The Holidays // Ask Us Anything Part 2.

00:00:00
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 three, which is first airing in mid December. We are having a second round of ask Us Anything. This was a popular post on Instagram. Sarah put it in our stories and got all sorts of questions, which, as we put out, you can ask us anything. We are not one hundred percent promising we will answer anything, but feel free to ask. We'll probably do a couple more of these type of episodes over the next year or so because they're really fun to do. So we're headed into the holiday season and Sarah, that's also birthday season for you guys. Right, Yeah, we're one of those lucky families where everything's happening at once. Both Josh and Genevieve have December birthdays actually only three days apart, so it's going to be a festive month for us around here. We're pretty excited. Yeah, so you're not traveling anywhere though, right you are not. I think I mentioned my self imposed travel ban, which is going to continue, I think until spring break of next year, just because I continue to feel like Genevieve is at a difficult age for traveling, and I just feel like I will get more joy by not by not traveling. Well, you know, it's save up the money and do bigger trips when they're older, biggers later, and just wait. It's mostly the sleep. I want to wait until I feel fairly confident that I'm not going to wait up to a screaming toddler in the middle of the night unless the trip is very you know, important for personal reasons, like in in spring break, we're gonna, hopefully, if everything goes well, go to see my new niece, so that you know, that's yeah, that warrants. But that's okay if you've got a screaming big because it'll be another one like so it'll just be all true. I don't know that we're all going to fit in my sister's house, and yeah, we probably won't, so I don't know if we'll have two chorus screaming baby toddler going on. Yeah, so we're not going anywhere. You know, Miami and South Florida in general has beautiful weather in December. It's actually unless you're really craving snow and skiing, it's a great time not to travel. Yeah, people come see you, right like that. I mean, you're in a place where people would come see you at the exactly and I have at least one friend who's going to visit with her little fourth newborns. I'm telling you it's baby season. But yeah, so we'll have people visit us. It'll be great. Yeah, we're not going anywhere. Well, you're probably not allowed to go anywhere. Not anywhere probably be a bad idea. Although it's funny because when we were expecting Alex, we drove out to Indiana for Christmas, and you know, this is the same same roughly due date and everything. So I drove out at thirty seven weeks, which you know, when I sort of casually mentioned this at my OB's They were like, you should probably like stop the car frequently, get up and walk. I don't and research what the best places to deliver babies a long way should should that arise? But in my defense, at that point I had never actually gone into labor naturally. Ah. That was because my first two babies were post due date inductions, like very late, no signs of anything happening like, so I was induced for that. Ruth. I elected to voluntarily induce early then because I was like, well, I'd rather not sit around for an extra two weeks if this is going to be the end result anyway, So we had scheduled an induction for Alex, so I in my mind it was like, I know when what day the baby's going to be born. It's all gonna be good, So I can travel like it won't happen until then, my body's not going to do anything. And then of course I learned that in fact, I can go from water breaking to baby in two hours. So it's one of the few things you can't really plan. So now for this one, we are staying around within you know, an hour of the hospital from this time, will you still obey all the parking rules yet. Well, I mean, who knows, maybe Michael, maybe we're in the baby in the side of the road. That's time I will see. At this point he probably has enough experience, so you're good. So that's a long winded way I was saying, we are not going anywhere, and but I've been making a list of local events that we want to do that we have, you know, I always do a Christmas fun list, and there's stuff like I just bought tickets for the Philadelphia Zoo Lights. There's Elmwood Park Zoo Lights. There's the Chu Chuo Barn out in Lancaster, which is this I mean, it's touristy trap, like it's in a storefront and a strip mall, but they do this huge model train exhibit. So you just go buy tickets and it's all done up for Christmas and it's just really cool to walk around and see that, you know, along with gardens Christmas do. There's a couple holiday parties we always hit. So you know, I think I think it winds up being a festive kind of time of year regardless, and so yeah, it should be should should be good even if we are not going anywhere. But you guys, did uh did Thanksgiving cards instead of Yeah, we made it eat on our years or whatever. You don't know new Years. Yeah, we're not, like I don't know if Hanka cards are even that much of things. We usually do New Year's, which I think is kind of fun because you know, we'll kind of put sort of a summary of the year, which a lot of people doing their Christmas or holiday cards anyway. But this year we decided to do Thanksgiving and I ordered them in October and just because I felt like that would be one thing that there was no real reason to wait on because I already we had for once had professional photos done. We actually did this as a family, which by the way, is a great option, so our extended family did it together. We all chipped in on the cost, but then we took family photos separately as well, so it was like one big event. It was like, I'm so glad we did that when I wanted to use photos from that shoot because some of them turned out fantastic. So the card was easier to do than it usually is when I'm sort of culling together different snapshots on my iPhone. Is there anything with everybody looking at the camera? Yeah, Yeah, So we did Thanksgiving cards, and I think this might be a new thing, just because it's it's nice not to have that as a to do item when all the holiday parties are happening and I'm worried about Hanuka presence and all other kinds of things. The jury is out on whether I am going to like every year. For about a decade, I've created a family calendar on paper, and I think a lot of the family members use them. But to be honest, last year was the first year we didn't use ours because we've been using a whiteboard and we use Google Calendar, and I just when we moved, I never bothered to hang it anywhere, And so I'm going to take a poll and find out how strongly the other family members feel about because it takes a long time and it's really expensive. So unless it's really going to be used and loved, it might be time to move on to a new memento. Yeah, I mean, and you could always just do like a photo, like print up one nice photo for people or something like that instead of a whole calendar, because a lot of people don't use paper calendars anymore anyway. I mean, they're fun to look at, but it's it's not that you're actually using it as any sort of capture system, and so then it just becomes another thing like that's up on the wall. Let's see, how about gifts, gift A gift plan this year? Yeah, no, the gift plan is always a know, it just winds up being more than I ever really need. Or the kids can have seven stockings, well not this year. You could and then give it to him after that's true, to give it to him afterwards. It'd be kind of cute because you could let your other kids buy baby. Well, I should probably go in and put in Well, the problem is I don't know the name for one hundred percent. Sure, I mean I kind of do, but like a little symbol. Well so, but I mean we all have matching stock and with our names on them, and so you know, this has to like officially happen, you know, so I probably should wait till it's on the birth certificate. Letsted change it changed my mind, No, I don't know. I mean I think I'm going to try to somewhat limit it. I mean, you know, I always wind up going overboard because it's just it's fun and they're still little, and but I mean the older kids especially, there's less that they ask for. It les drinking out that they're that excited about, which is great. I'm excited about that, It's true, other than the stuff they do want is expensive. So and we have these whole like philosophical questions. So Jasper asked for Netflix for Christmas, which I mean, it's it's not particularly expensive, right, It's like a relatively cheap gift. But the question is, and we want to have Netflix in our house? And yeah, we do, Laura, do you have Netflix? Netflix is great, There's so many good things on Netflix. Should watch sh It's Creak, It's the best. Oh yeah, yeah, Well this will be the year where my my goal is to watch television. There's actually a lot there's like a lot of good shows on Netflix. Like, I have no doubt there's good stuff on there. It's the question of, like is this something we need to introduce into our lives. But I think you know, to give Jasper, to give to give another point for Jasper, I know you're like, oh, I do feel like the quality of the TV on Netflix is is like higher than maybe maybe it's my delusion thinking that, but I'm not really They try pretty hard, and I feel like there's a number of smart people creating that content, although a lot of it is not kid I mean, he's in that age where things that aren't kid appropriate are starting to be okay for him. But it's like he's like right on that line. So that's difficult. Yeah, I mean, it's well, it's one of the reason that they don't have televisions in their bedrooms or anything like that. I mean it's so it would be in a place other people could see and if there was anything inappropriate, sort of have this discussion. Although I'm pretty sure that my husband has already watched a ton of things I would consider inappropriate with the older boys anyway, so violence and whatever. So yeah, I know, maybe that would be a good thing to give him and then he'd be happy. Well, I haven't made my decision. I didn't realize my kids were spoiled by having Netflix, but now I feel like, I guess they're lucky. Yeah, yeah, we don't have cable. So yeah, we have cable. I mean, we have ridiculous quantities of cable, but that's because we have to have the Texas A and M football games. And it turns out there's no good way to just get like Texas A and Ala cart because of course they know that, right, So you have to get ridiculous cable package with sports and stuff SEC Network and I am so they get you, they get you on that. Oh my gosh. Well, Annabelle has been debating she wants a planner. I can't imagine where she gets that one from the idea, but she is debating between a kid's Aaron Condren. They have like a special kids planner it's very stickered in rainbow and her very own HOI with a pink cover. So she's she's kind of going back and forth. I think she's really enjoying the rumination process a lot, so I'm not rushing her. And then Cameron is just obsessed with like he's been asking for the last year. I want a box of Babel I want to I want a whole box of them, like he's seen kids with like a like they get like plastic bab blades or like these little toys that spin. They look like little rockets, kind of kind of like they look like transformers, but really they were like spinning tops branded for like boys who like rough stuff. I guess they I mean girls like them too, but there's definitely a little branding going on. And they they are these plastic tackle boxes that some people they've got a mass a giant collection they can fill. So he's like, no, I want the whole collection in the box, kind of like in the box it was like a large ask. Yeah, so we're gonna have to figure out like how many we're gonna stock the box with or whether that could be like four nights spread out over one night and then a bay Blade another and then another another to take you through the whole time. Actually much, that's true. That's true. So we'll see and Genevieve, I don't know, we'll figure it out. But this year she's actually going to be into toys though, I mean, this is I don't know that she's going to care that much like what it is, but she's definitely gonna want to unwrap stuff. It looks kill like, yeah, well the problem I mean, so we never put stuff under our tree until Christmas tree for us, there's no tree for you. But it's it's that we you know, we've always had a little child, and the small children have no impulse control and they don't know why would you not open everything before, and so we figured this out relatively. This is the first year Alex can like handle it like, I don't know, I'm not sure I really want to tempt fate like that. I just think it might be. I think most of the time the better angels of his nature would triumph. But all it takes is one morning when it doesn't, and that would be the end of it. So I think, yeah, and then you've turned something really fun into something like to some annoying, some unhappiness. So we're just going to keep them away and put them out on Christmas. And I like the idea of the whole pile of presents under the tree in the weeks leading up to Christmas, but you know, maybe in another step in years. I also feel like kids would get a little too sleuthy. Yeah, you know, even if they weren't doing something bad, they'd be like, you know, they'd probably figure out what was in there and then what was in there? Yeah. All right, let's take a quick break before we head into our round two of ask us anything, and we will be right back. We'd like to take a quick break to welcome our first sponsor, Honeybook. Honeybook is an online business management tool that organizes your client communications, bookings, contracts, and invoices all in one place. If you run your own business, you're probably used to doing it all, but if you're struggling to get through your to do list, Honeybook can help. Honeybook makes it simple to run your business better. Professional templates, e signatures, and built in automation keeps everything on track and makes you look good. They can even consolidate services you already use like QuickBooks, Google Suite, Excel, and Mailchimp. It's the number one choice for client and business management for freelancers and business owners. So save time and do more of what you love with Honeybook. Right now, Honeybook is offering our listeners a fantastic deal fifty percent off when you visit try honeybook dot com slash best of. The payment is flexible and this promotion applies whether you pay monthly or annually, So go to try honeybook dot com slash best of for fifty percent off your first year. Once again, that's try honeybook dot com slash b e stof. We'd also like to welcome Lola back to our show. Lola is a female founded company offering a line of organiccotton tampons, pads, liners, and all natural cleansing wipes. Unlike other major brands, Lola products are one hundred percent natural and easy to feel good about. There's no bs, mystery, fibers, or doubts about what's going in your body. Plus, Lola products come in a simple, customizable subscription. Those deliver exactly what you need when you need it. My favorite part about Lola is the convenience factor. They really make my month a little bit easier. The subscription is fully customizable, so you can choose your mix of products, mix of absorbency, number of boxes, and frequency of delivery. It's also flexible. If you're building up too much of a stockpile, you can change, skip, or cancel at any time. Finally, as I mentioned, Lola was founded by women for women. So for thirty percent off your first month subscription, visit Mylola dot com and enter code best of when you subscribe. Once again, that's my Lola, m y Lola and enter best of b e stof when you subscribe. All right, we are back and I have some juicy questions in here. Ooh yeah's start with an easy one ready or it is an easy one, Laura, it's for you. Can I get more specifics about a night nurse? Yes, sure, So this is a service like different. I mean, you may have been in a big city where they have lots of people advertising services as baby nurses. Some people do this like twenty four hours a day, but you know, we already have full on childcare, so we don't really need that. But the idea of a night nurse is is that sleep is awesome and it's one of the most challenging parts of having a newborn. And if you only have one newborn and you're on maternity to leave, it might be possible to sort of make up that sleep during the day, but if there's other kids around and others that you know, it's it's just nice to be able to do this. So we have a service that's going to be coming probably about you know, five nights a week. They come at nine o'clock, stay till six o'clock. I still am planning to breastfeed, so for the beginning, you know, the issues that they take the baby for everything other than the feeding. And so the way we did it with Alex is, you know, they'd come in at one, come in at four, and then within a couple of weeks, I was pumping the one o'clock bottle so that you could sleep from you know, nine thirty to four. And that just is a wonderful thing if you have a you know, month old, six week old baby to get that long of a stretch of sleep. And so yeah, this is this is something that I am willing to put money into, and particularly if you have older, you know, other kids, and if your partner travels, for instance, for work, so this can't necessarily be split in the night even you know, because just because your partner isn't the one breastfeeding doesn't mean the partner couldn't take the kid if there's say, fussiness at times that don't involve feeding. So that's, uh, that's the plan, and we'll keep the service for a while and hopefully about to the point where the baby can sleep through the night. And this is just you know, I I know that it probably seems a little bit indulgent, but I'm a big fan of spending money to make life easier. So this is something I am giving to myself as a way to make the transition. Well, it's fascinating how judgment tends to come out when you spend money on something like that, but like a giant home renovation or kitchen redo, people don't even blink or like the fact that I'm driving an eight year old car, right, like, I mean, that's I think people would have replaced that a while ago, and if you did, if I did. And yet it's somehow the buying time, buying marital peace and happiness, buying my not flying off the handle at my other kids, you know, because I'm incredibly sleep deprived. There, these are all good things and I'm willing to spend money on that sounds good, all right, And I didn't do that, by the way, so it's okay if you also don't. But I do see the appeal in particular almost in it's not even like I did much overnight, but kind of knowing that I wouldn't have to, Yeah, you could just that and not just worry about it of like, well, even if she wakes up, I don't have to deal with it except for those feeding So I see that. Like at first I had trouble rationalizing it. But it's not even necessarily that you're buying that much work. You're kind of buying like the availability right, so that you could go to sleep and know you will sleep until the baby til you choose. Yeah, exactly, that's awesome. All right, here's another easy one, Sarah, did you find a free alternative to wine ab? Yes and no. So I've been using every dollar for the last like three months or so, and it's fine. Wine ab is you need a budget by the way, first, sorry, you need a budget which had an old free version that we had that finally sort of stopped working perfectly, and then they have a paid version. Every dollar is fine. There are certain things about it that kind of annoy me. Things you have to do with the end of each month to kind of balance everything that you don't have to do with wineab. And I'm considering for twenty twenty just going to the paid version of winab, which I think is like I don't know, something like eighty dollars a year or something like that. It does sort of seem silly to nickel and dime a budget app that probably does help us same significant amount of money just by being conscious and for me is also kind of like buying peace of mind, because I really now I'm like addicted, like I really like to just know where all of our money goes and I know that Josh finds it helpful as well. So yeah, while we did find it, I don't know that I'm going to be sticking to every dollar now. Some people might love it and it actually I would say that it's very reliable, it's easy to use, it has a desktop version, and it is completely There's a free and a paid version. The free has a lot of functionality, so I wouldn't deter anyone from looking at every Dollar. I think I just preferred basically like the way the months connected to each other and the way the dollars rolled over in wineab better. So yeah, all right, next one, as planners, how do you approach spontaneous invites you're not sure will be worth it? Well? I found this an interesting question, like what sort of life this person lives where there are just spontaneous invitations coming in all the time that she has to, you know, beat the people off from asking for social engagements. You know, I feel like we're many of the people that I do see are in the same boat, and that you know, everyone's busy with kids stuff, so it's not like there are people who are planning all that much. Sort of adult oriented social engagements. It doesn't have to be adult oriented, okay to be a spontaneous plays. I mean it just says spontaneous invites. Okay. I like, I don't know, let me ask all answers since you're thinking about it, because I have a definite answer, which is that I have to force myself not to just immediately say no, because that's my instinct, like nope, we're doing this, but like, take a breath, Like maybe it does fit into the plan. Maybe it would be fun to have that play dat or stay for lunch or like do like and yeah, no, I'm not talking about like a spontaneous like invitation to go to Paris for the weekend. And we're thinking about like like you run into somebody maybe at a kid's sports event, and they say, hey, do you want to come over afterwards? Like my first instinct would be like no, because I was going to plan on cooking dinner and blah blah, you know whatever I had thought about. And sometimes I do still say no, but I kind of take a purposeful pause because I know my instincts are a little bit much sometimes and my husband is definitely always of the mind of like, yeah, let's do that sometimes to his detriment, so we actually make a very nice balance in that regard. Yeah, no, that sounds good. I think, you know, my first pulse would always be to be like, but there's already a plan. But sometimes you can rearrange things and it does work. So I think, yeah, pause and say, well, actually, would this be fun? Would I find it cool? And if so, see if it can work, and if it can, it can't, but you to pause and consider if the plan could be reworked. I like it all right. Okay, another fairly easy one. How did you pick schools for your kids? So we had pretty much known we I was not looking forward to figuring out the whole school issue in New York City. So when Jasper was turning four and we knew that Ruth was on her way so we'd have three children, it was it seemed like a good time to be looking elsewhere. We had always had Philadelphia in the back of our minds. I mean partly because Michael's Michael had transferred to his firm's office here anyway, and he just wasn't going like once every two weeks or so, So it'd always been in the back of our minds, and I had met somebody who was on the Lower Marion Township Council on a trip to Peru, like a group trip to Peru years ago, and she told me about the whole area and everything. We knew that the schools were supposed to be pretty good here, and so when we were looking to buy a house, we just looked in this district. And so, you know, it's wonderful to know that you can send your kids to good local public schools and not have it be a huge ordeal of applying. It's just, you know, buy a house in this set area or rent an apartment in this set area and they're in. It's great. I'm a big fan. So that's what we did. That we looked and seen that they were well ranked schools, and we knew people had gone to them, and so yeah, I'm also kind of a satisficer. So obviously, theoretically we could have looked anywhere, I guess, but it helped to have a little bit of a guideline, a limit to where we were looking. To counter that, I guess, did you look at private schools at all? Is that something you thought about, because I'm finding that in the area where I live. We currently are planning on sticking with public schools, but that makes us somewhat of an outlier, particularly among our work colleagues, which is interesting. That yeah, that is interesting. I mean I feel like people generally buy in our district because of the schools if you have kids. I mean, it's not there are certainly cheaper places you could live in terms of your property taxes and the prices that are baked into the houses. Then because of that, I know, I went my college. One of my college suite mates lived near you and went to a private school in the area. Well, there certainly are a lot of There are some people who choose, Yeah, there are people who choose to do do and there's lots of different reasons. I mean it's you know, some people want much smaller classes for their kids. Or if your kid has some sort of learning difference that you think would be better addressed in a smaller environment or more one on one situation, that's totally great. Or if you want a single sex education for some reason that's also our religious you know, if you're very devout and want school that is oriented that way to support those values. I mean, these are all reasons that people choose private schools, I don't know. I mean I went to public schools K through twelve. Michael went to public schools K through twelve, So it's just not our default thing. And I'm not saying i'd never consider it. Like if we had a really bad situation, you know, we were a kid who couldn't function in a sort of normal class environment, Yeah, and a heartbeat, I would, I would try to find another schooling situation. But since that doesn't seem to be the case for any of our kids, our default is just to find a good district and then go with it. We were very similar. We like mapped basically when we were moving from Miami Beach, you know where the best school districts were in proximity to work, and that's how we picked where our house is. I mean just financially, when once you get past two kids, it really does you know, you got to multiply that tuition and unless there was some I mean I think there are some benefits. And again, like of course I'm also biased having had a public school K through twelve education as well, so I think there are benefits there. And then then there's also that huge benefit of like all the money not going into school can go into college funds perhaps, or like you know, that's not a necessarily a given. Some people feel like they'd rather spend it on private high school and then send their child to public college or have them take out loans for college. But for us, I think doing both would be difficult and we would rather put that money in college. So yeah, although I say, if you know for sure that you are going to be sending your children to private school, or if you know you're going to be homeschooling or something like that, then that allows you to kind of broaden your search of where you will live. Yes, And there could be upsides of that, like you might be able to live in a sort of you know, smaller district wherehouses are cheaper, or in a more urban environment where maybe the schools aren't exactly what you'd want or you have to go through huge application processes. But because you're not in that system, you can you know, broaden your housing search. So there are trade offs either way. And yeah, it's a lot of money out the door for tuition, but if you have one or two kids and then you can buy or rent somewhere that is not got the price of a district baked in. Some of this stuff probably comes out in the swash in terms of the economics. Anyway. Okay, well, I'm happy with our decisions so far, so we'll see what happens. Question is next, what do your husbands do for fun or self care? I want to hear because Josh has some more interesting stuff I think than Yeah, Josh is super into guitars and playing music these days, like super into it. He's even in a band right now. They have a concert coming up they have. I think the band is like the concerts called Rock the Docks, and his band is called Code Purple, and he's like loving it. And the funny thing was he did admit he's like, yeah, I don't really run anymore. I mostly like play guitar. And I'm like, well, you probably need to do something for general health, just being you know, an adult. That's like important for our longevity, which is which he has claimed he wants to live to one hundred. So I'm like, like, good to do something. But he he's he's able to do a little of both, and he's definitely immersed himself significantly into this music stuff. So I love that he gets this much joy I would also say he may not consider this self care, but he also seems to find a lot of time to I don't know, watch various series on on Netflix, common topic of today's episode, or and read some science fiction which she likes. Does he have a favorite author? It's not passion that I share something you're discussing frequently. He did get me to read Ready Player one and I really liked it, so that was good good. I mean, I actually I don't mind, like when I get into a good science fiction, I don't mind it. But he will read like the multi volume things. It is like set in like a different you know, planet, and that's just like a lot for me. Yeah, yeah, I like my novels to be a little bit more grounded, either in like history or another culture or like here. Yeah. No, I'm trying to think, like, what does Michael do for fun? Well, he's he runs, and we both run, and he pitting races, right, puitting races. He's been doing more. He signed up for two half marathons in the fall of twenty nineteen. So there's definitely, you know, a question of trying to get those long runs done on weekends, and so that certainly takes up a chunk of I guess his leisure time. He likes, you know, movies and TV shows, like he has various ones he watches with the kids that they choose together. They've all gotten into Young Sheldon, you know, the spinoff from Big Bang Theory. They were watching Big Bang Theory and now they love Young Sheldon even more. I think because it is about sort of kids. Kids. Yes, it's about kids, and it's even more so it's about a Texas family, like you know in the Oh, so he is Young Shelby. I you're being probably not. There's little less social awkwardness, but that's awesome. But they definitely appreciate the Texas household and all that comes with that. You know. We've come up with different things for him to do, Like he went skiing with his brother last winter that they did a trip together. He's very close with his family, so they do stuff together. They all went to a Texas A and In football game together this fall. I got him a flying lesson from for last Christmas that he just finally in late fall did and it seems to you like it. I don't think he liked it enough to actually devote the time to do it. And of course the flight school that was half the day as they're pitching like you come take flight lessons, you know, get your pilot's license. Whatever. It made me so nervous, Like I'm nervous just thinking about it. Yeah, he likes he's scuba dives. He's been certified the whole time we've been together, and so we do. Whenever we take a trip that's tropical or something that's something he will go do. So a lot of the stuff is not day to day. I mean running is day to day. I would say the hobbies are kind of things that are harder to do on a day to day basis. There's sort of that more trip recreational thing, the scuba and the skiing, and but you know that counts, it counts. Do you feel like he's satisfied with his amount of self care or fun? I think so. I mean he enjoys his job, and I think there's a lot of general socializing through that and learning new things from that. So there's there's sort of less of an impetus to find other stuff to do, which which is cool. He's immersed. He's immersed. It's fair, I think, Josh, which is he had a little more time. I don't know how to give him more time though, Yeah, well trying, I wouldn't. I don't think that's your problem. No, it's yeah, that's true. That's true. It's it's how he wants to to arrange things. But hey, if he ever told me he wanted to work eighty percent or something, you'd be all over that. I'd be okay, all right. On a lighter note, fave products for the um was included in the question quote aging skin botox. It's not what we think of it as a traditional product product, but I can promise that it works unlike the vast majority of no drug store or whatever aging products. Yeah. No, if you want to get rid of your wrinkles, injections are fillable. Fillers are probably the way to go. You know, I'm waiting till I'm forty at least, which is not very far. I will say, yeah, I mean that's probably the most tried and true and research BacT as well. They're actually papers on that, and there probably aren't that many papers on you know, Sephora product. But I will tell you a product I've been enjoying. It's not it has nothing to do with really aging, but I really really like it. It is the Ole Hendrickson Ole I don't know O l E. Sauna scrub and this isn't This really doesn't have to do with aging, but it like heats up when you put it on your face. It's amazing. But it doesn't have some weird chemicals because it's at least labeled as clean, so I don't know, but it like, so, what's on your face? Oh, but it feels amazing, and then making soda and vinegar. It's like a kid science experiment, it might be, but it's my new favorite find from my I kind of like treated myself to a bit of a Sephora hall about two months ago, and this is when I came upon on my own rather than following someone else's wreck. But I really enjoy it the sauna scrub. It comes in a little green too, And I am gonna be loyal because yeah, all right, well I'm going to choose some from this list. Here, go for it. How does Sarah like ramping up her hours? Was there any difference between eighty percent to ninety percent and then now, especially as you have some more flexibility but more sort of responsibilities that aren't directly related to patient care and thus can expand out of the time when you are seeing patients. Say, you know's, how's that working out for you? Yeah, it's I do feel like I have a bigger job, for better or for worse. I feel a lot more responsibility, and with that actually comes a little bit more stress that I am just kind of right now maybe dealing with a little bit of imposter syndrome too, Like, oh my god, I'm really in charge of this. Am I ready for this? Because I am someone who didn't spend a ton of years as an associate program director before making that transition. But I actually really also like it. You know, on days when I have a lot of meetings and I'm doing a lot of managerial stuff, I'm like, oh yeah, this is like I really like this. This speaks to my strength. I love working with my residents. It is the recruitment part is stressful, Like right now we're in our interview season and kind of making sure that your next class is going to be as good as your last classes is like I feel like you're rolling the dice. So right now I'm just a little bit like, but the ramping up of the hours wasn't that noticeable compared to like, I really do feel like I changed jobs, Like becoming PD is a lot. I only see patients really two days a week now, which is about right. I really enjoy those two days. I would not want to get rid of them. I like teaching during those days. I like keeping the patients that I have. I'd be so sad to like abandon my more complicated patients. And I really made sure I did have to transition a few of my patients, but anybody that had kind of more than one issue, I made sure they stayed with me. And I'm just fitting them in whatever. So yeah, I would say, thus far, I like it. It's definitely more stressful. I don't miss the extra day off, like I get one extra day off every two weeks basically, which amounts to when you look at like all the PTO that comes with our job, I get about fifty two days off a year because you have to count all the PTO, which is great. That averages to once a week. Of course, you know, sometimes I use that more by taking longer vacations, and a lot of times I use those days during the weeks to record podcasts. I think that's my nature. I'm not someone who's gonna like go home and put my feet up. I maybe needed that when I was pumping or just like really tired with babies waking up all night. Otherwise I know I'm going to fill the time. So ninety percent feels just about right. Yea, yeah, that's good. That's good, All right, Sarah. The recommended age gap between c and G or do you wish you'd had number three earlier? I don't think I could have had number three earlier. I mean, I just it would have been too much. It would have like broken me having like a zero, two and four at the same time. Or you know, Annibale and Camera aren't even two years apart, so if I had spaced them two months, good, I agree under four that's it. Really took me until Cameron was about three to be like, okay, I can think about having another. And I at one point, I think after annabel was born, I'd always wanted three. Then I had Annabelle and was like, wow, kids are are a lot. Maybe two is fine. And then I guess in becoming a more confident parent and just getting more into it and sort of realizing love, like you know, once you're kind of in this place. Adding more is not I don't know, it just took me a while, but having multiple toddlers is really hard. Like I remember when when Annabel was like not even two, when Cameron was a baby, and that was like not fun. I actually found the early days with Genevieve much much more pleasant. So I think I'm very happy about the age gap. It's not so far that they don't enjoy playing with her like they love playing with her. I have the best pictures like they're I mean, the only thing maybe if I had had her like a few months earlier, so that they could have had one year of elementary school together, but I mean, probably not worth it. So no, I'm very happy with my gap. And for the record, no, I am not interested in I've said it before, but just in case anyone's like, whoa, she's apparently we were having that guest who said in France like people have like two pairs of kids, and I see like the logic behind that. Not free perfect, We're good, We're just good. We're good. And on that note, Laura, would you want a sixth someone wanted to know that is that is not in the plan right now? I mean partly because be forty one as this baby is born, so I'd probably be forty three, you know when the next one would be born, just starting to get a little bit older in terms of the risks of things going wrong. So I think five is going to be a good number. I'm excited about having a fifth. I'm not feeling like I need to have a sixth to have too close together, despite the bigger age gap between the little guy and his older siblings, because like I went through, I went through that time. You know, now Jasper, Sam and Ruth they're twelve, ten and eight, so of course at one point they were four to two in an infant and that was a lot. Uh. It just I think that was the hardest time of parenthood because by the time Alex came, they were starting to get bigger. And then now, of course with this little dude, they're they're all big kids to a degree, and so you know, you just don't have this the piling out of like multiple people who are going to go stick forks in their eyes at the same time. And so it's two, like under three even it's just such a hard so hard, it's hard because nobody can understand when you're like, no, I need to be doing this kid, You know what I mean, Like, there's no there's no rationalizing, there's no and they both are so needy at that stage. Oh yeah, it's hard. You just feel like you're failing a lot. And then you wait and it goes, it gets better and it's better. Okay, yes, maybe like one more? Okay, well what do you want you choose? Okay? Any thoughts on a best of both world meet up someday? Someday? Sure, you know, maybe we'll take the show on the road. It'll be good if we could get a big enough audience so we know we'd have a concentrated group of people who'd get together in different studies. So please keep helping us spread the word and grow the show, and then we can look about doing this elsewhere. Maybe we'll do a poll sometime to look at, like what the ideal location would be, because I don't know where a lot of our listeners are. The other thing is I've been bothering Laura that I want to go to I don't think she wants to, but I want to go podcast conference at some point, just because I think it'd be fun to meet other podcasters and like, I don't know, just see what that world looks like. And so maybe somehow in conjunction with that we could sneak in a meetup. That would be fun. All right, let's do our love of the week, all right. Mine is Florida winter weather, because I'm sorry, I just had a brag because our summers are so lame and I'm just so happy to be out of that time. So yeah, it's really nice here in the winter. It is not nice here in the winter, but I do, like, I mean, just the whole idea of Christmas lights and the holidays sort of sees that. I mean, the you know, it was smart to stick the holidays around the winter solstice because then as you're getting darker and dark, it's like, oh look, lights and specialness and fun and family. Then of course you've got to get through January and February and half of March, which are snowy and yucky and gross. But March is the worst. March is the worst because you use it here, well not this year but next year. Just it just the wind. The weather continues like that, but you know, at least you've you're on the up. It's getting lighter at that point, So props to whoever thought to, you know, put the winter solstice celebration with Christmas. You know, I'm sure that evolved or whatever whoever did it first. But since since it, you know, theologically, it's pretty clear Jesus was probably not born on December twenty five. I didn't know that. I was like, wait a second, isn't it the actual date. No, it's not, it is not. It was in those poor It was the marriage of pagan solstice celebrations with the Christian birth celebrated, which and this is all very North Hemisphere, yes, North Hemisphere centric anyway, like your sign, what does it matter if you're born December twenty fifth, or like, I don't know, September in May. It's all sort of you know. Our listeners on the other side of the world are like, yeah, you and your Christmas lights? Yeah, old biting air anyway. All right, well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been doing holidays plus ask Us anything, which we will do again because we love these episodes. But we'll be back next week with more on making work in life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.