Work / Life balance with guest Rebecca Fike. Ep 28

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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 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 episode twenty eight. I'm Laura. We are recording that's part ahead of time. I will probably be absent for the main interview, which I'm very sad about. But Sarah is interviewing an awesome lawyer mom power combo who will be talking about how she makes work and life fit together. So really looking forward to hearing that. But first we thought we'd just do a few work updates on Sarah. How's maternity leave going. Yeah, I guess that's like a lack of work update. No. So I am at this point just two days past the halfway point of my twelve week maternity leave. So I'm six and a half weeks in. You know, it's interesting. I'm actually I am starting to miss work. I'm starting to miss certain aspects of work, especially, which is interesting because kind of helps elucidate which parts of my work I must really love and which parts I might not love as much. You don't have to say which ones you don't love, But I'm curious with part of the what do you feel you're really missing? Oh well, actually, well a couple things. But the big thing is that so, as you know, I'm involved in the launch of our brand new residency program and we actually are anxiously awaiting match day, and so I just was on a phone meeting yesterday. They asked if I wanted to and I was like, yes, yes, I totally do. So I was sort of listening in and I'm realizing that, you know, I missed the end of the interview season, and I'm kind of sad and I wasn't part of the end of that process. But I'm really excited to jump back in, especially because we're close to having real live residents that we can call hours. When is match day? Match day is it's the Friday. I think it's March sixteenth. I know it's on the Friday, and that's eversident. That is that's when they no, no, that's when they find out where they have matched. So they're Med students. The fourth year Med students at this moment will get like an envelope that says, this is where you're going to be for the next three years of pediatrics residency. They don't match multiple places. It's like you only get one option or oh so yeah. The match is a very interesting system. So everyone ranks. Every fourth year Med student ranks the places they want to be at, and every residency program ranks the med students that they want for their program, and a computer algorithm matches everybody up. And this has been going on for years and years and years. So match Day is kind of a big deal. And yeah, so on this fateful day, we actually the programs get to find out the day before who they matched, which is kind of cool. I've never been on the inside of that process, but our our future residents will find out that Friday, and you can joint match with someone right like you can couples match. I was never able to couples match because my husband and I were not in sync. So we actually did something called a suicide match, which is where you only only not actually call it a suicide match, you only rank like a very low number of programs. I guess it's called a suicide match because sometimes it's like backfires, but in our cases it worked out just fine. But yeah, because we're supposed to rank like, you know, ten, Some people rank twenty programs and I ranked two because I knew I wanted to stay in the area, so I didn't leave a lot of out. Sure the existence of match day, I was forcing a lot of conversations among oh yes, oh yes, what a couple's match, or are we not there? Yes? Absolutely absolutely so. Yeah, so I'm really missing that. I am missing a lot of aspects of patient care as well. I feel like it's interesting because I physically could handle work, but at the same time, I'm still dealing with a lot of frequent feedings. I feel like it's much better for her that I'm still able to be here with her, And there's a part of me that's like, well, what else am I ever going to have six weeks to kind of do my family and self and other stuff. Probably never, so I might as well to exactly exactly. So, yeah, that's where I am, you have some exciting work related stuff going on. Yeah, well, I mean I've been you know, I people listening to this hear me Babylon about my books sometimes. But I have one book that's coming out in late May that's called Off the Clock, and so we're sort of in the final push on that for the last things that need to be set before that comes out. So we've been talking about who we're going to try and get to blurb the book. Chau is those you know, notes from famous people on the dust jacket of the book that says why you should read it. It's this whole business of sending around trying to get the quote. So there's that getting like interestingly enough foreign language on it. So when you know you have a book coming out, like a US publisher will put out that they have this, and they try to sell rights to various foreign publishers. So we'll get offers in for our you know, Korean rights for instance, and simplified Chinese rights. So that's been kind of fun to see those come in cool be published. But my big news is that I may have mentioned in a fall episode that I was working on writing a fable like a time management fable that give us give everybody who's not in the publishing world, like an example of a very popular fable. Yeah, so if you think out something like who moved My cheese? Which, there we go. You know, a lot of people have read or been forced to read through like their corporate mass book buying things or whatever, which from an author's perspective, mass corporate book buying is a is a wonderful phenomenon and it should continue indefinitely. The some other books that I have more of a narrative that people might have perhaps enjoyed more from the reading perspective, Stuff like The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, for instance, is more of a narrative. And so that's more what my favle was going to fit in the line over the Go Giver series, for instance, The Go Giver is a more narrative fable of and this time management one is about you know, somebody, a young consultant who is newly in management and feels like she's dropping the ball in all aspects of her life, you know, work and personal, and then she goes to a corporate retreat center for the weekend for her. Firms like Women's Leadership retreat and she meets this guru who teaches her all amazing things about how to think about her time. And it's a novella. It's a novella. And I wrote it in November and revised it in the first part of December, and I heard, oh my gosh, and it's only January. That is insane. Well, I'm glad that. Yeah, they didn't keep me hanging too long. That I heard from my publisher that they are planning to do it, so that should come out in February twenty nineteen. I'm always a little worried about jinxing myself. They're working on the contract now, so I guess I'll cross my fingers here. But it looks that that will come out as my next book after Off the Clock, and we'll be out in February of twenty nineteen. Very cool. Yeah, I'm excited. Well, we'll miss you in the next part of this episode, but we will see you again in the Q and A in just a few minutes. I'm so happy to welcome to best of both worlds, Rebecca Fight. When I first started this podcast, there were actually numerous commenters who suggested that she would be an excellent guest or even co host, So I am so excited that we finally got her on the show. Rebecca is a mother of three, and she is an attorney, and she lives in Texas, and she does about nine thousand other things as well with her time. I think she's a great example of someone that's really kind of kicking but in many arenas, and I'm super excited to hear how she does it. So welcome, Rebecca. Tell us a little bit about where you're from and what you do. Great. Thanks, I'm excited to be here. This is my first podcast experience. So I'm originally from Houston. I grew up there and went to University of Texas at Austin for undergrad. I was a swimmer, a competitive swimmer, and swam for Texas and college where I met my husband, who was also a swimmer. After undergrad, I went to University of Chicago for law school, and from there my husband only applied to UT for grad school, so back we went to Austin immediately after I was done in Chicago and he got his MBA and I worked for a large law firm in Austin until I got the SEC job that I now work at for the federal government in Fort Worth and for those of us that are really not in that world and don't even know acronyms, can you remind us exactly what that means? Absolutely, it's not the Football sec. It is the US Securities and Exchange Commission. So I worked for the Division of Enforcement as an enforcement attorney. I investigate and prosecute financial fraud. Wow. Very cool, And that must have been a really big change for you. Tell us a little about you know, that journey that you made from you know, one side of the coin to the other in law, and you know what that's been like. It's been, you know, interesting, It's kind of a two sided thing. So I actually loved working at the firm. I think I was somewhat unusual and that I really liked the big law work. I loved the people I worked with. It was extremely kind of high end litigation, so you know, lots of money thrown out at, lots of time, lots of brilliant people working on complex legal problems. And I really enjoyed it purely from the work perspective. The life perspective is a little tougher when you have you know, that mention of was leave money and pressure and people on something. It's an extremely dominant part of your life to the extent I do a lot of different things now, I didn't absolutely no other things. Then I worked at the firm, and I spent time with my kids and husband, and that was it. And the timeline how old sorry and I mean dinner, how old were was your first? Like when you I guess, yeah, what's the timeline with your kids in there? Yeah? So and someone unusually I had my son, my oldest, in law school, so I had him between my second and third years, and law school is three years long, so he was one when I was taking the bar and then starting at the firm, so I never worked without like being a working mom, so that balance was kind of always in play. And then I got her my second child, when I at the end of my second year at the firm, so about half the time I was there, I had both of them, because I was there about four four years wow. So during that time you basically had time to work many many hours to be with your kids and then that was it. That was it. I mean I didn't work, I did not have any hobbies. I truly did nothing else and it was fine. For the time. I mean it's a little bit I compare it to like residency for doctors. I mean you're just there to learn, and you work a lot and you learn a lot, and that's what it is. And then as you learn more and meet more people and have more experience, you have more opportunities to either stay at the firm plenty of people do, or to branch out into a company or to the government or somewhere else. And an opportunity came up to work at the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is a somewhat difficult position to get. It's there on't a ton of them. There's a regional office in Fort Worth, and we're the kind of the Southwest region for the SEC. And I was, you know, I think it's important, even when you're working really hard, to kind of pick your head up every now and then and make sure you're where you want to be. And in that moment, I thought, I'm not one hundred percent I'm where I want to be, both from a life perspective but a little bit from a career perspective. That was part of it. The SEC. I don't have a partner I work for I do all my own work, so I thought it was a good chance to get to do more of my own casework, which has been very true. Wow, so in some ways it's actually been more rewarding despite also allowing you to have, for lack of a better term, more work life balance. I guess absolutely. I mean it really was a choice on both levels. I mean, in some ways, I didn't really realize how much balancing there could be out there until I left. I mean I didn't really know I was missing out on hobbies, and I didn't know I liked to exercise. I didn't know about all those things, and that was fine. You know. Now, having gone to the other side and discovering this three dimensional life on living, it would be hard to go back. But at the time it was really a pretty equal you know, family life but also you know, career choice. Very interesting and for anybody. So Rebecca writes a blog called lag Live, as I mentioned, and it is very clear from that blog that she lives one of the most three dimensional lives I've ever seen. I mean, she in addition to your job and I do want to get into me your day to day logistics, but remind anybody who doesn't or a televiody who doesn't read your blog about just how into the exercise scene you've gotten in some of the other things you do. So my firm colleagues would never believe it, because I was a staunchly anti exercised for all of law school and my time at the firm. But after we moved to Fort Worth, when I was at the SEC, I guess, right before I got pregnant with our third baby, I started realizing that I did have these little pockets of time and I did want to do something with them, and I wasn't sure what that was. And I always loved the idea of dancing. I'm terrible at it and I have no background, but I googled my way to a bar class like bre and it promised me that it was very precise form of sort of dance inspired movements that you couldn't really mess up too badly, and also had a lot of instructions, and I like instructions. So I showed up for my first class. It merely killed me. I absolutely loved it, and I started going kind of every day from that point on. It did seem like there was quite the ramp up, and I mean, I don't think you ever looked back, it's really really impressive in they're all out, and so I did that. I got pregnant with our third, so I took kind of a break, but I would do some little, you know, bar videos at home, or I'd drop in a class every now and then. But after I had her, I really had missed it, and I just dove right back in. And after another year or so of going to class a lot, I got certified to teach, and so now I teach bar once a week, usually sometimes twice if i'm sebbing. And along the way. I also got very into yoga and I do that most days that I don't teach and orange serotas yes, Jel, I'm pausing that right now to do more yoga. I've decided yes each day or try to. That is impressive. Well, with that in mind, tell us a little bit about how you do structure your time in order to get all this in, because to me, it's it's it's I mean, I also have three, although it's a very big difference because mine are like shift at all about four years ago for you, So it's a very different scenario right now than it probably will be in four years, but you're able to do that. You blog, you read like crazy, and you work a full time job. Tell me about some of the logistics that go into that, as well as how do you work things out with your husband who does he have a lot of flexibility. He does in some ways and he doesn't in others. So he ended up after we moved here starting a swim swim school. So he's an entrepreneur and small business owner. He also invents and sells swim swim products. His company's Fike Swim And so in the mornings he's home, that's when he does all his phone calls, his emails, his bookkeeping, shipping up until about two thirty is when he leaves to go out to the pool, and then from two thirty to six thirty he's completely unreachable. I mean he's in the water. There's no answering his phone. So in the evening it's not very flexible. That's on me and our after school nanny. But during the day he is home and he runs the whole mornings, so he does breakfast for the kids, he gets them up, he packs their lunches, and gets them to school. I have no part of that at all. So while we used to when we were back in Austin kind of split everything in a loose way along the day, now we ended up with this kind of very sharp divide between am and PM. But it actually works really well for us. It just means, I mean that is completely his responsibility and afternoon evening is completely mine and you can kind of guilt free not have any part of it. Like if I am going to work late and I'm home, I mean, I'm not making breakfast. I'm enjoying that time chatting with the kids at the table, and that actually works out really really well. But you're not a super morning person, are you, Because I notice you do a lot of your workouts at night. Well I used to when the kids were younger. Now I do kind of a blend. That is one thing I would say, And thinking about this, I mean, one, I didn't do that much when my kids were really little. So part of it is you just kind of grow a bit as your kids do, and frankly, they they have their own activities. So like on Thursday nights, all three of my kids have some lessons and that's when I teach bar So I mean, nobody's missing me. I'm not missing anything. You start finding kind of pockets of overlap that can work for you. But the schedule just changes a lot. And that's what you know. I had my kids really young, and so most of my friends are just now having babies. And your life and your framework and the way you schedule things is just getting involve on like a year or every two year basis. I mean I used to you know, put the baby down at you know, seven point thirty and then go out to an eight o'clock PM bar class. That now sounds completely insane to me. I leave my house at this point to go exercise in the evening, But that's what I did for a year because it was the pocket of time that worked for me, and it was actually really nice to get out of the house and to go to this class that made me feel really powerful and strong, come home and have a glass of wine and that was kind of my night, you know. But that's now evolved. Now I want nothing except my couch and maybe my laptop after you know, eight So you know, things change as your kids in your schedule are just kind of your wants and needs changed too. Do you feel like it's gotten easier? Maybe I can't tell from your book. Honestly, I think it's much harder to have older kids. I believe it. Actually I was good because I think I can see the complexity evolving, although I wanted to laugh when you were like, my kids figured out how to fight, and I'm like mine seem to have been born with that. We went out for a while and we just have this like home of harmony for several years. And I'm sad to say that is pretty done. No, it's I mean, babies are hard and toddlers are hard because they just make you so physically tired, like you're just they need you in like a very physical way. But their worlds are very simple, so you know, if they're crying, they're either mad at you and you know why and you're okay with it, or it's something to soothe and you can just do that. And with older kids, I have found it's just emotionally much more exhausting. It's hard sometimes to figure out kind of where you're supposed to be firm on something and where you're not. And oh if I give in you know this time for something, you know, does that matter later? It's just a more complex world, both into sort of that sort of you know, discipline and child rearing way, but also for them. You know, I felt like the conventional wisdom is always kind of stay home with your babies and then work when they're in school, and I found the exact opposite to be true. I'm so thankful that my hard working years when I missed a lot of dinners and I traveled a lot, or when they were young, because they're kind of like gold goldfish. I mean, they're excited whenever it's terrible, but anytime I'm found they were well, who, you know, money, and it didn't matter if I'd been gone for a meeting or for a trip, you know, across the country. And you know now, I mean, they very much know what I'm not there and our plans are more complicated. It matters to them that I'm there for them, and it matters to me that I can say that I can be there. They're not you know, they don't drop everything and run to me when I come home, which is a little sad, but you know, you kind of just have to be there for the quiet moments when they decide to tell you about their days. It's not really guaranteed, they're just going to spill everything out the second you walk in the door. I mean, sometimes they're just kind of doing something. I get a wave and they're happy I'm there, and they maybe already processed their day or think they have, and you know, I don't really get walked through it unless I catch them in the moment. And so I've just found I'm so glad that the extent I now am just home, just like physically present in their space more that that has been so much more important than when they were admittedly adorable babies that I enjoyed being around them. But there's something to the older kid that you just kind of need some space for and some downtime to have them decide to ask you some random question they may have been thinking of for a couple of days. I'm believe in that is that is a different perspective you. I will say, you always made it look very You made the baby stage look very easy. And it may be that I think I started reading your blog after you had Cora or like right afterwards, so well you seem like like she was either super easy or you were just like really good at it. And for those of you also who weren't following Rebecca is probably at least some substantial percentage of why my third child exists, because when we were trying to decide, I sort of put out a heartfelt post to my blog and many people commented, and then Rebecca wrote, like a really beautiful post a hofta link to it, you know, talking about her feelings about having three, And I think that may have been one of the things that tipped me over the edge, and I do not regret it. But really, you did managed to find a lot of joy in those baby years and it still looks like you're you're doing that now, but it does. I can see that it's getting does get more complicated, which is interesting. How have your routines changed? Do you have different childcare or different things that you outsource compared to what you used to We do you know? Now? My older two are in elementary school, so they're in second and fourth And one thing that came as quite a shock to me is once you graduate a baby from daycare, child care isn't free. You still have to care for them from when school gets out until it's from work. Because that was just sort of a vedgetary surprise to me. It shouldn't have been, but in my head, you know, that number went just to zero. So we have an after school nanny who picks up the kids. We live right near TCU, which is a university here, and so she, well, now we actually have two for different days, but they go to TCU and they pick up the big kids at three from school and bring them home and do homework and you know, supervise all of that, and then, depending on the day, usually get them to whatever activity they have and then if it's swimming, you know, my husband brings them homes and sees their coach, or if it's something else, you know, I meet them there and bring them bring them home. But they kind of execute that three pm to five thirty pm time of day. And Cora, our youngest, is in full time daycare. But since our public school and our daycare in our house, they're all right next to one another. We've kind of evolved to having the nanny pick her up after the big kids get out too, because she likes to be around her brother and sister. So they're usually when I get home from work, either someone's at an activity somewhere or everyone is home, and that is really nice. I don't really do pickups anymore, so I did for a long time. I will say I love not having to do a lot of pickups. And I will also say, even though this is not something that a lot of people have control over, the beauty of having everything very close together is like not to be overestimated. It's so much easier if everyone's if you're not, you know, driving across town all the time. Well, very lucky that our world here is very small. We're driving my cars three years old. It has twelve thousand wells on it. Oh my goodness, that's amazing. And that's so not what I think of when I think of Texas. It's a more specific thing. It's forward, spunny, it's it's own little, it's its own city, you know, with everything we need in it. And because it's not very big, I mean, anything you need is pretty close or you're just going to Dallas and we just very rarely have any need to do it, So everything's pretty We live right by downtown, so it makes this little kind of downtown suburban urban neighborhood that we live in just everything is really close and it's really nice. I think that's sort of similar to our situation because people like to not leave Miami Beach and then they go to Miami if they have to. But but I would say, unlike you, we don't have everything here, so darn it would be nice. Well, okay, so we have the blog, we have your full time job. We have a lot of time with the kids. We have exercise almost every day. You also cook and a lot and you read. Is there anything that you don't do yourself that you outsource? How do you fit all of this in? Because honestly, like I'm like a crazy planner and I'm I can't even figure it out. I mean, I think of it now too. None of my kids nap, So on the one hand, we're not beholding to a nap anymore. But on the other I've just sort of had to evolve to a higher state of being where there's no pausing. There's just no pause. Ever, there's no there's no flow of your day anymore. They just go all the time. And that's fine. We've kind of learned to roll with it. But I'll say the things we do still fully outsourced is I do not clean the house at all. And we used to have a housekeeper. We went from once a month to twice a month to once a week. I know that is obviously a luxury and not an option for everyone. It is for us. I think the biggest change just for our life was when we it was after we had Kora, when we did go to once a week. I mean, we basically dropped. Now we never eat out on Fridays, we don't eat out lunch ever, Like we kind of adjusted certain things, and it's changed everything because anytime I had to clean, one it took away from something else I wanted to be doing. And two it just made me an interrationally angry person who is mad at everyone in my house for making it dirty. So I don't do that, and I did finally convince my husband last year. We have our yard and our pool. Someone takes care of those. So the kind of physical environment we live in, we don't do kind of the deep cleaning on that stuff. We just sort of, you know, run the house. I do do all of our cooking, you know, our grocery shopping, kind of, all of those things we still do in like a traditional way. But the mechanics of keeping a house in a yard clean and meat, we do not have. You trained your oldest tone, Yeah, we have they're good about. He's good about starting it and switching it and folding it. I usually have to note that when your basket is full and you have no clothing, that's a good time to go wash them. There's a disconnect there. He's like always surprised he doesn't have any clothes, and sometimes I do it too, or because my husband's home. You know, we found now that we have three kids with bigger clothes that get so dirty. We can't save laundry for weekends. So he, you know, he'll start it and run it and switch it as the day gets going, and then when I get home, I'll kind of, you know, switch the last load or keep it moving. Oh that makes sense because if someone's in the morning, then they can kind of like routine lead. It's kind of an all hand on deck. It makes a big difference that he's home. It also, I remember a friend wrote a long time ago that you know, marriage, especially working marriage with kids, it's not fifty to fifty, it's one hundred one hundred. And I think about that all the time because it really is that. I mean, anytime you have downtime, you have to go find something productive to do with it, and both of you do. And that's pretty much how it works. So like you know, I said, he'll start it, switch it. I'll get home, switch the last one, fold some some might still be in the dryer for post dinner, and he'll go fold that while the kids are in the shower. I mean, we're both always doing something. And that's why you know, at eight or eight thirty, when everyone's in bed, we're then done. We're not doing stuff for our kids after they're in bed. That's for us. That's when I read, that's when I blog, you know, that's when he does work or watches TV or you know whatever. I mean, that's where I feel like we're able to still have time with one another and for ourselves and you know, to not just constantly feel like you're doing something for the kids or for the house like that. You have some time that is just belongs to you and you have to wait till eight thirty to get it, but then it's yours. And like from a completely practical nerdy standpoint, so then what time do you usually go to sleep? Around? Ay? And I usually get up about six thirty. Okay, so yeah, you're not like a long sleeper, but that's very reasonable. That's sleep, and I have sometimes later and sometimes I get up a little bit later, but I try to get into work by eight, and I'm trying to do more like seven thirty. But it's not working so that I can do I've been doing My favorite yoga class is actually at noon, and so I've been doing yoga in the middle of the day. But that kind of obviously cuts into my workday a little more than I would like, so I'm getting in earlier to pull out for that. Hey, whatever works, it's the same number of Sometimes I feel like those morning hours can be the most productive at work because no one's bothering you. Of course that doesn't work for like patient care, but when you're doing paperwork and you know, that makes that actually makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I'm always jealous of people who work out mid day. Maybe someday I will somehow make that work. Any time you're clearly not sweaty, you've gone through the effort to put makeup on, so starting all over, you know, three hours later and sound very good. But I do love the class, and if I can make it work, I'm always so glad when it does because it lets me still get that early morning hours at my desk that are so productive, and it means I don't have to well, one go at night, which is no longer happening, or two not stop on the way home, which is also you know, really hard to do. No, that totally makes sense. I was trying to figure that out because I could tell your kids were in all these later activities, and I was like, how is she? I was stuck in your old days where you used to do it at night. So that makes totally more sense. Well, okay, so now we know all your secrets and we can now do everything like you do. But my sort of last deep question here before we get into our loves of the week are is there anything you can think of that you like, would love to tell yourself five to ten years ago. Now that you are a seasoned mom of a child that has two numbers in their age and three kids, like you know, you're like the wise guru that I need to A lot of us are look up to. So what would you tell your past I think I would say, enjoy your like the open weekends. I just felt like when our kids were younger, our lives were very home based, and sometimes that was hard I'm a social creature and I like to get out and have lots of plans and be meeting up with people, and that's an important thing. But I miss This is going to sound bad, but I miss when we were enough for the kids. Like now, if we have, you know, three hours of downtime on a Saturday, you know, my two older two are immediately asking whose mom I can text to see if they can play, you know, and who can come over and where can we go? I'm like, don't you guys just want to hang out here and play? And I can just kind of listen and giggle every now and then, and you know, they look at me like I've lost my mind. So I just kind of miss when our family, kind of our little group before five was sort of what our weekend was. You know, it just we kind of did what we wanted to do and the kids were excited to be wherever we were, and you know, that was just really nice. So our world was a lot a lot smaller. I feel like that's it. I also love now how we have all these activities. We have, you know, a good friends circle, We have reasons to be out and about, so it's not that now is bad. I just kind of wish I appreciated more how lovely it was that my kids could just play together for a few hours in the house and I could just be home. That was very nice. Yeah, that does sound bittersweet to me because sometimes we go crazy in the house, but there are those magical moments when they're just kind of sitting all sitting around me and they're playing on the floor, And yeah, I would say, I'm probably not as appreciative of that. And I love that, I would say, which you probably already know, just even with your kid's age. Bread, but just that kind of every phase is the best phase, is what I tell people. I mean, I baby phase, would you appreciate more? I think when you don't have a baby, but just how they're you know, they're fairly simple creatures. They stay where you leave them, they're portable, you know. Then you have toddlers where they have you know, some of their challenges, but they're just they're verbal, and you starting to get to know who they are and what their preferences are, and they're just so excited and so full of love. And then your bigger kids, as you really keep getting to know them better, you know, and now with older kids. I mean, Landon's ten and he's like a mini adult sometimes, and we get to have these you know, great conversations and share movies and you know books I used to love and you know, and so each one has its drawbacks, but there's just something really neat about each age. And I think that's part of why Cora, our third was just so fun and such a wonderful happy time for us, because we could really just appreciate where she was while enjoying all these upsides of having big kids around too. It's just a very happy, you know, several years. And I felt like we had the right perspective at that point. And you know that any phase that isn't so fun, they all go so fast, so you're able to just kind of hold your breath and get through it. For me, that's been that's been very valuable. I feel like I'm less impatient about certain things. I'm like, well, it's not you know, none of this is forever. And actually, in retrospect, it seems so short with my older two that like the nighttime wake ups or whatever, it's like it'll stop when it stops. And I don't think I thought that way with the other especially, I'm genuinely excited to get to those next spaces that are so fun. And I don't think you know that's bad, but there's something about having older kids that let you have these conversations and talk to them like their people while snuggling your little baby that doesn't have an opinion on everything, and you're thinking, this is a really good spread. Yes, so I'm very grateful to your guy. It's approximately you know, ten months, ten ten months, nine months, and six weeks ago, when I'm just kidding, I love it. So speaking of love, we will conclude with our loves of the week, and I'll go first because I picked one sort of with you in mind, or the theme of your husband's business, because I love swim class. So I highly recommend that anyone has kids old enough to be in the water, that they start them early, because my kids have always enjoyed it like I never, and I don't know, I think there's that some of that has to do with temperament, because I've seen babies screaming in the water, and none of mine were like that. They've all enjoyed it, and then by the age of about three, they've all been able to basically swim across the pool, which is nothing compared to what your kids do. Your kids are amazing, but it really is so rewarding to see them improve. And then it just it's a fun and we don't do team or anything, but even just them going to classes is like a nice fun weekend activity and here we can do it outdoors all year round, which is awesome. So that is my love with we're very pro pro swim class also, and that's awesome. Years never had a freak out modes. Each of mine, despite growing up with swimming parents, with the pool in the yard, with a dad who is their coach, went through a solad six months each of screaming during some lessons with their dad the coach in the pool in there. Well maybe it's not a despite, but because it's normal. It's like eighty percent of kids in some class keep pushing through a life skill, yes, and then they end up enjoying it and they end up super tired out so you can have that nice relaxing downtime later. So what part of I love many things, but I think this past week, so as you mentioned, I read a lot. I read things. All of them are fiction. I mean they're not even like modern day fiction. I read fiction like about different universes. I really like to be as far from real life as possible when I'm reading a book, so they're no way for the betterment of my mind. They're just for fun. And the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown, it's a trilogy that came out several years ago. A coworker convinced me to read it, even though it wasn't my traditional like vampire romance genre like urban fantasy, So anyway, I read it. I loved it. It's one of the best trilogies I've ever read. And the author came out with a surprise book four that takes place ten years in the future after the last book in the trilogy, so it's like a jump head to see kind of how everyone's doing. And that was a little nervous to read it because I loved the ending of the trilogy so much, but it was excellent. It's called Iron Gold. If you are someone who likes kind of adventury fiction novels, it is really really well done, and my faith in him was well placed and he did a good job. It's kind of like how a romance novel often ends with the wedding and then just ends, So this sort of picks up, you know, ten years later, all these people still exist. Kind of what's happening because as we all know, marriage is not easier once it's happened. So not that this is about about a marriage, but it kind of you know, jumps forward and it was very good. So if you need a book recommendation, I highly recommend it. That sounds awesome and I have been reading a ton since I've been home, so maybe I'll have to check that out. Do you have to have read the rest of the series for that one to be good? You do, right? Okay, so is the series and then it ends with them, so yes, yeah, definitely read the trilogy. Excellent, awesome, Well, it has been so wonderful to have you. Can you tell our listeners exactly where they can find you on your blog and anywhere else? So yeah, my blog which I started my second year of law school, I think in two thousand and six. It's genuinely surprising to me I'm still writing in it, but there I am. It's lag Live, which is La g l iv dot blogspot dot com. I think I named it because I googled I'm Swedish and so Lag is law and live his life in Swedish. So that's the deep meaning behind my blog. But it's there, and I'm still I just I really like to write, and I found that oftentimes my brain is just more settled if I write out what we've been doing. So I'm still there. Her blog is joyous and fun and there's just something about it, so you should definitely all check that out. Well, thank you so much. Laura was so sad she couldn't have been here with this part of the conversation, but I'm sure she'll listen before it goes on. And thank you. I really really appreciate all of it. This was really fun. Thanks for asking me. Hi, this is Laura. I'm back after my absence from the main segment. In case anyone wonders how this work, we were recording the opener and the Q and A separate from when Sarah was able to get on the calendar of of our guests for this segment. Anyway, for the Q and A, we'd asked readers and listeners for suggestions for this, and Sarah got a bunch of great questions posed on her blog, but one was right up her wheelhouse, something she thinks about a lot on how she organizes toys, because you guys live in a very sort of denser residential neighborhood, so like the houses are, you know, kind of a little bit smaller. There's not a whole lot of extra spots to put your stuff. And yet with three children, the toys multiply. They do. And I will say, once I made the claim that we didn't have a lot of square footage, multiple readers were like, yes, you do. I live at a four hundred square but apartment in New York City, so it's not like it's not under that scale. But for example, my two kids are about to be sharing a room right now, Baby still in our room. We don't have a ton of extra storage space. And whoever built this home was not big on closets, So you still have Do you still have the wardrobe rac in your Yes, we do not have a closet. That just has to do it more with. So it's so interesting because people might think that I have this, like this beautiful home and I'm really into organization and pairing things down, but I'm actually not into decor at all. Like those things do not go together. So I'm perfectly happy with my wardrobe brack as long as it doesn't have things that I don't spark joy on it. If that makes so. I'm much more concerned with the content and organization of my home than how it looks. Anyway, that's a digression, but I do think it extends to toys, which is to say that our solutions aren't necessarily beautiful, but they're very functional and they focus on not keeping excess stuff around period. So you know, number one, I would say the biggest thing is to curtail the flood as much as you can. Now that is challenging because there are birthday parties and there's well meaning family. But by letting people know what you want and giving them lots of very consumable options, like those little art kids which are used once and then you know they're done with, you're going to end up with less stuff than if you ask for a bunch of small plastic pieces that just sort of have a way of jumbling all up and sticking around. So asking for the right things, but once you actually have the things. What has worked for us is from a young age teaching the kids that this is their space to have toys, and if they'd like to have new toys, for example, around the holiday season or their birthday, it still has to fit nicely in that space. So they're going to need to decide what they don't want to keep, and we call that process giveaway or keep, and they both know that's what it's called. And I mean, I'm sure kids are going to vary at their response to anything, right, Like you know, you talk about those lights that light up in the morning, and one of my kids completely complies with this, and the other one thought it was a total joke. So your mileage may vary, but both of mine have been pretty receptive to give away your keep because in their mind it means, ooh, that's how I can get new toys. And so we go through every season or so and really sit there with a bunch of bags, and I try to go very quickly because the more I find that, the more they think about it, the more they want something. And if they sort of don't respond right away, I kind of take advantage. Okay, you don't really care about that, do you, And usually they're they're like, yeah, you're right, I don't really because I want that space for new stuff. And by doing that we've managed to keep their stuff down to you know, those like target cubes that have nine cubes basically five cubes of toys, they each have four cubes worth of books. I'm not as stringent with getting rid of books, but i do find that that needs to be curated every once in a while too, because you end up with, like, you know, an excess of books that aren't necessarily quality books. And then we also have some toys in our sort of art room in one cabinet, and that's it. So if you let the space dictate how much stuff you're willing to have, then that's going to solve a lot of your problems. And that's how we've handled it. Yeah, so when it comes you've already made space by the time the birthday deluge comes in for exactly you have to plant around those periods of time, and if stuff doesn't fit, you can always casually say, okay, well then this is going to go in the closet for later. And then we had mentioned on a recent episode having rainy day toys because toys in their boxes aren't necessarily clutter as much as toys that are out and all over the place. So if you do have. We do have one large closet and that's where we will store things that are not opened yet and so they're kind of compact and that works for any overflow. Yeah, I mean, I'm a fan of, you know, making sure the kids can see the stuff that they want to play with. Like I've you know, once stuff is in a way in drawers, I kind of feel like it doesn't exist in our house. And then it, you know, it doesn't get used and then people want new stuff and they don't realize what they have. So I mean there is a problem in the sense of, you know, a lot of the organization the course, if they always want you to put stuff away, but then when you can't see it, you can't play with it. When you can't see any of it, though, then you're going to get out what you want to get out, you know what I mean, Like if it's all in a cube and if you only have five cubes and you know you're going to go to your cubes to get your toys like that. I see what you're saying. And we do. Every once in a while we get something like new and hot, and we do have it out for a little bit. But when you I mean, you may have rooms that you're dedicated to, like a playroom or a basement, but we don't. So if we were to have everything visible, our house would just be like toy kettalog. Yeah, exactly no, and that's I mean, I will throw that out there. Is One of the reasons that we did move to our house is that it had a large finished basement, and so there were other houses we looked at that did not have large finished basements. But that was a major upside in terms of having a place where the toys could be out and not necessarily up all the time. That it would be the kid's space and they could have their stuff down there, because when we were in our New York apartment, like it was always just underfoot and I think, you know, we we were losing that battle quickly in terms of keeping you know, a limited number of things there. But you know, that's not why we moved. But it was certainly an upside to having that extra space. Absolutely, I wish we could have a basement, but apparently it would be like any oga, you'd be looking at the pace exactly base. Guess that's not happening. Well, this has been the best of both Worlds Episode twenty eight. Tune in next week for more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both Worlds podcasts. Please in us next time for more on making work and life work together. M