How to Be A Happier Parent with guest KJ Dell’Antonia. Ep 56

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing position 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 the best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode fifty six. We have a special guest today, kJ del Antonia. She is actually sitting right next to me, which is where I'm sitting in her hotel room in the Marriott and worrying this afternoon. So you don't have to worry about Credeus doccers or anything so far, I don't have any ever since that one boyfriend in nineteen ninety three h Jols. She will be out of this Marriott by the side of the airs, but we're sitting in her to hotel room because we're at the podcast movement conference here, so we're glad we got to do this mostly in person. Sarah's in Miami, but we're ye, I'm totally jealous. I'm totally jealous. That's okay, So we'll have kJ introduced herself. We're happy to have her on because she is the author of a brand new book. It's called How to Be a Happier Parent, which is of course something that we are all looking to do. H and Sarah and I have also been listening to her podcast for a while, which is hashtag am Writing. She and jess Ley talk about all manner of writing, and as they say in their introduction, every time the various different stores, tweets, blog posts, lists all things. So we've we've been listening to that as well and learning learning a lot about the business and the practical sides of writing. So welcome, Thank you so much for having me. This is going to be really fun. I think it is too. It's weird to actually do a podcast while I'm talking looking at someone, well at each other. So why don't you introduce yourself to our guests? Anything that I didn't didn't sure, So I am Kjdalantonia. As Laura said, I'm the author of the book How to Be a Happier Parent. It is just just out, and I've just sort of come off an exciting period of like telling everyone about it, and I guess I'm right in the middle of an exciting period of going and telling every one about it. I am also the former editor of the mother Load blog at The New York Times, which became Well Family. I'm still a contributor there, and I, you know, freelance write about all things parenting, typically more on the cultural and societal and political side than on the personal, but a little bit of booth and the book is it's really a data driven research look at how to be a happier parent, but with lots of informed by my life with four kids, and informed by lots and lots of been there, Done that parents who frankly had a lot to teach me about some of the topics we covered. Yeah, and I've enjoyed reading a lot of your like freelance stuff for years prior to this. Is this your first full book? No, My first full length books was actually before I even joined the Times. It was called Reading with Babies, Toddlers and twos. I co authored it with Susan Straub, who's maybe more famous now as being Emma Straub's mom, and Emma's a novelist you might have heard of in New York. They are this super literary family, and connecting with Susan was really one of the big starts of my career, and we had this hugely fun time writing about little about kids books at the time. Although kJ did have a career before that too. Oh yeah, I was a lawyer. She was a lawyer. That so fun start. She actually went to law school at this relatively the same time as my husband, although she she graduated a little bit later as she was. Yeah, there's much younger and much much much younger if I could still be overlapping being there at the same time. But yeah, so that was. That was when I mentioned to you At some point He's like, hey, I went to law school with her. It was a small law school. It was I kind of all need totally was we all knew each other. Yeah, well there you go. Hopefully he behaved himself in school. I don't really have any idea. It was all good. Might not want to know that could be possible. So yeah, I left, left the law, fled from the law, led from the law, went into a literary career. How did the New York Times one come about, by the way, you've applied for that. Oh at least after Lisa Belkan right, Yeah, so so this was great, all right, So I stopped being a lawyer, had a baby. I actually got laid off from from being a lawyer after nine to eleven, and decided at that point that it was time to throw myself into the writing, which really was what I'd always intended to do. So I paid a lot of money. I say, the law school is just sort of circuit at Yeah. Unfortunately, my dad won't be listening to this because that would it would dis crush him. So I threw myself into and it was just when the Internet was really hitting and boiling the best of the day, and so I was I was literally mailing queries to magazines in little envelopes with self addres stamped returned envelopes the people who are younger. Yeah, yeah, so I barely caught that. And at the same time I was writing for these new things. And I joined the cast at Slate pretty early on, not super early, but when they were starting they were trying to do a gender based section I guess called X Factor, and I joined them actually as their children's media reviewer. With the idea that I would then write anything and everything that I could for them and just said yes, yes, yes, and ended up as one of their regulars. And from there when I found out when Lisa told me that she was leaving Mother Load for HuffPo, which is what she did, I literally, I think she emailed me I'm leaving. And I was at dinner with Jess, my co host, and our friend Serena Bowen, and I said, guys, I have to go because I have to go home and write a job. Okay, oh wow. And by the end of that night I had sent them an email and said I am the best person for this job. There was more to it than that. Okay, you say so. Yeah, and you did it for you did it for quite some time. I did it for five years. Wow. Yeah it was. I mean it was great. It was the best. It was the best, the best job ever really, because you learned, I mean, you get so many different topics. I mean, obviously there was a huge amount of content to put out there, but you probably heard from so many different people and all the different aspects. Yeah. Well, I really started out as the wild the Wild West. It was I mean, Lisa had done it for a while, but just as I joined, we were really starting to have guest writers, so I did so much more editing than anybody expected me to do. And also, you know, they paid, They paid a lot of really close attention to the the words, as the times should but at the time, so the sort of the stuff around it, the illustrations, whether or not you maybe you know, tried to explore a little stop motion video or I don't know if anybody remembers, ye, which was that short video thing when you were on Twitter, all that kind of stuff. They weren't really on top of that yet, so you kind of could just we really spend a lot of time playing around and exploring. It's not fun. I remember seeing kJ at a conference with a little camera like on a tripod blogging. Yeah. So, and I'm sure part of you you saw a lot of different aspects of parenting through that that beat, and your book has certainly come out of a part of that. I mean, do you think it is hard to be happy as a parent? Why? Why is this an issue? That's so? I think surprisingly few of us feel like we're happy as a parent. And that was definitely my experience in working with other writers and interviewing people. It wasn't to be honest, This is I just I've been, you know, looking at different lines from my book, and one of them was there wasn't really anything to complain about, but complain we did, yes, So you know, here we all were with these lovely modern Western lives and realistically on a day to day basis, most of us especially, I mean, if you're if you've got the wherewithal to be listening to this podcast and be worried about this, you probably have generally speaking, enough to eat and a roof over your head, and you know, clean sheets and the works. And yet we find a lot of things to stress about. And I really wanted to look at both why and sort of more relevantly, can we make that stop? Because this is what we wanted, Like most of us really worked hard to get to this family position. We wanted to be working parents with kids and have all the things and the dishwasher and the dog and everything, you know, So how can we get to the point where we're mostly enjoying it. I'm not sure that my sheets are all that clean. You could clean, I could clean work. It might or might not. That's sort of interesting for Laura, I don't think it would. I wonder if it's you know, it's this gap between sort of expectations and reality. You see about how my parenthood is portrayed and all sorts of them in between the Hallmark movie side, you know, the instagram of people's like, oh my four darling children, and you know, then there's that expectation in the reality where they're like up at five am and biting each other. You know, So is that gap you think partly responsible? That gap is partly responsible for that for it? And I do think when they're up at five am and biting each and we just we just took a road trip with four and they spent a lot of time licking each other. Are teenagers way mind you? Yes? Yeah, you know we're sitting there telling the twelve year old to stop licking the seventeen year old, and we had this huge commotion because the fourteen year old licked the thirteen year old. Camera. Oh wow, So we got twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and seventeen. I do, I do, and they're still they're just clustered in there. Yeah, they're licking each other. So I think we feel like that's bad, Like those are the bad times. It's five am and they're biting each other, and this is and this is terrible because they shouldn't be biting and licking each other, and it should look different. And so some of what I found as I researched the book was that part of our problem is just how we how we look at it. And it's not just I think this should look more instagram worthy. It's also actually, you know, the five am bite. Nobody wants to be up at five am or sorry, I gotta let you, But that moment when they're all there and they're all doing those things, I mean, there's this larger good that is still going on. You're still you know, you're still in your happy place. You're your family is still it's still your refuge, you're still loved, you're still sort of part of a good piece of life. And being able to train your brain to notice that even as you're shrieking, stop biting, I can tell those are your tooth marks on her arm, you know, it just it just can make the whole thing just feel a little better. That's your legal background that you can identify the two things. The point of evidence here off which which child it was who did that? I know you were the only one missing a front too, So I know that with you. And one of the great things about this book is that kJ talks about her you know, personal story of it, and there's a lot of kJ and her family in there. And in addition to the broader research, you know, I wonder if you could share some of your particular stumbling blocks there, you know, low moments on your parenting journey. Well, I got one with your your two daughters. You know, the showdown at the hockey rank was was certainly a moment. Yeah. So my two daughters are extremely close in age, and as I was writing this book, they were they were eleven and twelve. They were living in the they shared a bedroom, they go to the same tiny school. They were playing on the same hockey team. Basically every minute of every day they were together. And they didn't This was not my choosing. They did not like each other at this time. They are both very different and very similar, and they were just they were at war. It was it was just every day was this. If you don't have siblings who are at each other's throat, it's hard to even sort of think about how bad it is just to live with people who are really willing to go for the jugular at any moment. I mean, you know, like you can have two officemates who dislike each other, they're not going to be like you know, they at least are trying to be professional and generally speaking, you're not crying one of them's hands off the other one's neck. And that's an exaggeration. I don't think that ever happened, but you know, they would just they would just go at it. And here I am, and I'm writing this chapter on how to be a happier parent and sibling relationships, and I'm just thinking I'm gonna have to give the advance back because I cannot be happier. Yeah, like we are never, ever, ever, ever going to be happier. So it's a huge advantage to be writing a book at that point, because I basically went and bought a huge stack of books about raising siblings, of which some of my favorites. I'm gonna miss people, but certainly sibling siblings without rivalry is really Oh I've heard that's good. Yeah, that one's high on my list. And I also just started calling people I called those people I called I called every expert that I could come up with, and I was just like, you know, what, what is this? What can I what should I do? And the interesting upshot, the sort of long story short, is that the answer was I needed to just stop doing much of anything. If you see something, you don't have to say something. That turned out to be one of the mantras. So the deal was for us. And this is I mean just sort of to take this to the larger level of if you've got battling siblings when they when they're little, you really do have to you have to get in there. Well, you sort of have two choices. You can either let them, let them alone and not go in there, and because you just can't at that moment, but if you can go in, you have to really be like, oh my gosh, you know, Laura, you want to build with blocks, but Sarah's in the mood to kick over box. What are what are we going to do about it? You know, give them each time to try to go Laura, I hear you saying that Sarah has kicked over your block. You know, sort of do all the things that are the the quintessential mockery things that you know, parents need to say, but you really do need to say that. You need to get to the to the point where, even if they won't admit it, they can see each other's perspective. And you have to do that sort of again and again and again until you're pretty convinced that even when they're still knocking over each other's blocks. And you know, as I said, if my seventeen year old builds a block tower, it's quite possible my twelve. Of course, my twelve year old would knock it over. Once you're pretty convinced that they can see each other's perspective, that's the point when you have to you have to just let them, even if it sounds awful, even if it sounds wrong, Even if the seventeen year old is shrieking, you have a fat butt, and the the twelve year old is shrieking, you don't have any friends unless those are like massive emotional no goes in your house. You really just need to go and put some headphones on and let them work it out. And that's what I needed to do. It's gotten better, it has, it's totally actually now it's my youngest son and my youngest daughter who do this a little bit more so we're still in the throes of siblingness, but that particular relationship. Yeah, it really once, you know, I kept taking sides. I didn't mean to take sides, but it always seems like somebody's right right. It is hard. I would say it's very hard because I always feel like, yeah, my two older fight all the time, and it's like someone usually is kind of more in the wrong. But you're right if I if you can resist kind of being there, be a little more neutral, be a little bit make it their problem to figure it out. Well, the advice I got was to either sort of you had two choices, and the first choice is both of you are making your me crazy. You go sit in the closet, you go sit in the garage. You know, a universal both of you or both of you stop it, or that's it, I'm turning the TV off. Just something that really and you have to be sort of careful with that last one, because it could be that one of them really wants the TV off, but but something that applies to them both or you have to just you have to just walk away. And I really was. I mean, usually one or the other of them was pretty right. But the thing is you never know. I mean, you don't know what happened before, you don't know what happened an hour ago. You just have to let them. They have there, they have their relationships apart from you, and you have to let that develop. And I would also say that it's possible the siblings will never be best friends, and that's okay, Yeah, don't They don't have to be best friends. I just you know, need to be able to be in the house with yeah, both of them. Well, there are a lot of great ideas in here. I mean, Sarah, you have a few questions in here that you wanted to Oh, well, I love I want I know you mentioned the chor chapter and I definitely enjoyed that chapter a lot, and it made me want to rethink some of the things we do because we have not you know, and that's something that Laura and I have talked about. When you have we both have like I have a nanny who does a lot of our chores, and then our kids see that happening, and you know, how do I make sure that they're also learning to do things for themselves. So I liked a lot of your ideas there, and then I definitely want you to talk more about travel, because I like that chapter and we're about to embark on a pretty crazy adventure pretty soon, so I could use all the tips I can get. Well, let's let's talk about the chores first, because you do a year a yearly chor assignment. We do now. So first of the thing I want to say about chores is that it took both writing this chapter and then editing this chapter, and then copy editing this chapter and then reading it aloud for the audiobook for me to really feel like everything that I had learned from other people had soaked in and for us to start change. We changed this up constantly, and I finally feel like we're kind of The thing about chores is well, I mean, there's a bunch of things about chores, but one of the thing about chores is, honestly, this one's on you. Their homework is their problem, Their relationship with their siblings is their problem. But if they're not doing chores, it's really because we're not making them. There's just there's nothing. There's nothing more to it than that, And I hate that that totally sucks. Why can't it be that they're just lazy, terrible, terrible people, but who would do chores if if someone wasn't you know, they don't feel the same things that we feel. They don't feel like sink full of dishes is a judgment on their humanity and their you know, their their personhood or or whatever. It just doesn't bother them. So if you want it done, you really have to you have to insist that they do it, and that is really hard, especially if you have someone who can help, but you the yearly assignment though, it gives people the chance to become masters, right right. So that was something I learned as I wrote this is that every a lot of the people that I talked to who felt really good, who were like, oh, yeah, I cauls help around the house, you know, which causes you to like roll your eyes and follow over, said that's that's how they did it. They had a year long assignment and we shifted our actually have ended up being more like sort of sixty so it'll be like the school year and then the summer and then the next school year. But the deal with that is they get to get really good at it, they get to make it a habit it all. You know, you have to pick things that have to happen, in my opinion, daily and pretty much at the same time to have an expectation that it will really happen because they get older, you could probably you know, maybe laundry doesn't happen. To happen, it have to happen at the same time every day. And also you sort of get a little more room to cut them some slack. I mean, if if they're at a sports practice and you end up loading the dish washer the next night, they're still going to load the dishwasher. I mean, you have to be careful about that because we don't we parents are really we cut our kids a lot of slack and we pretend we don't, you know, so loading the dishwasher would be what are examples of chores that could be assigned for the year, like, yeah, are and these are so little and tiny, and that is okay. I mean, realistically, I have somebody that cleans my house too, and so the chores aren't cleaning the bathroom and they don't how to clean a bathroom. And I'm gonna let the idea that they will do it every week for the moment and letting that go. So our chores are pretty small. Every morning somebody has to unload the dishwasher twice a day. Somebody has to take you know, somebody has to feed our four indoor pets. And then we have outside animals that somebody has to go out and deal with once a day. So those that's like they're daily the daily task is nothing more than that. Oh, and then taking out the trash. I was gonna say, there's four of them, so shouldn't there be four or that was Actually it's a little tough because there aren't really four. But really, yeah, they are empty the dishwasher, feed the animals in the morning, feed the animals at night, and take out the trash. Those are those are sort of the main four that really truly have to happen every day, and so the same person does it. And and then on top of that, every night after dinner, everybody has to stay in the kitchen until the kitchen is cleaned. And that's a really hard because they finish at different times. And then they're like, but I have homework in the case of one of them, but I have to go to the bathroom. Yeah, we are all onto you. You know, it's a very adjustive thing. You gotta go. Yeah, it's very so we'll wait, will wait, will wait? Well, Ann, I mean, the book is about being a happier parent, How to be a happier parent, And one of the hang ups with the chore thing is that you have to keep asking. And I think some people have this idea the holy grail is that you don't have to ask that the kids the chore. I thought it, which may be setting yourself up for failure. That's a totally different thing. That's a totally different thing. If you accept that, you will always still have to be asking, but it will get done. Yeah, that's a different You're exactly can succeed. And yeah, you have to separate those two things. There's the I want you to do this instead of me, and then there's the I want you to do it without being reminded. And I have talked to so many people who have been like, yeah, that second part, you get that when they're nineteen and you just have to let it. You just have to let it go. That's that's not a piece of it. You know, I have to And it depends on the kid too, I literally, and it's not about you. In this case, I have one child who will put a dish in the dishwasher every single time. I never have to ask. I have another who will never do it ever. Ever, every single day I go and get that child and I say, you left your dishes from lunch every day, every day without fail, same kids, same raising basically the same age. Makes me crazy. Yeah, you know, I think there is going to having multiple kids where you can take your own personal responsibility out of it, right Like you you can't feel guilty that you did a bad job training them when one of them does an amazing job and one of them is Apparently neither of those things is on me. But exactly the right way. This makes you happier, there is say it because one of the things that makes people unhappy as parents feeling like you were doing all the work and you have no time for fun because you know you're doing the dishes while everyone else is watching TV or whatever it is. Well, and also that thing you said where you feel like you're raising these entitled little kids that no one will want. You know, you feel like you're raising that college roommate who just throws the dishes in the sink and hopes somebody else does it. Exactly you don't. So some of it is you're not doing all the work, and some of it is also you know, a sense that you're actually teaching people to be adult humans in the world, which is the goal. Yeah. So, but I like how your book, your book really does focus on not not taking responsibility for making your kids a certain way. No, that that is something that can make you feel a lot happier, right right, I mean, you know, to some extent, deciding that be your own happiness is an important part of your family life, which it definitely is. That's kind of risky because it means letting go of the outcomes with your kids. You can't you can't make your own happiness dependent on them getting good grades or getting all their homework done, or making the top sports team or whatever. I mean, that's your having its should not be dependent on that. But a lot of us, especially when they're little, we feel like those are things we can control, and you know you can. You could do all their homework for people do. It's it's out there. I say, your podcast co host hays a whole book about that. She does. But it's out there more than you would think. And you know, when you say I want to I want this family to be like a happy source of refuge, a part of my life. I want to feel joy, you know, I want I want this to be I want this to be a good thing. Part of what you need to do is sort of let go and let them be. Like I'm waving my arms around a little inner inner planets, you know, inner orbiting with you, but not that you. You can't control everything that they're doing and be happy. I don't think I believe it. I love that. Let's talk about travel then, because yeah, Sarah really wants her tips for having a happy family vacation. Okay, you know this one tip is so silly, but a lot of people have come back to me with it. Take turns being grumpy. What does that mean? What it means? You know, trips are stressful. Somebody's going to be the one stressed at the airport, or the one stressed because there aren't direction. One of the kids is going to be the one who is stressed because you're not getting where they thought they were going to be at the right time. And some kids get really upset about that. You know, some kids are just stressed by being out of their element. And the thing is that stress and anxiety are so totally contagious. So when you are, you know, standing, I'm trying. I'm just gonna go with the airport. So when you're at the airport and the plane is running late and your spouse or partner is going on, we're gonna miss the connecting flight and they're getting all, you know, you can sort of all join in with that and all get really, but it's not helpful. So the better course and maybe the flight's not the best example. But I mean sometimes it's just as stupid as like I can't find I just had my hair brush. I just had it in my hand. Where did I put the hair brush? And the thing is to just let the person sort of have their little temper tanter me moment and step out of it yourself, and even to say to kids, you know, it's actually we were standing at It wasn't the Grand Canyon, but that was our most recent family vacation. We did the Grand Canyon and all the surrounding national parks and were literally sanding there and my husband was upset about something and I turned to one of the kids and I was like, all right, it's daddy's turn to be grumpy right now, and we're just you're just gonna let him get through this and then he's gonna be fine. And some parents standing next to me was like, I love that it's daddy's turning to be grumpy right now. I do like that. You don't allow it. You don't allow somebody's minor misery to catastrophize the whole scene. Thank you for putting that in a much shorter phrase. But I like it. I think it's a great idea. Yes, yeah, but it's just it's just true. And I feel like I know that my little snits about the hairbrush or whatever are temporary, but sometimes when it's my kid or my partner, I feel like, oh my god, the whole vacation is gonna be ruined because they're upset. You just you really catastrophye somebody else's emotions when really theirs are just as fleeting as yours. They get over it. Yeah, yeah, And you can choose which narrative you want to take, the one where you know everything's sliding into its and every or you know that bump and that bump, but in between it, we're all, okay, I will keep that in mind. I'm gonna need it well. And another big piece I think of a happy family vacation, especially with young kids, is to leave give yourself a lot of buffer. So don't plan a lot of things that are really packed in tightly next to each other. You know, if you think it's going to take a half an hour to get from place A to place B, leave an hour and a half. I mean, you know, leave some room to stop for snacks, Leave some room for that. One of our children says, are we almost there? And what that really translates to is I have to go to the bathroom. But we were just somewhere where there was a bathroom and I didn't go. And I know you're gonna be mad at me. You know, you got to leave room if you the more buffer you can leave, sort of, the more slack you could put in the whole schedule, I think, the happier everybody's gonna be. I love it. Are you gonna do that? And I liked your list of I loved your list of You talked about like finding the things that you like to do in each place, not necessarily pay attention to like what the hot thing or like the stereotypical thing to visit, but like you kJ specifically like to see bookstores and something else. And if you get to do one of those things that you like to do, then it's a success, right, And you know, not everything should be not everything should be kid focused. This is so key. Even if you have little kids and you're heading off to Disney World, there's probably something you'd like to do that is not that huge on their list. Not only should you do that, but if it's age appropriate, they should come along. Because like learning to enjoy things sort of on behalf of someone you love. That's that's huge, and that's important. And watching someone you love enjoy something that they you know, that's their thing, that should bring that brings us happiness. And you need to give kids sort of give them enough respect to realize that they don't necessarily have to you know, not every minute has to be Harry Potter. It doesn't have to be an entertainment. You're not responsible for twenty four to seven entertainment. Please no, no, I know, Oh no, that's good, that's great. Did you have anything else on the book, Sarah that we wanted to know? But I want to say, oh yes, I was going to say, you know what, I think I might so I have this parenting book club that I started, and I think I might use your book. I think your book might be a good a good one, because I think there was enough in it to discuss. And I will say to anyone, you know, there are a lot of books out there these days that this book is very fun to read. And that's huge, because you know what it's like to hear about a book on parenting that sounds really cool, but then you read ten pages and you're like, oh, do I really have to read this? But this one's like entertaining, thank you, So I highly recommend it makes you feel bad either. I mean, no, it doesn't. It makes you feel good and it's fun to read. At some point trying to figure out like, you know, I knew I wanted to write a book that that sort of brought together the past five or six years, well really more in the past decade of talking to other parents and interviewing and parent journalism, and I kind of thought about I mean, I thought about a lot of things, including like just you know, a journalistic look at our societal non complete total failure to support families, which has been written. It's it's out there. Those are out there and they're great, but one of the things I one of my original thoughts was something about like having more fun is a family. And as I sort of started to make a list of, well what would things be they make things more fun, I just got like less and less, you know, it's just like a list of more things to do. And I was like, I don't want to do more things. I just want to be less things things. And I don't even necessarily yeah, I kind of do want to do less things, but mostly I just want to feel better about the stuff I'm already doing. Please don't make me like be present or I mean, I try to do those things, but don't don't make me be present or don't make me like, you know, add one outing with an individual child every week, or or you know, make a point of of, you know, having a family ritual dinner or something. I mean, some of those things are great. And if those are things that you want to do and you're already doing them, then you know, let's let's make them better. But realistically, if you wanted to do those things, you'd probably already be doing, so I don't really tell you to do anything. She wants to enjoy the enjoyable, right you can't enjoy every minute, no try, but you can enjoy the enjoyable, which is which is always good. So I think this brings us to our Q and A. I mean, so we're just doing the whole episode with kJ here so she can wait. Yeah, so maybe kJ can weigh in. Yeah, that'd be great. Did you want to read it, sir, because it sure, yes, it came. I think it came to me. I don't remember, but anyway, here it is. You mentioned having child care help on the weekend, and that's I don't do that every weekend. But going on call eyther way like, because you even if it was just because she wanted to go for a run, that would be okay. That would be okay too, Or if I wanted to hang out with one kid and want to care for the others, which could actually absolutely happen too, or if I want a time for myself and get whatever happens. By the way, so I can see how that would be super super helpful or necessary. But I am just really curious if you ever get tired of being around other adults as far as babysitters or Nannie's go, is there much personal dynamic to deal with their just curious and would love to hear about it if you have something to say, so I'll answer it first. And we've talked about like I am an extrovert, so I don't know if that like colors my answer. It has never bothered me at all. So I don't have a lot of helpful things to say except that, I mean, part of this is that we haven't nanny that we truly love, and she's I don't know if she can hear me right now. I don't think she can in the other room with our baby. She's someone I'm happy to hang out with, and you know that's part of why we, you know, continue to have her as a sort of contributing member to our family. So I am never bothered. And if I want to be alone, then I just would go for a run, or I would kindly say, like, oh, I really need the house to myself for whatever reason. Can you guys go to the museum or something, because at some point my kids might get stir crazy anyway, But it's not something that's felt. I think I did before having an any think that this might be something that would bother me, but it has not one bit. What about you guys, yeah, I would say that. I mean, it's actually one of the things I hire for though, because I do work at home, and so I know that the other person will be there while I'm there. So first I'm very straightforward about it in my hiring process. I say I'm going to be there, because some people don't want that at all, like they actually, you know, they want to make sure. I say, you're running the show, but I will be there in my office. You know, some people are for whatever reason that that's not the situation they want. But I'm also hiring them for somebody that I can tag team with a lot between our four kids, that we're passing off kids from this to that, or you know, we're all together doing something or you know. So I would say, because I have done that, then I'm not really that worried about it either. And like you, I would go for a run or go to a coffee shop if I needed to be on my own away from them. kJ what is well, so my kid my kids are older now, so things are different. I planned for this because I actually am I am, but I need time when there's no one I need time when there's no one but me in the house and I need time, which is sometimes hard to pull off. With fortunes, it's deeply hard to pull off. And also I find it's pretty successful for me now to have time when only the kids that are in the house, because that's a little bit different. But when we actually have the same it's the same person as it's always been. But I used to just plan days. I would sort of set the week up and be like, and on Tuesday, you guys are all going to do whatever. And so I just sort of took my need for that into account and made sure if I could that every week there was a space where, you know, even if it was just for an hour or two, there wasn't anyone else in the house, because I do find I do find having other adults around constantly find I find having other humans around constantly difficult. And yet four kids, Yeah, yeah, I'll do it. So now we have our love of the week, so we always do a segment to explain to kJ that we say something that is making us happy on this particular week. And I am laughing about Sarah's from her note. Yeah, sometimes they're high brow, sometimes they're low brow, sometimes they're random. This one's I don't know all of those. Anybody watch Glow Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. I did not. It's the best show ever. Well, then you're missing out. Oh I don't know Glow. So it's on Netflix. It's a series. Glow stands for Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, which was an actual thing in the eighties, and it's set in the eighties. And the outfits alone are like a reason it's so good. And season two was even better than season one, and I just if you want like a total candy TV show, I highly recommend it. And my husband and I actually both really enjoy watching it together. And there's only a very few series that fit that criteria. So yeah, shout out to Glow. Love it. What about you, guys? Do you want to go first? Do you want me to go first? I have been. There's a podcast that I that I love, but it's I guess it's somewhere. It's called a Kimbo and it's seth Godin and every week just you know, sort of riffs for twenty minutes on. It's typically vaguely connected to marketing or learning to do things better or whatever, but it's just he clearly really thinks, deeply about something and he comes up with these unusual examples, and yeah, I just I just enjoy it. It's kind of almost a meditative listen. It doesn't you know, it makes you think without it's it's not political, it's not you know, it doesn't get you fired up. It's just interesting, just interesting. Well, that's cool. I don't know that this is something that I've been loving per se, but I've really enjoyed watching everyone else in my family love it. Which is Shark Week, which is on while we are taping this, which is just so campy in many ways. They keep trying to figure out how they can take this time where people are paying attention to the Discovery Channel and you know, make it some moment of the Shaquille O'Neal and the Shark Tank, Shack and the shark because this is what it was, you know, after doing Michael Phelps or before they put like the Sharks of Shark Tank and the Shark they may I'm sure they did, because the celebrities into it. I've read that one of the sharks of Shark Take had his had a had a wet suit made that looked like his business suit, which that's kind of awesome as one does, as one does, and you know, I I guess it was I was actually asking somebody who was, you know, frequent diver and work with sharks in the past about the thoughts on this, you know, is it good or bad? And so well, it's really what you come into it with, right, if you're into you love animals and you're in to preservation, conservation like certainly gets more attention for these amazing creatures and that's awesome. Probably there's some other people who are more of the Jaws perspective and they're coming to it from that, so it probably doesn't change. It doesn't change anything. It's like technology because it's a conveyor for your pre existing ideas, existing ideas about sharks. So with celebrities thrown in, but I've enjoyed seeing everyone in my family except me watch so very meta of you, very meta of me. Anyway, Can I love one more? Yes? Of course you gets yeah, called Amanda Wakes Up. It's by Alison Camarota. She was a co host on Fox's Fox and Friends and now she's the co host of CNN's New Day. And it's like, if you liked The Devil Wears pradac about you know, the magazine industry. Okay, this is like behind the scenes of the news industry. This it would be pretty good for a beach bag, I think. And it's also actually it makes you really think about fake news and your perception of the journalists and everything like that, which is kind of funny because she wrote it before before or the twenty sixteen election. That's great. So it's a good read. Yeah, everybody needs a good read. That's probably more value. I love my podcast, but that was that's probably more immediately. Well, so you've got a bonus love of the week. You've listened all the way through to this episode. You got a bonus. So it could be a happier parent right now because you had that. That's right. Well, we've been talking to kJ Delantonia about how to be a happy year parent. We've been doing this live. She's sitting here with me in her hotel room in Philadelphia when she's here for podcast movement, but turn in. We've enjoyed doing this and 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