You hear it all the time “Take care of your marriage. Make time for your spouse. Your kids will grow up, they will move away and it will just be you and your spouse again”. I think it is probably the most common piece of advice expecting parents get. And in a way it is completely true. I mean, your kids will grow up and they will find their own lives. You will still be important to them, but as they grow they become more independent.
That’s important, but, also important to note, is that what your children see in your relationship with your spouse, their parent, is what they will view for themselves when that time comes. The interaction between you and your spouse is the first model to them of what a marriage or partnership looks like. And so, for both those reasons, it is important to focus on your relationship with your spouse.
But how do you do that? How do you make time for your spouse when it feels like your children have sucked time out of you (that sounds a lot worse than it really is, I promise)? Whether you work out of the house or are a Stay at Home Parent it is tough. Regardless of what you do, you are trying to meet the never ending needs of your children, being both the constant entertainer, teacher, mediator (if you have multiple children), protector, and guide. Your days are long (although the years are short) and when the day is over it can be so hard to want to stay up a little bit later and be present for someone else.
Taking time for your spouse is just as important as taking time for yourself. They say that you can’t take care of others until you take care of yourself. Well you and your spouse can’t effectively parent and be married if you are not taking care of each other.
It doesn’t take long, a simple 5-10 minutes to just see how they are doing. To check in with them on how their day was. To remind them that they are doing a good job. To tell them that you are proud of them. To give them a little peck, or shoulder rub. These little gestures, little moments of contact goes so far into “keeping the spark alive”.
Don’t wait till your one night (keep reading for that), do it now. You don’t need grand gestures, flowers or chocolates. Most of the time you just need a moment. A moment of just you and your spouse where you only focus on each other. A moment can be all it takes from going to bed feeling like a disaster on all fronts to going to bed feeling on the same page as someone else.
Take a night, once a week. Stay up later, cuddle on the couch, make it a point on that night to put away all the distractions and just focus solely on each other. It doesn’t have to be a go out to dinner and a movie date night, it doesn’t have to even be a get a sitter night (keep reading though for that…), it just needs to be a night where you can be with each other. *You can read about our take on this HERE.
Take a night out, wherever fits into your own budget, get a sitter and go do something outside the house with your spouse. Whether that’s dinner, a concert, a hike, whatever, get out into the world. Remember what it was like to go on a date with your spouse. Take a couple of hours and remember what life was like before you had babies crying at your feet, or a toddler needing help going to the bathroom. Hold hands while you are walking, sit across from each other and have discussions without having to reprimand your children halfway through a sentence. I gauruntee you and your spouse come back to the house 100% refreshed and ready to tackle those moments. We are homebodies so we don’t always do date nights like this, but we are getting better about it.
Finally, look back through your photo albums. Walk down memory lane. Remember that first date? Remember your wedding day? Look back through the photos, you’ll be surprised how many little memories pop through your mind and remind you what that moment was like.
How do you and your spouse place your marriage first?
We get asked at the start of a conversation with someone new about what we do. Who we are. I find myself answering with just the standard of, “I’m a wife and a mom.” and this seems to suffice, but I got to thinking that while those are my two most important roles, they do not describe all of me. They represent a part of me, a very big and important part of me, but that is not all I am. I am more than those two labels. So, I want to share three things that don’t fall under those labels. In turn, I’d like you to share something that doesn’t fall under a typical description of you. So…
They have a “rope course” across the zoo where they can travel up in the air from one enclosure to another. Similar to how they would in the wild. It has got to be one of the coolest things to watch. When was the last time you went to your local zoo? Do they have a local attraction that you really love?
Fun fact: September through December is my all-time favorite time of year. We get the beauty of the leaves turning and falling, the crisp coolness of the early morning, gorgeous sunrises poking through the trees, hitting all of the vibrant colored leaves. Then everything slowly turns chillier, barer, until that first magical snow fall. It’s just such a wonderful and magical time of year. I’ve come to realize that Autumn just feels like my soul has been embodied by everything around me.
First I am going to touch on where I “display” them all. I’ve got a cabinet that is in our living room, and most live on the top two shelves, with a couple on the bottom shelf (the bottom display shelf is mostly tea). I’ve got them grouped together: the top shelf being my The Cosy Book Shoppe Mugs, my Rae Dunn larger mugs, my Inky and Indigo collection, and the middle shelf being my Anthropologie, Emma Bridgewater, and miscellaneous (which changes as I pull out the couple of seasonal mugs I have…yes I have a couple of seasonal-aka Christmas-mugs). The rest of the mugs live in the inner cabinet (not shown here) and they are the mugs that are lesser reached for at this time, there is one mug in there that I still reach for semi regularly), or have sentimental value.
Ah something new. I’ve been thinking long hard about this. Do I want to do it. Can I do it. How do I do it. All thoughts that have been swirling around in my head for the last couple months. I’ve come to a decision that rather than just continue to wonder about it, that I would just take a chance. Give it a shot. If it works out and goes the way I am planning, then perfection! If not, then maybe timing just wasn’t right. Either way, I’d rather at least try then continue to sit and ponder and wonder what if. That’s not something I’m good at (although sometimes I am, and in those case I almost mull it over for too long and then the spark passes).
Before I was a mom I never thought I would be the mom who said: “Send (insert:caffeine,wine,junk food, etc) it helps” (In my case it’s tea and It totally does help).
I’ve said it before- I like a clean house. I strive for a clean house 97% of the time (the 3% being the time that my kids are awake and trashing everything 😅). A clean home makes me calm (no joke). What I really pride myself on though is my kitchen. I strive for clean counters, floor, dishes in either the washer, drying wrack or put away. Perfection in my kitchen is heaven/less stress to me. BUT (and this is THE BUT of life really), there is a time and place for that.
A Cuppa Cosy 