Making Your Home Sing Monday-Quality Time!

I saw this...Making Your Home Sing Monday....on my blogger friend, Alicia's blog, so I decided to participate. It's a wonderful idea....how we as mothers/fathers and wives/husbands make our homes sing. To play along or read other ways folks make their homes sing, click here. The thought that immdiately entered my mind was quality time spent individually with NPayne and each of my children. When you have children...whether it be one or eleven, this can be a challenge. NPayne and I try to have more dates than we use to....now that we feel our oldest can babysit. We will try to go grab a bite to eat together after the youngest are in bed, and we leave her "in charge" reading a book or something like that while we are gone for 45 minutes. It's so important to keep your marriage strong, in the midst of raising children, but it's also so difficult to find time to spend alone together. It's definitely something that, for us, has to be carved out. As for spending quality time with each child, that also is something that has to be carved out. Of course I spend much more time with Elliot, our littlest, than NPayne; because she is at home with me most days while he is earning the moola. I have learned that as our children get older, it is even more difficult to "carve out" time with them individually. They are busy.....NPayne and I do our best to "carve out" time with each child. We don't get to spend a day with each child each week, but we do try to spend some one on one with each one....even if it means taking just one of them grocery shopping with you, or taking one of them to pick out new shoes. When Addi, my oldest was a preschooler, about to enter kindergarten; I worked about 30 hours/week. I had 2 other children at that time, but I decided that before she went to kindergarten; she and I were going to have a "date day" each week. So I arranged, on one of my half days at work, to spend the entire afternoon with just her. Since then, I have done the same with each child....the year before they start kindergarten, we have a date day each week....spent with just me and that child. Some of my children have preferred to do the exact same thing each week, and some of them have chosen different activities each week. Either way, it's a great way to spend quality time with my children....time that they will remember and treasure before they start school when our time together becomes much more limited. This year is B's year for date days....we have ours on Thursday afternoons, and she loves it. She gets to choose what she wants to do, and we spend mommy and me time together doing it. Fortunately my children are pretty low maintenance, so they really like just eating lunch together, going to the park, playing outside, etc. I enjoy spending time with each child separately, and I hope there never comes a day when they can't "carve out" spending one on one time with me.