In 2009 we added a newborn to our family, giving us a 4 year old, a 2 year old and a newborn. I didn’t sleep much. And I don’t remember much. But I do remember giving out a lot of snacks, and I remember washing the tray of the high chair with one arm while holding a screaming baby in the other arm. And diapers. I remember so many diapers. (I never once got one child potty trained before the next baby was born). I remember waking up “in the middle of the night” to feed the baby and finally getting him back to sleep, and I’d quietly tiptoe out of the room and sooooo-slowly creak the door closed… only to be met in the hallway by a hungry 2-year old ready for breakfast at 5:13am. The days seemed so long (they actually were, since they started at 4:30am), and sometimes the bedtime routine of 3 kids under 5 was more than enough to push me into insanity. Needless to say, by the time all of the kids were in their beds, Brent and I didn’t have a lot of energy for emotional or physical intimacy in those days.

That began the only phase in our marriage where we had a regularly scheduled date night. Every Tuesday night a babysittter came to our house from 6:00-9:00pm. This was as much about dodging the bedtime routine 1 out of every 7 nights as it was about tending to our marriage. Life was just so.much.work.

I am not kidding. We were so tired. In addition to the 3 VERY small children, Brent was having a very intense time at work, and was working late hours and coming home very tired. We scheduled date night for Tuesdays because it was nearly impossible for us to get through the 5 workdays without a break. So, date night was never a very exotic event. It wasn’t about doing something fancy. It was just time away together.

Almost every week, you could find Brent and Heidi at La Hacienda Mexican Restaurant in Fayetteville drinking margaritas and eating chips and salsa. Our conversation wasn’t deep and spiritual. We didn’t hash out conflicts. You know what our marriage needed? We needed to laugh together. Home life was so rich and full and wonderful, but it felt like hours and hours of work. And we worked well together. But we missed having fun together. I missed being the girl who lit him up, and he missed being the guy who made me giggle.

Now that exhausting baby is 9 (and he’s really great). I still look back on that crazy year as one of my favorites because of that laughter at the Mexican restaurant. And lately, we’ve been sorely missing regular date nights. So we’ve made some really difficult choices to eliminate some activities from our family’s schedule, because we are not willing to sacrifice having time to laugh together. It’s been hard to prioritize our “fun” over our kids’ activities. But we needed to.

How often do you and your spouse laugh together? Maybe we should start to see a lack of laughter in our marriages as a warning light that indicates our marriage needs some attention. Is your warning light on? How can you add laughter to your marriage? Let’s prioritze our spouse relationship before it is a crisis.