Kid Swap: Finding Couple Time

Adam and I are childless for the weekend. Samantha is staying with her “godparents,” Jon and Chris, for what we hope will become a regular Kid Swap weekend. Jackson stayed with us a couple of months ago and we had a blast. This time, Sam went to their house.

She’s been there many times before, and once we even lived with them for 2 weeks while we were “homeless,” so it’s not unfamiliar territory. Still, it’s a big deal, for us and for her. She stayed with her grandparents for a weekend while we were in Florida last month, but somehow, it felt different to leave her there while we went off for a couple of days than it did to drop her off with Chris at a McDonald’s halfway between our house and theirs. I almost chickened out and drove her all the way to Richmond, but luckily Chris talked me out of it. About 10 minutes after the exchange, Chris called me to report that there were zero tears and that Jackson and Sam were busy talking in the back of the car.

As for us grownups, we’re going sleep in, go out to fancy restaurants, and maybe catch a movie. I suppose we could take a little trip somewhere, but we’ve had enough travel for the summer, and really, there aren’t a lot of places that we can’t go with Sam along. Sleep seems to be the thing that we miss most from our childless days.

Letting Sam go for this weekend is part of a commitment Adam and I made to each other when we decided to have a child. We wrote Children Vows, a promise and a statement of our intentions in having a baby. The predominant theme was that we would never allow the child to replace our marriage as a value. I’ll write more about our Children Vows in the next week or so, but right now, I need to go put on a nice dress.

Amy Mossoff lives in the DC area with her husband and 3-year-old daughter, and writes on parenting, Objectivism, and all the good Little Things in her life.