"Date Night," plus Seth!

Recently, after watching the movie "Date Night," I began to reflect on the history of our "date nights" in the past 20+ years. Back when all four kids (pre-Seth) were little, we had to hire baby-sitters if we wanted to go out by ourselves. That was expensive. If you add the cost of the baby-sitter to the cost of dinner to the cost of a movie (assuming the date includes dinner and movie), you wind up with quite an expenditure for just one night. So yeah, we did this occasionally, but not often. For those of you reading who are still in this situation, I have some excellent advice:

1. Have more kids!

2. Have lots of kids!

3. And be sure to spread them out.

That's what we did, and it worked out great. We only had to do the baby-sitter thing for about 11 years. After that we were home free. We had live-in baby-sitters! Once Luke and Shulamith were 11 and 10 respectively, we felt comfortable leaving them to care for Isaiah and Eli. Even as the two big kids grew into teenagers, we could generally count on at least one of them being home on any given evening. No more money down the drain on baby-sitters.

Time went on. Seth was born. Luke and Shulamith left for college, one right after the other. Problem? No. Because we followed Advice #3 above, when Shulamith left for college, we had a whole five years before Isaiah would leave. Isaiah and Eli were 13 and 11 respectively, the perfect ages to take over baby-sitting duty for 4-year-old Seth. Score! We could still have "date night" without paying a baby-sitter.

The thing we failed to consider in all this was what we would do with Seth once the "little boys" (Isaiah and Eli) grew up and left for college. Which brings us to where we are today. Isaiah, who was always the home-body and, consequently, our primary baby-sitter for Seth, left for college this past fall. Eli, who technically lives here, is seriously gone more than he's home. Between school activities, his job, church stuff, and an active social life, Eli is practically never home.

That leaves us with 9-year-old Seth and no live-in baby-sitter. Problem? I thought it might be, but really, it hasn't turned out that way. We simply take him with us the majority of the time, and it is truly more fun that way. He is quite delightful; we love having him with us. He brings his DSI (hand-held video game system) for those times when our conversation becomes too boring to tolerate, but most of the time he seems content to interact with us old parents.

Last evening, we decided to to eat Chinese food at a restaurant that had been highly recommended by several friends. Seth was excited because he loves Chinese food, and this place had a buffet, so he could get whatever he wanted and as much as he wanted. His favorite item on the buffet was barbecued ribs. Seth LOVES ribs, but ribs are not the easiest food to eat, and by the time he had eaten several, his fingers and face were covered with barbecue sauce. In a moment of confusion over what to do, Seth looked at his fingers, looked at us, and then wiped his hands on his pants, attempting to rid himself of the sticky sauce.

"Seth!" I exclaimed. "What are you doing? Use your napkin to clean your hands, NOT your pants."

"But, Mom," he replied, "I'm planning to change these pants tonight anyway."

Ugh. It gets even worse.

After that, he still had his face to contend with, so with his lizard-like tongue, he proceeded to lick first his top lip, then his bottom one, methodically, removing all the sauce.

"SETH!" I gasped.

"Mom. This is a good way to wash your face. It's very effective."

After a brief and comical discussion about the importance of good table manners, we finally left. It was a fun night. He is a fun companion.

"Date night," plus Seth. What could be more perfect?