Q&A Mailbag, Part 2!

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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 fifteen. This is also going to be a mailbag episode Mailbag Part two for early Fall twenty twenty one. We got so many great listener questions coming in through our blogs. That's the shoebox sahubox dot com, also Laura vandercam dot com, through our insta Best of Both Worlds podcasts. You can email us as well. Our information is on our blogs, so please do that. We love listener questions. We do one every week, but we get so many that we would like to occasionally do these mailbag episodes and tackle many of them. Because all sorts of great topics that people are thinking about. So let's go ahead and dive right in. So, Sarah, this time you are reading the questions all right, perfect, I'm on it. Question one, Any advice you would give a first time mom. I'm twelve weeks along. Oh my goodness, well, congrats on making it through the first trimester. Good for you. My first bit of advice is that you should listen to us, which this person already is so yay, already on top of her game, kicking it. There a couple things. First, to ignore anyone who tells you to enjoy every moment, because you are not going to enjoy every moment, so do not even try enjoy the good moments and aim to keep the bad ones in perspective. But in a similar vein, just ignore anyone who tells you just you weight. It's another horrible phrase. It's usually a sign that somebody has their own issues, not you, unless I put this in our notes, Unless you are the kind of person who are saying, like, my baby's never going to soil this two hundred dollars linen baby outfit I bought them, in which case, just you wait, I will use that there. Seriously, I don't know. This is such a hard question, right, Like people have to figure out a lot of stuff on their own. I think there's just two very practical new baby things that I would like to say that it's come through hard experience on my behalf. One is that if you do want to breastfeed exclusively, get yourself a pump. And I know a lot of people are like, well, why would I need one if I plan to just be around my baby all the time and breastfeed, Like you'll want to leave at some point, like you want to go to the grocery store, and if your kid needs to eat while you're at the grocery store, you will fall behind, and like then it will be harder to catch up. Whereas if you start pumping immediately when your milk comes in an extra bottle a day through the beginning, that will set your baseline higher so you have a freezer stash built up, and also that you will have an easier time nursing because you're not feeling like you might constantly behind. You're just at the right amount, like you'll be producing more than your baby needs, and so that makes it a lot less high stakes every individual feeding right the second thing I would say is that after a few weeks, the baby starts getting into a sleep cycle where they will eat, play, and then get fussy, and that fussiness is usually a sign that they are tired. It is not necessarily a sign that they are hungry. I mean, they might be, but you should try the nap first and if that works, great, Like now you've got three three and a half to four hours between feedings, whereas you know, if you feed them at that point, it's usually at about one point seventy five hours, So then you're on in every two or even less than two hour cycle and that becomes a lot harder to sustain as a nursing mother. So try the nap first with that initial fussiness, see what happens, and if it doesn't work, feed, But if it does work, the kid goes down for a nap, then brilliant. Those are my two hard learned lessons. And everyone is different because I'm like that never worked and literally always had to give the kid my food, so you know, and Josh would make fun of me. He's like, I'll try, but we all know what the outcome will be, and the outcome will be a baby eating. So your mileage may vary, but absolutely good to try because maybe you'll be lucky. Okay, I have three points here. Number one, just to reinforce what Laura said about the just you wait, my sister recently got a this is the easy part. Now my niece is like eighteen months old or how is that the easy key track is delorious? I hate that part. I mean maybe someone found that the easy part and good for them, but like, please ignore that. And you know, if you do find your motherhood very very challenging, especially when your baby is very young and waking up all night, that is totally okay. You do not have to love it. Like that part is, in my opinion, very very difficult. So just putting that out there. Number Two, figure out your childcare game if you need it, because that is you know, I always laugh when I see like these elaborate nurseries and then you're like, so what are you doing for daycare and they're like, I don't know what. So that's number two. And then my third one is to look for some friends who might be due around the same time. Whether that's I mean, it's harder pandemic wise, very much harder. But if you're able to do things in person or outside, look for like a pre needle yoga class because or even find some online friends that are on a similar timeline. I'm actually still like close with a group of women that were going through fertility issues at the same time as I was having Annabelle, and now we all have nine year olds plus many other childrens because it turns out most of us were able to conquer our issues, I guess, and it's just been so valuable to have that, you know, little circle. There's a podcast called Connected mom Life. I think I was on it once, so there you go with that. I fall. I don't always listen to all of her episodes, but I do follow her on Instagram and she has great kind of practical tips for seeking out mom friends, and I do think that is something you can do to make the journey just a little bit more fun. So I suggest you can start doing that early. Awesome good advice there, all right, Question number two, any tips for transitioning from one to two children? Ah? Well, this question, I think a lot of it depends on the age gap between the two, because I mean, if it's like eighteen months between kids, that's obviously going to be a different experience than if you have, say five years between your two kids. I think one of the most helpful things you can do is try to get some one on one time with your older child. There's going to be a lot of times that you have to be with the baby, obviously, and people will help you with your older child, but the older child can and wind up feeling like Mom never wants to be with me, and so sometimes give the baby to somebody else. I mean, you know, if the baby, if you're nursing and the baby isn't eating like other people can still take the baby, right, So spend some of that time with your older child if you've got two really little ones, definitely helpful to have extra hands. So welcome help from family and friends. Here's a practical thing. I don't think any of our best of both worlds listeners would succumb to this temptation. But if you are thinking, hey, I should pull my older child out of daycare, or maybe we don't need a nanny because I am on maternity leave for four or five months, so we'll just look again at the end of that, like, get that thought right out of your head right now. That is an absolutely stupid way to save money and almost guarantee that you have a very hard time getting back to work after the second one. If you are planning to stay home with your kids, that's fine, that's wonderful. But if you do intend to go back to work, do not end your child care for kid number one in any way, shape or form. Establishing routines can help with sanity, especially if you have two very little ones trying to coordinate the afternoon nap. If you can as soon as the smaller child gets into any sort of nap schedule, if you can make sure that the afternoon one goes at the same time, that will be good. But you know, as much as you can, like sort of contain spaces. I love that tip from Sarah from What's Their podcast? Yes, Sarah Powers was talking about, you know how when she had three very little ones, she'd sort of confine the space, like they'd all be in one small room. And then because it's just easier to keep track of everyone when you know you are have limited the area where things can go wrong, So think about how you might do that. I love all that. I think being more flexible to some extent with the baby's schedule than with the toddler. People get very caught up on these like moms on call type things, and they work for some people, and I think they're easier if you have just a baby, But if your toddler is with you, now, it's one thing if they're in daycare, they're out of the house, but if you're actually the one managing both of them, they're probably the one that needs a structure even more. And little infants can usually kind of, you know, roll with it, yeah, roll with it exactly. So I think that you know, paying a lot of attention to what your older kid is doing and letting your little one going along for the ride rather than the other way around can be helpful. And then I'll just reiterate to seek out friends in similar boats, because it's great to have a play date when you both have like a two year old and a newborn, because you know you're going to spend the whole time chasing, but at least you're doing it together. It's harder to have that type of plate eate if the other person isn't going through that similar and you feel like you're the only one running after. But try to see if you can find people who are in similar boats and do things that are not hard to do together, such as a playground exactly. So I would say just our next question is like related to that. Yes, this one's for you though, Yeah, I have to go to a three to four, which is funny because we often get the two to three and we would say, like, never ever make that joke about going from man to man is a defense because if you've got two and you've ever been alone with them, you've already figured out zone defense. If somebody says going from two to three, as Manda Manda zone is that they've never been alone with their two children, and say very very spoiled, very spoiled. So going from three to four was I thought a more intriguing question that this listener wrote in with that question we do not get. But this listener was particularly concerned about the time when they were teens and tweens. She says, I'm thinking of having a fourth child, but I'm concerned about having four teenagers in the house. I thought that was a very strange question in some ways because I think by the time they are all teenagers, like you're just gonna know these four people, like there are four people who have been in your life for twelve, thirteen, fourteen years, and so it's not like you're gonna be sitting there saying, gosh, I shouldn't have had one, like they're you know, that's just not the way it's gonna think like, So don't overthink that. I think the more immediate question is if you think you can handle another little one, because you will certainly have figured everything out by the time they are teenagers. I think it's just a matter of degree, Like there's not going to be massive differences between three teenagers and four teenagers. There's probably not even a massive difference between four teenagers and five teenagers, Like it's just you have a big, loud house at that point. There are some benefits of having multiple older children. The older ones can drive the younger ones, which is particularly helpful if you have like two kids in high school. Right if the senior can drive the sophomore freshmen to school at home, that's awesome. The older kids can also help supervise elementary school age kids after school sometimes. So yeah, I think don't overthink it. If the question is whether you want another member of your family, I wouldn't worry about any particular later stage, like you know, teen, tween, whatever, anything like that. Awesome. I have no words to answer this one because I have never experienced that, but great answer. All right, we're going to do one more before our break. Number four thoughts on red shirting a kid close to kindergarten age. So I think this is so individual. I mean, you really have to think about your kid, and not whether this is broadly a good idea or not. I mean, I'm personally not a huge fan of the idea, but it's never been an issue for us because our kid birthdays aren't particularly close, and the two that are close to the cutoff or on the other side of the cutoff, so they are actually almost always the oldest kids in their grade. I would be slightly more concerned the other direction that a child who's really old for their age, not for their age, but for their grade, and who had already gotten some of the school readiness that I know many of our listeners are concerned with. So the kid has already got their letters, got their numbers, knows what a book looks like when you pick it up. Like that, they'll get really bored with kindergarten when they're almost seven years old. I mean, that's just going to be like they've already gotten that stuff. So I'd be more worried about the boredom aspect of red shirting a child. I think if there are be behavioral issues that make you concerned about this, but they do have the school readiness part, then maybe want to look into a different sort of school. I mean, maybe there's smaller school, you know, different private options that maybe are less about sitting in desks in more Montessori or regio or whatever the different formats are. But that might be worth looking into for a year or two, with the idea that you plan to transition out of that once the child is a little bit older. For that, one thing I would add here is I'm actually a fan of skipping grades, which was not what the person asked, but I co wrote slash Ghost wrote a book years ago called Genius Denied with two educational philanthropists, Jan and Bob Davidson who run the Davidson Institute. We have listeners who have profoundly gifted children. You should definitely look into their offerings. I would also say that there is a lot of research on acceleration and it is actually a great solution for the vast majority of kids who are not being check challenged in their particular grade. A lot of people are concerned about issues that it turns out they do not need to be concerned about. Again, you know your kid, but if you're trying to figure out what to do with a child who is really really bored in school, needs more challenge, and there aren't great particular gifted offerings in your district, usually the best thing you can do is move them forward a greade or two. So that's not what they ask But I'll just put my little soapbox out there and talk about that. So, Sarah, what do you think that is so interesting? Well, I guess I would. Also if anybody has read Emily Oster's book or seen it on it's actually, I think like a New York Times bestseller. She has a whole chapter on this, so you might want to look into that. I thought it was interesting. I think this is also so regional. There are certain areas where it's very very common. So it's like, if you don't rent shirt, you'll be the only one. Thankfully, Also, we did not have to make this decision. My youngest kid for her grade is Annabelle, and her birthday's April, so that's not even that young. So I don't know, like, you know, if Cameron had been very close to the cut off, it might have been something we thought about. Well, I will say, and this is sort of counterpoint to what you said in a way. So although maybe not because it turned out great. So maybe. So my husband was went to move from Virginia to Florida, like, and the cutoffs were different. So in Virginia he was a normal but very young like first grader because his birthday is in December. In Florida, it would not have been normal to be in first grade. He would have been in I mean, I'm using the grades wrong, but you know what I'm saying. The cutoff was different. So he was now several months younger than the youngest kid in his grade, and they didn't they didn't put him back, and it worked out fine from an academic standpoint, and so maybe that would argue that, hey, it works great. He has a little bit of regret about that because he was in athletics, cross country and basketball. He also was a very late bloomer, Like I see pictures and I'm like, oh yeah, wow. So he's like, you know, I would have been so much better at sports if I had been the normal age for my grade instead of like a late bloomer and by far the youngest, so that I looked like like the little small one on the team. So that is just like his experience and I have colored what we did for our kids, but it didn't have to because we didn't ever have to face this. Yeah, and it's also hard to know. If young Josh would have been so terribly bored with school, he would have started hating school and that would have cut into his ability to build a career in you know, the various things he did technology and then so he certainly was not an academic like failure stories. So from an academic and life goals standpoint, it worked out beautifully. Yes, I'm not sure that Josh's professional sports career was ever what it was going to although he's very very fast, right, We've we've talked about this that he's yeah, he's he's actually a very good runner. But ye, all right, we are late for our break. We okay, back in just a couple of second seconds. All right, we are back doing our second mailbag episode over the past few weeks, talking all things that our listeners have sent in, Sarah, you want to tee up the next one for us? Yes, how do your family routines change with sick? I eat cold and flu kids? Any best practices to share now? They said, sick, not just quarantined, which is what we're doing right now. But yeah, that's totally different because nobody is actually sick in our home. I guess I'll just answer since I started, and I'll let you go. So, I guess my biggest thing is like, dial it all down. Dial down your screen time rules, dial down your expectations about types of food, dial down your morning routine because probably number one, you might get it too. In my case, I'm probably going to get it too. I seem to get everything the kids get, and it's just it's really hard. So I think I struggle the most if I fail to lower my expectations and then I sort of failed to meet my expectations, and then that becomes a stressor No, illness is like a legitimate reason to do the bare minimum and survive and coddle your kids and use screen time and eat popsicles, et cetera. So that's my take on PA. Yes, roll with it, I would say, Yeah, one little, tiny, tiny silver lining of COVID is we have actually had far less of this than I think we would have over the past year and a half, because, I mean, when everyone's masked and six feet apart, it turns out COVID isn't the only thing you don't catch. You don't catch every single cold that is going around. Although we did have about of GI issues this summer where everyone except me got it. I was queasy for like two weeks, but at least I did not succumb to the vomiting episode. With a big family, this becomes a bit of a guessing game, like who's gonna get it next? Who is waking me up in the middle of the night because they're throwing up. I don't know who it'll be tonight. Let's see so exciting GI roulette. So if you have little ones, obviously the first thing you know, you obviously have to figure out what your kid coverage arrangement it's going to be, if your kids are out of daycare or school, if you are going into the parenting. We had a question from a new mom about earlier in this episode. This is another thing to have an explicit conversation about your childcare arrangements, Who deals with it when it falls through, or how do you split the dealing with it when it falls through? A surprising number of people, and I've seen statistics on this, even when mom has the much less flexible job. Still assume it is mom who is supposed to accommodate a child illness or disruption in school or daycare. And sometimes it's mom thinks that too, I mean, is the assumption that a sick kid needs mom? I mean, and that can be great if that's the way your family operates. But I think you need to say this and have this conversation so everyone is on board with what the answer is. Or maybe it's that on Monday and Tuesday it's dad's responsibility, on Wednesday and Thursday it's mom's responsibility. Whatever it is you want to work out, but or week to week, like who's going to be on coverage? But if you assume that people will get sick and you have a backup plan in place, this winds up being far less disruption. Lower your expectations, as Sarah was saying, and just as a practical matter, keeps supplies on hand for any regular illness stuff like children's tile and all pedialite, Like you definitely do not want to be running to the drug store with a vomiting baby if you have a sudden need for peda light. I'm obviously I hope you have friends who would go get it for you, but just helps to have it, you know, in the closet, ready to go when the inevitable happens. Maybe even some home COVID tests. Home COVID tests, that's true, you can get those now, so that will yesh for the inevitable exactly, all right? Next question, how do you track your nanny's hours? And then how do you help others see the value of not counting their salary versus childcare but the household total. Yes, we combine questions there. This was not the same person asking these two, but I felt they were related enough that we should go into it. So, Sarah, what do you guys do? I think it sounds like we do a very similar thing, which is that we basically have a standard number of hours, which includes over time. Like let's say it's fifty. I don't even remember it's on our nanny pay thing, but let's say it's fifty and she gets paid for fifty hours. No matter what. If she works thirty six, she gets paid for fifty. If she works forty two, she gets paid for fifty. Like that is kind of like her baseline because I consider her on call, and she knows she's on call, so if a kid is sick, she's coming in. So it's kind of like just the deal we have. Now, if she works more than that, then I put those hours into nanny pay and it calculates it with the one point five the overtime calculation, and then I give her the extra. Our ceiling is high enough. She doesn't go over it that often, especially now that the kids are in school, although this way she might because quarantine. Yeah exactly. Yeah, yeah, now, and I mentioned nanny Pay. Sorry, I just wanted to give details in case anyone's curious. I've mentioned it before. It's an app you pay for. You have to get a yearly subscription. It's fairly DIY, but you can enter the hourly rate. You enter the hours, it will print out tax forms. You have to still file it yourself and everything, but it's been helpful so I don't have to like manually do the math, and then it kind of keeps the record for me as well. Yeah, we do GTM, which is a little bit less DIY, but over the years we've had like more than one person, for instance, and so at that point it becomes you're more managing a business payroll, and like keeping track of all of it yourself would be very complicated. And it's not that expensive once you start having more than one employee, because there's a certain amount for one, but then each additional employee is not much over that, so there's you're amortizing the cost. I would agree that you should set a regular number of contracted hours and just not fret if she is a little bit under that. I think this sounds like a lot of extra mental load that you just do not need to be doing. I think it's also like maybe not a great employment situation if somebody can't count on a certain number of hours per week, right like that. People need their own budgeting stuff, right like they need to know how much they're going to earn every week so that they can set you know, what they can pay for housing, what they can pay for their train, all that other stuff. So you want to be guaranteeing a certain number of hours just as a condition of somebody having a job. That they would want to have, and then you don't worry much about it if it goes a little under, because hey, that's that's part of the deal. Now, if you go over, then you would need to keep track of that. But hopefully you have set the baseline at an amount where I mean, I don't know, three out of four or four out of five weeks that's where it is. So you're just not adding this mental load to yourself that you really do not need to do. Now the bigger question of whose salary does the childcare count against? Like you know, this is really just you have to either believe that childcare is a joint expense or you don't. If your assumption is that mom working is just a nice little thing to have that she doesn't want need to do, you know, then you will come at this differently than if you don't. But I would imagine that a great many best of both world's listeners could theoretically, I mean, even if you're not or even not in your cost of living area, but you theoretically could support a family on your salary in the sense that there are many many families who are living on that amount, and so it is theoretically possible. So in that sense, since either of you could support the family on your own, it is not automatic if you are the lower earning party that you would have to quit, meaning that your salary should be the one that it is counted against. But again, either believe it a shared expense or you don't. I mean, is your house a shared expense or your utility is a shared expense? Like you know, you like the house cooler, so therefore the utility should only count against your salary. I mean, I don't. I don't understand, like how you can even have a joint household and sort of have these these stipulations. I think it also helps to look at this not as a point in time. We've talked about this a lot on this podcast in the past, I've talked about this on my blog. But when economists are looking at a question of an investment, you don't look at just this specific time when the money is going out. You also have to look at the time when the returns are coming back. So if you are considering going to college, for instance, you don't be like, oh my god, I shouldn't go to college because for four years I'm paying more than I'm taking in like that would be a very silly way to look at the question of whether you should go to college. The question is do I think I will get a big enough return on this investment that it is worth making. And for childcare, it is basically the same thing, because if you stay in the workforce, which is what childcare enables for both of you over time, most likely your income will rise over time your childcare costs will fall. Like you won't be needing full time childcare when you have teenagers, I mean most likely you won't. So from that sense, there are major returns over time from staying in the workforce. So you want to consider those early years where the childcare costs are high and maybe your income isn't as high as it could be as an investment, and looking forward to those years when you are reaping the benefits of having stayed in and having much lower costs, not to mention the non financial piece of like happiness and the fact that this is your life that you are living and get to choose to live and if you want to work then I mean, I guess it just sort of to me, it makes like the math of like why even do the math? There's not even a point because if you wanted to stay in the workforce, if you want, if it makes you happier, if you feel like you can be a better person and enjoy your life more, and the family's not going under because you're working, then I just feel like this math problem is like, don't even do it. Yep, there you a best of both worlds answer, right, And to be honest, I never do this math like I think of it. You're right, like, I just think of it as like, Okay, this is an expense we have, But I've never really sat there and said like, oh, it's x percent of my take home pay or whatever, because it's just not relevant, like it's not what I wanted to do. The end, I'm giving you permission to just reject exactly exactly. All right. Next question, also financially related, How and when do you do your budget? Is it part of your weekly review, daily task, et cetera. All right, Sarah, you give their answer on that one. Laura's going to give her non answer in a moment. So we enter transactions as we go, and I say we my husband's usually good about it. Every once in a while, who lot a bunch of receipts accumulated in his wallet and I will have to chase them down at the end of the month. But we're both pretty good about it. It's just reflexive. At this point. We use an app called You Need a Budget, and it's like a matter of seconds. You just pull it up, throw it in there. Now, every month I do a full audit using You Need a Budget pretty much without fail. I think I skipped like one year, but really for the last like five six years, I've done this and just to make sure everything lines up and that I'm not missing any transactions, which we invariably do sometimes, especially stuff that like has charged online or things like that. And then every three months we do a quarterly we like excel as sessiment of the longer term picture, looking at like net worth and where savings are and how much you know, various investments have earned and stuff like that. So we're pretty regimented about that. I'm the one who actually sets the budget for like the different categories each month, and I truly relish and that privilege and enjoy it. So hopefully no one will take that job over for me, because it's fun. So how do you decide to change a category I'm curious, like, what would be the impetus that you would shift something, Well, just if it's something that aligns with what we want our values. So, for example, we're thinking about doing overnight camp this year, which is obviously a much larger expense, and so I'm going to put more in that bucket each month. It's just a matter of what we want to do. I guess, yeah, I don't have a really good answer on this. We are both pretty frugal. We have sort of a set amount of thinking that goes out every year basically, and as long as our bind joint after income tax exceeds that by a substantial amount, then it just doesn't matter in the individual day to day sort of life. So, you know, if you set your base expenses as a sort of relatively small percentage of your income, so particularly in something like housing, and I know Sarah has talked about this in the past, that they have made a deliberate choice to have a relatively small housing you know cost as compared to what anyone would say they could afford, and that just leaves a lot more wiggle room for other things. And I think we operate under the same principle that if you keep these set expenses relatively small, then you have a fair amount of wiggle room. And Sarah likes to track it. I don't like to track it. I like to track my time, which I think Sarah it less likes to track. So we all have certain things that we are into tracking or not to tracking. And I have decided for my own mental sanate, I prefer not to think about specific small dollar amounts because I have very frugal tendencies and I would start doing things like making us buy the store brand peanut butter instead of Skippy, and that would drive my husband crazy since he's the one doing the grocery shopping. So we just let it ride. That's so funny. Yeah, my budgeting doesn't really tempt me to. I don't think either of us are again, naturally particularly frugal, So that's a difference there. It's not like I was trying to, like what's the word tightening, Like I'm trying to tighten each category and try to get to like fifty percent savings rate or something I'm seeing like, No, not ever tempted to do that, and it rains me in and it's it's necessary for us. So yeah, So funny. Obviously. I just want to recognize here that very feel very privileged to be able to do that, right, like to be able to set housing expenses relatively low. You know, you can't do that everywhere and get a good school district and safe places. And so I say that that is obviously a privilege that we enjoy, and I'm very thrilled about that. But yes, not having to track individual dollars is a major mental health benefit for me right now. I love it all right, Next question, what are your favorite kid activities and least favorite kiddective I thought this was a great question. Yeah, so I'm a fan of rock climbing lessons. I will throw that out there. It's kind of random, but it's something if you have children who are not shall we say, particularly gifted in the ball sports category, right, which requires a lot of hand eye coordination, or if they are not particularly swift, which is also another thing that is necessary for say soccer or basketball or whatever. Rock climbing has a lot going for it because very few people have inherent upper body strength, and so it's something that everyone is going to have to learn, and so you're not starting from being so far behind in the way that you are from things that you know involve balls or running that people are more doing from young ages. It's uh, you know, kind of fun for kids because it seems a little bit dangerous in rock climbing gyms. It really isn't. My least favorite, I will have to say is wrestling. I am very proud of Sam for doing it for a couple of years. He did it for like three years. Watching your kid wrestle one on one in the middle of a ring, it's just like physical combat, Oh so hard to watch. Plus, like the meets were always somewhere in random rural Pennsylvania towns at like eight am and Saturday, and so I was just a logistical ridiculousness to get there and you know, be there for like four hours for three meets, like for three matches. So I was not sad when he elected to stop doing wrestling. How about you, Sarah, I am excited. We have some gymnastics classes that have started. They participate masked and haven't put too much of a fight about it. But I like it because it's fun to watch, because I enjoyed it as a kid, and because I get to sit like somewhere comfortable and watch, so the corollary, And I feel so bad saying this because I don't really mean that I dislike it, because the kids liked it, and you know, there does seem to be at least some talent with ball sports with at least one of my kids. But I hated like sitting on the sidelines of soccer for hours. It was so hot, and like, especially if there was a toddler with me or a you know, preschooler, it's justugh. But I don't know, We'll maybe figure out ways to continue that those sports without the part from me. And then I also feel like I have a lot of childhood baggage around, like being told to practice music and so that I have a love hate with that because I love my kids to learn music, but I do not want to be in the position where I'm telling them to practice, but I also don't want them not to practice. So I just I'm in a little bit of like a spiral with that. Yes, that sounds yes, I would say. Just as a practical tip, if listeners have many children, including older ones and younger ones, you may wish to hire a sitter on the weekend for a few hours. If you are facing down long swim meets or wrestling meets or things like that, because while it is miserable enough to be at a four hour wrestling meet, it is even more miserable with a two year old. You're chasing around and you also inevitably wind up missing like the really cool move your kid did, because that's the moment where your two year old alects to go, you know, throw over the trash can that's sitting on the side of the gym. So something to keep in mind. Well, we had one more, but I think we should save it for a future episodes Q and A because it's more involved. So don't worry. A person who wrote in about this other thing, sorry, that's ever beat whatever. I just had to guess yes, exactly, So we will get into our love of the week. A reader wrote to me about this, and I remember the first time I looked at it, I was like, ough, Like okay, so what it is is? It was this YouTube video by a very popular YouTuber that I'm sure half of our audience has heard of, named Jordan Page. She runs the site fun Cheaper Free. Her demeanor is a little different. She's a little outrageous and out there, and the editing of the videos is like these super quick fast cuts that to me is like a little I don't know, not my favorite style. However, I don't remember it. Oh so somebody alerted me to her planner product, which, as you know, I have that other podcast I review planners. It sounded intriguing, so I watched the video again and I still found the video not the world's most fun to watch. Now, She's definitely never going to be a guest on our show whatever, but I thought her concept of her time blocking method was very different than the time blocking I had heard before. I thought it had some value. I thought her planner was actually very unique in a sea of planners that are very similar. So Jordan Paige, I had to give you a second look, but might be something our readers would be interested in checking out. Yeah, well, I'll do my Love of the week. I'm enjoying my Whitney English planner that Sarah bought for me. I am using it. I you know, like when you switch planners, you always have to sort of figure out what you can do with things. But I've found some additional pages in the Whitney English where I could make lists sort of bullet journal style. There are various places through there, and there is enough space on the two pages for each week for me to do roughly what I was doing on my cheap bon notebook before. So it's exciting to have elevated my planner game. So thanks to Sarah for giving me that and for recommending it on Best Like Plans, which everyone should go check out if you're not already listening to Sarah's other podcast. I am so excited that the match ended up working out. I was actually nervous to ask you no, no, It's all good, all right. Well, this has been an all mailbag episode. We will be back next week with more on making work and 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.