We got out last weekend, but in a totally different way. Our little family headed up to Dallas on Saturday morning to spend some MUCH needed time with my family and celebrate our beautiful bride-to-be of a friend. My mom and I joked before we even got up there that we should just leave Charlie with her. She was certain that one night would never be enough. I packed a few extra outfits and diapers, and sure enough GiGi decided that one night was not even close to enough time with Chuck, and John and I decided we'd like to try a couple nights away. We made plans to meet in Waco on Tuesday or Wednesday, and after Charlie laid down for his afternoon nap, we made the trek down south. We knew we'd miss him, and that it'd be weird to be home without him, but there was almost instantly something very carefree about being just the two of us again. We ate out wherever and at whatever time we wanted to and went for a run after John got home from work. I laid around in bed after I woke up in the mornings, and ran about a million errands back to back to back. Our time alone helped us take care of the small and the big in our lives.
What my mom and Wallace gave us for those 72 hrs is truly irreplaceable. Charlie is our very favorite human being, but those few days to ourselves made an impact. We got to recharge our marriage. Recharge ourselves. There is not a lot of time in our everyday life to truly focus on each other, and there were too many conversations during our time alone that started with, "What? I thought I told you that..." We were able to listen, engage and be 100% present in each others worlds. I read an article today about marriage - bits of humor, bits of reality - and one of the last paragraphs of the piece really resonated with me. I'm going to get the quote wrong and the person wrong, but the gist of it was that the best piece of advice he could give to parents is that if you want to be a good mother/father truly love your partner. John and I got a chance to get out and fully remember that love this week, and while I know it's not feasible in every situation, I truly wish every couple had the chance to do the same.
I toasted my best friend at her wedding with this quote, and the longer I'm married/the more John and I go through, I continually discover deeper levels of truth in it. "...to be happy [in marriage] you have to find variety in repetition and to go forward you have to come back to where you begin." - Middlesex
John and I got a chance to revisit our beginnings, and now Charlie's back, and we're all putting a better foot forward.
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