A List of Good Things

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hartunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode two hundred and ten, which is airing in early to mid August of twenty twenty one. We'll be talking all good things. You can think of this as an all love of the Week episode. We've done a few of these in the past, but we thought it was time to revisit the concept because we've perhaps been complaining a lot recent episodes, and we like to keep things upbeat and happy around here. So this is going to be a lot of things that are working for us right now that we want to share with you guys. So, Sarah, what's going on in your life right now? Yeah? So the first one is just the fact that it's so much easier than it used to be to rent a house for a vacation, you know, before Airbnb got big. I mean, I think vrbo was around, but I don't think their online interface interface was as robust as it is now. And that is just so easy to like browse a bunch of full sized houses if you want to go somewhere, which number one is very friendly to large families, and number two, if you're concerned about any kind of pandemic exposure, if you want to go on a vacation that's more isolated somewhere you can have your own house, and it's it's not hard to make that happen. So we are headed off to a VRBO next week and we are very excited about it. Yeah, that's exciting. We're renting a house on the Jersey Shore for a week in August. We've rented this house before, I think the first time we did through VRBO, and then they've decided to rent through an age, so we have been going through the agency for that. But yeah, there's so many rental properties out there and like vacation options, and I know that some people like the idea of having their own vacation home that they go to as theirs, but renting the same place over and over again has some elements of that without all the trouble that comes from second home ownership. So then you know, when you don't want to do it anymore, you can switch it out without any of the transaction costs. So we are a big fan of that too. We've even been able to rent houses overseas they're back. In twenty fourteen, we rented a farmhouse in the Netherlands for a week for spring break, and you know, because we had the three kids and staying in little tiny European hotel rooms is just there aren't as many like gigantic suites as there are at American hotels. Renting the house away to go but it was just it was seamless, like here, our landlord, who you know, had put this up and we just use a credit card and they verified the house and we get there and it's sure enough it's the house that it was, and they've rented it to lots of people, and so I just love how seamless that vacation option has now become. And that was twenty fourteen. I'm sure it's even better now, well, except it's harder travel internationally now, but once you get there, the house will be great. Yeah, and I think places have gotten a lot better about posting really specific pictures so you can almost feel like you can tore it before going, so it's not such an unknown of what's inside. So yeah, all right, what's your first one? Spray sunscreen? So I was appreciating that this morning as I was sunscreening various children for camp drop offs. A lot of the camps are doing more out even if it's an indoor camp, they're doing more outdoors now because a lot of them have people eat lunch outdoors, for instance, when they're not wearing their masks, or when they're taking breaks from masking or whatever, they'll be outside. So you just need to be more careful about the sun screening than you would even if you thought, you're, like, I'm sending our kid to a computer camp, why are they going to need to be sunscreened up? But they do, so I can't even imagine if I was trying to use a cream to get on every inch of all these children. And yes, the older ones are capable of sunscreening themselves, but sometimes they do less than a stellar job. And you can tell. That's the thing. The sun doesn't lie, and so somebody comes back with a sunburned nose, then it is time to start supervising that again. But spray sunscreen makes it easier. Sometimes the kids even like want to just close their eyes or do my face this way too. It's just it takes seconds as opposed to what feels like hours with the creams. Definitely worth loving. I will say that creams do depend on the cream. We have one in house cream, the Alta MD Pure, which actually rubs in very quickly and easily. But then if you get the wrong cream, it's like your white pasty for an hour. It's like never goes away. So but yeah, the good sprays are great. Well. On that note, my next good item that I've been playing with is the Allure beauty box. Okay, I think I've read about this. I don't know. It might have been the Edit Your Life, It might have been Claudin Coo, but I might be completely wrong. Anyway, it was somebody who had bought it for their child, No, you know it was. It was and Vogel for modern missus Darcy. She bought it for her daughter, but then she said she was like stealing all the stuff, and I was like, oh, this does look really really good. And it's like twenty five dollars a month, and you don't get to pick anything. They just put whatever they want in the box and you get a variety of like full size and tiny little miniature products, but the amount that you get is like a lot for that price point. My guess that these companies are using it more to like get the word out about their brands, or who knows, like maybe they need too much of some product and they need to get rid of it whatever. But what I've gotten has been like pretty impressive. I have one face cream this from Able Skincare that I really like that like if it retails from much more expensive I discovered a really nice eye gel and I don't necessarily plan to even buy the full size because I just keep getting new samples and stuff, and I found that it has actually lessened my need to buy full price product. So even though it's like, you know, you don't normally think of some surprise box as saving you money, in this case, it does seem to be great, mostly because I'm pretty flexible and I don't mind trying a lot of different things, and I don't care if my skincare in July is different than October because I don't really believe in the power of most of these things anyway. It's just more just fun and how it feels. So yeah, I like it the allor Beauty box. So I wonder if i'd ever use this stuff, you know, now you're talking about it. I'm like, oh, Sarah loves it. I need to go get it. But I'm pondering, like, would it just like stack up on my counter. I don't know. It depends if you. I mean, if you have a daily skincare routine where every night you put on some stuff and every morning you put on some stuff, you will go through at least a good portion of it. If you don't, then yeah you won't. But it's all like skincare products or is it like makeup or perfume or like what is it? This box did have a couple of perfume samples. There's usually like one makeup item like a highlighter or a browbrush or like eyeshadow. I wish it wasn't. I wish it was just all skincare stuff because I prefer it but a lot of times it'll have like an I cream or like a moisturizer or a cleanser or it does vary. Oh one highlight. So I listened to Forever thirty five, which is like a podcast all about makes I don't know, self care and skincare and that kind of stuff. Well, it's about a lot of things, but that's one of the things it's about. And they had talked about, like several months ago, this extremely expensive cream which the host didn't even end up liking very much. It's called the Augustinis Botter Cream. But of course because they talked about it and it's like hideously expensive, I was just like kind of like piqued my interests and there was a sample of it, like I actually got to try it for free, and it was probably like three days worth of use, but it was enough for me to know that I didn't like it very much, and I agreed with the Forever thirty five hosts, But I mean, did you save yourself all kinds of money right there exactly? I just felt like it was so cool that I got to try that out, and I was impressed that the box. I mean, it's it's like Lamaire type of price point, and there was like a small bottle of it in the box. So that was cool, exciting, all right, all right, maybe I'll have to try that out. We'll see. My next love of the week is something I actually got from an Instagram ad, which I think we've talked in the past about how these Instagram ads seem so often well targeted, dangerously well targeted. But Spanks was running an ad for their shorts, and I have been trying to find shorts that I don't hate, which is a very limited number of shorts that I don't hate. I bought some others from various other places like I you know, nor its from like from American giant like companies I normally do, and they look fine in the photos and they look bad on me, and so it's just like, ah, God, you know, here I wind up with stuff I'm wearing to bed. I could return it, but you know what, But I did buy a pair of the Spanks Bermuda lengths like always, you know, not doing short shorts, but like long length long shorts of their black ones. And they're nice and slinky, like they feel very comfortable, little stretchy, you know, and they sort of look polished enough that you could wear it with like a nice top and not feel like you're totally slumming it, which of course is always a concern when you are wearing shorts as an adult. So I quite like them. They're not cheap, as spanks is not in general, and I suppose there's some element that it's shaping your bottom that is kind of not what I'm buying it for. Like you know, when I'm wearing shorts, I'm not really concerned about the shaping of my rear end, but it probably has some benefit from there, tao, since that's their whole Raisin Deetra as a company. So but that's not tied around your thighs obviously, which is again another thing that spanks is known for. But you wouldn't want that a pair of shorts. So they're just nice and comfortable and sort of slinky and nice fabric and polished enough looking that I would. I have been wearing them, and I like them, So yeah, throw that out as a love of the week there. That is awesome. I did notice they were getting more into the apparel kind of. I'm sure I got Instagram ads too. That's probably how I know, yeah, they sell I mean they sell skinny jeans too, which I mean that's sort of more in fitting with the spanks concept. I mean that if it's smoothing out to your stomach and thighs and all that stuff, lifting everything up, lifting everything up. But you know, obviously that's not necessarily what you're looking for in a pair of shorts. But yeah, there are more into the apparel. That's definitely something I've been branching into. All right. My next one has a little bit of a back to school theme, kind of not really so the weekend backpack concept. I think I may have mentioned it on a prior episode, but I just the ritual of every Saturday morning taking my like wallet and basic stuff out of my work bag and into this vinyl black backpack that's been our family backpack for like a solid three and a half years because it was my diaper bag for Genevieve. I was like, that backpack is like going strong. It's very minimalist looking. I put it in the washing machine and it stays alive. I like always keep like bug spray and sunscreen in there, so I always have them, and it's just like a ritual that works for me, awesome. It happens to be the brand State, which can be overpriced, but I recall buying it for at least half price, if not more, on some sale, So sometimes sale finds do work out, even though I always think buying something because it's on sale can be a mistake. This was a happy ending sale, so happy ending sale. That's great. I'll throw in one more apparel related one. I realized this was in my notes and I didn't mention water shoes, so I have never really owned a pair of water shoes. I bought a pair of like Tivas or whatever they're called, that are supposed to be available. You know, you can use them in water, and I just never really wore them. I didn't feel like I don't know, but because we're doing something with a river recently and everyone had to have shoes, so I was like, okay, well I will buy myself some water shoes. And then two of the kids who didn't have ones that fit them and it's great, Like they're cheap, like you can get reasonable ones for twenty dollars, if not less. Some of the kids' options were less than that, and it just is a game changer for being able to like go in rivers, lakes, any sort of body of water that is not you know where you can see the bottom like a pool, and it's probably the ocean too. I mean, I'm thinking about it that you could walk across the hot sand and walk directly into the water or something, and you know it's it just makes the water more better for walking around. So I was a I don't know why it's taken me to age like forty two to get water shoes to realize that you could buy shoes that you could wear in the water, or that this was a purchase I could make that you were allowed to purchase such things, but as opposed to just like wearing an old pair of shoes or something. But there go, they're great, So check that out. I feel like I should my I think every other member of my family has water shoes, and it's it's kind of like required for my kids when they swim at school, they have to have water shoes. But I don't have water shoes. But maybe I should get some. Maybe I should get some right now before we go cook the manage. Yes, well, before you go on your beach vacation, this would be the time to do it. Yeah, awesome, Okay, I'm inspired. All right, this is a real back to school one. Even though this is not our official back to school episode, that one will be coming. So the neoprene zip lunch bags, I don't even remember the brand. You can buy them on Amazon. They're playing multiple brands. They're the only ones I will tolerate because every other kind so you can put them in the washing machine. That is, Like Annabel convinced me to buy some pottery barn lunch box that looked really cute, and I knew even before we clicked purchase that this was going to last like a week, because lunch bags get so disgusting just pick up all these horrible cafeteria smells and things. It's like terrible. And the only way to combat that is have one that you can put in the laundry, like with like real detergent and like scrubbing around. And of course this one was discussing by like a month's time, and we got rid of it and I was like, that's it. We are never buying anything other than these ones you can put in the wash I'd say the only other option would be like a hard sided box type of situation that could go in the dishwasher, but like children's lunch containers must be industrially washable period. The end I'm picturing like the industrial washing machines. Like there's apparently some some washing machine that was like built for commercial laundromats that you can actually buy for the home market that's got this like cult following. I may look into that for my next washing machine purchase. But my related love before we take our ad break is kids making their own lunches. So we buy school lunch during the year, that's our thing. But and curiously enough, they stop charging us this year. I never figured out what happened with the pandemic. After you know, a week or two, I was like, why is my balance not going down? It was just like, okay, apparently it was free for the year. Who knew. But anyway, so kids making their own lunches. We established this as a role for summer camps where they do not have hot cafeteria lunches being served. I make Alex's lunch. You know, I've decided if you are under eight years old, it's probably I can do it or somebody else can. But the other children are responsible for their own camp preparedness. In general, and we make it easier by buying individual sizes of a lot of stuff. And I recognize that that may not be the most environmentally friendly idea, but it makes it a lot easier for the kids to just like grab a thing of raisins, as opposed to pouring raisins into a plastic baggy that I then get them to reuse for raisins the rest of the week. I feel like that just would not happen so in the jewel sizes, and so far it's gone well, I don't really know what they're eating. The other day, Ruth told me she had a cream cheese sandwich and watermelon for her lunch, and I'm pretty sure the watermelon wound up in a plastic bag too, So I'm really curious how that worked out. Maybe the zip blocks are really really good, But you know, it's all good. That's what they want to eat. That's what they want to eat, and I'll focus on breakfast. And it could be a lot worse than that. It could be a lot worse. That's true. That's true. It could be just like five packages of goldfish like I'm exactly, or like fruit snacks or something exactly. Well, we did label some of the stuff in the pantry. It's like this is only for lunches, right, So there is an industrial sized box of fruit snacks and it's like one a day for your lunch, not six while you're watching TV, like one. Well, my kids would be jealous just hearing that, because we don't have any for snacks. Sorry, I don't. I don't think their school allows them. Oh anyway, break time, break time, All right, Well we are back talking about all good things in this episode, things that are working for us right now. Things we are enjoying, what's going on in our lives that we are feeling happy about. So, Sarah, you have what you've been, you know, on a long crusade of changing your screen time habits. So you've come up with some good stuff. No, not really, but I'm just trying to set you up here. Well, I mean, it's it's a continual battle that I probably will fight until the death. But that's that's okay. I feel like it's one worth fighting for me. Like if I just gave up, then it would just be terrible. Oh. I have come up with a very enjoyable alternative to just mindlessly scrolling, which is I'll be honest, it's only one specific channel. There's probably other channels. But I watch this this woman, Amanda's Favorites. She is. All she does is Planner reviews, and of course, I mean I consider it kind of like market research for buslaid plans. But I also find her very calming and she's like she's one of those Planner users who's not into like making it look perfect. So I'm not really watching an artist, you know, like draw some elaborate thing. It's more like she'll like go through different brands and how she uses them, and her demeanor is like just yeah, as calm as it can be. And I love watching that. And so I do find that I would rather sit there and do that and maybe even like doodle myself while I'm listening to that. For me, that is like a ten times more a ritual that like fills me up rather than like takes away versus the like comparing comparison scrolling that we've talked about previously. So yeah, I mean your groove on YouTube or something very relaxinger that seems to feed you instead of takeaway. I like that. I'm gonna have to start figuring out what that is for me like, what do I want to watch on YouTube? One of the things I've been liking. We've been doing a couple of big kid only activities. These are sort of big kid non screen activities. We went tubing with cousins. We had some cousins visiting this past weekend, and we took all the big kids, which means ages six and over, tubing on the Delaware River. And this was a really sort of good fun for the whole family activity. And if you think about, there are not that many activities that are fun for the whole family, Like almost nothing is ever fun for the whole family for the whole time. And there were elements that sometimes you're not one hundred percent of every but people had a pretty good time. So you go to this tube rental place, you know, they give you your life jacket, and you get on a bus and you go a couple of miles. It's probably just like two miles. You're tube on a bus up the river, get in, they tether, you tether together with your group and float on down. And the weekend we did it, it'd been after some rains, which in my book is a big plus because it meant the river moved faster if you're in a very slow moving river time, I mean, it could take like three hours to you know, go down and I think our our group would have been done at that point. I think people would have been like out kicking and swimming trying to get to the end of the river at that point. But we were moving along at a rapid clip. So it was only you know, less than ninety minutes on the river, which was just about perfect. Of course, because of it was you know, there were some actual rapids because of that, and at the end they have to kind of fish you out. I think normally you can just paddle yourself over to the side, but because it was swifter or moving, they had boats out to like corral people before they you know, wound up too far out in New Jersey or whatever. But it was good. We liked it. And you know, it's a non you couldn't really even bring your phones with you. I mean, how would you would have had to have like a water park type bag, and even then you're on bumpy water, so it would have been risky to have that sort of thing. So we really, we really enjoyed that. So yeah, trying to come up with activities like that that are fun for lots of people. Not screen related can be hard, but that was one of them. I have fond memories of, like white water rafting in like high school or yeah, I don't know, maybe maybe even middle school. I don't remember, but yeah, that's it is really really fun and it's just the right level of danger, especially if you go with a guide or a group where they make sure that you're not really in harms way, but it feels kind of on the edge. So super fun. Okay, my next one, oh minor blanks, someone are surprised to you. Okay. I have another YouTube themed one, which is that I discovered the world of very highly organized professional YouTube fitness stars and their strength training programs. I feel like I delved into YouTube fitness like a decade ago and kind of didn't like how it felt very disjointed, like oh, you could do this butt workout or this, but it you know, like what am I supposed to do? When now there's all these people, I think because of Instagram the rise of social media, who are making very good livings clearly, and they it's very similar to Beach Body that they'll have a whole program, but it's not beach Body. It's YouTube. It's completely free. I mean, you watch some ads. There are usually programs you can sign up for for additional support or like to get like fancy calendars and stuff, but honestly, the entry point is that a lot of these are you can try them very easily for free. I'm currently just dipping my toes into this one super rockstar woman named Sidney Cummings, and apparently there's another sort of competitor named Caroline Gervins, and I'm trying to figure out which one would be a better fit. I think Sydney might be slightly more accessible, so I think I'm going to go with her. But I have been looking for something beach body ish that's not beach Body. I will say, you know, I did try the Peloton Strength, and I think some of the worsts were good, but I don't. I don't love it because and I know this is like sacrilege to many listeners who are so into that that's clearly their demographic. But I really like having like a program and having one person that I feel like, again, it doesn't have to be a real life person, because I'm an upholder, and I don't I don't mind, like I can make a schedule and stick to it, but I like there to be like a specific thing I'm trying to complete where I'm going back to this person's routine every day. And I didn't feel like Peloton really had that model, which for most people that might be great, but for me it didn't fit. But this, this whole world was like opened up to me, and I'm sure there's like many others that are amazing and like you can get such an amazing lifelong workout without ever having to go to a gym or a class again. And I'm like, that's amazing. Yeah, that's amazing. At these modern times, I have not been doing anyone's workouts online. I'm been trued by some of the people I follow. Like I said on Instagram, I follow this lady Anna Victoria, who is another you know, fitness influencer personality whatever, But she posted a workout she did that I think honestly she did as her workout during her daughter's nap. She's like, Okay, this is like twenty thirty minutes dumbbells or other limited equipment, you could do it during the nap. And I was like, well, that's that sounds doable. That sounds like actually a good targeting market there, So maybe I will check that out. I could could start doing that. I don't know. I've been just running. I know that's not what we're supposed to be doing for our body composition in our forties. Wait, what happened to your strength streak? Oh? I am still doing that, but you know I'm not doing enough to like get anywhere, just so that's count. I don't know. I would not discount your strength streak. I mean, strength is strength, even if it's ten minutes. If you're doing it every day, I don't think I'm even doing ten minutes. I'm doing like one thing. I still love it. I don't love it. It's better than zero things. Yeah, okay, all right. One thing I do love though, puzzles. I know our listeners have been hearing about me, you know, hearing me talk about this for a while. I've really been on a streak of doing thousand piece puzzles over the last nine months or so, I've been doing White Mountain is my favorite brand so far. I've been doing some from Buffalo Games as well, but I think the White Mountain ones that the pieces have some heft to them, and the designs are thought through as being puzzle designs. I mean, I think a lot of people they just put a scene, like a pretty scene, and then it's cut into puzzle pieces, which is fine, but that can wind up being like that. There are whole swaths of it that are like similar colors, and so if you've got this model gray, it could be this quarter, it could be over here, it could be wherever, and that can be very challenging. And if you want that in a puzzle, that's fine, But if you're looking for something that's fun and brainless entertainment, I prefer to know that no, that piece goes most likely in this part of the puzzle. So yeah, I'm doing a hot air balloon one right now. I did one that was like the local bookstore before. I've got my eye on three holiday themed puzzles for around Christmas. I'll probably start donating them the ones that I've done. That's probably the best thing to do with them, because you don't really do a puzzle more than once usually, but it's a good thing to do that's not scrolling, because we're talking about screen free activities and sometimes I don't feel like reading. I have definitely not felt as much like reading, particularly if I'm tired at night, if I've been on screens all day, I don't want to read anything on my phone. And you know, it's been harder to stick with books for whatever reason. So it's something I can do and I enjoy spending, you know, thirty minutes a night on it and make progress. Love it. I might be out of good things? Is it bad if we have more complaining than good things? You have nothing else? Well, okay, can I have a comment? Or you have the Olympics on here and I'm going to I'm going to let you go through that. I don't want to add a complaint to our good things episode. But I think we spent solid forty five minutes trying to figure out how we could pay to watch the Olympics because we don't have papo. Oh and I'm not even sure we were successful. See, this is the problem when you cut the cord, it's the only problem. We can get anything else we want. But we were like, Okay, you go to sling and then you sign up for this. Oh wait, that wasn't the right thing. Okay, way was this? Oh that wasn't the right thing. Oh you go through WHU like it wasn't like we weren't willing to pay, We're like sign us up for whatever service, Like there needed to be in twenty twenty one, some easy paywall where I could just pay two hundred dollars and get full access to all of the Olympics. I would have paid it. I would have just paid it, like press the button done. Okay, I'm sorry, and I'm certain I'm inserting a complaining rant into our happy things, but I'm disappointed in that, and I really do want to watch more of the Olympics which are happening. I mean, they're going to be pretty much over by the time, yeah, but it is such a treat and maybe by twenty twenty two. Well what's funny about that is they had such a thing in nineteen ninety six, because I remember that several people I knew there was like three channels you could buy for the months to like get all of the Olympic things. And I know several people who did that, right to watch the entirety of the Olympics. So it's fun that they had it then. It's just harder for people to do now. I'm behind on watching I meant to watch more than I have. I mean, so it's like, oh yeay, the Olympics are on. It's like I see little bits of swimming, you know, because my life has not become slightly you know, less stuff going on in my life just because the Olympics are on. So it's not like there's magically six hours a day to watch it, even though there might be things I wish to watch. So I'm sure I'm gonna be behind on it. But oh well, But the thing is, I mean, we're spoiled for Olympics this year because the year of delay means that the summer is now, the winter will be six months from now, because you know, they're on a two year cycle, but it's always one and a half years and two and a half years because of the summer to winter, winter to summer thing. But because we lost the year, it's only six months. So that's going to be kind of a lot of Olympics. Maybe I'll be done watching the tape Summer Olympics by the time the Winter Olympics comes on. I wonder where the Winter Olympics are. Oh well, they're in China. It's a long story, right anyway, So another thing that. Yeah, we'll see how that plays out with a geopolitical situation. Not a topic for best of both worlds. So one other thing I had on my list, which would be a nice fun note to end on, is lilies. So they are in season now in the like the big summer lilies in the wild ones too here in Pennsylvania. So tiger lily is the orange ones are just a wildflower, like they grow. I assume people must have planted them, but sometime, because sometimes they grow and sort of like concentrated clumps in places where it's like, well, that looks like somebody planted it. But I love looking at them, and so I'm always like, oh, we need to have some for our yard. And so for like a year or two, we were going to garden stores being like, how can we get some of these, you know, tiger lilies, these these orange lilies whatever, and people are looking at us like it's like you walked into a garden store and asked to buy dandelions, I mean, because it's they just grow. So we finally wound up digging some up and transplanting them from a friend's yard because they had crops of them everywhere, and they're great. They grow up. They're beautiful, Like they're just a nice bright orange in the middle of July and into August, and they're so maybe your whole lin is going to become that exactly. Oh that would that would be fine. I mean, because they're very pretty and they right now we've got them, and they create myrtles which have these beautiful the kinds we have with these beautiful violet pink flowers. So to have pink and orange in your yard is a good time in the middle of summer. I love it. And least, at least to my record, they smell really good, don't they. I don't know. I think it's not so much the smell is that they're very big and bold colors. So yeah, they're wonderful to look at. So we have a question from our listener, another childcare question we get. Like I've said, we this is the topic we hear from people most about, and I think it's because it just doesn't get discussed a lot various places, and there's a lot of logistics to getting the childcare situation that works for your family. There are some thoughts out there that like, oh, once you know you've figured out childcare, you never have to worry about a thing again, and that is not the case. So this listener is a prosecutor and her husband is a physician, so two big careers. They are expecting kid number two. They had a nanny for the first nineteen months of their older child's life and then went to daycare after that. The issue, as people who have sent children to daycare now is that you get sick a lot. And that's even worse in the COVID era because there's always things like quarantines coming as a result of potential COVID related symptoms, even if it turns out to be just normal respiratory virus that runs like wildfire through every daycare. So their kid's been sick a lot lately, they're wondering what to do. They've got a small pool of babysitters that they can ask for backup care, but it's hard to find somebody at six pm the night four for seven thirty the next morning. R I'd say that's even a lot of notice. I'm problem is when it's six thirty in the morning for seven thirty, that's even worse. So what should they do? They love that daycare is social, their kid is learning a lot, making friends, loves being with other children. But you know, as they're expecting baby number two, it seems like, you know, they have two careers where they cannot not be there between you know, a physician practicing and somebody who has court cases where they need to show up. What do they do? So, Sarah, what do you think on this one? So we did this and we had both when I was pregnant with Cameron. That's when we hired nanny, and Annibal had been in full time daycare for a couple of weeks. We'd just moved, and it was evident that that was not going to be enough, because all of a sudden we were faced with, oh, what happens when she gets sick? And it was like, well, I'm not going to call out from work that I just started here, you know, with my first real job, and Josh really couldn't do it either, So it was like this is kind of just and with the impending second kid, you know, we weren't that excited about sending like a very very young child to daycare, although some people do, and the babies too usually do great. But anyways, so yeah, I just think that layered covers is essential. I hate that because it is extremely expensive when you say coverage, so you are recommending and that's so we know here what Sarah is recommending is that they keep the two year old in daycare and hire a full time nanny. So you explain that to people, because I think people think these are either or things. No. I mean I think that you're probably right that that environment's great for your child, they're comfortable there. Perhaps you might think about shortening the day, like I think what we did is we had our nanny pick Annabelle up at like nap time and she would nap at home, so we didn't have to pay for the full day of daycare. But that way, with her napping in the afternoons at home as a two year old, you know, our nanny didn't have to actually do that much. She could focus on Cameron when he was little. But it was kind of like never it didn't even cross my mind as a viable option that we could just put them both in daycare and be okay, just because of the inevitable multiple sicknesses. And this was way way way before COVID unless you have family, So if you are lucky enough to have family around that's comfortable being your backup, and I know lots of people like that. Amazing. If you can structure your life in a way that family could be your backup, amazing. That was not an option for us for multiple reasons, so that's what we came up with. The other viable option, actually, I guess I can think of two would be an O pair, which is really really popular for that reason. And you could do an O pair and daycare and that way. For example, I know you mentioned the partner's a physician, Like the old pair could help you on the weekend sometimes, so you wouldn't be doing if they were on call, you wouldn't be doing lots of solo stuff, and you could like kind of use those hours more flexibly if the others aren't in care. And I guess Laura's other option, I'll let you talk about it would be like stacking multiple options kind of a thing. Yeah, So I mean what people who have you know, multiple big jobs in the family that is not going to be like forty hours flexible, you know, like that where there could be after hours things, there be more than forty hours a week, like you physically need to be there if there's sort of limited flexibility. What a lot of people need to get their heads around is the idea of stacking child care coverage so it's not nanny or daycare once you have more than one kid, it's often nanny plus some form of communal care, like daycare for a two year old or preschool. You know, once you've got a three or four year old, like daycare for two year olds is essentially preschool, only just a little bit younger than most people would start sending their children to preschool. But because of that, you know, then you have more doable job for your caregiver, right because there's hours of the day they're only focusing on one child. The older kid gets the socializing, but there's a backup for when they inevitably get sick or if the school is closed for some reason, because you've got that full time care as well. Now, obviously your full time caregiver may also have days that he or she couldn't be there, and so then you need to figure out what is the backup for that for the kid who's too young to go to whatever community option you have. But it's at least a slightly more certain thing because I can tell you that almost everybody finds that there are more daycare illnesses than there are situations where your full time caregiver can't come, you know, all of a sudden, right, Like, that's that's going to be a less likely scenario than the child suddenly getting sick in daycare. So stack it, you know, stack nanny plus daycare, nanny plus preschool. If you have two really big jobs, you might want to stack full time nanny plus part time nanny, because you know, I hear this complain from people. They're like, oh, I can't keep anyone. Nobody wants to work for me. Oh it's so terrible. It's like, well, okay, And then you drill down. You see that they're trying to get somebody who work sixty hours a week, and it's like, well, that's more than you really probably want to expect someone to be on for. They're going to burn out at that job. So hire one person for forty to fifty or so, another person for twenty, right, and then that way you've got the coverage. And then possibly if the part time person has some more availability, they could be a backup. Should be full time option be available, and hopefully you'd be able to maybe limit your hours some if the part time person wasn't available for a while. So there's that. But you know, we were saying, like this is obviously expensive, like good quality care is expensive. It's even more expensive once you are stacking things. But it's not forever, right, I mean this is you were making this point to our listener. Yeah, the well I thought you were gonna mention also like the idea of having like a six deep babysitter pool. Oh yeah, well they're no. I mean, so one thing some people do. And if you want to read about a family doing this or whatever, I think this is in Tiffany Dufu's book too, that she was what she put her husband in charge of finding babysitters for stuff, and he was like brilliant at it. She was always finding somebody within like two minutes. And she's like, what is your secret? You know, what are you doing? And it turns out he put all their sitters on a group text and then would just say if like he needed somebody at eight o'clock on Thursday, he'd be like, okay, who wants it? And the first person to respond is the person who doesn't. And on some of them people are be like, whoa, that's a little weird, Like you know, what do people think about it? But you can, you know, obviously, ask people if they want to opt into this, like you don't have to like you force anyone to do this, but you also, I mean, this is how a lot of small businesses actually operate with shifts too. So if somebody is feels like they can't come into work today, what they'll do is text the employee pool and be like, you know, I can't does somebody could tell me take the shift, and then whoever actually wants extra hours can respond, as opposed to trying to go through your manager who's busy as well, Like this is just a way, you know, for interchangeable work. You could book people, so you know, that's that's something you can do. Like if you have people who've opted into this who might be available at different times, just say okay, you know, I need somebody for this time and use it that way. But it's hard to make work for the long term and people when you've got that many people who aren't working full time, their schedules start to change quickly, and so it's like, oh, well, this person had a Tuesday night class, this semester, but now they have a Thursday night class. You know, it's just you can only run it for a couple of weeks with the same sort of scenarios before you have to change things up again. So yeah, I think that's an interesting option, but high maintenance, But it could work as a probably less expensive option if it's just completely out of the realm to you know, completely hire somebody. So one other thing we wanted to mention is the fact that this is finite. It's kind of like paying for college, like it's four years, you know, and then it's over, you know, whether you choose to or not. This is not from your baby till they're eighteen. You won't eat coverage when they're fifteen years old. In fact, by the time your kid hits maybe like six or seven. If you have a job where sometimes you could do your job from home, you could imagine having a fully productive work day while your child basically watches videos and you get them lunch. You know, obviously that's not going to work when you have an eighteen month old. And if you have you know, eight kids, then yes, you're going to have an eighteen month old for a while. But if you just have two or three kids. You know, this phase, this expensive phase, isn't necessarily going to be forever, So you know, keep that in because it may seem like a horrendous outlay, But if you think of it as having an endpoint, then I think that can help exactly. All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been doing an all Good Things episode. We will be back next week with more on making work in life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of Both Worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.