This topic has been weighing on my heart and mind for a while now. Marriage. Marriage is hard enough in itself, but man, who knew adding little people into the family would make things so much harder. Well, actually lots of people knew, I just refused to believe that my marriage would be rocked because of kids.
After spending a whole day with the girls, cooking, cleaning, getting around to helping everyone out and having conversations with my two year old, you would think that all I want to do is curl up with my husband and have a great conversation. With an adult! But honestly, it's one of the hard parts of staying home that I didn't realize would happen. Most of the time, all I want to do is just sit, and be silent. I think that now we have kids it's kind of so easy for us to not talk to each other. It's not that we hate each other now, it's just that we've both been doing our own thing all day, with kids and work and other people, and we haven't had a chance for any solo time!
Then, I feel like everything revolves around the children now days. We're either playing with the kids, talking to them, reading with them, disciplining them, feeding them, bathing them, or just talking about them when they go to sleep. Who knew two little people would take up so much of your lives.
There's also the parenting styles. Jason has his way of doing things and so do it. Sometimes it's just hard to remember that we are more than just parents. We are one, we are together, and husband and wife first. Yes, we will parent the children different ways, but I have to tell myself that that shouldn't get in the way of Jason and I as husband and wife.
I don't really want to just dwell on the bad parts of marriage, but I'd rather share things we've been doing to reconnect as married people. This has become something I've realized is incredibly important, because we are the examples for what our daughters see for a marriage. I want to be a good example of what a respectful wife should look like, which is one thing I've been focusing on in my life.
So here are somethings we've been doing lately to reconnect.
1. Date!
It's funny that even as a stay at home mom, it's hard to leave my kids behind to go on a date with the Husband. I just miss them so much! But honestly, it feels good to go out with Jason and get to be "us" for a while without the little ones. One of my favorite date nights we've been on so far is one we had while we were in Ohio. We've been wanting to do a restaurant crawl for a while, and we finally did it. Normally, it would be that you go to a restaurant for a drink, then another for appetizers, then another for your main course, and another for desert. We went to a little historical town in Ohio and it was so much fun going to all the different places on the old timey feel street.
2. Love Languages
During our pre-marriage counseling, we had done a little questionnaire to find out what our love languages were. Jason had saved the paperwork and we went back over them about a month ago. It's interesting to see how they have changed since we've had kids. I found this app for the Love Languages and we both did the quiz on there and started a challenge they include. It gives you a weekly task to do for your spouse as well as some "Conversation Starters". They are both really cool. The conversation starters are usually things we've never talked about! It's been really great having that to reconnect with each other.
3. "I love you because..." board
We started this a couple months back. There's a white board in our laundry room, so we pass it several times a day when we go to the garage, or do laundry, or go to the trash. When we think of things to point out to the other, we write it up there. Obviously, we could just tell each other, but there's something about taking the time to write it on the board and reading it that makes it special.
4. Date Night at home
We put date night ideas together and wrote them on a piece of paper and threw them in a jar. So from time to time, we will pull one out when the kids go to sleep.
All of this is easier said than done. Half of the battles is carving time and effort out to do it. But I hope maybe one of things could be a piece of encouragement to someone out there.
After spending a whole day with the girls, cooking, cleaning, getting around to helping everyone out and having conversations with my two year old, you would think that all I want to do is curl up with my husband and have a great conversation. With an adult! But honestly, it's one of the hard parts of staying home that I didn't realize would happen. Most of the time, all I want to do is just sit, and be silent. I think that now we have kids it's kind of so easy for us to not talk to each other. It's not that we hate each other now, it's just that we've both been doing our own thing all day, with kids and work and other people, and we haven't had a chance for any solo time!
Then, I feel like everything revolves around the children now days. We're either playing with the kids, talking to them, reading with them, disciplining them, feeding them, bathing them, or just talking about them when they go to sleep. Who knew two little people would take up so much of your lives.
There's also the parenting styles. Jason has his way of doing things and so do it. Sometimes it's just hard to remember that we are more than just parents. We are one, we are together, and husband and wife first. Yes, we will parent the children different ways, but I have to tell myself that that shouldn't get in the way of Jason and I as husband and wife.
I don't really want to just dwell on the bad parts of marriage, but I'd rather share things we've been doing to reconnect as married people. This has become something I've realized is incredibly important, because we are the examples for what our daughters see for a marriage. I want to be a good example of what a respectful wife should look like, which is one thing I've been focusing on in my life.
So here are somethings we've been doing lately to reconnect.
1. Date!
It's funny that even as a stay at home mom, it's hard to leave my kids behind to go on a date with the Husband. I just miss them so much! But honestly, it feels good to go out with Jason and get to be "us" for a while without the little ones. One of my favorite date nights we've been on so far is one we had while we were in Ohio. We've been wanting to do a restaurant crawl for a while, and we finally did it. Normally, it would be that you go to a restaurant for a drink, then another for appetizers, then another for your main course, and another for desert. We went to a little historical town in Ohio and it was so much fun going to all the different places on the old timey feel street.
During our pre-marriage counseling, we had done a little questionnaire to find out what our love languages were. Jason had saved the paperwork and we went back over them about a month ago. It's interesting to see how they have changed since we've had kids. I found this app for the Love Languages and we both did the quiz on there and started a challenge they include. It gives you a weekly task to do for your spouse as well as some "Conversation Starters". They are both really cool. The conversation starters are usually things we've never talked about! It's been really great having that to reconnect with each other.
We started this a couple months back. There's a white board in our laundry room, so we pass it several times a day when we go to the garage, or do laundry, or go to the trash. When we think of things to point out to the other, we write it up there. Obviously, we could just tell each other, but there's something about taking the time to write it on the board and reading it that makes it special.
We put date night ideas together and wrote them on a piece of paper and threw them in a jar. So from time to time, we will pull one out when the kids go to sleep.
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