Kids at Different Ages & Stages.

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vanderkam. 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 is Laura. This is episode ninety nine. We're going to be talking about having kids at different ages and stages and some of the complications that can introduce, and also some of the cool parts as well. Partly, by nature of having bigger families, you're going to wind up with kids at different ages, and we know a lot of people listening to this are dealing with that or are considering having families that might wind up with kids at different ages, and so we thought that would be a great topic to discuss. We originally discussed this Sarah and I together in Miami. This was one of our live episodes that unfortunately succumbed to the same fate as the frugal parenting one, namely our inability to turn our microphone on. We were just so excited to be in each other's presence that we decided not to do a tech check. In any case, here we are making good on this recording, not in the same place, but hopefully our discussion will be better for having had it once before, right Sarah, who knows, maybe we will initiate regular rehearsals. Things turned out to be exactly of much higher quality. Well, I think we need to remind our listeners the ages and stages of our current broods, since not everybody keeps careful track. I have a seven year old entering second grade. That's Annabel. Cameron is five and we'll go into kindergarten this year, and then Genevieve is eighteen months old. Yeah, and I have Jasper who's twelve and going into seventh grade, Sam who is nine turning ten and going into fourth grade, Ruth who is seven turning eight and going into second grade, and Alex who will be in preschool for another year. One of the cool things about our live recording was that I was able to view Laura's camp spreadsheet live. In fact, it was so live. She was like, remember, don't say out loud, where all my kids are this summer at any given week. Yes, I know, if you can list it all, like from June seventeen to twenty one, they are here. But it was actually really cool. I still think you need to create or share that template so that our listeners can take advantage of filling out a camp spreadsheet of their own. And although you really don't need a template because it's just Excel and it's very easy, like okay, true, but you know sometimes people might not think of all the different well, and you didn't even take advantage of full color coding that you know, this this is basic Excel. I took, like you know, the very simple computer class in high school or whatever, visioning a redo where we change the vacations to a color, and then when they're at the same camps, it's the same colors you can easily visualize. And it was really cool because I was able to see, like there were a few weeks where three of Laura's kids were in one place and one was in the other. There were weeks when the whole family was on vacation, and then there were some really scary weeks where it looked like everyone was going to be veering off in separate directions. I don't think we have went anywhere. All for are in different places. I think we avoided that. But yeah, no, I just have the names of the kids across the top. So there's four categories across the top four columns, and then the weeks of the summer down the left hand side, starting from when Alex was out of school because he was the first one out and so he had a week of camp while the others were still in school, and then going through that, so you know, it goes from sort of mid June to Labor Day and what it just it provides a very quick visual, you know, impression of the summer, and you know, I printed up copies for Nanny and for Michael. The kids have looked at it too, because they don't remember where they're going, like they asked for various camps, but they have no clue like which weeks of July that was, you know, and so they look at it and saying, oh yeah. And then it helped me also figure out when our mommy days could be because obviously you know, it works better if the kid is not in camp that week if I want to do a full day trip with each of the kids. But yeah, I don't think i'd be able to keep it organized on just my calendar. I think it helps to have the spreadsheet it all in. No, once I saw it, it it made sense, like it felt warranted. We didn't need one this summer because I kept it really simple. The two big kids are in one camp, Genevieve was still home, so this might be the last year with no spreadsheet. We'll have to see. Yeah, well, I mean two kids even you can like enter it in on a calendar. I don't know. It's just by the time there are four people who have sort of their own interests. Yes, And I think that that makes a big difference too. If you know you're just going to send all three to the exact same day camp with you know, the same hours and one drop off, and you're not going to do a in the middle of it, it's much less of a big deal. But as kids get older, as we'll talk about, their interests often diversify and things just are going to get more complex, at least if you let them. Yeah, when we originally recorded this episode. We had our introduction to it, but then in the intervening time between our recording that and discovering that the episode was gone and needing to rerecord, Sarah wrote a blog post talking about the toddler age and mentioning a blog post she'd read by a different blogger who was talking about some of the challenges with you know, early teen and preteen kids that you face kids in those ages and very dedicated best of both world. Listeners would recognize this blogger because she was a guest. It was, oh, never mind, I think, oh no, she shares her blog name. I was going to say she's confidential, but she's not. Anyway, she was a podcast guest, but she talked about her blog while she was a guest, so there you go. And anyway, with that digression, she talked about some challenges her big kids were going through. And I've always read her blog as kind of, I don't know, like looking at my future because her kids are a similar age spacing to mine, And I love her blog and I love the way she thinks, and I love the way she writes, and it's like a fun ride for me, and it still is. But this post just made me think, because she really talked about that classic adage of bigger kids, bigger problems, and how stressful certain things were becoming as her kids were getting older, and for some reason, as I was reading it, I was having I don't know, some more stressful times, very centered around my toddler. Not that she was doing anything particularly stressful, just that we had toddler's tough I mean, yeah, yeah, I guess that's what it is. Caring for a toddler is tough, and I just as I read her post, I got it like I got that. I'm not staying up at night stressing about Genevieve's you know, internet habits. That's true, but while I'm awake and she's awake, I'm I'm not really doing anything other than like zee freeing. Yeah, I don't know. I mean having kids sort of spanning both of this, because you know, I have older kids who are online. I also have a younger kid who's still sort of like crazy in various toddlerish ways, even though he's getting a little bit older now. I don't know. I feel like you can acknowledge that various parts of any age can be challenging and there are various parts of any age that can be awesome, and I think the problem comes when people want to like have this narrative that whatever they are currently going through is like the worst possible, and other people just don't understand. I think that's where it gets a problem, because I think you can be then very frustrated as a mom of littles when somebody's telling you, like, oh, you should just enjoy when their kids are one in three because you know, at least they're not crashing your car. And I mean, yes, that's true. But on the other hand, when your kids are old enough to crash your car, they're also old enough to get themselves places, and like you don't have to wipe their bottoms, like you don't have to feed them like that, you don't have to hover over them every second. Like there's just things that are, you know, positives and negatives about both aspects of it. I was thinking about it on my drive today, and I was thinking about your book and Off the Clock specifically, and about the experiencing self. Not only the remembering self so much, but I find that from an experiencing self level, toddlers are much much more difficult than say, a preteen, like you're not going through your hours of your day in the present. I mean, maybe your your your mind is wandering, distressing, but it's more like during those reflective times, right versus when you're kind of maybe at a family gathering with the toddler as I was this past weekend, or just wiling away the hour on Sunday, like your count in minutes literally like oh my god, when is my partner going to come home? I haven't spoken to an adult all day. I am trying to cook dinner. But every time I, you know, try to like relax for more than thirty seconds, there's something out of the dust pan, I mean exactly. And so I think that I think they're just they're almost not comparable challenges in a way. I mean, both involved kids, but but they're very, very different. And in fact, there were even people who commented on my blog post today that kind of said things like, oh, yeah, like my seven year old, it's very stressful. Well, I have a seven year old, and I have a five year old, and I have a one year old or an eighteen month old. And for me, and maybe it's just my personality, I find the toddler parenting about ten times more stressful, even though I actually love it too. It's weir. It's like this weird I don't know, combination of things. No, I totally get it. I totally get it. And I think, you know, toddlers are amazingly difficult. They make time go very slowly in some you know, not so awesome ways. I think there's also, you know, the reality of you having to be on them all the time, and sometimes other people don't share that burden. And this is you know, I've I've had this experience at extended family gatherings, like I think that you you went through this past weekend, and you know, it's you're watching the toddler the whole time. Everyone else is relaxing and enjoying themselves, and it's very lonely. It's isolating and it's boring as hell, and you know, it's it's just I think people forget that aspect of it. And I'm not saying, like, you know, adolescents are a you know, piece of cake, because of course they're not. I probably am less inclined to talk about that, just because as they get older, it's them. They have their owns, like their struggle that they may not. They are not as much extensions of you in any way, shape or form. They have their own life, their own you know, digital print or whatever. And so I think part of what could be challenging is we're all out there talking about the toddler struggles and so you definitely know you're going through stuff, whereas often I think what people were reacting to with that blog post that you link to, I mean, many people don't post about their adolescence challenges and things like that, partly because they are individual people that you may not wish to, you know, have out in the public eye. So I think that can be part of the isolating aspect of that, which you know you could and maybe lean more on your in real life friends for stuff like that and relatives and others who have gone through it. That might be a better support network than the people you meet online. Yeah, that makes sense. No, And I'm in no way minimizing that and in no way arguing with her posts. I mean, it was completely valid and it was her feelings, and she even wrote a very supportive comment on my blog talking about how you know, for her that was just her experience and you know, she actually didn't find parenting toddlers a challenging So I do think that's also a personality thing too, and some people are probably more gifted at it than others, and that's okay. Yeah, I don't think I'm necessarily all that gifted in the baby toddler department. I definitely like big kids better, and you know, I enjoy having conversations, I enjoy doing fun stuff with the bigger kids that you just can't do as easily with littler ones. But we wanted to talk in this episode about some of the challenges of having a spread so not even so much you know, big kids versus little kids, but because it's all hard, because that's all. Yeah, each stage has its own fun and its own challenges. But if you happen to have kids in a different ages, either because you've spread them out, maybe that they are a blended family or whatever, it is, how you deal with those various things. So you've been going through the difficulty of you know, finding activities that everyone can do with you know, the toddler and the past. Yeah, we're at that awkward stage. And again, I think that has a little more to do with toddler. I think maybe it's less of an issue when you've got maybe a similar spread. But maybe if my kids were five, eleven, and nine, although even then, I think by the time you have a middle schooler, they may not be as excited about going to the Zoom for the you know, the tenth time during the summer. Like you can get a lot of mileage out of those places with the young ones. But yeah, things like ice skating. Annabel's expressed a lot of interest in doing that, but I need to be able to take her kind of on her own because that's not something I can bring Genevieve to. Or performances, oh my goodness, refuse. I refuse to bring a Fowler to really any kind of performance lasting longer than five minutes. That's just recipe for misery. Yes, yes, and then vacations. I mean, our Disney crews worked out really well, and there's certain vacations that are sort of targeted to these situations. But yeah, that's that's been a tough one, and we are keeping things a little bit more low key this summer for that reason. I like your trick, the leaving one at home trick. Yeah, the leaving one at home, Well that solves that problem right there. Yeah, So we sort of realized that our older kids were going to want to do things that we're just going to be miserable with our youngest. And so given that up until a certain point, he was certainly not going to remember being on like a twelve hour plane trip to Hawaii, but he was going to make us miserable on the twelve hour plane trip to Hawaii, we elected to not take him on some of our longer trips that would have been difficult with a younger one. So obviously many ways you can handle this. If you have a caregiver who stays over night, maybe that person can cover it, or extended family who might be willing to spend some special one on one time with a younger kid, you know it. Obviously not everyone can can do this, and I totally recognize that, but for us, it allowed us to have some of the upsides of having older children, like going to Yellowstone and hiking next to geothermal things that would have been a nightmare with you know kid who doesn't like to stay on paths, which the truth is, I mean, you only get one chance to make those childhood memories with any of your kids, right, so by denying your older kids those experiences because you can't do them with your younger is also giving something up. I think I didn't initially realize that when I heard about your adventures, but now that I know it's more similar, I'm the bad mom. I was not judging you. I was just more like, could I do that? I don't. It's allowed pretty much everyone is allowed. It was a good point, almost everything is allowed, but no, there is actually I mean, you're giving up something if you don't go, so you know, you have to weigh the positives and negatives there. And you're absolutely right that he would not have remembered that torture is stripped Hawaii. But even on a day to day basis, I mean, because you're dealing with the nap time phenomenon, right, Yes, the nap time. I mean, it's much better now that we're one nap. The two naps. We abruptly changed to one nap, probably earlier than was officially you know, necessary, just because the more naps you have in the day, the harder that is, because you end up trying to structure things. And I end up in that agel debate, like do I try to protect the nap by you know, messing with the older kids schedule and what they want to do, or is it better to you know, just not worry about the nap at all and then kind of pay for it later. So I don't know, there's no right answer. It varies, but but yeah, we're trying to figure things out as it goes. Yeah, I mean, and some kids, I mean, kids are different with the nap, and there are some kids who absolutely have to sleep at certain times in their crib or life falls apart. My kids were never totally like that, so you know, it's been a little bit more variable. But we definitely would you know, split up the family on the weekend's one parent take the big kids to do something while the others stays home with the younger napping, or we you know, when Alex was much younger, we would have weekend sitters more regularly, precisely for that reason, because you know, it's like a toddler who wants to nap at a wrestling meet is just everything awful about that situation. There's nothing good. And I know people do it, like I see other people's toddlers at the wrestling meets and they don't look happy. I mean, that was you know, I feel bad for them, and I know that that's what they have to deal with. But since we are it's avoidable. If it's avoidable, and since we're in a position where we could either hire a sit or if people have extended family or neighbors, they might trade off or do play dates or something. But like just you know, giving yourself the space to not deal with that and actually be able to watch the big kid do their thing, you know. Yeah, I'll be excited when our nap years are over, which is usually around three at our house. All right, we're going to take a quick break to welcome one of our sponsors once again. Laura is going to talk about better health. Yeah, so listeners, we know you're extremely busy. We thank you for making time to listen to this podcast. But if there is something that is interfering with your happiness or is preventing you from achieving your goals, then you know you owe it to yourself to do something about that and better help. Online counseling is there for you. You You can connect with your professional counselor in a safe and private online environment. 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That's HelloFresh dot com slash best of eighty b e s TF eight zero and enter the promo code best of eighty for eighty dollars off your first month. So here's to making family dinners fuss free. All right, back to our discussion about the challenges that go with raising kids at different ages and stages. Now, I know one thing we wanted to talk about was something that you thought was a little crazy, right. I guess I'm not judging you know, I'm not judging anyone. However, I thought it was interesting when Sarah sent a note about how Genevieve was going to be starting preschool in the fall. Genevieve, Recall will be about twenty months old in the so I was just curious why one might do this, so Sarah, maybe you can explain that. I mean, I'm divided on it as well. To be completely honest, the school she's going to is a very dedicated and traditional Montessori program, and I love it, so I was excited about that. And she actually will not be the youngest one they are, because I believe they open up at eighteen months, so maybe she'll be the second youngest. I don't know. I actually was going to pull her out last minute, because all of a sudden I really realized that the logistical challenges might not be worth the potential benefit and fun she could have in this environment. Josh felt very strongly that he wanted all of her. He felt like it worked for the other kids who did also attend school at a young age. Now, the other kids that happened more by default because Annabel had been in daycare, so we felt like the natural transition was to a school. And then when Annabel was going to school, Cameron seemed excited and the school was right near our house, so it was very natural. This feels a little bit more not forced, but contrived, elaborate to contrive, Okay, that's the right word. However, I do kind of love the school, so on my new plan is, yes, we've enrolled her, I fill that amount of paperwork and she's going to start. But if it turns out that two weeks in we're still, you know, dealing with separation issues, or it just seems like a big ordeal that's not worth it, we will pull her out and tell them nicely that we will send her the next year. And my thought is that if she's crying and unpleasant, they probably won't fight us too hard on that. Yeah. I mean, we started Alex much later than the others, and partly is because last year, when he could have gone theoretically to preschool, he wasn't potty trained yet. But I guess we could have tried to push that. My three big kids were all in the same elementary school, and I was sort of like, this is beautiful. I have three kids in one school. I only have one set of parent teacher conferences, days off fun users like, let me just roll with this, and you know we have we have the nanny, so it's not like he needed to go somewhere. They did plenty of classes and all that good stuff. So we held off and then enrolled him in the fall and of course because he's sort of older starting he adjusted to it quite well. There was no separation anxiety in factor where we drove him the first day and I'm like, okay, Alex, here you go. You're going to preschool and he's like, yeah, ran inside, it's like I've been ready for this for two years, to go for the past year. So he had no issues with that whatsoever. So yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think it's up to you. We started Sam very young and not a day. It was a monassory one too, and I think other kids really liked it. Sam did not. He refused to put his little slippers on like you were supposed to. He kept his jacket on the whole time so he could race out as soon as somebody came to get home. So well, i'll report back by October, so you all know how. She's probably a very gregarious little girl and we'll love it. So we'll see you see. So all right, challenge, Yeah, that was challenges, And then our next category, in a more uplifting way, is theoretical challenges that haven't been so bad. Yeah, so room sharing. Some of our kids are sharing rooms on both of our sides, so you have your older kids sharing, yes, and the older kids sharing cross gender. They're in bunk beds. No one's in puberty. I'm hoping they won't be for quite some time, and so my plan is to keep them together until it becomes awkward, and when that happens, I will either put the two younger ones together. I noted from an end of perspective that boys are hormone free for longer, so that may work, and then potentially Annabelle and Genevieve or maybe by then we'll move. Who knows. There's also a downstairs room that I guess if everyone was hating each other and we didn't need the office, someone could live there. I don't know, but yeah, it's been like a total non issue. In fact, I would say it makes bedtime a bit more efficient. Yeah, I love it. No, No, that's true. So my older two boys share, so Jasper who's twelve, and Sam, who's nine, and they've been sharing for the past like three years. Originally we thought that Sam and Alex would share as soon as Alex was kind of old enough to sleep normally and all that good stuff, and so we bought a bunk bed for that room in anticipation of those two boys sharing. They're sort of temperamentally more matched too. It's got the big closet, so that seemed like the room that they should share. Sam stuff is all in there, like his clothes, but they cannot share a room. Alex snores for starters, which keeps Sam up. It Also he wakes up ridiculously early and he's ready to party, and he wakes anyone else up who's in the room with him, And so we just kept the you know, the big boys together sort of indefinitely. But poor Sam had been sleeping this little trundle bed for like the past three years, and finally we realized, like this situation is not changing anytime soon, so we bought him a real bed, so now he had that. Now there are two real beds in this room. They're at a somewhat strange angle configuration, but the upside of it is that there's a little reading nook like in the corner between the two beds. So they've kind of enjoyed running with that. And I don't know, I mean, I don't see any real way around this because we don't have another I mean, he could move there's a downstairs bedroom, like you were saying, but it's so far away, it's in the basement. Like, I don't really think it's the right solution. And maybe someday the basement could be like a hangout room, but not actually where he sleeps, because that's weird. Yeah, I don't know, he felt like he needed a bachelor pad or something. Well, the problem is, like all the electronics are down there, right, so you'd be on the xbox all night, the ultimate bet. And he could also get out of the house because there's you know, means of egress from the basement. So there's just also that's not going to work. Speaking of adolescent Yeah, some problems what I would discover upon going to the basement. So yeah, probably that is. That is not but you'll figure something out. And I have this feeling that you're not like up at night worried about it, like it's going to organically work. Yeah, And people have shared much smaller spaces and lived to tell the tale. I mean, what do they do in New York City. I'm sure like everyone shares, everyone shares, and I don't know, occasionally they're going to have, you know, sort of moments. So Jasper is away, this week at something, and so Sam is getting the room to himself and I'm just enjoy it while you have it, and we'll see how this goes. So another sort of interesting challenge or not that we've been dealing with is the idea of family policies. Yes, we totally had family policies. I like, what age can you do X? Right? Like that's and I will note that there was some bitterness that my little brother got to do whatever X is and this idea of exes something was your ex I told my ex well, I just remember, Okay, So here's you know, my my sort of tale of woe. I was watching Seinfeld one time as a teenager, and my mom came in while I was watching it and they were making a joke that it was funny but perhaps inappropriate, and she was like, you are not allowed to watch this, So off it went. Time passes. I come home from college. One time I walk in the living room. My mom and my little brother, who was of course younger than I was at that time, are watching Seinfeld together, like together young who the sheer rail? It was just that is bad? Yeah, I thought I was mad about not getting contacts at the same age. My sister. Actually I am mad about that. Parents. If you're listening, it wasn't nice. So yeah, I am determined to keep things very consistent between my children. If I've decided it, whatever, ten is the age for X, then I am keeping it ten because it's not cool. It's not cool. Yeah, I'm sure if I were a younger child, I would have the absolute opposite last it's like, but I'm more mature. I can deal with it whatever. Yeah. So, I mean our current policy is like you get a cell phone when you're eleven, which now has been taken as like gospel, right, so the kids are I mean Sam has said multiple times like, well, when I get my phone at age eleven, So I guess that's what it is. And I know something. I know it's gonna have to ask you about her. But I just don't see that that's that's going to happen. But I actually feel like it's nice because now you set the line in the sand and then they're unlikely to, you know, keep asking. Yeah, I hope they may keep asking, Like why wouldn't they keep asking? Like true? Yeah, there are some benefits there to having kids spread apart in age one, we are slowly coming to is the idea of sibling babysitting. Tell me about the sibling baby mythical idea of the sibling babysitting. So, you know, Jasper is twelve, and when I I was twelve, I was not only babysitting my younger brother, I was babysitting neighborhood children. You know, all the time. This is just you know, like a business I was in. And you know, I'm pretty sure no one's going to hire him to sit for their kids who isn't in our family. But the question is could he stay with some of his siblings. He can definitely stay home by himself, that's that's totally fine. So we this past weekend had him stay with Sam for a very short time and it was fine. I mean, as far as I know, the house is still here, they're both still around, so clearly nothing went really wrong. I mean, it was more that I left to go to Target, like before, Michael was on his way back from with Alex from soccer, so it was like, really, I mean, you know, twenty that's perfect. You can certainly piloted out in those little tiny chunks where it would kind of feel ridiculous to hire someone anyway. Yeah, and so I'm thinking maybe I'll try like going for a run or something while you know, Ruth and Alex are all with somebody else. You know, It's just something like that and see how it goes. And I think definitely staying with Sam is gonna be fine. We'll see possibly Ruth, that may happen at some point. I think Alex still needs adult supervision. I just you know, you have to be willing to deal with certain things, and I'm not sure you have to be like paying attention consistently, and he may he may not because he wants to watch TV or do whatever. So I don't know, we're not quite there for that. You'll get there, though, You'll get there. And you found that younger kids grow up faster though, right, It's yeah, I guess I feel like in some regards, Genevieve has seemed to sort of copy her older siblings and do what they do, And sometimes it feels like that's a slight advantage. I think I mentioned like going out somehow, maybe it's just her. I mean again, these sort of end of one declarations as well. Toddler's the third kid knows this, but you know, exactly total anecdata. But I feel like she's maybe a little easier in restaurants than the other two were at her age. But maybe that's also just because she has the benefit of two older kids that are slightly entertaining, whereas Annabel just had two adults that were born not entertaining at all. So yes, no, that can I think there may be something to that. There's definitely you want to keep up though, when you're the little kid. And yes, unless you draw your identity from being the baby, which sometimes some kids do, so that would be the counter to it, because some kids that's their definite identity. But just for instance, I mean, Ruth really just figured out like riding her bike without the training wheels at about the same time Alex did, because he so wanted to ride his bike without training wheels, and so he was willing to, you know, keep falling over to make it happen. And if you're willing to fall like fifty times, you will learn to ride that bike. Oh yeah, so that that's what he did, and he had an eerily similar like timing thing. Yeah maybe that's yeah personality thing, and yeah, who knows that you're old, your older we learned at the same time. In fact, I think he got a little more proficient faster than she did. She doesn't like to fall, yes, exactly, it's caution and versus recklessness. But one thing we both found is cool for dealing with, you know, having making sure you have time with older kids, because younger kids will take a lot of your time and energy just by the nature of being very demanding as younger kids. Doing the mommy days. So you've now done this, yes, actually, yeah, this is perfect. When we first record this, we hadn't. But actually in the interim we have. I did my very first set of dedicated mommy days, and that the kids knew they were going to happen, that it was just going to be one kid at a time. In fact, the other kid went to camp as usual, and then our nanny was here into care of Genevieve, so they got their own days. And man, we packed a lot in We didn't do. I mean, Laura, you can talk about like you do. Ten have tended to do, like day trips. We did stuff that was local, but I mean during Cameron's day, we went shopping for legos, we saw a movie, we went and got ice cream, We went swish. That sounds awesome. Yeah, we did a lot and on Anambel's Day, we baked cupcakes, we got our nails done, and we I don't remember what else, but oh yeah, we made we made friendship bracelets. I taught her how to We bought embroidery floss at Naples and I taught her how to make friendship bracelets and we basically spent the whole day. Both kids had their choice of restaurants, so there was a lot of Panera like favorite things great, yeah, I mean out of things, yeah, exactly, And yeah, they were kids were so happy to just have that attention all on that. Yeah, it was fun. Yeah. No, I mean I started doing this a couple of years ago in the summer, just doing you know, one day with each of the big kids. And I mean I remember the first one that I did. I think it was Ruth and I took her to Hershey Park and she must have been I think she was four, you know, closing in on five, but she was definitely four years old at the time, and it was just it was like magical, I mean, just to have one kid. But like I mean, I know parents of only children don't experience this constant bliss because and you have to entertain your kid all the time or you're like constantly making playdates get them out of your hair. But when you have the siblings around all the time, then they're not used to it. So it's just this like we can do whatever I want, Like we could just go to this ride if I want to go to this ride. We could go to this restaurant if I want to keep like con for the Black Black conflict amazing. So that was that was really great, And I experienced the same thing with the others. So we've we've kept doing it, and some of them may be local this year. I think they've they've toned down some of their requests, which is good because I you know, some of them are tough, but you know, it's still fun. So glad we've been doing it. Yeah, all right, should we get to our Q and A, which and I already answered halfway so this will not take too long. I came from a reader of my blog and it said we are considering adding a third kid. Ours there currently sixteen months and three years, and ideally we waited a little longer, but I just turned thirty nine, and so we need to get going sooner rather than later if we do decide to go for it. I just read your old from twenty eighteen about the downsides of the third baby, and all of those really resonate with me. Again. For the record, there are so many upsides that I felt like a post needed to be written on the downsides. I feel that the upsides fully outweigh the downsides times many. But you know, still good to talk about everything. Okay, anyway back to the post. I do not love the baby stage, the person writes, and I dread going through it again, and I expect that the first year would be really tough on all of us. So my question is, did things get any easier or better once Genevieve started being more toddler and less baby? And I think you can tell from my initial part is that, actually I will add to this because the parts that I talked about did get a little harder. Like toddlers have a little bit more. You know, you can't just like throw them in an argo and do whatever you were gonna do, and you kind of have to be more careful about the nap time, et cetera. All the stuff we talked about already but I will say, and I mentioned previously, my work life got a million times better once we were out of the baby stage. Now you all know it was because in part of my obsessive needge pump. So you know, there's that you could not do that. A lot of people do get caught in that, you know loop, So I can't just tell you not to do it. And even if you're not pumping, babies wake up a night and you don't get a lot of sleep, and that makes it very hard to really focus and be your best self during the workday when you have to get up at a certain time. So I just feel like that part of my life is a million times better in the toddler stage, and then oddly my weekends are maybe harder. So but then I also mentioned to this writer that you know, it's still short. The baby stage is like a year. The toddler stage is really like two years, kind of maybe from ages one to three. But I even think two is easier than one, and three is easier than two, Four is great, and five in my mind is like the Promised Land. So really like to me, it's a trade off that still has some wonderful positives to it. In exchange for having a third person in your family, which if that is what you want and that is what felt right to us, is totally worth it. So yeah, one thing I do want to want to say here because now I remember this from our original conversation when we recorded before, Like the point I made, I think part of what's getting her here is that she's got a sixteen month old who's really draining and the thought of being pregnant while dealing with a sixteen month old is what is making her a little bit true concerned about that, and that might get a little better in six months or so, which it could get better in six months to a year. And so just because the fact that she turned thirty nine, like, I think she could give herself six more months at least to have a little bit more space, because you know, yes, we've all heard the statistics on declining fertility, but clearly she has demonstrated post thirty five years old fertility. If she's had true baby after the age of thirty five, like odds are you know, it hasn't fallen off a cliff in the last sixteen months, So she probably can give herself another you know, six months, get herself to where the youngest one is two, and then maybe she might feel a little bit more willing to go through that when she's out of the stage where the baby may still be getting up at night or requiring her to chase around constantly. Maybe there'll be a little bit more mellow when the youngest is two, and then she might feel slightly more motivated about the whole pregnancy thing at that point. True, although we've also said previously in other episodes, and I'm just because I know we've said it, which is that you know, you can't plan on when you're going to have a baby, so it might take longer than you think, so somehow than you think too. Maybe well we'll start because it'll take me six months and then guess what tomorrow. I know it's so hard to predict. And I do think there are benefits to having really close in age kids, and there are benefits to spreading them out a little bit more. So it's like, there's no right answer. Go with your gut here, but I do agree with Laura that probably the urgency for a few months isn't isn't going to make a big difference. Yeah, all right, So love of the week. I got to admire Sarah's love of the weekend person. When I was with her, I was wearing my camper like wedge sling back things that I were to work all the time, and I was just showing Laura how they were going strong after two years. And I can walk in them and they do make me taller, but they're very very comfortable, Like I can walk an Abel, you know, a mile to school in them and then still feel good in them at work. So they're kind of miracle shoes. The brands Camper, C A, M, P, E R. I am. They are not yet a sponsor. I would like to like to sign on. I'm sure I'd enjoy wearing them too, so please. But anyway, hairs, Yes, that is my love of the week. What about yours? Oh gosh, I think I had something and then I've totally forgotten what it was. Was it travel related? Was it travel related? It may have been. One fun thing I did last night is that I did a puzzle with each of my two older children who are home. So Sam and Ruth are home this week and did puzzles. I think I'm sure I've mentioned, like Crocodile Creek, puzzles before as one of the things that I enjoy, but I actually enjoyed putting the puzzles together with them so much that I went on Amazon and ordered more Crocodile created puzzles. So now we have a slew of them arriving. Apparently they now go up to pieces. Is like the right piece to two hundred is good for doing in like an evening, like an hour or forty five minute event, So then your kids aren't bored. If they're sort of seven nine years old, they can do that. I enjoy a challenge, so I have ordered some five hundred piece. I may be on my own for those, but the two hundred, if you have it out and kind of in progress, then maybe people will kind of join for bits and piece maybe yeah, we'll see. Not to use the pun, it's terrible, all right. We will end on that. I hope that everyone enjoyed this Redone episode and that it was extra polished and it was even kind of fun to go through again, so exactly all right, Well, this has been best of both worlds episode ninety nine, talking about kids at different ages and stages. We will be back next week with more on making work in life. Fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.