i’m working on a blogpost about things that benefit our marriage the most.

and in there I mention our monthly dinner dates.

and while this system doesn’t work for everyone, it works so well for us:

to prioritize me staying home with KK and to prioritize our gym membership and to prioritize other things important to us in this season, we aren’t going on trips just the two of us right now. (we aren’t going on family trips, either - other than maybe a road trip to the beach or camping.) so our monthly dinner date is our little time away together, and therefore, a big priority.
our favorite thing we do together is going on neighborhood walks. and we love watching one episode of a new show each night together before separating to do our own things. and we try to go to bed at the same time as each other as often as possible. and we love taking kk to the pool/park/Wildflower Center/farmers markets. and our big thing we do to prioritize time together is our weekly Grill and Chill - which honestly feels like a weekly date for us in a way. so all that to say a dinner date is an added bonus for us and our communication and our relationship, not a lifeline. so while some people love a weekly date night out, that was too often (and too costly) for us, honestly. a dinner date once a month is our sweet spot.
and we prefer going out to eat for our dates, as opposed to any other activity. we never take KK to restaurants (only every now and again when we’re eating with friends or family) - it doesn’t feel enjoyable for us, so therefore we never do it. so getting to go sit in a restaurant with brett is a treat.
I keep a Google Keep list on my phone of potential restaurants I’d love to try for our monthly dates. whenever I see or hear a new recommendation, it gets added to my list. and the week of our date, Brett and I decide which one we’d love to try. (that’s the key for us: deciding ahead of time, and having a bank of possibilities from which to choose.) one of my monthly routines is to plan a date, but really that usually just means I’m picking a restaurant. I like the monthly reminder regardless.
right now we try to save our monthly date as our adventure to try a new restaurant. if we end up loving the restaurant, we might get it for takeout in the future. like I said, I really don’t like going to restaurants with KK, but I do love that one of our dinner themes for Friday nights is takeout. and we love discovering new restaurants to add to our takeout repertoire.
and I’ll say it: we are incredibly fortunate. neither Brett nor I are originally from the area that we now live, but now my parents and both my sisters live nearby. we are so grateful for their continuous support...and their free babysitting for our monthly dates.
at the beginning of every season (March, June, September, December), I coordinate with my mom three evenings (one for each month) in which she’d be available to watch KK while we go to dinner. and i put it on our beloved fridge calendar. I put “coordinate monthly dates with Juju for the next three months” on my yearly tasks + expenses list for March, June, September, and December. scheduling out this far in advance helps us ensure that our monthly dinner date is prioritized and set in stone.
also, we go on our dinner date at, like, 4:30PM, I kid you not. (or whenever Brett can take off early that day). at 4ish PM I take KK to my parents’ house, and they love on her, feed her, play with her, and bathe her, while we go off and eat dinner. we personally like to have our dinner date while KK is still awake (it’s truly the loveliest way to kill those awful hours before bedtime), and we personally like dropping her off at my parents’ house. then on our way home from the date, we pick her up, come home, put her to bed, and have the rest of the evening free. (another added bonus of going so early: there are hardly any restaurant crowds. win, win, win!)