Date Night

Michael and I have made it a goal to have a date night once a week if we can. This week, Michael went to Texas on a 2-day work trip, so Oliver and I had our own little date night. I took the little man to the movies. This is what he thought:

Because he is four months old and therefore has no say in it, I got to pick the movie. I dragged the boy to "Fame." I'll be sure to mention this to him in front of his friends when he's a teenager. It's right up there with bringing him to a tupperware party at two months of age. We had a wonderful time. We had the theater to ourselves. I had an Icee, and Oliver had Enfamil. We held hands. It was very sweet.

I worked every day but Thursday this week; next week will be the same, and then I'm back to working full-time. So our date on Thursday was part of a very precious day for me. We spent it well, both in our pajamas until 3pm. We napped, and again I found myself drooling all over my little guy's head, which resulted in an extra bath this week with shampoo. We played, looked at each other and smiled, and talked to Daddy on Skype. I felt a little guilty not getting more done around the house, not reading Oliver more books, and not waking up from our naps early enough to go to the zoo. But when I thought about my upcoming Monday through Fridays, I realized that our day of doing almost nothing but being together was exactly what I should be doing.

This week has been harder to be away from Oliver for 10 hours at a time. Harder than my first two weeks. Maybe because I worked one day more than last week. Maybe it's hitting me that the working thing is permanent. I find myself rocking Oliver to sleep and crying sometimes, thinking about how he has just been in this big world for four months and already I need to leave him for most of the day. In the mornings, I get him dressed and fed before Michael takes him to Colleen's house for the day. Oliver is all smiles before he goes, soft-skinned and cuddly with his warm head resting against my cheek. After I hug and kiss him goodbye, on tougher days I find myself grabbing the pajamas he was just in and smelling them so that his sweet baby scent lingers in my nose just a little longer.

Tonight is Friday, and I have a whole weekend of Oliver to look forward to. But when I put him to bed, I was feeling so, so sad about having to work and be away from him. But this is Friday, I thought to myself. Why was I being such a downer? But it occurred to me then that in my mind tonight, when Michael and I were on our own date night to the movies, I kept replaying three particular smiles Oliver gave me over the last 24 hours. Yesterday, he smiled at me pretty much constantly as he lay in my lap looking up at my face for about 10 minutes. And he had this look on his face as he searched mine like he was just loving me. The second smile was when I dropped him off before work this morning. Colleen was holding him, and Oliver was staring at me with this goofy, content grin on his face. He wouldn't break his gaze or smile, which made the three steps to the door very difficult to take. The third smile happened when I got home from work today. As I kissed Ollie's cheeks, his mouth was open wide in a ridiculous grin, eyes lit up, and he looked at me like, "Mom! You're home!"

My working friends say it gets easier. But this week was the hardest so far. I love Oliver even more every day, if that's possible, and from the way he's been looking at me lately, I think it might just be reciprocal. It makes it that much harder to be away. But, as I try to remind myself, it also makes it that much more extraordinary to be home at the end of the day.