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Thursday, July 10, 2014

Keeping Your Marriage Alive with a Toddler


I am co-hosting a "One Year and Beyond" link up, and this weeks topic is "Keeping Your Marriage Alive with a Toddler"

After two kids it's so easy to fall into the daily routine of work, eat dinner, give kids bath, get ready for the next day, sleep, repeat. My husband and I have been together for 11 years...hey wait, now that I think about it, we started dating on this day 11 years ago...crazy to think about. We were together for 7 years (5 of them married) before we had kids, so we had a really good chunk of time without them.

We had been dating for 5ish months in this picture
People say that after you have kids your marriage really changes, and while I agree with that, for us it was just the next step, we were ready for kids, we decided when we got married that we wanted to wait 5 years before having kids, so when we did have them, it wasn't a surprise. It really helped that we both know our strengths and we sort of just fall into what our baby duties were going to be without having to talk about it.

At my baby shower I'm about 32 weeks pregnant here.

Not arguing how to raise your child also helps. We are both in 100% agreement on how to raise our children, discipline, eating, etc. It also helps that Mr. is really easy going and always said, what I says goes, mostly he doesn't have a strong opinion when it comes to certain things, he just goes with the flow of how I want things (makes things really easy when we're not fighting over when we need to feed our kids).


Communication is huge too. We are constantly telling each other EVERYTHING. Every small thing the children do, everything that happens during the day. I think it helps to keep us close, to know that the other person saw some crazy person reading a newspaper while driving to work or that Baby Fox hit his sister earlier in the day or that Mini Fox cried when her brother left to go with the grandparents. It keeps us connected, keeps us talking to each other and most importantly keeps us on the same page. As soon as one of us doesn't agree with something, we talk about it. Hey you know when you did such and such? Well I thought that wasn't the best way to handle it...and then we talk about how we would do it differently. We don't hold grudges, once something has been talked about and put behind us we never talk about it again.

This was my birthday dinner - 10 days before Mini Fox came. We knew it would be our last time going out on a date for a while.

You're probably thinking, what does this have to do with how to keep your marriage alive right? Well for us, once the kids go down, we've already talked about the kids and what happened that day, so it's all about us. We usually get a good hour or two before we have to go to bed. We have shows that we like to watch together. We don't use the phone, computer or other distracting things, we always know we get those few hours before bedtime. Hence I get no sleep (cause I wake up at 4:30am), but it's worth it to have that time with Mr. Important to me.


We also try to go on dates, every Wednesday (most every) my parents come over to watch the kids for a hour and a half so we can go to the gym together to go rock climbing. It's something small, but it's just for us and it's weekly, we're not going out to dinner, or movies, but we get to do something that we used to do a lot before kids, and we love it. It really rejuvenates us on those Wednesdays to help us get through the week, us time.

Climbing together - Wednesday gym date

Bottom line: If you're communicating, when you do have those few precious moments of downtime, you're not spending it resenting each other but can really enjoy each others company like you did before the kids came.


One Year and Beyond is back!!  We just couldn't stay away from this awesome toddler series.  We've gotten so much positive response so far.  Motherhood can be difficult especially with a toddler at home.  So we're here to talk toddler issues, mom to mom.  We've got a great group of mamas who are offering their advice on getting through those challenging times with their child.  Be sure to check out their blogs and then link up your own post on the topic with us below!
July 10:  Keeping your marriage alive with a toddler
July 17:  Favorite summer toddler activities
July 24:  Helping Your Toddler to Communicate (Words, emotions, etc.)
July 31:  Dealing with Separation Anxiety
Aug 7:    Car Trip Necessities
Aug 14:  Deciding when the time is right for baby #2 (and/or how to handle these questions)
Aug 21:  Tricks for eating out with your toddler
Aug 28:  Feeling confident as a mom (How to feel this way, Your struggle with, etc.)
 

9 comments:

  1. Couldn't agree more with your bottom line. Love that you get a time each week to go do something you both love together, kid free!

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  2. You totally put into words what I wanted to say about not arguing about how to raise your child! My husband and I are on the same page about how we raise Owen, and we knew this long before getting married and having children. That's a HUGE part of what makes family life great for us!

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  3. Love love that you guys have date nights once a week!! :)

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  4. Replies
    1. Thanks Deena! You need to take the no comment off your blog! :)

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  5. It's so important to make time for each other. I know of so many people who's marriages are falling apart, it blows me away. Kids make life busy, so it's important to MAKE time for each other. It's great that you guys have family close by to watch the kiddos so you can get away. Keep the romance alive! :)

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  6. I love that your husband is super easy going because mine is the same way. It makes marriage and parenting so much easier!

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  7. Oh I love this!! You two are the cutest couple! My fave thing is that you don't use the computer or phone once the kids are in bed... Eric and I really need to be better about this! He's usually on the computer and I'm on the phone (not the whole night, but for a good half hour at least) and the problem is, I can't focus on more than one thing, so if he talks to me I totally don't even hear him. Ugh! I've gotta put the phone DOWN!

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