A Break From Routine

We're learning that little kids really thrive on routine-- they like to know when to expect food, when they get to go outside, and when it's time to sleep. Unfortunately, the routine that maximizes the amount of sleep we get and keeps Linus happy, is also the same routine that makes us feel like really boring people. While the weekends are wonderful and full of exploration, our weekdays look like this:


6:00AM Alarm rings, hit snooze
6:15 We actually wake up to get ourselves ready
6:30 Stuff our faces with food, chug coffee, feed animals
6:40 Linus wakes up. We wrestle on a diaper and get him dressed
7:05 Farfar comes to pick up Linus, and the entire Karlsson family is out the door. Mattias takes a free shuttle, Ellie hops on the Metro.
8:00-5:00 Ellie and Mattias work their little butts off.
5:30 Ellie drives to pick up little Linus and Guster at Farfar and Farmor's house.
6:00PM Ellie scraps together whatever she can find for dinner. Sometimes its hotdogs...
6:15 Mattias gets home and we all sit down for dinner. Linus throws food on the floor for Gus.
7:00PM We are usually so tired we can't move, but sometimes we get motivated and take Linus to the park.
7:45 Get Linus dressed for bedtime, and I nurse him to sleep.
8:00 Young parents are totally trashed-- sometimes we muster up the energy to go to the gym, sometimes we watch shows like "House" or (Ellie's choice) "So You Think You Can Dance."
10:00PM We get to bed and get ready to do the same thing over again tomorrow.



But this Saturday, thanks to Kerstin and Magnus, Mattias and I went out on a date. We got to feel like young people again, order a bottle of wine, and chill out on a rooftop restaurant in the warm summer air.






We sat on that roof for almost 2 hours-- laughing, remembering when we were just 15 years old. We called each other a lot of stupid names and reminisced about the life we had before Linus came along. The plan was to watch a movie, but we got there a little too late. Instead, we made a slow, drunken crawl home.

I can honestly say that we looked like were having a better time than all the other 20 somethings on that roof, who didn't have babies waiting for them at home. And when we finally did get home, we were happy to come back to our regular, routine lives.