Date Night, Plus One

I was just telling a friend that David and I sneaked out on Sunday night for a date.

"Wow, that's amazing." she said, "Who watched the kids?"

"My grandmother," I said, "For an hour or so."

"That's great that she can watch all three of them," she replied.

"Oh she can't," I clarified, "We took the baby. We always take the baby on date night."

This is one of the things that happens when you have three kids, I guess. There's no one in our life who could handle Primo and Seconda PLUS a newborn baby, so the baby always comes along. I genuinely don't mind. She's easy. I stick her on the boob. I bounce her around. She doesn't interrupt constantly and ask a million questions about physics and theology I can't answer and talk about farts and vomit at the dinner table. She's cool. I don't even notice she's there really, until someone observes that she is adorable and then I beam with pride. Its all positive.

But it makes me laugh because I remember when Primo was a few months old and David and I were so desperate to leave the baby with someone so we could have a real date. It was so ponderous to have the baby under our care. We needed to liberate ourselves from the terrific burden and be fully unfettered so we could stare into each other's eyes and do other shit I don't even remotely recall. Now, being unfettered means having only one baby with us. Of course there are things that happen on date night that can't happen with the baby in tow, and that is why God made babies nap so much. See? With only one kid in tow, we've got marriage and romance fully covered. Now if we can only figure out how to manage with the rest of it thrown in.