The best-laid dates of mice and men often go awry

So the Friday before last my wife and I were going to go out dancing.  My wife had looked forward to it for a while, but we had recently moved to the area and didn't have a babysitter.  But then we got to the building, no one was there.  We haven't figured out if it had changed times or locations or what happened.  But it wasn't happening then and there.

Often I get frustrated when dates don't go right.  I'm a meticulous planner sometimes and don't like the time I invested to go to waste.  Unfortunately I'm not as patient since being married.  When people shared stories about bad dates, I never had one.  Something bad might have happened, like when I locked the keys in the car late at night while on a stargazing date out at a state park.  But I had never been on a date that I considered bad.  While dating you might not mind waiting, anticipating while your date is still getting ready.  But when you're always waiting on the same person it gets old after a while. You wonder whether movies still show previews before the main show.  You have to skip parts of the date because there isn't enough time anymore.

But this time I didn't mind so much.  Maybe I was just in a better mood that day.  But there are also other factors too that might have contributed.  My wife had planned the date, so I was not pressured to make everything happen right.  Also, we had recently met a new family who moved to the area and had arranged to switch off babysitting with them on a weekly/bi-weekly basis. Babysitting exchanges are great!  So even if this date didn't go perfectly, we already knew there would be others. And we weren't paying by the hour while waiting to see if the dance class was going to happen.  Previously, we didn't use babysitters as much, so there was more pressure for every one of those dates to go smoothly.

So what did we do?  Well earlier in the evening I had said or just thought that it was strange to have the monthly dance class the same night as the monthly First Friday activities in the neighboring city.  So when we gave up on the dancing, we went over there and strolled around a bit.  We spent a lot of time in an eclectic shop with clothes and curios from around the world -- one of those places you can't look around in when you've got some wild and grabby boys with you.  It was pretty cool.  Then we strolled over to an old fashioned-like soda joint and shared a milk shake.  And we had plenty of time to talk.

It wound up being a pretty fun date, even if it didn't go exactly as planned.

Babysitting

Going out without the kids at least sometimes is very important--especially if one spouse is staying home with the kids all day/week.  We sometimes use the day care next to the gym at which my wife is a member or a teenage girl we know from church.  The frugal part of me finds it strange to spend $20 on babysitting to see a movie at the dollar theater--though that's a lot more frugal than paying for babysitting and full price movie tickets!  So I try to find creative ways to maximize the time while we are paying a babysitter, and watch the movies later when they are available at redbox.  But sometimes that creates too much pressure to have a perfect date whenever the kids taken care of.

The best times have been when we have arranged with another couple to take turns watching the others' kids.  This had a double benefit.  Every other week we knew we had free babysitting, and we could do a variety of things.  In between those weeks, we would watch their kids.  And to be honest, it was usually easier watching four kids play together than our own two fighting each other or us.  So it was a win-win situation.  We've done this regularly with at least one family in each of our last two locations and sporadic trade-offs with others.  We've recently moved and are still meeting people here.

A personal finance blog I follow occasionally, The Simple Dollar, has a recent post on a baby-sitting exchange.