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@irene: We try for once a month but it’s more like once every other month. We hire a babysitter.
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LOL. Date nite. Ha.
In all seriousness. DH has been working out of the country far far far away from over a year. He is pretty much always jet lagged and we have two very young kids. So when he is home, the last thing we want to do is go out. I look forward to taking my parents up on their offer to watch the kids for a week while we go away.
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@Mrs. Champagne: I’m glad to hear that we aren’t the only ones who have never used a sitter. As our parents are aging, we are going to have to bite the bullet and hire sitters.
Last year our parents slept over 2x a week so we would try to get out for a drink or dessert. This year we have no family help, so date nights aren’t happening, plus we are not in a place financially to go out to dinner a lot and pay for babysitters. Babysitters are paid $15-20/hr here.
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We probably get out once a month or so. Usually one of our moms will be over for dinner and we will ask her to stay a bit longer. We have a pub that’s close by and and will just walk down for a drink. Even if it’s just for an hour or so it is so nice to get out. We are fortunate to have both our moms in town who are quite happy to babysit for us.
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About once a month and my sister or MIL watches them
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When we got our first foster placement we hired our babysitter to come weekly on Fridays. We only go out for a couple hours but it has been the best possible thing for our marriage. Life with 4 kids is insane and it gives us intentional time to connect, talk about the week, make logistical plans for the following week, and just be grown ups for a little while. We don't have any free childcare from family so we have just accepted that this is an important thing we have to budget for.
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Weekly! My mom helps with LO or one of my siblings! He is usually in bed so it’s pretty easy and free! We find it very important for the marriage and just another way to stay connected.
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We pay for a sitter every other week or so. We just moved cross country and have 0 unpaid help. We don’t do anything super fancy- just happy hour or trying a new restaurant in town. It’s pretty affordable since we are in a rural college town. Minimum wage is $10.40.
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Ours is about every other month, sometimes once a month. If our parents visit, we might do 2 in the same week.
We have a regular sitter who already does school drop off and pickup, so we usually just use her. But she's 22 and has an active social life, so between the expense and her schedule, it usually ends up just being every other month.
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It is very irregular and varied. Our parents live out of town, but visit pretty regularly, and we go out at least once when they visit, often multiple times in a week. My parents try to visit four times a year, with one being a longer visit, but have visited much less in the past two years due to health problems. My in-laws are closer and generally come every month or two. We also have a high school babysitter who lives in our neighborhood that we pay to watch the kids. She is involved in a sport and often unavailable due to that. We went out much less in the first year after each child was born, and did not hire a babysitter until the younger one was 18 months.
I have high sleep needs and would only go once or twice a year if it had to be after the kids are asleep, but my kids are fairly easy to put to sleep.
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I would say it's every other month or so. We fell into a rut of just going out to dinner but now, we are instead doing a physical activity. As an example, our son has an activity on Saturday morning, so we are going to use that time to play a game of tennis or run.
We also do one large family event per quarter, like a seasonal performance, so we tack dinner onto it and depending upon how far it is from home, we get a hotel and stay overnight. That makes it more of a treat and feels special.
Those are two ways we don't have to use babysitters or family. Otherwise, we use my parents and we typically will get an early reservation and go to dinner on the way home from work one night. We also used to do lunch dates, but since my husband's been travelling so much, we haven't been able to do that. And, when he's travelling, we set up Skype dates, where we do workshops and things to strengthen our relationship.
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We usually hit about once a month fun date with family help. It would be more but we use family for childcare for other things like child free school events/classes we take on the same night. I wish we did once a week!
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