L and I have our 7 year anniversary coming up and we are very much looking forward to an evening without bedtime routine and a morning without toddler’s demands.

But this happens once, maybe twice a year if we are lucky.  So L and I choose one day a month as our date day. We recently have been going “out” on a date every other month:  dressing up, going to a movie, nicer restaurant, getting dessert, or coffee shop etc.

The other half have become date days at home. We dress down, watch shows we haven’t had time for, take a nap, read, play a game, have conversations that we can’t have with Z yelling over us wanting attention.

Even though I am an introvert, I find these “home date days” difficult.  As a SAHM and work-from-home-mom I do not have the luxury of “coming home” from my office. This means that when we have a date day at home, I have to ignore the piles of laundry, the dirty dishes, the unclean floors, my organizer with bright colored post-it “to do’s”. I have to transform my work space into my rest place and focus on who I am with instead of where I am.

The last time we had a date day at home I asked Luke about the plan, several times, for several days. When he came home from dropping Z off at daycare he told me his goal for the day: to rest and relax-that was all.

Now that sounds I’m sure great. For me? To stay home and do . . . nothing, to not have an agenda, or plan, or even parameters for what that time will look like makes me   nervous.

I do not slow down well-I do not relax easily. Rest is a discipline for me not an easy state of being. But if I can consciously ignore all the other influences, roles, and expectations of the world around me-these date days at home are wonderful.

There are so many benefits to a date at home.  L and I don’t have to worry about how long a movie goes, the wait time at a restaurant, the drive to and from our event, or what time we need to be back to pick up Z.  If we are tired: take a nap, hungry: get a snack, want to rest our minds: watch a movie. Simple decisions.

With a date day out I am tempted to focused only on what we are going to do, where we are going, the  event we are going to. But with a date day at home I am able to, with some effort, focus only on L-and that is the whole point of the date to begin with.

Date days as at home take some effort for me-but they are so worth it.

Did you ever choose a day at home over a fancy date out? How did it go?