Keith and I took a BIG step last week. At least it felt like a big step to me. We took a weeklong vacation, by ourselves, and left Autumn with my parents.
The first night we were in New York City, I laid down in bed and thought, it's going to be a week until I see Autumn again. I nearly cried.
But as time started to go on, I sucked it up. Keith and I don't get opportunities like this. We don't get to have time just to play. Sure, we've been able to go to a wedding here, a sporting event there, but this time we didn't have to think about heading straight home afterward. We could just play around and do what we wanted when we wanted.
One night we went out for ice cream in the evening, walked toward Times Square and on our way back toward our hotel decided to stop in Madame Tussauds. After that we went next door to Dave & Busters to play skee ball and trivia games. Then we used our reward tickets to get Autumn a stuffed toy. But the point is that we got back to our hotel room just before midnight, something unheard of in the realm of parenting.
It's not as though we didn't think of her last week -- we did. We just also allowed ourselves some freedom to be kids again. We allowed ourselves to follow every whim. We didn't have to think about naptimes, early bedtimes or when to sit down for food. We had fun.
But by Saturday, we were so excited to see Autumn again. I felt myself getting more and more excited the closer we got to my parents' house. And seeing her again was so wonderful and a big hug and kiss from her was such a perfect way to cap off the fun week.