Ask Us Anything!

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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 one hundred and twenty, which is first airing in mid November twenty nineteen. This isn't ask Us Anything episode, although honestly it's not anything. We are putting some limits on what you can ask us. Well, they can ask us anything. They can ask us anything that's true. I'm not promising we will answer anything, but Sarah posted on our Instagram page, see you know, getting a story posted there that you could questions, and people sent in all kinds of questions on everything under the sun. So we're just gonna pull from them and go and probably do more ask Us Anything episodes in the future. Because these are really fun, so Sarah, and then the list goes all the way like down the questions, So you don't think we're just gonna have to cut ourselves off at some point, but I'm going to go in pretty random order, and yeah, rapid fire. Now just a little like behind the scenes. Normally we do a pretty thorough pre prep and even when we do our Q and as Laura and I write out our answers to the questions. But for this we decided we would just kind of answer from our hearts. So of course somewhere who knows. So if there's a little bit more spontaneity in this episode, or we bought that perhaps Laura and I could use some more spontaneity in our lives, then here you go. All right. Number one This was directed to me, but I think we both should answer it. What is your dream vacation if you and your spouse have time off? Now this wrote just in your spouse yees, Hawaii would be great. Is this just you and your spouse or is this including the children? I sort of thought the way it says if you and Josh have time off, they probably meant, well, why don't you answer both? If you have like answers for both, so I would like to go somewhere exotic with Michael. We've done a couple trips like this. We've done the African Safari Tripe trip, which is a lot of fun to go in game preserves and go around and see lions, elephants, stuff like that. We did Tigers in India, which is also fun. But I haven't been back to Australia in a long time. I studied there in college, so Australia might be really good, but I think it's not the kind of place I would want to take the kids, at least for a few years, because the flight is just so epic, and I know that one of the airlines probably contests, but I'm not entirely sure is starting a direct flight from New York that will go in twenty twenty one or twenty twenty two, so that could happen. You just get on the plane and sit on the plane for seventeen hours and then you're in Sydney, so that that's how long. It's about some time, but it's better than if you have to go from the East Coast to lax so that's you know, five six hours right there. And then have a two hour layover and then get on the twelve hour flight to Sydney. So direct is always good, right, I have too good an kids. Kids. I mean it's going to have to be somewhere like Disney World because that's what they're going to request. How about you? Well, I just this person wrote Hawaii, and I will say we did really enjoy Hawaii. That was our honeymoon. But interestingly, and I don't want to be unoriginal, but I would also love we were thinking of New Zealand specifically, we would have loved. I have just seen the pictures and it's just otherworldly. But it is such a commitment, like you need a number of days because at least a day on each side is going to be essentially lost to travel. And I also do have a dream of just going to like Fiji and just doing nothing. That sounds okay, we should both go to New Zealand sometime. We'll have to, wonderfully, you have any New Zealand listeners? Well, arrange for speaking ahead. But there was a question posted to Instagram that said will you take the show internationally? E g. Australia? So I mean I would love to physically do a best of both worlds performance in Australia and if anybody wants to sponsor that opportunity and make it happen, Laura and I will make ourselves available. However, you know, the just the beauty of a podcast is that it is international, right, I mean, you're you're if you're listening from Australia, you can you can download us from from any of the Australian podcasts cast apps. I'm assuming. I don't think there's like censorship or anything not in Australia. So that's the That's a lovely thing actually about the podcast world. I do feel like, you know, it's I've gotten to hear some interesting perspectives from other countries through podcasts. So but you've had some international guests, which is also pretty amazing if you think about it, that we can connect to people just through online software and the fact that they're in Europe doesn't matter. It's pretty And maybe we'll have an Australian guest someday. That'd be great. All right, Well, that took a long time for our first question. Oh yeah, I didn't even answer the rest of it. So with the kids. With the kids, I am very much looking forward to the time that we get to do Europe together as a family, when the kids are like old enough to appreciate that. Just because my husband has these fond memories of trips he took with his family, that sounds like, I don't know, you know, they really made an impact in his brain and they have all these funny memories from them, and I'm a little jealous of that. So hoping to give our kids that experience sounds good. Yeah, all right, Question number two Laurago. First, how much do you feel you have to censor yourselves on the pod? Well, to a degree. I think I'm fairly open about most things related to how I spend my time or how I might be feeling about something. But of course other family members are their own people and have their own stories, and so particularly with anything concerning the older kids, I would think long and hard before presenting stuff without their input. For instance, I could talk to them like is it okay to talk about this? And with Michael as well, we generally try to not drag him into things. I'm not saying, like, you know, life is perfect, hunky dory or anything like that. But in general I would try to not present another person in a certain way. Who can't then come on and defend him or herself. So that's where I tend to limit what I talk about. That's fair, Yeah, I agree. I mean this like is my podcast in your podcast, but it's not Josh's podcast, for example, So we had to be careful. You can't really in sharing your own story. If you're too inclusive of what you talk about, you could be telling somebody else's story and invertinly and we definitely don't want to do that. Same with the kids. Obviously, I can't speak about I really don't want this to be a medical podcast, and I don't honestly know about the liability related to that. So having that, do not write in for Indo Chronology advice. Well, I've gotten emails before and I just have like a stock response, Yeah that I can't answer that. You see me, you know, come to my office and be my patient, and I'm happy to give you medical advice. I am happy to give you medical advice. But yeah, so there's I mean, there's another there's of course, some censorship. I think we're fairly on this real side of the spectrum compared to some of the curated content out there. I think some of that is just the nature of our podcast being fairly homegrown and just being our styles. But of course their censorship. Let's be real. I know my parents are listening. Hi, mom and dad. All right, question it may not be addressing some of the questions that case, we'll get there. We'll go okay, we'll get there. All right. This one is for me, which was, can you give some examples of what you treat and what your patients you for? So I thought that was interesting that maybe people might not know what a pediatric endocrinologist does. So I treat diabetes, I treat early puberty, I treat late puberty, I treat thyroid problems, I treat problems with periods and mensies. And I treat patients who are looking to transition genders in you know, the adolescent phases. So that's kind of a new field of what's called like gender medicine. And yeah, so all of those things, and I would say the biggest proportion of my patients are still diabetes patients, with growth running a close second in my area, and then a hodgepodge of everything else for the rest. Yeah, because those are issues that have to do with and what is indochronology. So yeah, well you know that hormones. Yeah, it's the study of any condition related to hormones. But in some cases, you know, you could say, you could stretch that even further, like I think some of it's just based on tradition, like back in you know, nearly a century ago. Actually it wasn't even a full century ago, the field didn't even exist, and actually diabetes was not part of what pediatric endocnologists did until maybe the nineties. There were still some diehards that said, we don't do that, like that that's not you know, it is a hormonist, I would say, isn't. Yeah, but arbitrary. So yeah, but was that just not known? I mean I thought that was no. I'm not sure what field did cover whether that was just more under the purview of the general pediatrician at the time. But really there there are some old school pediatric endos who still don't cover diabetes, and there are some programs who have divided themselves into endocrinology and then diabetology, which is interesting, like that's generally in a very large program. I have a friend at Colorado Children' which is a renowned center and very large and they have two separate teams. She's on the ENDO team because she was not diabetes was not her favorite. I actually like everything, so I'm glad that I get to see a variety. Well, it's interesting because I mean I could see that diabetes being its own condition and being relatively common as as conditions go, that there might be a benefit to having people totally specializing in that because it's yes, I can see different from transgender medicine in terms of what you're seeing, like what the issues are going to be. And so yeah, that's interesting that it all comes under one one umbrella. But yes, it's a fun umbrella. Is the animal? All right? Question this is a deeper one. I'm going to you can go first with us. I just bothered on for a while. What would you tell your younger self about motherhood and career? Hmm? And I gonna say how young of a self are we are we talking? I mean, is this eight or old Laura? Twenty? Probably before you've had children. I want to say, you're twenty two? Twenty two? Twenty two year old Laura? Okay, Well, interestingly, this was when I was twenty two. There was a ton of news about findings that you know, your fertility like fell off a cliff after twenty seven or whatever it was. That was the headlines that came out. I think this was just right around the time that Sylvia am Hewlett's book Creating a Life came out, and so the headline coming out of that was just like, you know, forty plus percent of women who had these big jobs did not have children by forty and you know, there was all this to do about this. I was like, oh, well, that's that's interesting. I mean, what I took away from that is that probably I should start having children younger if I was interested in having them, which I was little did I know that that data is somewhat problematic And it turns out, as listeners know, I am pregnant again at forty. So I did, in fact get pregnant at twenty seven, as you were supposed to do to hit your peak futility window, and then turns out you can also get pregnant at forty. That the data is a lot less six three, a lot less all the ale. So no, it wasn't that I was rushed into it already. Think I was very happy to start my family when I did. But I think a lot of the negative headlines were disconcerting to me at the time because I didn't know, like, you don't know going in, like will it be possible to keep leaning into your career while raising a family and having the life that you want? And so I've sort of built my career around trying to find people who are doing such things and sharing their stories and hopefully sharing helpful advice with people. And of course the good thing about doing that is that the advice has been helpful to me too. So I chose chose a field that, in fact, it's all sort of meta that you know, what would I tell my younger self about combining work and parenthood. Well, I built a career where I figure out how you do that? And I would just hand her a copy of I Know how she does I would hand her a copy of I Know how she does it. That's true, and I recommend anyone listening to this podcast do that too. Any young women you know, Yes, how about ten women you know? That's even about perfect your book club. All right, here's a fun one before we take our break. We'll need a break after this one. Please talk about sex post kids. Well, so, I mean the reason this person was bringing this up is because there is a section in my book Off the Clock in which I talk about having tracked my time for multiple years, and among the things that I do with my time, as you might imagine, it's, you know, the reason I have five children, you know, it's how much we need to be euphimistic here. And so this makes it onto the timelog. And so because of this, I know how often such things happen. And the funny part about it to me was that my tally of such encounters from one year was the exact same as the tally of the next year. And it's not like it was a multiple of fifty two. So it's not like, oh, every you know, Friday and Sunday, Wednesday, every Wednesday something. It wasn't a multiple of fifty two. It's not that. It's just that whatever reason, that's how it happened to go. And I'm happy to report that the third year I tracked, the number did go up a little bit, which was great. Wow, And that's why you're having another baby apparently. You know, if you go, I wonder if there's an app for that. Well, you don't need an app, you just need to I know, but what you were saying, it was just like my mind went to Strava and how I strack my workouts and I can get like a calendar. So I'm like, I bet some I'm well, I'm sure there is there's like certainly you know conception trackers when people are trying to get pregnant. There are ones that have fields for intrigues time which because of course you know and do so on your most fertile days, if that's what you were pursuing. It could also be a page in your home. It could be a page in your hope and it's not in my life, not for you, Or it could be a collection in your bullet journal if you have notes on each separate thing. But I mean, I think what this person is. The question I sort of get from people from a time management perspective is often people are really tired at night, or you know, they're being woken up at night, which has a remarkably bad effect on wanting to stay up later to do anything, or feeding hormonal stuff somonal stuff immed at least not kind to the or just you know, busyness, like the kids are all over the place. You know, how do you make time for that. And I think it really is like anything else, deciding that it is a priority and that you both want to have it happen. And if you don't want to have it happen, that's a different issue that should probably be addressed, whether through through counseling, or if there's medical issues that need to be addressed, that's a that's a different issue. But both of you are game. Then it's about saying, well, you know, even if the circumstances aren't perfect, usually you're happy afterwards. So maybe just try, you know, or carve out unusual times. I was giving advice to some people recently who both worked from home on a certain day of the week. I said, well, that sounds like a great time for a slightly longer lunch break, right, you know, it's or nap time on weekends, or in the morning, if you're both up earlier than the teenage kids or something. I mean, there's just all kinds of ways. It doesn't have to be, you know, Saturday night. If both of you are passed out tired on Saturday night and just be creative. I love it. I'm not giving any more details because I have too many family members that listen to this show. So we're going to move on. Well, maybe we should even just take a break at this point. Yes, all right, so we're going to stap for a quick word from our sponsors. 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Availability or there or your interest? Well, you've had to sort of redo this whole thing when you moved, so you know you're kind of starting from scratch. How did you wind up making those decisions? Well, I guess, just to reiterate, yeah, it used to be a superdecision of can convenience because well, interest and convenience. The school had built in enrichment activities. And I would just show that schedule to Annabelle and Cameron because his school actually had them too, and they would just kind of pick what they liked great, logistically amazing. When we moved, those were no longer options. We basically we've encouraged them to do piano. I don't know how. I mean, they're not like complaining about it, but it was a little bit more driven by Josh and I feeling like it's just a nice basis to have learning how to read music and what the notes are, you know, in case they learn other instruments. And you know my backstories. I played piano for years and then played violin and singing, and I felt like the piano really helped me in those other endeavors. So I just wanted them to have that same kind of early start. So that's the one activity I would say they didn't really drive. Everything else has just been like they asked to do it, and then we see how to fit it in. We try to do at least one. I tell the kids, like, you have to do one athletic thing. It could be dance, or it could well it hasn't been danced for a while, but it could have been, or it could be like a sport. So currently Annabel is in basketball and also this like Ninja class that she wanted to do, and then Cameron's in basketball as well, and then they have to do one kind of creative thing, so that could be piano. Annabel also really likes art, and then yeah, and beyond that just kind of mostly driven by them. We're really lucky that we have a nanny who's able to handle the logistical load, so we sort of plan more around what the kids want to do within reason. Yeah, I mean, interest is huge. If kids don't want to do something, it's a lot harder to make them do it. We have generally said something athletic and something musical. The musical things can of course be at school. So Jasper just joined his middle school's advanced choir, which is very exciting but is logistically challenging because it meets twice a week at seven twenty a m. So that has thrown the whole morning thing off. We are working on it, but you know, it's it's very important to me that if a child takes the initiative to do something, to try out for some thing, we provide the logistical support to make it work. So he's doing that. Sam just elected to take up the Alto sacks, so that's a new thing. It just came home yesterday when we're recording this, and it's so cool. I would see him, like it looks like a little blues musician walking around with his alto sax. But he got to choose right, Like, so his school has a band and a band for and they do music lessons as well. And I had thought he wanted to do drums because he had asked for a drum set last Christmas, which he got, and so he's learned how to play, but he made a decision that he would rather have the instruction in an instrument like the alto sacks, where it's a little bit more important to have that and to develop a new skill that he could probably continue just playing the drums on his own. So yeah, now it's now we got the alto sax. So that's you are totally going to have a family band someday maybe, which is like my husband's ultimate dream. I don't know why he loved to talk about the family band anyway, that's awesome. Okay, are you too as positive about mothering, wifing working when you prep for the show? Can they? I think someone's imagining that we get on we're like, oh god, my husband did these horrible and they're like, Hi, welcome to the best of those world where we make work and life fit together. I mean, are we positive about everything all the time? Like, absolutely not or I'm not anyway, I'm not going to speak for you. But am I positive about my overall life situation? Yes? Yes, I think I'm pretty positive about that most of the time, except when I have PMS. Yeah, I mean, well, and that was the beautiful thing of Sarah having done that month long blogging streak because that we got it all, We got all the swings, all the swings. But yeah, I mean, I think both of us are fairly positive people. That not saying that again everything is great. You know, we both have things happen in our life that we don't share everything on this podcast, But I think that it generally behooves us to be grateful for our situations, the things that we have been able to make happen, and the things that, through no personal merit, have also come wonderfully into our lives, and to understand that because we have these sort of resource and resilience that we can deal with stuff right like that you can approach problems looking for solutions, and that is kind of a big message. I think of everything we try to do here that we're not totally pollyanna ish, but there's often something you can do to make a situation better. Love it all. Right, here's a fun one. What one thing do you suggest expecting moms do before baby is born? Get your childcare ducks in a row. I do agree with that, and actually, like Laura, I've now added two more people to my people I know are pregnant list, Like everybody in my life, I'm telling you it's catching. No it's not, but no, it's it's actually amazing. So I feel like, No, the fun thing for me is even though again, as I've said, like we are done and Josh, I think Josh I mentioned my friend who had four kids and her blog and how I liked it, and he looked at me. He's like, that's like a really crazy life, right, And I was like, I don't think I was worried. I think he was worried. I was in singing no it's not, it's not. We're happy. But actually, what I do love is like talking about baby stuff. So I'm getting my fill of that through all of these other people that are going through it. Many for the first time or some really wide I have a friend who's having her second and her kids are like eight years apart, so it's super fun. It feels like a first time for her, and I think one fun thing to do well two things. Number one, I would, I don't know, plan something fun for your maternity leave, like something to look forward to, because it can feel like a drag's kind of period. And if you're like, you know what I'm going to like read these this trilogy of novels, like I'm going to save maybe like crazy rich Asian series and read it during my matternity, like find something fun to look forward to and maybe on that similar vein set up like some friend dates or like something, because I kind of have wished I had done that because I found myself once I had the baby, I wasn't as much in planning mode, but I really did benefit from having social engagements and seeing people and being forced to leave the house. So maybe set some of those into action. But I agree with Laura, that's that's all like to do after you have gotten your childcare ducts in a row. That's that's number one. Yes, Because I think a lot of people are like, oh well, I'll see how I feel once the baby comes. You know, no, like that's that means that you're going to be you're too late. You're too late, which means that you won't be able to go back to work, or if you do, it will be in a subpar situation, which will guarantee that you will probably not be able to do what you You know, if you decide you did want to go back to work, you're kind of shooting yourself to the foot. So I want to settle for the daycare with the open slot. Yeah, you know, you are much better off getting a situation in place. Then you try it for six months. If after that you're like, no, no, this is this is not for me, that's fine. You can then make a sort of rational decision about it six to twelve months or something and decide that you would prefer to be at home with your kids or something. But you know, you will make the decision for yourself by not getting your childcare in place. And again, if that is your decision, that's great. But if you don't know, you want to make sure you have options, awesome? All right, this might be filed under the not everybody Well, I'm fine answering this, but I don't know if you're going to want to answer this one. Do you guys get along with your in laws, particularly mother in law? Yes? Oh good, Okay, well so if I'm very listeners would call it. My mother in law accompanied me on the Disney Cruise with my three older children in August, and she is such a good sport. Oh my goodness, like come come see the sting rays and the dolphins and you know, deal with our kids and such on this boat. And she's she's all good for it. So yeah, we had we had a good time. Yeah. I'm also I'm like super lucky. In fact, I'm probably a little more prone to fight with my own biologic mother and father, even though I love them too than my in laws. They're just very easy and we appreciate what they do for us. So yeah, sorry, we don't have much advice to offer there, because I'm sure that's really difficult. Actually, though, I would say the one thing that I've read in various books that has struck me is sometimes people don't get along with their mother in law and yet there's still the primary one, like planning and talking with that mother in law, and if that were the case. For me, I think I would just be like Josh, you will be talking to your mom and I will be doing whatever the two of you decide, like you like, remove yourself. Yes, the extend your kids doesn't mean I have to have my situation, but if it's not one that is a particularly positive one for you, I would say that's true. Yeah, all right. How do you handle school functions with multiple kids any full time job? I mean, I guess that's just logistics in general. I mean I have the sort of general flexibility that if there's something I deem important to go to during the school day, I will go to it. And because we have full time childcare, it's not a problem for younger kids who are not in school at that point, So I have the ability to do that. You know, evenings, do you go to everything? I don't go to everything. I mean we Michael and I certainly try to get dates on the calendar for things that we think the children would really appreciate us going to or that we think are important, like having a parent teacher conference, for instance. But it's not everything. I mean, I don't know, there's you can't necessarily go to everything, and if you have younger kids, for instance, it becomes logistically far more complex. So and in fact, that was one of the things I found. It was sort of easier probably for someone like me to take on something like room parent duties even though I work. But because I work, I have child care for younger children, and that means that I'm available during the workday in a way that if you did not have regular child care for your younger children because you were not employed, for instance, would actually be harder to do. That's true, that's a good point. I mean, my philosophy is we just don't go to We go to the things that feel important a performance. Yes, parent teacher conferences, we actually both try to go to those, and luckily, you know, most of the teachers do appreciate that many families have two parents that work, and so a lot of times those are early in the morning or kind of at the end of the day. I do. I would just add to that, you can also often have another parent call in. Yes, so I mean you want to ask obviously if the teacher is okay with it, but having the other parents skype in from work, they may be able to get half an hour off in a way that they couldn't take the half day off, for instance, or if they're traveling for work, then that works as well. Absolutely. But the other thing is I feel like, you know, for those volunteer opportunities, I certainly don't feel like I can or should go to all of them for any one kid, but I'm trying to at least get to one per year for each kid. And I do try to take my days off fairly strategically. Like Laura knows, I took Halloween off because I figured, I know, like there's going to be stuff at school and sure enough, and don't worry, Laura, it does not interfere with our podcast taping session. But Cameron, I was asked there was an event from like eight thirty to ten am, and I was like, perfect, because we're not recording till noon. And I took the day off. And like when the Stars do a ligne, I will jump at it because I know I'm not going to be able to go to every single field trip or you know, every event. Yeah, so yeah, I just I think you can give yourself permission to miss some your kids will be okay, yes, all right? In what ways we're getting deep, we need we need to find some shallow questions, but we'll do one more deep one in what ways have you shifted your expectations to have the best of both worlds? Oh, I don't know, what are you? How are you going to answer that one? Maybe you go first on this one. It's a great question. I think, just continuing to shift away from perfection and towards good enough and knowing that you know within your life you are going to try to make the most of it. But you really can't have everything, but you can have a lot. I guess that's sort of my overdriving philosophy. And I think I learned some of that from your early writings, which is kind of amazing. But I think it's I think so much of it is like letting go of perfection and a book and letting go of tropes that you didn't write. You know, just just remember who's creating the rules and what the rules really are like that, Yeah, let go of tropes you didn't write. That sounds good. I'll go with that too. You awesome? All right, let's find a let's find a like a like A fun question. Well, this is sort of fun. This is for Laura. Okay, you can choose to answer or not? What is your take on the index fund bubbles? It's my personal finance, macro economic you know quiz here I saw when I saw that that question was on the Instagram list, I went and looked up what this listener was talking about. See the Planet Money episode. I know what they're talking about because I listened to Planet Money, but they didn't ask me, which is interesting. But well, I think it's because I was the one who was telling people to buy VT. It was vander actually World Desire. I have like no opinion, so yeah, but I think that the people who were quoted as worrying about an index fund bubble were people who are in the business of selling managed mutual funds, which their whole business model is getting people to pay higher fees in the hope that these managed funds will then make higher returns than the market. And some will, but on average they will not. And because on average they're going to be about the same as the market, you then lose out because you're paying you know, one to even like five percent some of these front loaded mutual funds fees, which is just killer for your returns, whereas the index funds, like you are going to make the market. That is the whole definition. You will make exactly the market, minus a very small percentage for fees because they are not actively managed. The one thing I did think was interesting is because there's only a few major players in the index fund world, the sort of vanguards of the world and other things like that, there was a concern that because they're kind of owning the so much of these companies, as money goes into the index funds, they have a much higher vote in any shareholder situation. Maybe there's a long term governance issue with that, but that has nothing to do with like you personally like where you should put your money, So I'm not too concerned about that. For most people, I think it still makes sense as an individual investor to mostly have a diversified portfolio, which index funds by definition will will do that for you. So not too concerned about it. Awesome. Well, I think we're at the thirty five minute mark or so. I think we should finish up with one more question and then the rest of these. There's plenty of juicy ones left we can save. We're round two, so let's go with how often do you do date night? Well, probably not as often as maybe we should or would like to, And our weekends have just been really full of other stuff of late. I love how someone's like, but you didn't mention friend time. I'm like, I don't think it's kind of you know, I mean, it's it's in. Your weekends are like all over the place, all over the place. Yeah, and you see people at say a birthday party. So there were two different birthday parties I went to in the weekend before this was sent in that question, and I saw certainly parents there that I know, and I could chat with them, and so you get this sort of adult friendly interaction with those people, you know. I guess we don't necessarily have as much of this sort of going out with other couples. We do that occasionally, and that's that's fun when we do. But we've also just had a lot of extended family visiting or things that we have obligations for that or even overnight trips camp cub scout camping, and it just takes you away for enough of Yeah, Like, you guys have just been doing a lot of I would say family adventures, like a lot of which is really cool. Your kids are building such amazing memories and it seems like it works for your family. Yeah, and you know, we sometimes we're better about it than others. And when we are in a good habit of doing our calendar meetings and we look and see if there's a Friday night that we're both was gonna say, I thought you sometimes did a Is it just harder now because your team, like nobody's going to bed. So it's not like nobody's going to bed. I mean we we've been gone on Friday nights. We've had you know, if you're gone for the entire rest of the weekend, you probably want to choose Friday as like the family night. You know, it's it's just not been as high a priority. I will be interested in seeing if this resets and becomes a little more home centered after number five. Yeah, now we'll probably do more of the Well, it's just you know, with big kids, there's no time after they go to bed like that you could hang out together. So in the past, it would it would work to say, Okay, the kids are in bed at like eight, and now you can hang out and do this together. But that's just gone, Like they're they're up later than I am on weekends, so I'm like terrified because mine aren't even old. And I still feel like like that when I read I get so jealous when I read about other people. I mean, in a way, I feel like, Okay, well, it's nice that my kids want to hang out with me and that you know, I don't have to like put them to bed at seven thirty, like they're not tired. Then they usually it's more like eight thirty, and a lot of times it's close to nine, which they are actually fairly tired because they have to get up early, and then I go to bed like thirty minutes later. So no, so we do I think because of that reason, we do have to go out for date night or I feel like we'll never have a coherent conversation, and that's I don't know, just our and we do do a lot of them socially, So we tend to do like I would say, half double dates or like dates with friends and then half that's just us. And I would say we go two to three weekends a month. We'll go on Saturday night usually if we're not on call, we're usually going somewhere or we have an event together, like we have to go to the ball that benefits the children's hospital where I work, and that'll be kind of like a date night event. Yeah, but it's still fun if you're going, I don't know, anything with your partner is more fun than by yourself, could be true. Might as well call it a date night as well? Call it a date night. All right. Well, you know, we'll we'll hopefully get back in the habit of this one of these days. But anyway, this is this has been best of both worlds. We have been going through the questions sent to us from but what our love of the week? Oh no, love of the week. Oh well I was about ready to cut this off, but I will tell you, yeah, my love, do we the same love of the way, Yes, it's the exact same level of the we. We're just so appreciative that we can put a call out on Instagram and get so many awesome questions and how engaged everybody is and what a community this feels like. And someone did ask about and meet up as one of the questions, which maybe we'll I don't know, maybe we'll have a better answer for you by episode number two. But it just I'm just like so impressed. Like we don't even have a Facebook page, but I still feel like there's the community of your listeners, So thank you so much. You are our love of the week. You make this a lot of us, so our listeners are definitely our love of the week. But yes, now, this has been best of both worlds. So we've been doing ask us Anything, and we'll probably do more in the future because this turns out to be a great way to get an episode done. But we'll 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 shoe Box 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.