For the First Time in Two Years

“You can wear that to the Christmas party!”, is what he said as I walked back to the dressing room to try on some new clothes that would actually fit me without falling off.
“Umm, the what?” I replied quickly, nothing like dropping a bomb on me as I’m walking into a dressing room.

He proceeded to tell me that SOA Corporate has an annual Christmas party and that it’s a classy event and naturally, no kids are allowed. The idea of a babysitter was daunting – to me and to Ryan. We had never let anyone watch our daughter in the last 2 years. We never considered it even. It wasn’t really that we were completely opposed to it but once we had her we fully planned on having her with us through all of life’s events. She was our child, our responsibility and we would plan accordingly. Soon December arrived and the day got closer and a bit more daunting. We were actually going to leave our daughter with someone else for several hours while we went on our first real date in two years? We have at home date nights every week but this was something completely different.

We bought a new dress the weekend before and had my mom and sister all scheduled to come to watch A. I had in the back of my mind that if the weather was bad or she was sick we could cancel. The realistic part of me said, “this is his work party, you are his wife first – it’s going to be fine. She is going to be fine.”

The day arrived and I got dressed in a nice dress, pantyhose and heels. I put my hair up nice and prepared for our big night. I knew it would be fine, it was just going to be different.  We said our goodbyes and we went on our way down the road. No jabbering toddler in the backseat, no lugging her into Target when we stopped for Starbucks. It was weird but oddly refreshing. It took me back to the days where it was just Ryan and I.  I wouldn’t change being a mom for anything but it was so nice to just be “Ryan’s wife” for an evening. It was nice to be dressed in nice clothes like I wore before quitting business meetings in exchange for full time motherhood accompanied by jeans, yoga pants and v-neck t-shirts.

We arrived at the Denver Art Museum. It looked lovely and I was welcomed by so many “Oh Ryan, is this your wife?! It’s so nice to meet you!” or “This is my wife, Kristina.” Everyone was lovely and talked to highly of Ryan. I met all of his collegues and bosses. I met the Western Region (Ryan’s region) VP, who was the nicest, most humble guy ever. He sat next to us at dinner and asked all about our relationship, how we met, how I moved to Colorado, all about our daughter and you could tell he genuinely cared.  The food was delicious and for one evening we sat and had a meal that didn’t consist of saying “sit down, please.” “you need to finish eating, please.”  The party had a raffle but naturally we didn’t win anything up for grabs, but I was okay with that.  It was just nice to get to spend some alone time with Ryan like we did for so many years before becoming parents, enjoying one another’s company and talking about life.

When we came home, A showed us her crafts she made and mom told me all about their evening. They had a great time too and the getaway for a few ours was so refreshing. She had fun doing something out of the norm and we did too.

So for the first time in two years, we had our first real date out of the house kid-free. While it was lovely, and we plan to do it again soon I’m not sure we will be going crazy with it but it was refreshing. Refreshing to step into time of quiet and dating my husband again focusing just on him because it’s so easy to get caught up in the other duties that I carry as the keeper of the home and the mother of our children but once they are grown and gone it’ll just be me and him all over again.