Nap time dates

Having recently moved to a new country, finding a reliable babysitter to watch our kids for regular date nights has been hard. We almost always left our kids in the arms of loving family members back in the US. We were spoiled by that, and it has been hard to replace. Luckily we've come up with a solution, that  is working really well. Nap time dates! Before you go calling social services on me (or whatever it's called in Germany) I don't mean we leave our kids alone during nap time. We have been loading them up in the stroller during nap-time and bringing them on our dates with us. They doze peacefully and we go for walks, and visit beer gardens, or outdoor cafés. It's good on all accounts, we don't spend nearly as much money as we would on a fancy dinner or a movie, but we do get out of the house, and get to spend some uninterrupted time together.

Last Saturday we took our napping boys to the Englisher garden and the biergarten there. When they woke up we let them out of the stroller to run around for a while, and then we all came back home. I wish we had taken pictures, it was such a lovely day, things are really starting to bloom and leaf out here, and the weather was perfect. We even saw a mother duck and ducklings on the lake.

In addition to weekend nap time dates, we've started taking the kids for evening walks. We get them all ready for bed and then slip them into their fußsacks in the stroller. It allows us to have some quality conversation time, and helps the kids wind down before bed. If we're lucky, they fall asleep in the stroller, and we don't have to fight them to get them to fall asleep when we get home! Once the weather gets nicer, we could probably go on "bedtime dates" at restaurants or cafés with outdoor seating.

I'm pretty grateful to have discovered this little trick, it's making things feel just a little bit easier, and a little more comfortable.