting them. However we sometimes have other things that make it so we can't be there all the time. For the most part they understand, they get sad that we can't be there all the time but they know that they still matter to us even though we had other plans. For example, we have season tickets to Seahawks this season in particular we have had to miss one of each of the kids events for games. And there was a day we had to miss a Seahawks game for the Boy's Championship game. Some things don't happen all the time like Championship Games or Nationals, again there is that word balance. You have to balance it out and make choices that you both (mom and dad) can live with. Sometimes you just need together time and sometimes it won't work out.
For the Hubs and I Seahawks, no actually, football has been a big deal for our relationship. I learned about football sitting in front of my locker in high school reading scouting reports with him. It is something we bonded over early on. I looked forward to every Monday morning sitting there learning his assignment for the game on Friday. For a while I was the only wife allowed at games (partly because I was the only wife in the group and partly because I was the only chick in our group who really knew football but mostly because the Hubs wanted me there and of course I wanted to be there) Now I look forward to Sunday home games. When my kids were babies I was quite a worried mom. Game days were the only time I could get away and really let myself enjoy and be me, not mom and I didn't feel guilty. We did have other date times but I was always waiting for the phone to ring or calling checking in. It was important to me, to have that feeling of being just 'me' but that did not make me less of a good mom. Now, the kids love football to the Boy plays and the Girl asked us to record the game the day she performed and we went the game (and missed her performance) She asked if she could go to the one game we missed this year (actually ever in the last 10 years that we have had season tickets) when her brother played in his Championship game on a Sunday home game. We told her that her brother's game was more important! ...Balance
My point is parents need connection because your kids will grow up one day and you will be left with your spouse. One connection the Hubs and I have (hopefully you do too) is obviously sex but it is also Football and the kids know that. We also have date nights regularly. Sometimes the kids will give us a hard time when they have to go to Grandma's but, if we miss date night they ask and wonder why they keep us on track too. They know that we love them and we love each other. They see us fight (not always super proud of that but we are real even in front of our kids) we wear our stress on our sleeves and the kids pick it up too, they are smart people. They said to us one day "you guys need a weekend away (we really did) and we need a weekend at Grandma's". ...Not sure if that was wisdom and observation or just that they wanted to go to the place where they rule the roost for a couple days! But regardless, we made it happen Grandma was happy to oblige and keep the kids for our "escape weekend" at the end of the weekend we were all happier and reset to conquer our world.
The whole adage of kids come first is great but really sometimes your marriage need to come first. Your husband gets up every morning to provide for you and you get up every morning to clean cook and keep your house running. You do it for your kids you do it for you and you do it for your husband. He really does appreciate all you do even when he doesn't say it. They say "you must first love yourself before you can love someone else" which is very true (plan time to take care you in there too). You have to love yourself and take care of yourself and you have to make a priority to love the mother or father (bio or otherwise, or co-parent) of your children so that you can show your kids how to be married and be a team together. Marriage is hard and should be your number 1 priority. You are raising little people...adults not kids. Your kids grow up to be adults and they need to know that they have to put in the work it takes to be happy the same way you are putting in the work to be happy! They need to see their mom and dad taking care of each other they will learn that behavior, trust me. Now that we are fighting less, our kids are fighting less.
Don't judge yourself against me or anyone else always do your best. Love your best and when in doubt have some good sex!! That is a great way to get connection with your spouse!
Happy #Everyday2015
No comments:
Post a Comment