How to: Weekend!
August 5, 2015
Long before LB came along, I was getting grumpy with how we did weekends.
PiC was accustomed to getting out Saturday mornings and cranking out some miles. I’ve always had my feet up, working on the computer, until 2 pm before rolling out through town running errands. We’re such inherent opposites in energy and finances, it’s a wonder we get along.
I think we were both sort of constantly quietly exasperated that it was so complicated balancing our needs (grocery shopping, cleaning, routine repairs) and our wants (sleep, more sleep, work, getting exercise, having fun) but we failed to do anything about it. Apparently the discomfort was only enough to be a pain and not enough to motivate.
Time feels more precious now, and now that we’re actually surviving day to day in reasonable shape, things seemed to click.
A few weeks ago, we talked on Friday night: What do you want to do Saturday and Sunday? One answer per day.
PiC wanted a 4 hour time slot for his workout. I wanted a late morning lie-in and a couple hours to work. LB was going to want to be fed, fight sleep, eat again, play, avoid a nap, eat, and so on. Obviously, hir schedule was going to stay pretty much the same so we worked out which of our things could happen when, with hir schedule in mind, and made it happen. It was an epiphany. We felt productive and still had the late afternoon and evening to relax and do some shared family things like errands, cooking, and eating. Rinse and repeat.
Verdict: Awesome!
Another weekend, I acquiesced to PiC’s plan that we do a volunteer activity together, even though it meant packing up the whole family, and we fulfilled one of his hobby obligations. That many hours in the sun clean wore me out, though, and so I took the rest of Saturday off. It was Daddy-child and Daddy-dog time all day Saturday with only pinchhitting from me.
I think this is the right groove for us. We need time to do our own things separately as well as together as a family, and these does not simply happen.
Especially with my “who needs to go outside” attitude, if I don’t make a real effort or PiC doesn’t make it happen, I’d never get outside or away from the family to be alone and refresh myself. I’m not lost in my new role as a mom, this is a reversion to a more severe version of my usual niche as a domestic hermit. It conserves precious energy! But that doesn’t mean that I can, or should, hide forever.
It’s going to take deliberate communication and coordination but I think it’s worth the brainpower to look forward to weekends as a time to enjoy, rather than hoping for the best and being frustrated.
Sounds like some great communicating/compromising happening! I also find that when my boyfriend and I talk through the weekend and have a plan that allows us to spend some time together and some time on our own, its always a success!
You’d think it’d be more intuitive but I guess it falls by the wayside when we’re just talking about regular, about the house, weekends.
We need to do this more… Planning out our “free” time. We were rocking it at the beginning of summer, but we’ve fallen off the horse and both find ourselves frustrated in not reaching all of our personal goals. Great post! Glad you guys have found your groove!
Yeah, just like loose change, or unbudgeted cash, free time just slips away if we’re not intentional.
This sounds so nice! My partner and I tend to do our own thing most of the times, with the occasional joint activity going to an event or watching a movie on Amazon if we’re both feeling like shut-ins. I don’t know how a kid and their preferences will change what we do, but posts like this make me look forward to it.
I never intended to be more social because of a kid but it does get us out a bit more often than I expected. It’s not a bad thing š
Woo!
We have a similar dichotomy. Tim is cooped up all week, so he’s frustrated that my ideal weekend is… doing nothing. Sleeping, relaxing, watching Netflix/Hulu/YouTube.
We’ve started trying to go out Monday night for free pool. Although we stop in at a restaurant first. (LoneStar cheese fries. You can’t say no.) So that’s at least once a week we’re getting out of the house. But not enough for him.
It’s would be so bad if he DID have a workout. Or anything to get him out of the damn house without me. But that’s not in the cards right now. We’ll see how it goes.
I have heard tell of these Lonestar cheese fries, but I’ve never had them before. They sound excellent.
I wish you had friends close by that could do a night out with him that didn’t require you to go out too.
[…] We didn’t do much on our weekends, in the pre-LB era, except when we did too much. I like that our weekends are a little more even keeled now. I like that I actually want to take small outings occasionally. It makes me feel human again. We went to the Ferry Building and you all know how much I love doing that. We might even go so far as to take the family to a little farm and meet farm animals. For FUN. […]