It Takes a Village

I've always heard the expression, "it takes a village to raise a child", and now that I have a child I truly understand the sentiment. You can't watch your child all time and not have any time to yourself. My brother and sister in law told us before Brooks was born to make sure we had a date night at least once a month. This is made more challenging since we have no family locally and we've only lived here a year. Fortunately in that short time we have been able to meet and befriend some amazing people.

Things got a smidgen easier last month when a friend moved less than a block away. Their son is a week older than Brooks. We've been able to discuss development, ask questions, bounce ideas and run over to one another's homes for a moment of sanity. Our lives took another parallel when Leslie (the mom) started watching a friend's daughter 3 days a week.

Last week Leslie suggested we do a sitting swap. We would watch their son one night and they would watch Brooks. Cha-CHING, sign me up! We started our swap this past week, we had Gabe on Thursday and Brooks was with them on Friday. Neither boy had even stayed with someone that they hadn't spent a significant amount of time with, so all 4 parents were holding our breath and crossing our fingers.

Gabe came over and was just fine, until his parents left, then he got fussy. He stayed fussy for about 15 minutes, then started to really break down. That's about the time we realized he didn't like John. So John went downstairs, suddenly we have two happy babies. John came upstairs, Gabe started crying, John went upstairs, Gabe was fine, all night long. It was quite comical, but not a big deal since the boys were playing well together and learning to share. After 2 hours his mom and dad came back and John could safely enter the room.

The next night it was our turn. We had every intention of grabbing a glass of wine at the local wine bar and coming home to clean and prepare for a get together the next day. Welllll we stayed at the wine bar, grabbed some Thai food and had a proper date. It was so chill and lovely. When we got back to Gabe's we found out Brooks was the same way with Seth (the dad) that Gabe had been with John. We all got a proper chuckle out of this. It was decided that maybe the boys need a little more time with the other's dad. I'm hoping that Leslie, Seth and Gabe will join us for dinner this week.

I don't have a village of family near me, but we are all so fortunate to have a village of friends who will lend an ear, sage advice, a kind smile and a long walk.

They were both smiling right before this was taken, but you get the idea.