Enrichment night last night also featured a session on “Dating Your Spouse”. The teacher was a woman who is very outspoken and talkative. She rattled off this list of things that she and her husband do together. (Roller blading, motorcycle riding, bowling, dining out, movies, it went on and on) I sat there thinking “Wow that’s cool” and feeling insecure that Howard and I don’t have many “dates”. It is hard to get out together to do fun stuff when money is tight and paying a babysitter isn’t often an option. Responsible parenting is death on spontaneous trip taking or friend visiting. In theory we can set up a babysitting trade with another couple so that we can take turns going out. What seems to always happen is that they watch our kids once or twice and then never ask us to watch theirs. Then I feel guilty and don’t call again. It seems like everyone I know has other babysitting solutions.
Rather on dwell on the stuff Howard an I can’t do right now, I decided to create a list of things we can do without sacrificing the well being of the kids or the budget.
Jigsaw puzzles
Watching DVDs
chatting while cleaning
wandering in the back yard
Talking over insaniquarium or a different game
Just talking
Sit together for lunch
Things I’d like to do more of:
Playing games (scrabble, Star Munchkin, Cannibal pygmies, Falling, Give me the brain…)
Take walks/hikes
go visiting friends
And that’s where my brain stalls. I KNOW those lists could be much longer, but I just can’t think of other things. Howard if you think of stuff let me know. If any of you have sugguestions feel free to post comments. I want to be armed against the next “What shall we do tonight?”
Pi and I do puzzles. Sometimes the puzzles get the better of us, however. Or just curl up and have a movie night…gah, now I have to think.
Interactive fiction. Start story telling.
Do some of the art class projects together.
If you have a GPS unit then go geocaching.
Play Logical Journy of the Zoombinis with the kids. It is a computer game.
Karaoke?
Bake cookies.
Scavenger Hunt (use it to get the kids to pick up! 🙂
Start a Journal for them? Get them to tell you how their days went and let Kiki and Link type it in or write it out.
Zoombinis!!
I loved that game… ten years ago. I still remember it fondly, though.
Another idea – along with the storytelling and the art stuff – is something halfway between the “comic jams” that cartoonists sometimes do at gatherings and the “rotating stories” that are often a staple of primary school writing classes… Basically, have the kids (and you and Howard, perhaps) each start a story… one or two sentences and a picture, and then pass it on for the next person to work on. I’m not sure your younger ones are old enough for that yet, though…
Zoombinis!!
I loved that game… ten years ago. I still remember it fondly, though.
There are now two more titles in the series. Zoombini’s Mountain Rescue and Zoombini’s Island Odosessy (can’t spell tonight and don’t want to get up to find the cd). They’re inferior to the first though. Putting new graphics on the old games and new sounds. Nothing really new. The Island game does have some science games to it instead of just math.
I can think of a couple things that a married couple can do together; however, it isn’t my place to suggest them, and kids tend to kill it fast.
Snicker
The fact that we have FOUR kids should tell you that we’ve learned how to be sneaky. 😉
Re: Snicker
Good point.
“Hey, kids! Let’s play hide and seek! You can hide anywhere in the house except mommy and daddy’s room, and we’ll count to a million and come try to find you!”
Interactive Fiction
That’s something Sue and I do more than a bit of, having built a sort of game world together and enjoying getting into our various characters and their mindsets and just seeing what we can do next. Along the way we tend to jump into all sorts of discussion and debates, and I find it a fun way of spending time with her, especially when she’s at her home and I’m at mine.
It keeps things interesting, at the very least, but it’s not for everyone. It’s why I use mIRC so much, and why I tend to be quiet in other online chats… but it helps to have two computers networked together.
Take care!
Re: Interactive Fiction
He starts speculating on something and then we fill in the details together. It’s fun.
We don’t do this on-line even though that is our main mode of communication these days. (He doesn’t like to talk on the phone.)