Toddler Parenting Survival Guide

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hartunger. I'm a mother of three, a 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 ninety, which is first airing on March twenty third of twenty twenty one. Today we are going to be talking about toddlers. Sarah and I have been through the toddler stage many many times, and we were talking about this and think it's got our vote for the toughest stage of parenthood. Now. I'm granted my oldest child is just turning fourteen soon, so I am willing to believe that there is the stage when people like crash their cars and things like that, which is all so difficult. But of the ones we have experienced so far, toddler's definitely the roughace mobile baby, old enough to do things, get into trouble, but zero sense, right, Sarah, Yes, and you have an NF five, which is which is pretty decent. I mean, I will say that newborn phase can be very very hard if there is like excessive colic, or you have a baby that just truly doesn't sleep. So I get it. Some people may put their votes there, but I'm with you. I you know, there are certain challenges that come with a newborn stage, but somehow my body feels more equipped to deal with it. There's like a lot of chemicals and hormones that kind of give that stage a little bit of a fuzzy pink aura, at least in my memory, whereas by toddlerhood that is all gone. Sometimes for some of us, that's the toddler phase is accompanied with with the hormone crash of the breastfeeding hormones kind of changing everything. And I definitely found it the hardest. I think the very hardest for me was having a newborn and a toddler that is like, oh my god, Like I that's why there's so much space between Cameron and Jennevie exactly. Yeah, well, I never had less than two years between kids, but I do have some two year gaps, and now looking back on it and like, oh, yeah, there was a time when I had a four year old to two year old and an infant, and it's just maybe I just don't remember that time, and that's why it's just doesn't seem so bad in retrospect. I'm sure it was really really tough. Of course, I was also like ten years younger, so there's that as well. So this is gonna be our Toddler's Survival Guide episode for those of our listeners who are going through this stage who want to commiserate about it. Of course, we want to say toddlers are incredibly cute, sort of putting the phase from about you know, one to three more or less, very cute, learning to talk, beginning, learning to walk, sort of toddling around, heints the name, you know, when they get a little and a hug. And this morning Henry was literally jumping up and down in his crib when I opened the door. It's like, wow, nobody else does that, you know, come in to get the older kids up for school, there's no jumping up and down like woo. The morning that's so true. There is a level of appreciation for life that is so special in toddlers. I mean I've always heard people say like, well, good thing, they're cute. Yeah, a good thing, they're very, very cute, because otherwise basically anything that might be fun is like not fun with toddlers. So we've got our new house is going through renovations, but we're still going to do some stuff in the yard while the house is being renovated. Michael's like, well, we should put a fire put in the backyard so we can go hang out by the fire pit there. And I'm like, fire pit not fun with toddlers, right, Or you think about like picnic on the beach not fun with toddlers, dinner at a restaurant not fun with toddlers, Like all these days that are yeah fun with toddlers. Anything that is fun as an adult or even as a big kid is just like not fun with somebody between the ages of one to three who is constantly looking for ways to get into trouble and has to be watched constantly. And so the more bad things you introduce risks, you introduce fire, water, other people, random places you can run off to it just makes it makes it tough. And when you have more than one kid, it's like they're not independent variables. So what, at least in my experience, tends to happen is you do end up having to focus like ninety eight percent of your attention and energy on the toddler, which the other one or two or more probably notice, and that typically probably leads to more challenging behavior than if you didn't have ninety eight percent of your attention focused on the toddler. And now you have multiple things going on, some of them perhaps out of just desire for more attention. Yeah, my gosh, it is such a challenging phase. I'm going to go there and say like, I wasn't that sad to see it end? And I feel like, in a way that's sort of unpopular because people are always very sad when their kids grow up. And it's been kind of funny because Genevieve actually will say that she doesn't want to grow up. But at the same time we have very much noticed her kind of exiting that stage. Most recently, actually, she just transitioned to a new classroom, which at her school is ages three to six. Yeah, so it is big, big, little kid age at that point. Yeah, and we just look at her and we're like, wow, you are like you're not a toddler, like you are done, and it makes me pretty happy. I like big kids too. I mean, I really enjoy hanging out with my older kids. Like sometimes in the evening, after Henry's asleep, you know, we're hanging out in the kitchen ki people are getting their snacks. We're just talking, having real conversations. It's like a little party, you know. I have big people in the house, and so that's you know, one of the challenging parts of this is I feel like, because he gets so much attention, I'm not getting to enjoy as much of that time as I would. But on the other hand, you know, it's it's also fun to go back through these stages too, So I would say I'm probably more on team big kid in terms of my favorite ages. But they are cute when they're when they're little. So you can finally leave Genevieve for like two minutes without her getting into trouble or something else happening, Yeah, I mean, like I can. I can pretty much shower, especially if I have, like, you know, animals in the same room. With her, Like the worst thing that might happen would be like she's dumped out a toy, But we're actually, I think, unless there's something really tempting and dumb hanging around, like a whole bunch of sharpies, like well past the point where I would expect that she would scribble all over something or hurt herself or anything like that. So obviously only short periods of time better if there's another kid in the room. But it is an immense amount of freedom. I mean, like I'm outings for example, like I'm taking off three kids strawberry picking, and like I'm looking forward to things. I mean, who knows, maybe there's also like the pre and post pandemic aspect of that, but I'm looking forward to things more than I did when I knew I would be spending all of it like changing diapers and like picking hoisting the kid and like redirecting them. And now I feel like I can bring this more responsive crew. And now, of course again she's three and a half, not like seven, but there is actually a significant difference between say two and a half and three and a half and how much flexibility you have there definitely, well, you know, trying not to wush time away, but yeah, we're ten months is a rough China and we're having a rough time that he's not sleeping all that well either, which is adding to it. But so we have some survival tips so we can go back and forth on those. One thing we've been doing is creating some safe zones at home, and people are like, well, why didn't you baby proof the whole house, Like you try that with four other children who are have their own things, who are going to move their own things, Like, there's just no good way to do everything. We have to choose the spots that are going to be safe for the baby and then kind of protect those. So but what we do, you know, we bought a gate for the outside porch. Currently we have a big piece of furniture put against the opening to the stairs, but we bought a gate for that so you can hang out on the back porch, he can have a toy or two on the back porch, the adult watching him can sit on the couch and not have to hop up every two seconds to keep him from wandering down the stairs. So obviously that's one. We cleaned out one of the rooms in the basement. We had been calling it the Lego room. It was also a room where kids had been doing virtual learning, but they're in other places now. It only has baby toys and it has a door that shuts, so that is somewhere that you can go sit. You can have as the supervising adult, maybe a beverage appropriate to the time of day, if that's coffee in the morning, your craft beer in the evening or whatever. But you can relax while he plays in there. Sometimes I can convince another kid to come in and play with him, and if it's one of the older three kids, that's relaxing. If it's another child, it's not relaxing. But that's a different matter. What are your favorite toddler toys? What did you guys like? Yeah, well, first, I wholeheartedly agree. I just want to say, like that area where you can corral the kids, even if it's not the whole house, which same thing, where there's going to be tiny toys all over the place. If they're still in that mouth putting in the mouth stage, then like can't mix the big kids toys with a little But even if it's just their room, Like if you don't have any other place but the room with their crib in it if that can become like toddler land, so that you could close the door and chill, Like, if you don't have tons of space, you can still make this work, and that might be one way of doing it where you're like, you know, all the fun stuff is in their room and so you can sit there and get a comfy chair and hang out. Our play kitchen was a big hit in the toddler phase. We had a set of like Ikia vegetables that went through like all three kids, and I think we got rid of the play kitchen about six months ago. So it really does fit in right with the toddler stage. And then of course the old perennials, duplos and magnetiles. I mean, don't have a question with the magnetiles, because you have said this so many times that yes, I saw that it can. It's not for kids under three, so I don't know why the package says that. I think it's because of well, oh god, now someone's going to die and sue this podcast. Hopefully not. I've never had a magnet. I think it's on the theoretical guys that like a magnet could fall out and the child would eat the magnet. That would be the only reason, because it is very dangerous if a child eats, particularly two magnets. One magnet is usually okay. Two magnets can cause like necrosis the GI tract and perfect it's horrible. So anyway, maybe that's why that said. Have never in all my many years of playing with them. I think if you're watching your child, there's nothing inherently They're just pieces of plastic, and I've found that kids as young as you know, fifteen months eighteen months can start playing with them and put them together, and if you have bigger kids, it is a toy that works across multiple ages, so that's very interesting. I don't think I realized that the package said that, and I definitely use that my kids played with them prior. Yeah, dioty, it's just something you'd want to make sure you had either either new ones or ones that you would only had like so you knew that they were in good condition supervision, which you're generally good shops with your toddler anyway, like you would you would notice if they were, And yes, I agree, probably wouldn't want to buy like a decrepit old set with cracks in it or something like that, but they do hold up quite well. So magneto and then duplows, I mean, kids can, little toddlers can, even if they're obviously they're not going to build some elaborate thing, but just playing with the different color pieces and putting them together, and they're not going to break anything. As long as you're not stepping on them. They're pretty darn harmless, so I don't think you can go wrong. We have a big bin of duplos that are in the baby room now, so that's something that Henry can play with, and then when one of the older kids is in there with him, that's something that they will often play with as well. It's like something to do, it's something to do for them. And then watercolors, So that sounds super annoying and kind of like why would you like let your but actually water colors are completely water soluble, so they really can't make that much of a mess. They're very cheap. They're like ninety nine cents for those little like paint things that they're at there at the grocery stores. And I found the Genevieve as young as like two would really like doing that while the other kids and compared to like crayons, which you can like. She would always draw on everything and I had to wipe it off with like magic erasures and stuff, and it was a pain. But the water colors just wipe off of everything. So it's actually, even though it seems kind of more precious, it's actually an easier cleanup. Some people love those color Wonder markers too as well, but then you have to have a special paper. And always felt like my kids would write like one line on each page and go through like anyway. And then chalk, of course is great as long as they're not putting it in their mouth. And then anything with bubbles. Bubbles are always fun. All right, Well, let's take a quick break and we will read write back with more on toddlers. Well, we are back talking about our Toddler's Survival Guide in terms of planning our days. So I know that there's that nap time transition. When did your kids go from two naps to one? We are still not at one. We're in that lovely one and a half nap stage. We were always on the early side. And I actually I listened to a podcast or I follow up on Instagram I named Pete's doc talk and she had a poll recently and I think it was twenty nine percent by thirteen months had transitioned their kid to one nap, and I was like, huh, I thought it would have been higher than that. But I always found that we really started to have bad bedtime struggles when there was two naps at that age, and or they just didn't want to take the second nap, so it was like more trouble than it was worth. And so I always tended to transition them right around a year, but I know a lot of kids take longer, Like my niece is definitely still well, she's like in that transition. Days she'll take that solid second and other days she's so tired that she goes to bed at like six thirty. So it's interesting. Yeah, well, the problem is there's not too much space between that second nap and the early bedtime to sort of you pick your poison with the later half of the day. Yeah, you know, if you take a late nap, they're not going to do the early bed time. But the question is like can they make it to the early bedtime without utter meltdowns? And I feel like if they can, then that's the better option. Because then you'll end up with a more reliable first nap, and it's just easier to plan around one nap. So I probably like pushed it as soon as I felt like my kids could like make it to seven o'clock or so. We tried to go down to one nap, especially after the first kid, because I have another kid to contest. The two naps is really hard to make, I mean, especially like so weekends, it always coincides with kid activities in the morning, and kid activities in the afternoon is just and plus it chops up the day a lot. So I'm I'm hoping we'll be i mean maybe even with it. And well this is erring in a week, but within a month or so, we should be down to one nap. And the one nap is easier than to build a day around because you just figure that the afternoon is downtime, which is often good for other kids too, although then it's going to make it harder for us to take family outings. So mornings, if possible, go somewhere, get out, do something. If you're in the two nap stage, you plan it in the middle, like for early afternoon, but having some change of scenery because then you can push those safe rooms to limited times of the day as opposed to try to fill like all morning in there, which is going to get old fast. You know. Then figuring out a post nap activity is also I think very helpful in terms of getting through the day kind of mentally. It can be a walk. A walk is usually a perfectly fine post nap activity, even in I mean normal times, people are like, well, you could go to like a museum or a playplace, there's something, but often that is closed four thirty five, and if your nap is ending at three thirty, that sort of it limits the available space for doing something like that. Though you might get forty five minutes and that could be fun too. But you know, even just a nap or a playground trip, but something that you have in mind to motivate you to get out of the house after the nap can also then keep you from getting into that kind of space before dinner and bed where things are just melting melting down, no, one hundred percent, and you know, someday post pandemic times, I actually think that last hour can be a good time to like we used to hit up this little kid's art museum at the end of the day because it was usually emptying out, but we had a membership and lived close by, so it was like, Eh, no big deal, spend four to five there and then it's like, oh, it's dinner time, and like we did something. And so obviously, again, you know, your mileage may vary as the pandemic winds itself down. We're hoping this episode is going to be perennial favorite. So I'm sure we'll be listening in twenty twenty two and everyone will be going everywhere. Again, we have not taken Henry to much where he would be then out of the stroller, and there are places that are open, like there are no restrictions on things like play places. But I just I know he'll get upper respiratory infection from the dirty toys and then we'll worry it's COVID, and so it just seems like not worth it at this point. I guess it's so much higher stakes than before for your kid to end up with a running nose. That's very true. On the other hand, I mean, knock on wood, but he has never had a running nose. This is the craziness of pandemic life, is it turns out that not being around other people and wearing masks all the time really does prevent the spread of a lot of germs. I've been pleasantly surprised at the limited number of illnesses he has gotten in his first fifteen months of life versus any of my other children, who are apparently just bathed in microbes from birth. So, in terms of nap time, so we are structuring the day of We have our morning outing, we have our nap, we have our afternoon something post nap. Don't do chores during nap time. I mean, I know people do, but don't do it during the first forty five minutes, is what I would say, because otherwise what happens is you're like, well, I have to clean the kitchen, and then all the toys the toddler took out or all over the place, let me clean those up. And the next thing you know, you're like an hour and thirty minutes into nap and you only might get twenty minutes before the kid is up, and then you feel like you have absolutely no fun whatsoever. So put your fun first. Do whatever you are going to do, whether it's reading a book or a hobby or your own nap or whatever it is you need to do for that first forty five minutes to an hour, so you know you will get it, and then you can go fold the laundry or clean the kitchen, or catch up on work or whatever you need to do in that second hour that might be a little bit more variable about how much of it you get. Maybe you'll get more time. That's always great, But that way, for sure the relaxation will happen and you will make the chores fit more into whatever available space there is instead of having them expand to consume all of nap one hundred percent. Nap was like sacred time for me. I always used to take my own nap, preferably reading a book in bed. There was just something kind of like, Okay, I've gotten to this point of my day. Now it is my chance. And I was kind of sad when it stopped, But then I was also kind of like, oh freedom. And again the exit of the nap kind of coincides with the exit of some of that toddler need, so it actually does work out. Although can you have you transitioned to a good quiet time or does that not happen? Well, yes, because every kid including Genevieve now knows how to play iPad and will, if allowed to, would quietly do that, probably for like six weeks, without eating, drinking, bathing or anything. So, you know, instead it becomes brilliant. I like exactly. So instead it becomes and I've said this before, we kind of set a time start, time limit on screen time so that our weekends are not dominated. We don't really allow it on the week days, at least certainly not like the iPad stuff, because they have other stuff to do and they have homework, et cetera. And on the weekends they really don't get any until around one thirty or two, which used to be nap time. And then I can usually reliably count on an hour or a couple of hours where everyone's pretty darn happy without me. Again, who knows? Am I doing something bad to their brains? I don't think so in that limited amount, especially if we're good about turning them off and going outside and doing something afterwards, and if we spent the morning being active. I mean, it's fun. I enjoyed playing computer games too and Nintendo as a child, and I think that when as long as people are conscious about it, it can be a great way of having automatic quiet into your day. Now, I would love to also teach my kids to enjoy things quiet off of screens, So I guess that would be something to work on in addition. But you know, don't worry about one thing at a time. You don't have to justify as me. I'm like, that sounds great. I would like to love it. And at least one of my kids really does enjoy like reading in bed because we don't allow screens at that time. So I think, you know, once sleep patterns change, then maybe that's night time would be like the more natural reading time for my bigger kids. Yeah, that's when my big kids read too, and they are I've found this very much. They are more inclined to read if they have books they are into, and so that's just something we have to be very good about aggressively pursuing, like are there always books in the house that they want to read? Because if there aren't, then of course they're going to want to do screens and I can take them away and I have at night. Obviously there was there's an instance of subterfuge I found out the other night, so I hide the phones they were located well, they thought I was asleep. You're like, I'm gonna use fine my eyes, it's over. It was I never figured out like who, I mean, I know who went to get them, but I don't know if that person was acting totally under their own agency or was egged on by others. So it's all an interesting thing. But anyway, I feel like that is the most common thing ever though. Yes, Like that's like every kid tries that at least once. At least once they thought I was asleep, which which, So now do you sleep with the phones under your phone? Because I don't want the phones dinging and waking me up? Right, Like, this is the process, so you don't want to like cause the brain humory. Therefore, Yeah, well, speaking of sleep, I mean, so here's the other thing is it's really important to prioritize sleep as an adult during this stage as a primary caregiver for a toddler, because you know, if you're waking up early in the morning, as many toddlers do, I mean, this is reality. You go to bed at seven thirty and that's when you're tired. You're gonna be up at like by six in the morning. I mean, that's just the way sleep works, and so if you, as an adult, are not naturally up and excited about being up at six am, then you're gonna have to shift your sleep patterns to take that into account. And this has been tough for me, because again, I do want to stay up. I want to chat with Michael, I want to read, I want to hang out with my big kids, who of course are not going to go to bed at eight o'clock, like this is not something that's even going to happen for their stage, and so I kind of get squeezed on that. And I really aim to be in bed lights out by ten thirty, but even that is pushing it because if he's up at five thirty, that's seven, and that's right on the margin of what I can function on. And if he has any wake ups in the night, then it's seven minus bat I should be doing it at ten, but ten is almost impossible. So we're just you know, I I am trading off with Michael a lot, like I go sleep in the guest room, for instance, and he handles a night. I still need to get to sleep earlier or even on those nights because Henry wake up, wakes up in the morning, wanting to nurse, and so Michael can push him along to sex, but you know he's not lactating. Eventually, I'm the one he's gotta fined, So the morning is still going to start pretty early. I was just gonna say, like, yeah, it's interesting how kids can really differ like with their with their design, and sometimes those features of wanting to be early kind of sticks. Like I feel like Annabelle has always been like the most inclined to be early, Cameron's been like the sleeper. Genevieve is somewhere in between, although she will rarely just sort of wake up at five and I'm like why, like, don't why. But it's like one out of twenty nights, so it's certainly not like no, it's it's rare enough that it's like shocking and like almost even more annoying because it's like, what are you doing? Like normally I have to drag you out of bed at six fifty. I don't understand, But I wonder if maybe when he gets rid of that second nap, maybe that'll help. Yeah, si patterns be more solid. Although I know your fourth child was also a big fan of the earlier Yeah, what he still is, although some mornings we have to wake him up at eight to get ready for school, but most mornings we don't. Most mornings he is up, he knows to stay in his room until seven, and I would say he observes that maybe seventy five percent of the time, which is better than not observing it, and he usually he can go down. He will come get an adult to go get the computer on downstairs, then he goes and watches videos. But we've kind of got it set up now that he could just do it on his own, he still tends to. I mean, going downstairs by yourself is kind of scary when the house is dark and quiet, so I get it. But usually that doesn't happen till seven, and often somebody's up with Henry at that point anyway, so it's kind of less of an issue. It's more that somebody's down with Henry and then he comes and finds them. But yeah, no, I mean I could look the crazy thing. I track my time so I could look back at my logs from Alex and I know that it was rough. It was just rough. I almost feel like you could make the coolest graph, the cohost graph of yes my wake ups with with Alex and my wake ups with with Henry, and oh Henry, it was this last night was terrible. I don't know. I mean, we're we're doing all the sleep training things. You just have a very stubborn little child, so oh that's hard. Yeah. Mine, mine pretty much responded to that whole like, we're not getting you anymore. And I know some people find that controversial, but that that was a life saver for us. But it worked very quickly, and I get that if it doesn't work quickly, this is much much more torturous then, and then you question yourself because you're like, well, is this even gonna achieve the aim? If it achieves it in two nights, you're like, okay, well that's over. Yeah, And if it doesn't, it's it's probably just that the kid is a different kid. He's a different kid. He's much better about going to sleep. I would say that I have him asleep by seven forty five eight most nights, and I don't know if other people feel that's an appropriate toddler time, but whatever, in our life, that kind of works. That some time between seven and eight is when he goes down, and that tends to happen without a huge amount of screaming. Now, so that's great that part has happened. Staying asleep is harder, and so we're still working on that. You know, the time for him to fuss himself back to sleep can be very long, and then it can be short lived. So there is nothing so much fun as having him fuss himself to sleep for twenty minutes at one point thirty am and then be back up fifteen minutes later to start the process over again. That is so hard. That is so so hard. That's funny that you say appropriate toddler. I do feel like there's this weird you know, there's a weird judgment about when you're toddler goes to bed, but I never hear any judgment about when they wake up, whether they're up at six or eight or whatever. So we have to accept that some kids are going to be on a little bit of a later schedule, and some kids are going to be on a little earlier schedule, and it's going to be based on what the rest of the family's doing and all kinds of other things. And then we also we'd al said definitely and so go to bed early and then share the load right that as much as possible, getting an extra set of hands to even for short amounts of time, can be helpful. And what I'm seeing this mostly is with my older kids like that they can take the toddler, especially in a toddler's safe zone like the baby room. There's such limited trouble the kid can get into in there that an eleven year old can in fact play with the toddler in there for twenty minutes while an adult goes and does something else, And so that's been pretty helpful. Ruth, for instance, loves to play with Henry all the time. It's like a living doll, and we're trying to make sure that she's not automatically given the responsibility just because she's more enthusiastic about it, that the boys are totally capable of watching him as well and should also do so. We have left Henry with Jasper for very short periods of time, usually when Henry is asleep that we don't want to wake them up and we have to go get another kid somewhere. We have two kids out at different activities so that he can stay with him sleeping for twenty twenty five minutes. I haven't reallyased fourteen fourteen. Yeah, I was fully babysitting for people while they went on dates at that age and getting paid like two dollars an hour to do it two hours. I'm all up for that. That sounds great, But I think we're getting there. I'm not sure we're one hundred per The problem is, then we also have it only works if Alex is not there, right, So it has to be during Alex having and something else out because supervising Alex when it's your own kids, there is your own siblings, there's an extra layer of like like I wasn't gonna fight with my charges, but like you could fight with your five year old six year old brothers. Yeah, you know, I mean that's on. It's tough for adults to handle the two of them, so I think that asking a teenager to do it might be a little bit challenging. But you know, so this is possible. And when Michael has gone on a recent weekend and I had another really bad night, took Henry for like twenty thirty minutes apiece so I could nap, and that worked out really well and was such a life saver in early afternoon for me that I was able to get that in and of course childcare too, right like you, this was when you had the tyler and like on weekends when you had them on your own. Yeah, and it's like I didn't really notice not needing it as much, but I those weekends just felt so long sometimes and I never feel like, felt like I could stop. And those were the times, like when I had a one and three year old, or when you went I had like a one, five and seven year old or whatever, that I did feel really like, oh my god, two hours of babysitting will really make the difference for me. Again, you know, obviously the pandemic can add a layer of like, well now I'm taking an extra risk, like is it worth it? Et cetera. But again, as things change and more and more people are vaccinated, and in fact, you know, daycare workers are eligible, so there may be you know, a great increasing supply of vaccinated caregivers available. If that, if that is important to you, you know, it can really make a big difference. And then you'll you'll realize, I mean, part of me was like, oh, this is so expensive, but if you actually think of it, like, well, actually this expense is going to be an expense for like two years max. And then I won't really need it then you you know, in the grand scheme of things, it makes a less of a big deal. Like you're not creating a ritual that's going to be a pattern for the next eighteen years. You're just doing something to get yourself through a hard time. And if you even added up all the money, you know, maybe it was like a couple thousand dollars total. It's not I'm not talking about like full time childcare. I'm talking about like two hours you know, every couple of weekends when my husband was working Like that made a big difference. It was worth it totally. That is a definite good thing to have, and we've not really had it, but but I have my kids, so that that's made this time around much easier, even though we have the pandemic. And Michael and I will trade off too, so just in case people won't knowing where is he, Well, that was a one weekend he was gone. We will trade off like every if we're home for an extended period of time, we will trade off every hour or every ninety minutes or something like that to give the other person time off to do their things as well. All right, well, let's go to the question, Sarah, we had a lot to say about toddlers. Yes, okay, this comes from Mollie. Can you name some things you don't do, either at all or much less than other people normally do. Hearing, for example, Laura, that you have simply reduced your standards for how tidy your house is on any given day was oddly freeing for me. Curious what else there might be. I thought that was a fun question that came in on instance. I'm wondering what I said, because do people have some impression that my house is tidy at other times? I don't know, it's really right after the cleaners come that Friday every two weeks, it looks pretty nice for about twenty seconds. No, I think her point was that, but you had basically said, like, that's one of the things I don't do. I don't spend all my day making sure my house looks like it could be photographed for a living magazine all day long. I've like decided not to do that. So I think that's that's where that came. Yeah, No, that's that's definitely something I do not spend time on. We don't cook particularly elaborate meals at all. I know some people get really into that. Do not on the nights that we cook. So, for instance, right now, Wednesday and Friday are too that Michael or I are handling. For instance, we've been doing breakfast for dinner on Wednesdays and we have been doing family bake your own pizza night on Fridays. So those are both very easy and we don't have to think about them. And then then on weekends you can do a bit more like try to be a bit more original or something like that. But no, I'm never like looking through cookbooks looking for ideas. We still get sun basket, so that's we do that two nights a week, usually Monday and Tuesday. But yeah, I know, don't put a whole lot of effort into that. That's something I don't do. We I don't do really most of our laundry, you know. We have a question on a later episode about like when you have full time childcare but your kids are in school, like what do you do? And in our case, one of the things we've done is to have our childcare worker do some house stuff so that we can keep her as a full time employee, which makes everybody happy. So I really don't do laundry. I don't do most of our cooking. I don't watch that much TV. I watch like a little TV if it's like something I really want to watch. But I feel like people do spend a lot of time on that, and I know you don't either, Laura, So that's, you know, something that's interesting. And I feel like I don't spend out on certain things financially that enable me to not do the laundry, So you know, you're always they're always trade offs. But I feel like not spending lots of time on housework is something that makes me happier than most material things do. So it feels worth it to me to drive a really old beater car. Yeah, of time. I don't spend a lot of time on television. And I found when I did the time diary studies for I Know How she does it, that was, honestly one of the ways that people made life work. The number of hours of television per week for the women in my study, and remember this is women who earned over one hundred thousand dollars a year and had children at home they were watching on average, it was about four and a half hours of TV a week. And you know, that's not nothing. That could be like two movies. It could be. To me, that sounds like a time. I mean, I don't know half an hour so much. That sounds like half an hour every day. So it's at least it's like a sitcom every day or something like that. So it's not nothing. But on the other hand, the average, according to the American time Youse Survey, the average employed mother, it's more like ten hours a week, right, which is or even a little bit more. I forget, I don't have the numbers off the top of my head. It's more like twelve hours a week. It's more right, it's more than ninety minutes a day, and so that's an extra hour there for other things. And you know, people work longer hours than average if they have intense jobs, high paying jobs tend you know, but they were working like forty four hours a week, whereas the average person with a full time job, average employed mother with a full time job, it's more like thirty five thirty seven. So there's the time right there. It's the extra hour. So which again, you know, it's how people made it work, that they were trading off TV time for work time as opposed to work time for family time is how I saw that. So, yeah, that's something I tend not to do that much. I turned down the television the other night to watch a Sixers game, and people are like, what are you doing? I want the TV. I'm impressed that you were watching a six Ers game. To Spret, I like sports. I like basketball a lot, and then every every winter I forget that it's basketball season. So I'm trying to remind myself and I'm like, wait, it's March again. It's like March madness again. That's college. But I don't have a college team I care all that much about. But I've been you know, the Sixers are actually pretty good right now, which is great because they weren't for mini many years while we lived here. All Right, so that's things we do not do a lot of, picking up television, cooking, et cetera. All right, Sarah Love Love for the week. Okay. Mine is a recipe blog that I've been into lately called how Sweet Eats. I've just been getting more and more recipes from there. They tend to be pretty easy. I don't cook them or Nanny cooks them, but I plan the meals. So that's how that ties into my last answer. And she is coming out with cookbook which I have pre ordered because it looks awesome, which is just like super easy. Sorry say the name of the site again, how sweet? How sweet? Like how sweet? So I have been getting into non dairy frozen desserts, and so, as longtime listeners know, I had my my dairy crisis, recognizing that my my chronic sore throats and congestion might be linked to dairy consumption, and so I tried to just cut it out, and I've been fairly successful in cutting it out. I also really really love dairy products, and I'm very sad that they do not love me back. And so I've had to make some adjustments in terms of what my treats are because I love ice cream, like ice cream would be my treat, and now I don't have that treat. But some blog readers, people who listened to this had written and tell me, like, you should go check out the freezer case because it is not what you think. Like the advances in non dairy treats is just huge, Like the market is so much bigger than you think it is. So it's not like a sad you know, fruit flavored popsicle. There's good stuff. And so I went and I looked like Wegman's the other day, and I bought these cashew milk like frozen dark chocolate pop bars, you know, basically like chocolate covered ice cream on a stick. They are awesome. It was just I had them in the freezer. My kids were eating them. I'm like, you're eating my non dairy dessert. They didn't even notice. They thought it was great, like this cashew milk stuff. And then Ben and Jerry's even makes stuff with almond milk, coconut milk stuff like that. And so I bought the American Dream Flavor in non dairy. And it's not ice cream, it's frozen dessert. Right, we have to use the proper You can't call it ice cream if it doesn't have milk. But I'll put that out there. If there are people who are also not eating dairy for whatever reason, let's just say the people and big food companies have come through for us. So is that the so delicious Delicious? Want to check it out. They're really good, really good. I love their coconut milk stuff. I get that just on I mean I eat dairy, but I like coconut milk frozens. All right, well, this has been best of both worlds. We have been talking mostly about toddlers. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore 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.