Children's Activities. Ep 89

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, 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 says Laura. This is episode eighty nine. Today we're going to be talking mostly about children's activities. How we think about managing our schedule with multiple children's activities, how we choose what to do, how we choose what not to do, any tips we have for that. So, Sarah, as we are recording this, you are on your spring break. But I know a lot of other people have their spring break as they are listening to this. You have the fun of two admin days. Oh that's kind of exciting. Tell us tell us about the admin days. I created those for myself because we're so behind and we're going to go on a cruise, a Disney cruise, so you know that's going to be very concentrated family time. So I don't feel particularly bad. I have childcare for Monday and Tuesday. I don't feel bad about just making those like catchup days for me and for Josh as well. So they're self described admin days. They're going to be great. One of them is half over already. Has it mostly been been personal stuff? I mean it's not work rely, mostly personal stuff, boring stuff like I mean, getting my hair done does that kind of admin, but also catching up on the pile of stuff on my desk, various school forms and god knows what else. So your spring break must be later now, yes as well, yeah as well, not now as we're recording of it, but now as this is airing, admitting it between Passover and Easter. But we will see. It'll be exciting. Everyone will find out what we've done. I actually marked the first half of the week off, like I've been blocking it and steering stuff out of it and not accepting things on those days. But of course we haven't actually planned anything, so we will see now that I've blocked these days off. I'm a shesh I should like go to Europe or something. I don't think we will, since nobody's planned that. I don't think I'm going to be planning it. But we won't stick. We won't stay around the house. I know, we'll go do something, probably for about four days, but we shall see. Anyway, I feel like a last minute trip to Europe might be kind of yeah, hey, it could be fun. Maybe everyone's passports are up to date, so we could. We could. Nothing's stopping us except the expense and headache. So yeah, So activity activity, Well, you have a nice rundown of what your kids are doing right now, A lot more going on than we do, so you can. Well, this is the nature of having older children. Although it's funny, you know, I wrote this up and it sounds like a lot, but it isn't. This is this is the funny thing about activity. So currently, Jasper swims two to three times a week heat. The big three kids are all on a competitive swim team, although they aren't doing a whole lot of the competition. They just really are more doing it for practice. We sort of let them decide how many meats they wished to do, and poor Ruthie had a very traumatic experience of backing out of one meat. She was waiting for her next thing, and then she really had to go to the bathroom, so she had to run away from the starting block. I don't know. Sometimes small children with intense competition could be difficult anyway for a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure. So anyway, he swims two to three times per week. He sings in the school a choir. He used to do karate. Stop doing that. We'll talk about that in a bit. Does the Reading Olympics at school, but that's also you know, he stays after school once a week, which supposed to be once a week. He's only done it probably two out of every three weeks. Sam does flag football in the fall, wrestling in the winter, and little league in the spring, so those are all seasonal. There's only one at a time. He also swimms, but usually only does it one time a week because of these other sport activities that he's doing seasonally. Started drum lessons. He had been doing piano and he got a drum set for Christmas, so he switched over to drums. People think I'm a glutton for punishment on that one, that drum, but children are playing. He does coding club that's after school once a week, so that's pretty low key, just days after school once a week, cub scouts. It sounds like a lot more than it is, but that's because it's all seasonal. So you know, the fact that he does flag football and wrestling on the Little League. None of those ever happen at the same time. Ruth is doing karate, piano lessons and swim but she usually only does one time a week two because she thinks the water is really cold. We actually bought her a little wet suit. It's so cute she wears for a little wetsuit, your pool must be indoors, like six inches of ice on it for the entire swim season if it was outdoors. No, this is This is an indoor pool, but apparently it's insufficiently heated in her mind. Alex Is started karate very cute. He'd been going to ruth stuff for years and then he started it himself as soon as he's he's starting soccer on the weekend and soccer shots and young Sports class during the week. But he does a lot of stuff like music class and swim class, but that's in the afternoon when he's not in school. And I because parents have activities too. I sing in a choir on Thursday nights. We perform every sing with the Service every Sunday morning. So yes, parents are allowed to have their own activities involving time specific commitments too. I encourage parents to do this, and honestly, because you know, if you are making time to play in a softball league or play in a community orchestra or something like that, you probably I think there's even more validity to it because you are choosing that with so many other things on your plate, whereas your kid may just be like it sounds cool, or I haven't really thought about it, or mom's making me do it, or my friend is doing it. I mean, for you to make time to play your violin and a community orchestra means you probably truly care about it because it's the logistical planning, so it'd be a pretty good addition to your life. I just want to make the point with the volume of activity is that it sounds like a lot, but you know everyone, I mean, the nature of having four children is that there will appear to be a lot going on, but once we get into a rhythm of it's not that bad. There's usually only one or two things on a weekday and maybe one or two things on a weekend day. And I did try to set up the schedule so I don't have to drive. You seem like you have a fair amount of redundancy set up in there as well. So does that help with the drop offs? Like, are you able to coordinate some of those swim drop offs or karate drop offs? Well, the two karate are at the same time. Also, the two little kids karate classes are at the exact same time. Swim has not been unfortunately, that has never worked out so well. There's maybe for a while we had it where one kids drop off was the same time as another kids pick up, but that doesn't That was only for a couple months and then they shifted again. And because they're all at different levels so they meet at different times. But you know, I honestly think I like activities. I think it's a good way for kids to explore their interests outside of school, and particularly I mean, our kids are in classes where I think they are being challenged. But if your kid is in a school where that's not always happening, like you don't feel like they're sufficiently challenged and all. Sometimes activities are a great way to add something that is more at the kids level. Might be challenging, might be difficult, have to figure out how something works, you know. And I tend to think it's when they're home. It's so easy for the kids to wind up just on screens and it becomes this game of whack a mole with the number of screens in the house, and I just don't have the bandwidth to monitor it, like to go follow all four around and be like, have you just turned on a computer? Have you turned on a TV? Have you turned on you know, mommy's phone that you found somewhere, Like, I mean, I just can't monitor all of it. So the way to keep them doing other things is to keep them busy with I mean that makes sense. You know, if you have a first grader, for example, and you know, if she spent some time doing homework and she spent some time in karate, you know, if the balance of it was spent on screens, that's not that much time left. Yeah, So it's about what they were doing afterwards. So yeah, and how about you. What do you guys have going on right now? I mean we because we moved. We have very little going on. We used to have like, what like phrenetic levels of activity for the ages of our children. I mean, at one point, I think they were both in gymnastics, they were both in swimming, and then they both had a number of things that were sort of directly after school, although in my mind those barely count as activities. You know, like if you can sign up for cooking and it's from two to three, so it makes the pickup at the end of the day at three instead of two, and it's at the same place. I don't think that's as draining on a child as like going to the gymnastics gym, changing into your outfit, getting in with a whole new group of kids, and participating in that. It feels, I think to them more like a fun extension of school, like a little bit of a special activity. So they were doing a lot of that, They were doing a couple of outside things. Right now we're just doing really almost nothing. I may sign them up for a gymnastics gym locally that has classes that they would have a boys class for Cameron and a girls class for Annabelle that's held at the exact same time, so it'd be very easy. Yes, oh, like during like a couple options, like Wednesday at three thirty, like so during the week, so Arnanny could bring them and then she would just play with Genevieve and then they'd be done. I am a sucker right now for any activity that has Annabel and Cameron in their own separate things but at the same time in the same place. And that is actually a pretty hard thing to me, right because like for gymnastics, they can't be in the same class because we already figured it out that they like sabotage each other, so they have to be in separate ones. And then for piano we do the same thing. So on Saturdays they have piano at the same time at a studio, but they each have their own different teacher. So it's like, you know, two birds with one stone. It's very nice, nice, very nice. Yeah, but we're not doing We're just not doing much this year. I think we'll do more next year. I do. I will say one of my children, I think is prone to getting a little worked up when there's just a little too much going on and may withdraw from everything. And I also learned a bit of a lesson with Annabel did Miami City Ballet at age four, which I was all proud of myself for giving her this amazing opportunity because Miami City Ballet is like a real ballet studio, and you know, you don't have to try out as a four year old. They'll take anyone. So I was like, Okay, great, we're gonna do it, and you have to buy all the official stuff. And she started it and they're very serious and you have have a really tight bun, et cetera, et cetera. So like two years into it and the teachers are like, you know, very strict, to the point where they're like critiquing these like five and a half year old's form, like come on, a stand up straighter, can't you bend it? Don't bend your leg like that. And she was quickly like forget this. So my attempt to kind of give her the best option ended up backfiring, and now she doesn't want to do any ballet. So I've got too much hair for this bun, Yeah, pretty much. So just sometimes I think that if you get too excited about something or you go for the most intense version of something. Now I've learned that's not always the best. Yeah, it's so hard with stuff like that, because there are activities where you if you start young and you are into it, you will have a much better run of it. Yeah, and ballet is like one of those ballets. I feel like I was doing her this huge favor, especially because I as a child, did not take ballet as a young kid, and that you know, it would have been I feel like if I had and a lot of that stuff earlier, maybe I would have liked that your fantasy of being a principal with alf Yes, totally. Yeah, No, I we're saying or music things like that, and I we just had this experience of my having these little fantasies along the lines because we got a flyer for the Philadelphia Girls Chorus, which similarly, I'm sure to the Miami City Ballet would have been you know, professional opportunities to work with your voice, to develop it to you know, learn music. Very challenging environment. Uh so all that stuff, and so I'm like, Ruth, would you like to audition for this? You know, I'd figured out how we do it, even though it'd be like downtown. She looks at the flyer and it was totally like you know that was the song thank you, next, next, next, just like no, no way, you know, like not even part of me, Like I would have killed to do something like this, but and you probably wouldn't would have would have but she kids are not ourselves. Kids are not ourselves. And even if you can recognize this from the future of being like, well, it's really good to have this sort of musical training, and you know, what can you do that, they don't want to do it. They don't want to do it. We tried gymnastics last year for the year and she liked it for the year and I was like, yeah, you know, I feel like she could do gymnastics, maybe this could be something she could be serious about. And nope, she wanted to be done with that this year. So that's they aren't us. I also feel like when you come to something wanting to do it yourself, you are much more into it. There's a different energy there, there's a totally different energy to it than if you don't come to it yourself. Now, obviously that's all hard trade off because there are things that you do need to learn early, and so maybe as a parent you try to expose people to a lot and if there's something they like, and then because they like it, they practice a lot and get decent at it. Then you can try and help children over maybe those dips that we all have in motivation. If you think that they're really you know, would still like it, but the kids just like, eh, you know, why make life harder for yourself and them? I guess yeah, it's hard to know when to push or how much to push. I can see both kids enjoying piano, and we're already at this point where they're like, well, she could practice a little bit more, but don't push it. Like even the instructors like, but don't push her too much. And it's sort of like, you know, because really you don't enjoy those kinds of things until you do get better at them, and you don't get better at them until you practice. So to some extent it makes sense to put at least a little bit of incentive. I guess that's been my art. I think we had a discussion in the car. It was like, Annabell, how about if we work on like ten minutes a day and we fill out a chart and if you do five days, then you know we'll reward you in some way, not in some big way, but in some minor way. And she was like, oh, good idea, because I think she sort of liked the idea of having motivation, Like it wasn't like, oh, ten minutes, I'll just do it to get the prize. I think she was sort of like, ooh, a mechanism to make me more compliant with my practicing. So yeah, I don't know, Yeah, we all eat a little something. I mean, I think about it. I've sang in choirs for years, although I took six years off between when we moved from New York to Pennsylvania and then before I started singing last year in my church choir, and there was nothing stopping me from like practicing scales or taking voice lessons during this time, but I just didn't do it right. And so now having the motivation of singing with a group, and you know, it's making me do it a little more like I you know, in my office, I have the piano, which the where the keyboard that the kids play too, and so I'll sit there and sing my scales and practice songs and you know, definitely doing a lot more of that than I ever was, even though I could have done it. I just didn't. Yeah, so no, we definitely need sometimes a little bit of external motivation for these things. So that's where we are with activities now. Maybe next year will be more adventurous. Yeah, we'll be more into the area. I would say that if a kid truly does want to do something, so we've been talking about, you know, when they're you're kind of in the middle and the parent maybe want to do it too. But if the kid truly does want to do something, I do feel like it's good to owe it, you know, to the child to try to make that happen. You know. I know it's sort of fashionable talk about, oh, kids are overscheduled, we don't want to put too much on our weekend. But if a child truly loves something and is often coming up with their own things, like mommy, you know so and so could drive me home from this, I mean, like, please make it happen. You know. So Sam really wanted to do wrestling, and so we have done wrestling the past three years. I don't know if he's going to stay with it, but you know, this was definitely totally led by him. He had seen the flyer, he had brought it to me and be like, I want to do this. I have no idea why he was so into this idea, but you know, and I don't particularly like watching wrestling. It's very difficult to watch as a parent because it's like one on one combat, your kid like doing something in the middle of the mat. Very very difficult to watch, particularly if they lose the match. But you know, it's been fascinating to see that this is something he chose, and so we just support it, you know, make sure that he can do the practices and get to meets and all that. Yeah, I could totally see that, even though I am committed to not ending up in some situation where I have to drive to like far flung soccer games every weekend. But you know what, if one of my kids really really wanted to do travel soccer, then they probably wanted to do it enough that they don't care if I'm sitting in every game at the sidelines. Yeah, I can sid it a select number of games at the sidelines and we can all be happy. Yeah. So there's different ways to try out activities. I mean, one we had on our list here is, you know, a one week summer day camp. So if you are looking for various things to keep your kids occupied during the summer, and they've listed, you know, ten different activities they want to try, rather than signing up for ten activities in the fall, you know, and having the craziness of that on top of the school schedule. See if you can find you know, one week of summer day camp devoted to that particular activity, and if they like it, then maybe that's a keeper that you can then do in the fall. And possibly the place that has the camp also has fall activities, so that might be something that could keep going. But that's a relatively low way to try, low key way to try something out. I like that. And then your logistical tips. I am all about logistical do what is easy. That's why I like to put the kids and things that are at the same time. What are some of your logistical tips. Well, definitely look for activities that are nearby. So the fact that I am driving to swim like five times a week is a lot less horrible given that it's only eight minutes away. It's actually right next door to our church, so it's like we're there all the time. I've got the route mapped out, you know, it's a I'm pretty much driving there every day, but that's okay. It's the fact that it's eight minutes there and back means that you can go there and go back, even for only an hour. Long thing is sometimes we'll stay and you know, do work or I've run during swim, but it seems to work fine to actually come back as well. You know, after school activities are also good, as we mentioned, because then you don't have to get them there, so reducing any driving to once versus twice or having to stay there during the time. And so if your school does offer stuff that's almost you know, if you only had school age children, it'd be a great way to get extra childcare hours honestly out of it. Instead of your kid coming home at say four, they might be four thirty or you know, it would it would just make it a little bit longer. And if you have some flexibility in your job, that may actually get you to the point where you wouldn't need an additional after scale, after school program or sitter. I'm also a big fan of investing in extra childcare if necessary with activities to avoid the sheer misery fact of having a toddler on the sidelines of an extremely long activity for an older child. You know, we've had this, you know, weeks when we haven't had say weekend childcare, and we've had a swim meet and a wrestling meet. So pick your poison. Which parent gets the kid the toddler on the sidelines. Is it going to be wrestling where you're trying to keep them out of a mat where you know, a ring where people are fighting, or is it are you trying to keep them off out of a pool? Because that's that's worse too, you know, So there's like all sorts of bad choices here. So you know, finding another place for the toddler to be during these things allows you to then pay attention to your older kids sport as well, because I I had the experience of like missing one of my kid's goals, like you know, they're never going to score another goal in the whole season, and I miss the one because I'm chasing a kid into the parking lot. It's just you know, you know, spectating with a one year old on your lap is terrible. And it's gotten different now. I mean, now that the kids are older, they can you can entertain them with screens in a way that you can't with a one year old, you know, not that the not oppositional, not being opposed to screens, but just that like they're not they don't stay interested in it. It's not gonna Mickey can only you know, sing one song and then they're like, okay, I want to jump at the pool on getting in the pool again. Yeah. So now that the kids are old enough to actually be entertained by an hour long movie or something, then it's much less necessary to have backup care for that, but definitely, you know, have it. The other reason you might want to consider it is that there might be opportunities for the parent to do something during an event. I have definitely gone running during swim practice. Kind of feels like found time, or you know, gone for a walk in the neighborhood of flag football game, you know, even if you want to watch the game. The way it was set up is that practice was before the game, so you know, I could go walk during practice and then come watch the game. So yeah, definitely feels like found time. Although I'd say one thing with sometimes when you do drag the little kid along, they start to like it themselves and they pick up on things. And our nanny had been taking Alex to Ruth's karate lesson on Monday, because you know, it was at four o'clock, like I couldn't always be done with work by four to deal with stuff like that. And so he was watching it and he was playing with toys and there was another little kid that he liked to play with there side. But then he was started really watching it, and then she asked, you know, do you want to do it? And he's like yeah, yeah, And so now he started. Now there's four, he can start taking lessons too, and he's already got some of the moves down because he's been studying. Like that's yeah, yeah, all right. What else do you have for us, Sarah, Well, we were talking about organization and you have your bins. We have like our piano backpack. We used to have our ballet bag, so everything was in one bag, even her uniform and everything, because it was just like that's your ballet spot. So I highly compartmentalizing your activity stuff into one very specific place bag or location I think is key because there's never a worse time to be scrambling to find some little accessory than when you need to get out the door. Yeah, and I'm a fan of actually having multiple accessories, multiple versions of the accessory if it's something that you need. So swim goggles would be an example here of something that yes, they have their favorite, but if there are backups, that's really good in case one gets lost, because this is something you can have multiple ones of. Now that might be a little bit different with a highly specialized piece of equipment, obviously, but for something like a swim swim goggles where I'm trying to think, what else I don't know, ballet shoes, what else could you have multiple versions of? Well, goggles are the best one. I can never keep track of the goggles and we probably need to just buy like twenty pairs of goggles and just like but I do like the individual sport bag because then if you know you keep the stuff in that bag, then it has a home and you just grab the bag on the way out the door. We have our mudroom bins where the kids each have their own bin and that is where their stuff will go. So if we need to run out the door, we have it. Let's talk about quitting. Quitting, quitting, Oh my gosh, I don't have any I want to hear. Your story is probably better than mine. I mean, I think there was one point where we did actually allow I'm able to quit in the middle of the year with swim because it's became such utter misery that it was like we're punishing ourselves. I mean, she knew how to swim at that point, it was more like drills. And again, doesn't necessarily love being told exactly what to do. Just wasn't a good fit. So we did allow her to quit, mostly just to help ourselves deal with the rest of the season. We let Cameron say in it. We gave him a lot of positive reinforcement for continuing. And yeah, so that's my story. I don't have any good tip, Noah, I think so. I guess my thought on this, and I've been talking to a lot of other parents about this too, is if you're on a team, quitting mid season is not a good idea because that's teaching all kinds of bad things about your you know, unless there's some particular, you know, really big thing, a traumatic incident or an injury obviously like you know, you yes, you don't have to keep playing injured, or if there's a major academic issue that has to be dealt with, then maybe that's the least bad solution is that they step back from activities that are taking away from studying time, So that might be a reason to do it, although in general no, I would say trying to avoid what I call the rage quit. To gamers, rage quit and they you know, quit their game in the middle. But if the child has had a really bad practice or a bad game, or you know, just lost badly in something, that can be a moment where they want to quit. And I think that's a really bad moment to quit, because you know, then you're not learning the resiliency of coming back from that and saying, well, actually, you know you can do Okay, you can recover from these things. It is not the end of the world. You are bigger than this. There's more to you than this. I like the idea of like a finite number, like yeah, okay, you may quit, but first you must go to three more and like really reassess you see, not like necessarily you have to go to twenty more because the season is only half over. Yeah, no, I think that, and especially if it's something individual. I mean, yes, we don't have to do things for the rest of our lives. We can walk away from things and sometimes we have to learn to do that as an adult, that you can walk away from things that are no longer working for you, but you know, trying to give it a best shot. And so with karate, I think, you know, Jasper had stayed through it to his brown belt, so he was getting quite high up. He had gone into a different class which was definitely more challenging, although I thought he was doing okay with it, but I think he felt it was just not what he wanted to put the time into in order to continue to get better at it and perform at the level he was going to need to to then keep advancing in that last step toward black belt. So I said he couldn't quit the first time he told me this, right like, he had to go to several more classes to you know, feel if he still felt that way, and you know, he did, like four classes later he still felt that way. This was shortly after starting sixth grade, which the workload was considerably bigger than it was with you know, elementary school. And he also was willing to start going to swim more frequently. He had been going less, and so he said he was willing to go to swim more often. Said, well, okay, that would be a reasonable trade that you're still doing something athletic. So we said it was okay, So there we go. You know, one kid out, then another kid starts. So then Alex started a few months later, so we still still have two kids at the at the karate studio, at the dojo, at the doo. Yeah exactly. So, yeah, that's that's what we got. Well, our Q and A today has nothing to do with activities, but that's okay. We had a reader, Uhra, why don't you read it? Yeah, right into us about pregnancy, and she wrote, I will be honest, the first four months of being pregnant, I hated it and I was certain I would never do it again. Now that I am ending my second trimester, I am open to the idea of at least one more child again. I always wanted at least two. My questions are how do you survive pregnancy without hating life? Specifically the morning sickness, lack of mobility. I'm a runner, and the ligament pain stopped me for my favorite form of exercise since around twenty weeks, and generally changing everything about your life for ten months. As two women who have decided to have three or four children. I would love to hear your advice. She asks if it gets easier to be pregnant after the first time, and whether the time goes faster, and also if we had any thoughts on age and having children, because she'll be thirty two when the first is born. Yeah, well, congrats on the upcoming level, little one. That's exact. I never liked pregnancy. You didn't either, did you? Not? Really? No? No, I wonder if they're I wonder if the people who say they love it are just loving it in retrospect. I don't know. I I was definitely counting every week, like, ooh, okay, now I'm at Thursday of this week, so I'm at twenty nine weeks. Now I'm at Thursday the next week, so I'm thirty weeks. And I know there's that old adage of like, oh, when it's your third kid, you lose track. I'm like, I never lost track, No, never lost track, because I was just like, what am I done? And I mean, yeah, when am I done? I guess I love children. I love being a mom, and how having the pregnancy was sort of a step in getting there, and so it's kind of a necessary thing to get to that point, and therefore you deal with it. I mean, I got to say that. You know, she said the first semester can be bad for everyone, but I think that the first pregnancy is more psychologically difficult because you feel like your life is going to change and you're the first thing of that is is that your body is changing and suddenly you can't necessarily do things in the way that you were going to before. Like if you know, you've been the paragon of health your entire life and all of a sudden you're like vomiting daily. This is not you know, I was never that I felt I felt sick, but I wasn't. I wasn't really throwing up, but it you know, it's like my body has been taken over. And then you're tired. And if you're the sort of person who's been perky all the time and all of a sudden you're tired all the time, you feel like what's going on? And then also, you know, people start treating you differently, like once you're showing, and that can be you know, people start putting you in this mom cam that like I don't know, they won't serve you a beer if you want a beer. I mean, I'm going to get hate mail for this, but you know, like just you know, if you want to have a couple SIPs and all of a sudden, this is this huge deal, or not serving you sushi or whatever else. So you know, people start treating you incredibly differently and that can be tough. But by the second kid, you already have the kid with you, so it's like you're already tired, you're already getting sick because the kid's picking up germs at daycare and giving them to you. Like everyone's already treating you like a mom because you are a mom. You know. I think it was just like less psychologically, you know of a change there. So you know, if this listener does know that the first trimester is particularly rough for her, if she does decide to have a second, you know, make sure you get extra help with your what will be you know, your two year old or three year old when you're going through that, and make sure you can get extra rest during that time. The comment that I thought was funny in this was that she wrote the concept of generally changing everything about your life for ten months, but really like the part where you're pregnant is so much less of a life change than the part that happens after, So maybe she's just going to figure that out later. I don't know. Yeah, the baby is the real lifestyle thinned. Yeah. I mean, yes, you're somewhat limited, but it's nothing compared to actually having a person that you're in charge of and taking care of and bonded to. And you know, yeah, I will say, I guess My comments in addition are that I also hated the first trimester, so it's okay. The rest of pregnancy does often get better, and I think this person was like only a few months in which she was twenty weeks, so maybe maybe it was going to get better after this comment. And even if running was not working that I really encourage her to work on seeing if there's other forms of exercise that agree with her better during pregnancy, like maybe swimming, or maybe more strength work or maybe yoga, because you know, there is this known mood boosting benefit to exercise. And if she used to run all the time and now she's doing nothing, then yeah, she's really going to to feel the lack of the running. But if she finds other things, she may find that actually she can get just as much of a high, especially while pregnant. You know, it's very demanding to walk on a treadmill at a fast paced at an incline when you're carrying a big bump around. You could probably get just as much of a workout doing that than running or doing perntal yoga or strength or something something else. Yeah, as for spacing, I mean, you know, I had my last child at thirty six, and I guess it was definitely my body felt differently than it did being twenty seven and pregnant. I gotta say, it doesn't necessarily get easier the longer you go, even if you're used to it. So being used to the symptoms means you can sort of manage them more, But your body does get older. And I know, Sarah, you were talking in our notes about you know, not wanting to wait too long. Yeah, I mean, even having just a taste of what it feels like to not be able to get pregnant when you want to. I would just say, if you know you want more kids, there's really no reason to wait it. It's only going to get harder to get pregnant later, and you just can't take your fertility for granted, at any point, but particularly once you get to the upper thirties and even to over forty. It's it's not something that you can just count on. So I would say that don't wait unless there's some really compelling reason to do so. All right, So love of the Week, you finally did it? Oh my goodness, I did. I didn't even just do the twenty seventeen photos. The photo books. Her Love of the Week is photo books. Sorry, yes, So I don't know if you guys. Well, we did air our Goals episode recently where we talked about I think that I didn't do the photo books yet. We tend to do them about like at the end of the years, and often I procrastinate so long that it's the fall. But it's March as we record this, it's April as it airs, and I have not only finished with twenty seventeen's, but I also ordered twenty eighteen. And that is because I noticed this little thing on Shutterfly that said make my book. It was just for you, yes, and all you have to do is make my book. Was to upload all of your pictures, which you know that take a little time, but actually not nearly as much time as one might expect, and then you wait a couple of days. I am sure it's either done by a robot or a person in another country. But in two days you get this like mock up of your book that someone else put together. And yeah, you can add whatever customizable you know, like captions you want, or you can just look at it and say, this is pretty darn good all on itself. The pictures are chronologic, they're arranged reasonably nicely. And now my photo books are done and you could just order them, which is what I did, and I am just so happy. So if you didn't know that, they do have a make my book option and it cost a whopping four dollars and ninety nine cents for them to do this for you. Awesome, So it probably is a robot. But that's okay, now, smart Rose awesome, smart robot. Yeah, you use that. My love of the week. We hung a gallery in the upstairs hall of We did a photo shoot in November early November of all the kids and got gorgeous photos of them. And you know, we've had blank walls basically in the house because it's just such a pain to print stuff up, get it framed. Hang them level, you know, if you've got more than one photo. But we finally did it and it looks great. I love walking past it and seeing all their smiling little faces. And they'll probably be mad as they get older, be like why did you get me at that one age? Like I didn't like that picture or whatever, but you know, it's it's nice. It's so fun to see all of them as they're you know, getting older now that we're not in this pregnancy baby stage anymore, that you know, capture them at least at this this moment of time. And yeah, you know, it's uh. I guess that's what I would say to our to our listener, that you know, the pregnancy is is such a small part of the whole parenting journey, and yeah, it's not particularly fun. Maybe we'll hear from listeners who're like, what are you talking about. I loved being pregnant, but you know, I don't think either Sarah and I had that experience. But it's just so awesome to have these little people to share your life with that you know, it's just part of the deal, and we can do all sorts of things that maybe are not our you know, most wonderful, pleasant experience at the moment, but has such amazing payoffs. And you know, I've so loved, you know, being a mom these these past almost twelve years. Now that I'm really glad that twenty seven year old me was willing to go through that. Yes, one hundred percent of a payoff that was worth it, I agree. Which is also a good reminder to take more family photos because man, those toddler years also go by incredibly quickly, and they're really cute, yeah, really really cute. All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. This has been Episode eighty nine. We've mostly been talking about children's activities, but pregnancy too, and we'll be back next week on more 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.