True to form, it gets complicated after the kids arrive, for three reasons: childcare, financing, and scheduling. Until Moses was 4 months old, we brought him along on our date night outings. When he got older, it was easy to drop him off at friends' houses on our way out. Eventually, a better arrangement emerged, where we enlisted another family to watch each other's kids once a month when we needed a night out. This worked well while it lasted, especially that we each had one child and the children were about the same age. These friends moved away to another state, halting our sweet dating program.
To make matters worse, we went and had another kid. Arrangements between families to watch each others' kids suffer when there are more kids per family to watch. And often, the more kids a family has, the better it is that childcare happen at their house, at least until the babies are older.
While family and friends can be helpful in enabling us go out once in a while, we do not want to impose on them or burden them with frequent requests for childcare. Indeed, a two-kid situation is a different dynamic than a single-kid one, and not many are prepared to handle it. Besides, it is too much of a hassle to shuttle the kids somewhere so you can go out for a couple of hours. Even if you can find a childcare provider that can handle this dynamic, they won't be cheap. A provider from care.com, for example, can charge upwards of $35/hour for two kids, effectively doubling or tripling your date night budget.
Further more, our current sleep routine does not favor night outings or other obligations after dusk. We also find that it is not worth it to interrupt our babies' evening schedules so we can get out and eat steak. The best scenario would be for someone to come to our house and do this evening routine with them while we are out on date night. Otherwise, we pay for it down the road in thrown-off sleep cycles and the effects of inconsistency, lessons learned from Moses.
So with all things considered, we decided to not do date night for a little while. Instead, we will do "date day" (need a better-sounding moniker): we'll schedule it on a day when the babies are at childcare, meaning it'll have to be during the day (most likely in the afternoon). Immediately, the time of day we go out on a date changes what it means, how it feels, what we can plan to do, and where we can go. It also means we both take an afternoon off work, which is in effect an additional cost, depending on how you look at it. We understand why many couples forgo the idea altogether, but we are determined to still make it work, as long as we can.
