Parenting Highs & Lows

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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 hart Unger. 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 one. We had our big two hundredth episode anniversary celebration last week, but this is episode two hundred one because we just keep going, and this episode is going to be about our kids to a degree. It's going to be about proud parenting moments, low parenting moments, and things we really like about each of the kids that we're learning from them as they grow up. So you know, there's a limit to how much we can actually talk about our kids on this pod, right, Yeah, And that's more and more as they get older, which I was saying is kind of a shame because I mean, it's not like our need for advice and sharing goes away when the kids get to be six or eight or ten or whatever. But it's less and less easy to compare vignettes on the internet because sharing about your issues nursing or pumping is about you. And also, you know, all one year olds to some extent are kind of similar, or a lot of them are. But then it just becomes so much more personal as they get older, as they become really their own people, their own personalities, and their own Internet things with they're reading all of it, which is or listening to the podcast because it's out there and you can. But yeah, their own people, their own lives. And so I think for any of our listeners who are in the tween and teen stage or entering that it might be a good idea to really think about some close friend and family really relationships where you have people that you can share advice with and share these stories because your need to seek commiseration with other people or to see how other people did things. Yeah, as Sarah said, doesn't change, it's just that you can't talk about it. So that's when it really is good to have those friends who are there do your kids listen to the podcast. Sorry that was a digression sometimes yeah, well, not necessarily on their own, but when Michael is driving them places in the car, sometimes they'll all listen to it together. That's so cute. Well, sometimes they covin like quisby about something. I'm like, when you said this, not even they listen to this. Sometimes they listened before breakfast sometimes, And I don't know if they feel my productivity advice is worthwhile or not. We'll see how everyone shakes out on that. But yeah, so let's talk about some of our recent like proud parenting moments, so you'll forgive our exiting a little bit of happiness about these, Sarah, what did you have recently? A couple of months ago, it was our first foray into outdoor dine actually one of our only forays. We haven't done a lot of dining one way or the other since the pandemic. And we decided to get pizza after the kids ran around on the beach at an outdoor venue and this older lady was sitting across from us and was like, your children are so well behaved and I love their conversations. Did they attend a Montessori school? And the truth was only some of them did. The older ones did not, the younger ones did. So I was like, well, actually, yes they do. And it turned out that she was like involved in Montessori education and knew the head of the school where Cameron and Genevieve go, and she was just so she ended up like buying them a dessert. She was like so into our kids and how they were having I don't know, some discussion about like features of animals or something like that. But as we'll discuss later, things are not always like that. So I think that because there are some lower moments when when is good, I really really appreciate it, like that was a highlight. Yeah, yeah, that sounds really awesome. I had one recently where all four of the big kids went to the dentist, and so Michael schedules us all at the same time, like the six of us who have enough teeth to get cleaned, all at the same time, and so this place doesn't have like six hygienists either, so we're going in and staggered thing I was at home. It's actually our new nanny's first day. I don't haven't really mentioned this. We had a childcare changes and we have our longtime nanny moved on. We had to hire somebody new. Obviously, this was her first day. We're all going to the dentist, so I have to wait. You know, she's coming, leave Henry with her, get Henry situated with her. So I show up later to the dentist. I walk in. Alex and Ruth are sitting on the couch in the waiting room just so patiently, just like sitting there. And they'd been sitting there for twenty minutes because for or whatever reason, my husband had put the older boys in first, and so they're back getting cleaned, and so I sit with Ruth and Alex and we talk about things for a little bit, and then Ruth goes in and I'm still with you know, Alex comes back eventually, and you know, he sits nicely and gets his teeth cleaned, and then he comes over to watch me. They allow him to come over and watch Him's just so pleasant and asking questions and having a conversation. And my other kids too were too, you know, all talking with the dentist and you know, and eventually the hygienius was like, you know, your kids are so nice and like sweet and patient, and like, you know, we've had a lot of like entitled kids in here, like doing all sorts of horrible things at the dentist's office, So your kids aren't like that at all. I was like, oh, I'm so proud, like you know, a that Alex could wait like in essence an hour and not destroy the whole dentist office like that was a good moment for me and all so that they thought my kids were nice people, which was so heart grew three sizes listening to all that. It does make me want to compliment other people when I see their kids acting good, like that's it, because people are going to remember it. And I actually have that opportunity a lot. Well, sometimes depending on how are sometimes we just keep quiet, we can't say anything nice, we don't say anything at all exactly. So our other thing I think we had this somewhat in common, is that I was very proud of how non complaining my kids were in general about the pandemic and the changes about masks. I have one kid that seems to want to wear masks forever and they can continue to do that if they'd like, and not being able to do things they weren't like, oh, that's not fair, I can't have a birthday party. They were like, oh, okay, we get it, pandemic, that's fine. Whatever. Like they were happy about the little things when we got popcorn or going outside to take walks. And I don't know if they would have kept their good natured spirits up for like five more years of that, but I was pretty pretty impressed. I guess they're just more adaptable than sometimes we think. Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised by how they rolled with it, especially at the beginning when everything was just like what on earth is going on? It was just like, Okay, we don't have any more school, Guess we're homeschooling. Guess we'll play minecraft. I mean, it was just like, okay, you know, I'm glad that you're not really concerned about it, which is good because they shouldn't be their kids, and we had sat at the beginning. It's like our job to make them feel this is more of an adventure than a horrible, awful thing that is happening. And they've been pretty good about it and about managing the hybrid school schedule, and then now we're back full time, which is wonderful, but just yeah, rolling with the punches. And I know that many people have not had as good an experience, and maybe their schools have not been as quick to get back in person, and we feel for people who are still dealing with all this right now. But yeah, I was amazed at how resilient they were about it and grateful too. I do think, well, you have some kids that are close to teens, but from what I've gleaned from patients and people with older kids is that the ones who struggled a little bit more and a lot more in some cases were kind of the older teenagers, which I guess makes sense. They're like closer to being adults, but still with lacking a lot of self regulation because they're teenagers. I mean, that's normal, kind of interesting. Well, and it disrupted so many of their friendships and romantic relationships and things like that. And you're trying to establish your identity apart from your parents and suddenly your back stuck with your parents twenty four to seven. That can really be awful, and especially if you're having to miss things like prom and graduation and senior trips and all these things that are so part of people's stories and their identity. I mean, it's just and they're old enough to recognize they're not going to get it back. Yeah, they're not going to get it back. A lot of thing makes my heart hurt. Yeah, No, I'm who said I was grateful that we, you know, our kids were the age that they were we recently had Maybe I could share a picture of this somewhere. But the older ones set up a sibling Olympics, which was pretty cool. One of the events in the Sibling Olympics was making breakfast, so I got some waffles and pancakes and eggs and strawberries out of that. That was pretty cool. And I also really love seeing them take care of Henry that he has a lot of people who can play with him, which is really helpful. You know, they can have kids sit with him for a while or play with him for twenty minutes when I need to do something else. Having a lot of kids can be harder than having fewer kids, I guess in some ways. But once you get older ones, they start to have the helpful element sometimes, and that is great. I've really enjoyed seeing that side of their personalities come out too. Love it. Shall we go ahead and take a break before we get to our bad parenting moments. Perfect believe we'll be right back. Some negativity. All right, we are back. And since we're gonna we're gonna make if anybody has heard of a feedback sandwich where you give something good and then you give something constructive or not so good, and then you give something good, this episode opportunities for growth exactly. This episode is going to follow that structure. So this is in part because personally, I feel that I benefit from hearing others low moments sometimes because it makes me feel a lot less alone when I have my own, makes me feel less like there's something wrong with me. So Laura and I are going to go ahead. We're gonna be a little and more anonymous with this because, again but helpfully, we have each a few kids, so we're able to tell somebody's story anymous without entirely telling them. Okay, my first one is in the kind of toddler years, and we had a particularly memorable plane flight where one child exploded a baby food pouch which happened to be blueberry, of course, all over everyone like in a row. The other child fell asleep and had an accident and did not want to change and had to be carried partially unclothed and whiling through the airport. So that felt like a low moment. And if you've been there, well, just know that you're not alone. There's somebody else carrying a naked child through the airport covered in blueberry apple sauce or whatever it is. Yeah, so I know I've told this particular low moment before at some point, but maybe it was one hundred episodes ago. So if you aren't worth listening, then back when I was pregnant with number four, so I had three older children, but they were not very old. We had rented a house in the Jersey Shore, and theoretically we were either supposed to have a babysitter there or my husband there with me the whole time, but that did not happen for various reasons, And so I was spending a lot of time rainy day at a beach house with three small children while pregnant. And at some point some of the children elected to start a game to entertain themselves in which they jump off the front porch railing into the bushes. So I was not a big fan of that game, and at one point I was out on the sidewalk. I just like lost it, like screaming about stop jumping off the railing, and the neighbors complained to our landlord about the crazy screaming lady on the sidewalk, so she calls to try to suss out if there's like some sort of child abuse that needs to be reported. So that was a particularly low moment for me. I was not thrilled about that. Hop like, maybe your kids were jumping off to escape the yelling lady or something. I don't know. I don't know they were. They were just jumping off because it was the thing to do. Oh my goodness. Interesting that those both involved vacations. I think vacations are a you're in a new scenario. You may have predict did your children would act one way? They didn't. We all learned things, but at least we have memories to take away. Yes, all right, my seconds a little more heartfelt and you know, still something we're kind of dealing with at times. But just receiving negative feedback from a teacher about behavior, especially when it's repeated and that nothing changes, It keeps happening, and you start worrying that the kid is going to hate school. Readers of my blog. I've gone into a little bit more detail, but this can be tough. And I will say from a parenting perspective, when I hear other people going through this, I never think to myself, Wow, you must be like crappy parents. And yet when I was going through it, I absolutely was like, well, I must have done everything wrong. We've allowed so much screen time. I'm sure that's, you know, the root of all evil. And I could have done things better, or I should have you know, helped my kids be more prepared or something. I don't know. You do go to blaming yourself. And it's been helpful to hear from a lot of people that like they had those thoughts too, But really that's probably not accurate. So we are doing proactive things now and we've poured time and resources into helping with things. So that's good. But it was kind of a lower parenting moment because it's all well and good to be I don't know to say, you can be very hands off and let kids be independent about school when they're doing a great job, but when things aren't as successful, it does become more difficult and you have to reevaluate what your role is. Yeah, So semi related. I have one child that I'm sure people longtime listeners know exactly which one this is, but who in any sort of group setting will sometimes get into trouble for being physical. And this makes sometimes group sports just painful because you are constantly watching to make sure that he's not going to do something that is going to freak other parents out. And this, you know, like this is a soccer game the other day where yeah, I'm not sure, like I'm not gonna say he isn't instigating it. I don't think he's always instigating it, but he has a good chance of being the one who gets caught. So like somebody's like, that child is kicking my kid. He's got to be separated away from my kid. And I'm like, like, it just always stinks to be the bad parent, right, Like you're the one whose kid is you know, causing the problem or I don't know, maybe keeping somebody else's child from performing at their highest where they're going to be noticed for the travel soccer team. I don't know what's going on, but it just is painful to deal with that over and over again. And yet you don't want to like not let the kid play sports. There we go. I don't know, that is hard, that is super hard. All right, Well, here's we're going a little back to babyhood because we do have a lot of listeners who are still in the thick of those baby and toddther years. So I will share a vivid memory. I was taking Annabel to ballet class, which I could tell some stories about that in and of itself. She was not the most enthusiastic ballet participant, but that's okay. But I had Genevieve with me. She went to class, and I was I don't know, she was like maybe six months old, ninetieth percentile, you know, pretty much exclusively breast well, exclusively breastbread. I think I had some like baby foods, but otherwise just breast milk. So clearly this is a big honkin baby. But sometimes she would just scream and cry, not want to take my boob, or act like I didn't have enough milk, like for whatever reason, and she got into one of those modes at the ballet class. I'm sure compounded by the fact that like I'm sweating and people are like watching me and like it's you know, that probably made things worse and some well, meeting lady like walked up to me and was like, you know, you should just feed her or something like that. Like while I was like holding her between attempts to feed her, and I think I like bit her head off. I was like I have been like, oh, like, I don't remember what I said, but I remember being like, I need some space from you right now. And I like walked out of there because like I had been trying to put her on to feed her like ten times and she would like take two SIPs and then reject because it was like empty. Meanwhile again big hunkin baby, like not deprived. Oh it was like obviously I still remember it now. It was a low moment. It was traumatizing. Lesson is, don't say stuff like that to a mother of an infant. Oh, yeah, I should feed her. Thanks for that helpful to I haven't been feeding her like I should try that sometime. Yeah. We similar were overnight in Washington, d C. Saying at a hotel when it was just Michael and me and Jasper and he was I don't know, nine months old similarly, and he would not be comforted and so unfortunately he kept waking up and crying and you know, I was like feeding him more of a breastmolk bottle whatever, like you know, everything, trying to get him to calm down. And at some point our phone rings is the front desk because other people are complaining, and it's like you need to get your kid to calm down? Like what do you want me to do? Like are we supposed to like smother him? Like what do you think we're trying to do? Like this is just not helpful, Like do you think we're sitting there poking him with pins? Be Like you know, we're the how to hotel guests who really like to keep everyone else awake. That's when I check into a hotel. That's what I go for. Oh that is so sad. That is so unhelpful in the moment too. Yeah, what are you supposed to do? What am I supposed to do? It was time for your one am beach walk, I guess, but like, oh my god, terrible. Yes, well, so that's that's happened. Let's end this feedback sandwich and go to the matters of things we really like or admire about each of our kids. Do you want to start, Sarah? Yes, we are back to positive. We are back to positive. All right. So Annabelle, I'm proud of her when I see her doing things independently, especially her you know, her schoolwork. She's really taken a lot of ownership and I see her responding really well to the teacher she currently has. But I feel like she also has gotten it that she needs to try hard for her own sake, and I don't feel like I did that really, but I've watched it happen and it's really gratifying to see. And I think the same is true when she does art. She's really very good artist, and she's self motivated to learn new things and watches videos to create new stuff. So I love that about her and like just seeing self regulation develop, Like we took a trip together pre COVID, like when she was seven. It was actually fun, Like getting to that point with your kid at a not too old age, just like really gratifying. So that is really cool. I guess let us do all three then you can go for it for it. With Cameron, I am very proud of him. Well, he has two things that I'm very proud of. Number One, he is very gregarious, like he will talk to anyone, He's not afraid. He is very friendly he always has been. When he was one year old, like I would walk away, like I would beat a restaurant, and he would. He would like kindly like walk up to such strangers and like I want to have conversations with them in this very charming way. And I think he's maintained a lot of that as he's gotten older. But also when I watch him play sports, I'm like, wow, those are natural abilities I don't personally have. That's really cool. And he is able to really focus and listen to his coach in an active environment, and is also quite fearless in how he handles his body in sports and tends to really be like the player you can tell is like trying his hardest out there on the field, So that is really fun to watch. And then finally Genevieve, who is three, so you know, has many more years in front of her to impress me, but right now, I'd say her independence is pretty amazing, and sometimes I do credit her Montessori school, just like that lady did. She is the only child at that age who will go to the bathroom completely by herself, wash hands, flush everything, like I try to double check things, but really handles it and I'll see her like engaging in playing with Calgo critters or blocks or something, and she'll just be like talking to herself and acting out scenes for like long periods of time, and it just makes me so happy to see her do that. That's awesome. Yeah, it's so fun to see that develop in little kids. So Jasper's sort of similarly with Cameron. I love his ability to talk to other people, and I'm sort of bizarrely socially awkward. I don't know, it's situations. I never want to seek out someone to ask a question about something. And so we're in Barnes and Noble the other day and he's like, well, I wonder where some book is I want to go get And I'm like, oh, I got to go like hunt through the YA section and like turn around, and he's over at the information desk like having a discussion with the lady about you know, the book and like what books he likes, and they're going to walk over there together and they're finding it. I'm just like, Okay, well, I'm glad that he could do that, because it's you know, it would have taken me forever in an awkward conversation and you know, he did it Sam. I mean, one of the things that is so cool about Sam is he's like mister cool. I mean, so the things is cool, but he doesn't get upset about things. He's very unflappable. And one of the ways I saw this when he was wrestling a couple of years ago. That was the sport he elected to do on his own. Nobody in my family's ever wrestled. He just found a flyer and decided he wanted to do it. I don't really recommend wrestling as a sport if you are neutral among sports and looking for one for your kids, but many people like it. But anyway, if you lose in a wrestling off. He won many matches, but when you lose, you lose in a public, obvious, one on one physical way, right, and it can be so hard on kids, Like lots of the little boys would like cry, scream, you know if they lost. He would let it roll right off of him. It was really amazing, like it was never an issue. It's just like that was that. Move on to the next one. I'm like, I wish I could be like that, right. Ruth Is I love her creativity. She is an author already at age nine. She recently wrote a book about a pandemic, which was a virus that she's currently called the kid Only Virus because it only attacks children between the ages of four and eighteen. It is not fatal, it is not that dark a book, but it is on, you know, a virus that attacks children. And she wants to change the name because she's like, well, I'm only calling it kid only for now because that's what it is. But she's like trying to figure out what other language she could have it in, because she knows that that's a creative way to name things, you know, like JK Rolling. All her stuff is Latin, Like Root's going to come up with I don't know, you know, Russian or something to name this virus. But you know, it's got an evil mastermind who wants to take over the world with his robots. But the robots don't attack kids, so I need something else to attack kids. It is a great story. I loved it. She actually wrote a poem about she gave herself a haircut when she was four years old, like she chopped off her own hair, had a little PIXI cut for a year after that, but she wrote a poem about it. That said I looked terrible. A ponytail was not wearable. I was like, that is that as better than I could do? Like that is perfect. That couplet is just gut. She did not look terrible. She looked very cute. But whatever. You know, Alex is my little rebel, which is occasionally challenging because I am more of an upholder and so that is an you know, a combination for parents and child that can lead to some conflict, but we are channeling it as much as possible. You know, he's started doing weapons training at karate and loves it, like he's really good at sparring. But the other day at rock climbing, he we just had such a wonderful morning with this. So at rock climbing, he's just going to the top of everything and he I think started out scared of heights, but he just he wants to climb, and so he conquered that and now he just zips to the top over and to the point where other parents, you know, in soccer. Sorry we didn't say which child that was, but parents are coming to me being like, oh, he's amazing, he's amazing, and yes, he's like very physically adapt things like that, and you know, it's just so curious. Like in the car to and from rock climbing, he's like, Mommy, give me math problems. I'm like okay, and he's like, I want some that are in the overworld that's positive numbers, and some that are in the nether world that's negative numbers. Like that's a little Minecraft, like you know, mishmash with with math and so we we that's amazing. I hear my kids talk about another but they're actually talking about pure pure draft, not Minecraft and math. That's amazing mash up. And finally, like Henry is just such a chill, happy baby for like what he was born into. I mean when he is happy, he is so happy, Like he's bouncing up and down in the crib in the morning when I come in, Like no one else does that, Like I love, like nobody else wants to see me in the morning. He's just like maybe it's because of what he was born into. Maybe babies will like that. I'm sure it's exciting. The world is here. I'm now he's and you know, especially he's such a happy, resilient kid. I mean, like I said, they just had this you know, huge childcare change, and yet he has managed to deal with it and you know, a little rough at times, but he's rolling with the punches. And you know, I so look forward, like you're saying with Jenevie, I look forward to seeing what he's going to become. So exciting. All right, So we move into our listener, Q and A. All right, we can. Let's do it. Hi, Laura and Sarah, this is a question for best of both worlds. My name is Elizabeth and I live in Nova Scotia, Canada. I'm wondering what advice you might have for framing unpaid work on creative projects. For some background, I'm in a time of real transition. My youngest child starrety kindergarten this year. And while I've never stopped working part time since having children and don't plan to leave my current employment in the science and tech industry, I do have career aspirations that fall outside this sphere. I have more time to devote to curating my interests and honing my craft. If I was completing another degree or participating in an apprenticeship, it would be easy to categorize that unpaid work and to legitimize and explain the investment of time and money. However, my time spent pursuing creative goals is a strictly independent venture. At this point, I don't want to label my work a hobby, as that de elevates the role I hope it plays in my future. What can I call it? In turn? How do I prioritize it? And then how does it factor into conversations when people ask what I do? Thanks so much, I really appreciate any advice you can provide. All right, well that was great. That was you know, this question about taking on unpaid side activities. I mean you sort of Sarah you have with you know, the podcasting. At the beginning it was unpaid. The blog has I mean it's got some ad and affiliate revenue, but that wasn't necessarily where you started with not a major income stream. And yes, you're right, I don't think I added ads for the first seven or eight years of having it. You know, Do you have any advice to start with how you fit it in? Yeah? I mean, if you enjoy doing it, you're going to do it. You have. I don't know that it needs a name. I mean, I don't know if I called my blog a hobby or if I called it a side thing, I think I just called it that I something that I did. I mean, I guess it was kind of a hobby in a way, but I guess I just I wouldn't overthink this too much. If you truly enjoy doing something, whether it's writing a book or some kind of artwork or something, it'll evolve into what it's meant to be. Especially like I think that if if it's not your goal to make that one of your main income streams, I wouldn't necessarily push it. You can push other things to enhance your career if you want to. And it sounds like you had to have a satisfying part time work situation going on, but I wouldn't necessarily pressure yourself because sometimes it can take the fun out. I haven't really found that too much on my side, but I have, you know, heard that in some cases that can remove some of the joy out of doing it. And I think that if it's going to head away, if that occurs to you, like you know what, I really do want to start selling these birdhouses that I'm making or whatever it is, then you'll kind of know when that time is right and when it's appropriate to do that. Plus a lot of times you kind of have to develop your craft to an extent before it's worth anything. Anyway, Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. I think sometimes people want to have mental categories for things so they know that they're not either over or underinvesting their time in that. So if you track your time, which I always recommend anyone try doing, you might see that you know, well, these are the hours that my kids are in school, these are the hours I work, So these are the hours that are available. Here's my target for how much I will do on my hobbies and side projects, side hustles, like whatever you want to call it. I mean, it could just be you know, passion projects. Give it some name like that if you want to, but you've tried different things, like it might not just be one thing you want to do, but you know other things you dabble around in this free time, adult playtime. I don't know, you can call it, like I think with Sarah say it doesn't need a category. But if if you want a category, play around in your mind with like what makes the most sense to you, and then you might say, Okay, I want to do five hours a week in that category. So you know, I'm aiming for one hour on each weekday, you know, or maybe it's going to be more like four because for one day gets taken away from you for whatever reason. So I mean to aim for four hours a week on these passion projects, side hustles, et cetera. And then if one starts looking like it's really going somewhere are you can start scaling it up, or you can start focusing more intently on that because you'll start getting feedback. If you do want to make something of this, you need to get it out in front of people who are your target market for things. So you know, if you writing, you could obviously start a blog because then people will start reading, you know, as you bring people in and then you'll get feedback from them. But you know, you could also try this with different places. You write articles for local publications or something like that, or if you are doing crafts, maybe exhibiting in various craft faress or trying to sell them on at sea or whatever. You get some sort of feedback then on what the market likes, and then you can decide, well, is that something I want to do more of? And if so, then you can start thinking of it. More as a business and go from there. But yeah, in the beginning, sort of just give yourself a time target, give yourself permission to try different things within that, and then be open to feedback and what comes in Love it. Well, this was a fun episode. I hope people enjoyed. Oh, I guess we had into a level of week. We have to do a love of the week, do well, let's let's hope we have one, so if go ahead. Yeah, I'm just trying to say something specific. I do like fan family meals, and I know that family meals is sort of a tough topic for many people because it's that thing you're supposed to do, and if it doesn't work for some reason in your family, it's like a sign of I don't know, everyone's going to be delinquent as a result, and that's just ridiculous because that's not at all what the research shows. But you know, it is kind of fun when we can all sit around the table at the same time, and you know, I even see little Henry sitting there in this highthchair kind of leaning in being part of it, and it's fun to have all of us sitting there talking about stuff. It never lasts long because somebody's up from their chair immediately, and you know, somebody's then screaming about something. But in the seconds of contentment that happen, I enjoy that. I will say, I just love that my kids are still at the age where they want to do stuff with my husband and I. I I hope that stays forever. Maybe we'll be lucky, like Annabelle got the idea that she was like, let's cook this whole kid's cookbook this summer, and like I was, Oh, what a fun project we can do together, where like Cameron went out skateboarding with Josh and like, you know, love the idea of like going with his dad. Don't get me started on forty mid forties, mid to late forties person skate skateboarding. But that's another episode. But they love it and they're so happy, and yeah, just the fact that they still like that and hopefully will for a while sounds good. All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking about kids, high and low moments of parenting, what we like about each of our kids. 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.