Vol. 63 - Date Night!

On alone time

Before we get into this week’s jawn, I wanted to share another essay with you. I know I recently said I don’t often share work stuff here, but that’s because my work stuff doesn’t normally pertain to fatherhood.

But last week, I published an essay with Inside the Magic, which is Disney’s in-house blog. First off, what a treat to publish something through an official Disney channel. Second, the essay was all about mine and Emily’s relationship with our son (and with a certain megahit movie). I hope you’ll read it!

Now, onto the newsletter.

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Emily and I are officially back in the dating pool.

We’re not breaking up. Nor are we looking to get into three-ways. (Though we are about to head to France in a few weeks, so, you know, who knows?)

Rather, we’re dating our kids. Or at least we’re going on dates with our kids.

A joke we often make about adding a second kid to the mix is how parents go from zone defense to man-to-man. That is, all hands on deck, no time off, someone always watching someone.

And considering Emily has the boobs, she has, over the last two years, often been tasked with covering the baby.

In turn, I have spent a lot of time with our son. Which has been amazing. He and I have bonded so much over the last two years. It’s a bonding that, as he spent most of his first three years attached to his mom, Emily promised me would someday come.

We ride bikes together and go to the local arcade. We kayak around the local lake. Or should I say I kayak, towing him in a small boat behind me. At the pool, it’s usually him and me, with Emily in the kiddie pool with baby (a breakdown that has more to do with the fact that I can stand in the deep end and Emily cannot, making me the candidate to continue to teach our son how to swim).

Our son and I are as close as we have ever been.

But during a recent time in, he admitted to Emily and me that he’s been acting out a bit lately because he misses his mom. He said, in so many words, that he felt detached from her.

And thus, date night was born.

Unofficially, of course. Because our kids’ lives are already becoming too scheduled, we didn’t decide to put any hard and fast boundaries on the idea. Rather, Emily and I just realized that we really need to focus on her spending time with our son, one-on-one, just the two of them.

No daddy. No baby sister. Just mom and son.

A few weeks ago, they went out to dinner together. Over the weekend, our daughter and I dropped them at the movies where they saw the new Pixar flick, Elemental. There are some ideas germinating for future dates, maybe even entire days and nights together.

Conversely, this meant that our little girl and I got to spend some quality one-on-one time together.

We had ice cream, explored the contents of a nearby bush (worms, a few nuts, and some scattered pine needles. Oh. And lots of dirt), and went to the local bike shop to bike up a part I needed (as this local bike shop is geared toward high-end machines made mostly for bike racers and the like, keeping her away from the racks of five-figure road bikes proved an effort unto itself).

She feel a few times with varying severity, at least once requiring a good long hold by me that normally would have been reserved for Emily.

Mostly, we laughed and smiled together.

Soon after the movie ended, our family ended up in the configuration Emily and I prefer most: all four of us together, hanging out at home.

But these little moments of one-on-one time, of true man-to-man defense, mean that not only can our son get the attention he so needs from his mom, but that I can spend more time bonding with my daughter, who is growing more and more with each passing day.

Someday—I don’t know when—Emily and I will go out on dates again. Someday “date night” won’t mean a Pixar movie, ice cream, and a scraped knee (though maybe…). Someday she and I will be able to give each other the attention each of us so needs from our partner.

But until then, these’ll have do. And they do, just fine.