As a spin off to the NYE question I'm just curious how often you go out. I don't mean date night but times when you interact with adult friends, parties, out to dinners, live music. My kids are older now so leaving them only takes scheduling my big girl to stay with her sister. The frequency hasn't really changed since they were around 1-2 years old though.
We have a tight relationship with two other couples particularly and a larger group we see a bit less frequently. Of course there's lots of family stuff we do together but strictly adults is about once or twice a month. Some months more than others but if too much time has passed we schedule something fun. We've been doing this since we were in our early 20's.
We spend ALOT of time with our children, tons of activities, vacations, dinner almost every night, not once have I felt bad about my own social life. Leaving them the first couple of times when they were small was not as much fun so I do understand the "Momma nerves" but honestly I think a little separation breeds independence and security in kids.
How often do you and your spouse go out with other adults?
1 or 2 times a year. we go out as a couple 2-5 times a year.
babysitters are $60 a night.. so it hardly seems worth it..
I enjoy my kids.. and thye wont be this little long.
A lot more now that they are older. It makes a big difference when you can start leaving them home alone. Getting a sitter always took some effort (even if we were just swapping with friends or family) but it's so easy now to just decide at the last minute, hey do you want to go to dinner tonight, let's call Bob & Sue.
We go to the movies once or twice a month, and concerts and other shows here and there too.
We DID make an effort to go out somewhat regularly when they were small but honestly we were much more tired then LOL!
We USED to go and meet friends every weekend and play cards...Now it's about once a month.
My kids are older now and can stay home alone - we have friends that have younger kids - so now we are making a point to get together once a month at our homes - we usually stick with the younger kids houses so they can go to bed, etc. and have a pot luck dinner and play cards.
We never have sitters. We enjoy taking our son places with us. He is a lot of fun. My other children have done every other weekend with their father for years and I feel so much time has been lost. With our youngest we like to do as much with him as we can. We did go to a concert a few months ago for our night out and my daughter does offer to babysit. We just prefer to do outings as a family. We will probably go out to dinner on Valentine's Day just the two of us. We did that last year and it was very nice. Soon enough they will all be too old to want to go places with us and then we will enjoy more time alone together. Soon our youngest will also start sleeping at friends houses too. What will we ever do??? A couple times a year I meet with friends for lunch and my husband with his co worker friends. We are sitting home tonight for New Years with our little guy. We are not night owls so by midnight we would be exhausted. My husband and son are playing video games since I am not feeling well. My son is smiling from ear to ear getting all his dads attention. That is more important to us than having to worry about drunk drivers out there tonight.
Not often. Most of our adult-only time is separate, and that is ok for now because getting a babysitter is a huge pain in the butt and more effort than I care to put up with.
Once a week I get adult time with my girlfriends, I take the kids since all our kids play together; rarely I will leave them home with my husband and have girls-only time. Maybe 3-4 times a year we will have a girls only outing or vacation as well and leave the kids and husbands behind.
Once a month we visit my in-laws out of state and they will watch the kids in the evening while my husband, his brother and I go get dinner and see a movie. So it is not really a romantic night out but it's fine.
Maybe 2x a year I can swing babysitting and go out with my husband only. I will sometimes go meet him for lunch but I bring our 5 year old, and that is fun for us to all go somewhere.
We have 3 kids. They are pretty well behaved when we go places, so it is just easier to do family friendly things that all of us can do. In a few years, I think my kids will be able to babysit themselves and there will be more freedom. I am just not that comfortable with babysitters unless they are family and that makes it kindof a rare thing since we are all so busy.
Once or twice a week.
Good for you! Sounds like you have a good and healthy social life!
We each frequently spend time with just adults, but not together. I have dinner with different groups of friends a couple of times a month, go to things like charity nights with music, drinks and silent auctions, go see a show or go away for a night or so to someone's beach house, etc. My husband plays cards almost every Friday night with friends, goes out to watch MMA fights with my brother at a local restaurant, and plays hockey once or twice a week with a group of guys. Sometimes whoever is not going out stays home with the younger kids but if we both have plans the same night, we just have one of our teenagers stay home.
We don't spend a lot of time out with friends as a couple because we're that tense couple in a strained marriage and more often than not we don't get along so we can be a bit of a downer among friends who pick up on the animosity. For the most part, it's better for everyone if we do our own thing :-)
Ugh...I'll let you know when it happens!!!! Lol
About 2 times a year, but I have a baby at the moment. When she weans, it will increase, but not much. We don't socialize much.
We do socialize with other families from time to time, but I'm a loner. I like good friends, not noise.
My kids do spend the night at their grandparents about once a month, and once a year we leave them for a few days. They are plenty independent.
Not often enough! We do this maybe once or twice a year. Our kids are 4 and 7, so we will probably try to do something more often (like 3 times a year).
Our problem is that we are all so busy that we kind of feel like our down town needs to be family time. Some of it does. A lot it probably should be spent as a family. But it's important to have adult time, too.
I don't think we have ever gone out with just adults and no kids. At least not since before having kids. All our friends have kids, so if we do go out with friends, it's as a family.
Maybe 2-3 times a year. We have 3 &1/2 yo dd & 23 mo ds. We really enjoy family activities so when me and dh are home on the same days we spend time together as a family. We just don't have much interest in dinner/movies/concerts etc. we kind of got much of that out of our systems before kids. We have a few friends that we occasionally hang out with but they have kids too so they all come. Maybe we need to make more time for just us but its hard when we switch off days we work and don't have much help with childcare.
A few times a year we get together with a group of friends. My husband goes out with a buddy monthly and I see some women friends every couple months. I'm sad to say we have no close couple friends anymore. One couple divorced and another couple moved away.
I'm becoming more of a home body I think. We rarely get sitters and I enjoy being home with my husband and son, even if he is out playing or at a neighbors house.
Last year my husband and I decided to make new friendships a priority. We started going to a new church and really made an effort to get to know other couples. Some have kids and some don't. We have our kids every other weekend and every other weekend they go to their other parents house. On our "no kid weekends", we usually will have 2 other couples over to play games. Or we will be invited to their house. There are about 5 or 6 couples we do things with, 2 couples we feel the closest to. We never seem to go out during the week since that is "family time" and we always have dinner together. So usually every other weekend we are doing something with friends and sometimes on our kid weekend with friends that have kids.
We have a game night with another couple once a week. Our kids are 12 and 13 but when they were younger we never did anything else except spending time with them.
Our going out with other adults usually consists of sitting together at our kids's sporting events. Very few times, maybe once or twice a year where it is a planned adults only outing.
Going out with just my husband is another thing. We try to do that at least every couple weeks.
We go to movies with friends. It seems like we went a lot this year, we love movies. My MIL is happy to watch her, and in the last year we've started letting her have overnights over there. I also have a friend who is happy to have her come play with her girls if we want to go have lunch or something. We don't have a lot of couple friends, but we do have guy friends who go to movies and out to eat with us.
I'm not sure how much it will continue in the near future, we've got baby #2 coming and we don't really want to impose on MIL too much. Although for all I know, she's really excited to watch both of them. :) I'm a huge Marvel fangirl, though, so I know we'll have to try to get out to see the Marvel movies when they come out, plus the new Hobbit next year, baby will be about 6 months old then. We'll probably do a matinee instead of an evening show, which is what we did until our older daughter got old enough for overnights (which I didn't really allow until 5, I'm a weirdo, I know).
The first time we went out without kiddo, I cried the whole time and was mad that they forced me to go out without her. I wasn't ready. But it wasn't long after that before I was ready to let her stay with someone for a couple of hours so we could go out.
About 3 times a month when I was active parenting and married. I am still a very social person. Now, I prefer at home entertaining, however.
Not often, if at all. Our kids are older than our friends kids. They always have to get a babysitter so we rarely ask but when we do, they spend some of the time calling or texting their kids or the babysitter - so it doesn't always feel like an adult night out. We go out quite a bit by ourselves though.
Maybe about 4-5 times a year, but now that we're becoming more active in my kids' school community (smaller, private Catholic school), we find ourselves fielding many more invitations to events with other parents. We are accepting as many of those invitations as we can because this is the community we have chosen to raise our kids in; we want to know the families very well; they share our values (for the most part), and surrounding ourselves with people who can support our values helps us maintain them in the larger world, etc.
We've also been hanging out with my husband's younger cousins (meaning, mid to late 20s), because he's always been close with them, drifted a bit while they went to college, but now since none of them are married yet we know our timeline is very short before they DO get married and start having kids and becoming too busy for us. So, dinners/drinks, sporting events, summer festivals, or just having them come over, etc.
Our kids are young--7 yrs to 4 mos, so at this stage we are using sitters or if we happen to have my parents/brothers visiting from out of town, they'll watch the kids. We need it for our mental health, and the kids love the break from us too.
