Sometimes, my pre-parental perspective on things feels downright quaint.

For instance, in the months when we were expecting Lily, many of our friends with kids, and the few books I read, recommended shooting for, at minimum, one date night a month.

I scoffed at this. "Well, that should be the easiest goal of all time to attain," I thought. "I know we'll be busy, and tired a lot, but please!"

I was so freakin' adorable. It's like I want to reach back through time and pinch my own cheeks.

Yes, my husband Joe and I stole away for about four hours this past Saturday — we'd bought tickets to the Detroit live recording of Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" several months ago — and previous to that, I'd bought Joe tickets (as a Valentine's gift) to a March 7 Big Bad Voodoo Daddy concert at the Ark.

But in terms of "date nights," we missed April entirely, and to be frank, we hardly even noticed.

This isn't because Joe and I wouldn't like more nights out together, of course. (And contrary to the stereotype, when we do get the chance to spend time alone together, our conversation isn't wholly focused on Lily — partly because my partner happens to be a Chatty Cathy with a broad range of interests.)

But when scrambling to make arrangements for a night out, so very, very much has to fall into place exactly right. And that's just something I didn't fully grasp before I had a child of my own.

The obvious part, the babysitter, is the most crucial, and sometimes the most elusive. New Year's Eve? Valentine's Day? Good luck finding someone without plans of their own (understandably so).

And regarding the set of grandparents that lives nearby, we don't want to abuse their generosity (they have all three kids in the area vying for their occasional babysitting services). Plus, they have busy schedules of their own (again, understandably) — not to mention how reluctant they are to put Lily to bed, even when we're going to get home late. ("She didn't want to go to bed," they tell us. Of course she didn't want to go to bed. She's 2!)

Finally, sometimes, despite much advance planning, you'll exhaust every possible person and still come up with nada through sheer bad luck; or you'll have something worked out and get thwarted by your child (or you or your partner) getting sick. Either way, guess what? You're out.

And scheduling is its own kind of minefield. On many weekends, we have obligations that already feel a little overwhelming after five days of work. And because I often have evening assignments — fun events, admittedly, but I usually can't take Joe with me — there's often a sense, by week's end, that I've already short-changed my half-pint a little as is, and I kind of miss spending time with her. So when I've had two or more evening assignments in one week, I long for a few quiet nights at home.

Like most parents of young kids, Joe and I always feel like we're treading water, and the time just flies by. But we still do our best to get out on our own now and then.

I will admit that I significantly mourned the loss of time spent alone with Joe after Lily was born. Things that we used to always do together — like running — we suddenly had to do separately, when we could manage to squeeze it into our days at all. (Lily was fine with the jogging stroller for a short stint of time, but beyond that, no dice.)

And of course, back when Joe and I ran together all the time, we'd talked about our work, world events, our ambitions, etc. Despite the high demands of Joe's job, running was always a time when we could just relax and talk and focus on each other.

So once, when we tried to go out together with the jogging stroller, and Lily threw a fit early on in the run, Joe ran her back to the house, and I spent the rest of the run feeling grumpy, mopey and self-pitying.

I missed my husband, I thought. I missed us, the couple we had been together before we were parents. Because while raising a child brings you closer in some ways, it inevitably pulls you apart in others.

These days, for instance, when Joe puts Lily to bed, he stays up in her room until she's asleep, often falling asleep himself, while I clean up from dinner and/or try to exercise. When Joe emerges, he tries to exercise, too, while watching something on the DVR, or a live football/basketball/hockey game, and I'll often perform a pragmatic task (fold laundry, pay bills, blog, take care of unfinished business from work) while in the same room.

Before going to bed, we often watch "The Daily Show" together or read for a bit. (Even when we try to do the in-house date night kind of thing, renting a Pay-per-view movie on a Saturday night, we often only get halfway through before one of us is nodding off, forcing us to try and finish the movie off the next night.)

Occasionally, though, when neither of us instantly loses consciousness when our heads hit the pillows, we find ourselves lying in bed, chatting for a while in the darkness, and these are the moments when I most feel like we're still the old version of "us."

We make each other laugh; and there's an ease and a decadent laziness to the conversation. Finally, for the first time all day sometimes, we're doing something for no other reason than because it's fun, and because we enjoy each other.

Which is supposed to be the function of those maddeningly elusive, ironically stressful "date nights," of course. But occasional stolen moments in the dark offer the same sort of release, thankfully, and demand so, so much less effort and time from us. So for now, I'll happily take them.

Jenn McKee is the entertainment digital journalist for AnnArbor.com. To read more of her parenting posts, visit http://www.AnAdequateMom.wordpress.com. Reach her at jennmckee@annarbor.com or 734-623-2546, and follow her on Twitter @jennmckee.