Giving Thanks: (Mostly) Little Things We Are Grateful for This Year

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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 two hundred and seventy seven, which is going to be all about giving thanks. In the US at least, it is Thanksgiving weeks, so we have a lot of people celebrating that. I know our Canadian listeners celebrated a few weeks ago, but we wanted to take a little bit of time to reflect on the things that we are grateful for and not so much the big things, which we are always thankful for our health or our families for having work we enjoy, but the little things. Because you know, people who do start gratitude practices find that if you're going to write down three things you're grateful for every day. It can always be your health, your family, your career, whatever it is that you enjoy and that makes you feel a little bit like this is routine. After a while, you want to remind yourself of the new things, the little things that you might not notice otherwise, and by paying attention to these we can create a far more optimistic, hopeful mindset. So we are actually recording, if this sounds a little bit different, we're recording from a hotel room in the Florida Keys, Sarah and I are to gather. We are certainly grateful for that experience, very grateful for that experience. If this episode inspires you, perhaps you could take a moment afterwards and just use it as your excuse to write down all the things that are making you very grateful in this season exactly. We are definitely grateful that this best of both worlds retreat happened. There was some doubt whether it would or not, as a Hurricane Nicole hit Florida right before I was flying down, but it turned out we could fly around it. My plane took off and landed with no problem whatsoever. We were warned that there would be significant turbulence, but I was grateful that it was only moderate and intermittent, and thankfully, I don't think Nicole turned out to be such a now it was nowhere near as devastating as the earlier ones this year, so we are all grateful for that as well. So in this episode, we'll start by talking about Thanksgiving holiday. I mean, we both celebrate Thanksgiving, Sarah, you usually celebrate with your Florida relatives, right, Yes, it is a very big holiday on that side of the family. So I'm a little sad that I haven't gotten to spend too many Thanksgivings of my adulthood reliving the Thanksgiving of my childhood. But you can only have it one way or the other. I guess. I have brought my parents down to join us in South Florida on a few years running. This year, we're doing our own things, so yes, we will be home for Thanksgiving. And my Thanksgiving favorites as a child were my mom's crescent rolls. I think I would have been happy just eating that for Thanksgiving dinner. She's like laboriously would make them. I think she usually froze them ahead of time. And Mom, if you are listening, we would love the recipe, so it's like a family secret that she hasn't shared with you yet. I don't think it's a secret. I just don't think I've ever asked for it because I haven't actually made crescent rolls or anything close to crescent rolls in my life. But maybe it's time to start. Maybe it's time to start anyway. My favorite Thanksgiving thing now is definitely every pie like I love them all. I love the pumpkin, I love the pecan. In my family, I actually typically make key lime pie for Thanksgiving, which is completely untraditional, but it's also a tradition in our family and everybody expects it, and I make a really really good one. So Pi, I could just eat pie for Thanksgiving and be completely happy about it. I think everyone could just eat like the buttery carbs and the pie which is also buttery carbs. I really that's just what we want. Yeah, one of my favorite dishes. We often celebrate with my side of the family for Thanksgiving, and my sister in law makes some incredible rolls, some yeast rolls that are could be buttery. But we have some relatives who also, in addition to me, can't eat dairy products, so she makes them with shortening as far as I know, but it was a big family secret her recipe for a while. I believe it had not necessarily been shared with us. But when COVID hit we couldn't all be together for Thanksgiving, she did a demonstration and taught us how to make them over zoom. So that was a lot of fun. Green Beans, I love green beans. We should have the more offense, like a vegetable I actually enjoy, So I should probably just eat that every day and then I'd eat more vegetables. But I don't like the castroll, Like I wouldn't want to like dump a cream of whatever it is onion soup that people put on it. What is it that people do with the Yeah there's like little onion fried things. I don't know. Yeah, no, there's fried onions and some cream soup based thing and I do not do that. I just like green beans as they are. And for the turkey, I like the dark meat. I am definitely team dark meat. I like only eat the dark meat. Which was a sort of funny experience. My first Thanksgiving I spent with Michael, so we were dating. We were not engaged or married yet and I went to his family to go celebrate Thanksgiving, and apparently no one in their family eats dark meat, so his mom just doesn't even serve it. She basically like would just throw it out. And so I was like after, you know, I was like, it's so bizarre. There's like no dark meat being served, and I've like went hunting for it later and it's like in the kitchen, and so I was like, become the weird girlfriend who eats dark meat. But anyway, I do enjoy it. Are you e whiter dark meat or you don't care? I could leave the turkey entirely. I don't care. I would pick dark over I don't know. I'm not honestly. Sometimes I don't even take turkey. I just like take all the other stuff. I have to save room for the pie, exactly. And if the turkey is taking up valuable space that could have been having pie, then maybe you haven't won. But you please let us know. Are you team you know, white meat, dark meat, or team no turkey, team vegan, team vegan meat, whatever it is that you are doing to celebrate Thanksgiving, please let us know. So moving on, we're going to start talking about some things that we are grateful for, and we wanted to do this in a couple of categories. So starting with technology, Sarah, what are you grateful for in the realm of tech? I know what you are not grateful for? What you two of you two. There was a recent highly commented post in which I admitted that that Genevieve is spending a lot of time on YouTube and I think I need to stop it, and there was just a lot of heated discussion about it, which was really interesting and helpful actually to me. I do think we are going to try to curtail it for now, particularly for her, because I think it's doing more negative than positive. And I don't feel like I have to cut screen time entirely, but that particular genre probably needs to. Yeah, watch movies instead, right, Yeah, watch some movies, watch some TV shows, or even play some you know, puzzle type games. That's fine. So anyway, that was a digression because the things that I am grateful for. Every time Annabel texts me, I'm still like, oh my god, Adam all can text me now. Anabel doesn't even have a phone yet, but she will text me from her iPad. As I think I mentioned on a prior episode where I accidentally shared her email address. Nobody emailed her, so you all know to behave yourselves and no, it's just so lovely. I think it's just a nice, like new facet of our relationship that I appreciate. And then the other piece of technology that I really really have grown to count on and like is the You know, we have one of the ring doorbells, as do most people these days, and that's not even like our main security system. We have other security in addition to that, but I love the ring. I love being able to see when packages are delivered, when our nanny comes in, when the kids come in, Like I just like to see the comings and goings in my house. And getting those alerts on my phone. I mean, some people may find them interruptive or intrusive. I don't pay that much attention to them, but I just I really like having that ability. Yeah, no, it is pretty cool. I was going to say, like just having the photographic evidence in general with deliveries. I am grateful for this that Amazon sends you a picture of where they put your package. Now, if you live someplace where it is obvious what your front door is, that is probably where your package would be. But in my particular house, there are a lot of fake looking door areas, like you know that you might leave a package or our garage is separate from the house, and so sometimes the packages get left over there if people think that that is the house itself, even though it's pretty clearly not. But sometimes that's where the packages get left. And I would have absolutely no clue where some package was. I would have to like search around everywhere. But if there's a picture, I know, I'm like, oh, yeah, that is the weird door next to the hall that nobody uses, but somehow that got chosen as the delivery spot. So yeah, that's great. I would say I'm also grateful for parenting by text, so especially as I now have a fifteen year old, a thirteen year old and eleven year old. People will often ask me questions or talk about things that maybe are coming up in their lives, and you know, sometimes you can have that as a conversation. I'm really grateful that my kids are willing to talk with me, which is awesome, but sometimes you don't want to have a conversation, but you can have a conversation by text. I know many of us may have sent text messages sometimes when we don't want to have a conversation. It turns out kids do that too, But it allows you to, you know, share any ideas or strategies or support from afar. And I like that we can do that. I know some people probably overuse it. I assume that my kids won't be asking me how to do laundry at age twenty five and I'll be texting them the answer. But you know, for now, it's really good. I hope not all right. Media category, Okay, this is like I already use it as my love of the week. I can't stop myself, but I gotta just say Midnights because it's been on repeat. That's Taylor Swift's album that came out about a month ago. Just love it. I'm so glad I love it, like I'm grateful that I love it, because when it was coming out, I was like, well, what if it's not good her last ones I've really enjoyed. Well, I like this one, and I'm just I love it. I actually am in the process of trying to get tickets for the whole family to go see Taylor Swift all together in the spring when she comes to Florida. So I'm super in it, super on it. I am grateful for Apple Music, which I'm sure there's probably some cheaper option or better option or whatever. I'm one of those satisfies for people that when I found a music option that met my needs, I stuck with it. But it's funny to think, like my kids have no concept that in the past, if you wanted to hear a song, you couldn't just hear the song like you either if it was a new release, you know, you could go buy the album, or you could drive around in your car hoping that a radio station would play it or something. I remember occasionally doing that as a as an older teen if there was this song I really like. There's certain like Alanis Morissette songs I probably was really into. But now, of course, if you think of any song from past, present, whatever, and you're like I would like to hear that song, you can then hear that song the vast majority of them. So I've listened to like some you know, old like Indigo Girls stuff that my album was destroyed, like they have scratches on them, and I was like, I want to hear that song, Like I can hear that song. I can hear that song right now. There's no delayed gratification whatsoever. I also love Apple Music and we also use the same service. I think it's great. So we've done Spotify in the past, but we decided to experiment with Apple since we all have a lot of Apple devices and they're both good. They're both good. So my other media gratitude thing is since we can stream all the music, we can also stream all the TV we would like. And I just love having series that my husband and I are excited to watch together. There's not that many of those actually, and so the fact that there's a new White Lotus that I kind of have like on the docket to be like our next series, and it probably only has six or eight episodes, so it's a short term commitment, but super excited about that. All right, Well, let's take a quick ad break and we will be right back talking about more things that we are thankful for. Well, we are back. We are together in a hotel room and the Florida Keys having a best of both worlds retreat where we'll be recording a couple episodes brainstorming episodes for the next few months. We of course welcome listeners suggestions. Many of our best ideas and certainly all of our questions come from people writing us, so please feel free to do that. We have our information. Always reach me via my website Laura Vandercam dot com or Elevanderkam at yahoo dot com, Sarah the shoebox at No, it's well, the shoe box is your website. Yeah, then any of my emails, but you can use Sarah dot heart dot hunger at gmail dot com might be the easiest to remember. Yeah, so please send us your ideas that we will definitely be looking for those. So the next category, we were talking about things we are grateful for consumables consumable Sarah, you want to explain what this means? Well, I was just trying to come up with categories, and I don't know things that get used up. So I decided that we would actually come up with one food consumable item and then one non edible consumable item one product per se. So I'll just go ahead. My consumable item that I'm grateful for almost every day because I eat it pretty much every day on this trip, sadly but normally is a Justin's Dark Chocolate peanut butter cup. I just love these. I've also enjoyed the Trader Joe's brand and the three sixty five brand mini chocolate peanut butter cups. But my favorite of the Justins, like the bigger ones. I like the super dark version, which my kids say is healthy because it has five crimbs of sugar. They're like, can we have it? It's healthy. I'm like, fine, eat my stash, let's go ahead. And then there's also a crunchy version, which I've recently discovered, that has quen wat in it. It does not teaste like keenwa, but it like adds a nice little crunched to your peanut butter. It's like puffed quenoa, right, so it's more like rice rice crispy exactly exactly. So they're so good. That is my consumable Yeah, my product isn't really consumable now that I'm looking at it, but I'm just it's kind of consumable, Bill because Okay, I guess I wore the same pair of Chanel sunglasses for like six years and they were great, But for the last two of those six years, despite my attempts to get them adjusted, they just were kind of falling apart, and they were f only off my face, and so I decided to replace them with much less expensive sunglasses that are sort of consumable in a way, because I don't expect them to last many many years. And I got the gooder ones because I was one hundred percent influenced by a podcast ad. But I really really enjoy these sunglasses. I like the fact that they actually fit my face really well, and they're a mirrored color. They look slightly like ridiculous, but they block the sun really really well. So there you go, my somewhat disposable, lower priced sunglasses that I'm enjoying right now. Yeah, a good pair of sunglasses is definitely something you're thankful for when the sun is like in your face and it would make the experience incredibly uncomfortable. So my consumable that I'm grateful for right now is main Root blueberry soda, and this is like my little treat. I wind up ordering them now from Amazon slash Whole Foods. They sell twelve packs. They probably sell twenty four packs too, but that seems they're kind of pricey for soda, so it seemed a little ridiculous to order twenty four at a time. But anyway, I got into this because Cousins Main Lobster has that as their fountain drinks, Main Root soda, and I like their blueberries because blueberries is a very main thing, and you know, so if you're having a lobster role, it's nice to have a main Root blueberry soda with it. And when we were this summer at the beach, there was a restaurant version of the place. Normally we're going to the food truck, but they had a restaurant there at Asbury Park, and I would order my blueberry soda fountain drink and just drink it on the boardwalk and be very happy and grateful for life. So it turned out I could recreate that experience with bottles of main Root blueberry soda. So now we have those in our fridge. So yay for that. My product is going to be a pharmaceutical one Nexiam and Zantac that my various reflex issues appear to be mostly under control, and I will do a shout out to those lovely pharmaceutical companies for making that possible. So feeling grateful for that. Yeah, all right, kid related, what do you have? Kid related? What medical disclaimer? First? That you should consult with your own tritle before taking any of those medications, and that this is not a pharmaceutical endorsement. But I'm so happy that Laura has found relief with those methosis all right, kid related, So I am grateful every time I drive my kids to an activity that's really close to our house, and just in general the fact that most of their activities are under ten minutes from our house, which I know is like depends on where you live, but I just feel really lucky that that's available to us. And also very much like when they express interested in activity, I look for the closest option, and I've been just really lucky to find great options within spitting distance, so just makes logistics a lot easier. Yay, grateful for that. So I am grateful that Ruth made our twenty twenty photo album. So I know many people we want to make photo albums. Is now all our photos are on our phones or devices and everything, and so you don't print up many of them, and in order to not have them only be electronics so that you can look through them, many of us try to create photo albums every years, and as one might imagine, you sort of get behind on occasion, and we didn't do twenty twenty, and then didn't do twenty twenty one, and have not done twenty twenty two yet. Twenty two andy two isn't over, but you know, trust me, no one's done it yet. And so at some point we realized that Ruth is on my same Apple account with her iPad, so she has access to my photos. So she went through, found her favorite photos from twenty twenty, uploaded those two shutterfly. Shutterfly like creates the book. You can click something that it'll just create the book. And then she went in and put photo captions on many of them, and so all I had to do was go in and edit a little bit, although you know, her spelling was pretty good. And then we ordered multiple copies of the twenty twenty book. So now I'm like, hey, this is great. I thought maybe this was something that was going to be a lingering task on my to do list, but one of the wonderful things about older children is they can do useful stuff right like, so hopefully she feels excited about doing twenty twenty one twenty twenty two, and as far as I'm concerned, can do through to twenty thirty. That is amazing. Yeah, maybe I'll have to mention that loudly at our house, and then maybe I'll get a volunteer. You'll get a volunteer. Yeah, because certain people definitely love playing with layouts and fonts and canva and any kind of similar app to that, and those certain people should have their talents put to use in a way that is helpful for the family as a whole. Yeah. No, older kids are really great. I you know, I think about this sometimes. I know a lot of people like to complain about teens and preteens and whatever, as far as I can tell, I mean, I'm not saying we don't have any drama or moodiness or whatever, but I think they're great. I like seeing how people grow up and what they learn how to do. And the final category we want to talk about things we are grateful for is nature. So, Sarah, what are you grateful for in the realm of nature? I have two pieces of gratitude. I am very grateful that hurricane season, at least the typical hurricane season, is largely over at this point, because we had two two day stretches of no school in the last two months. And I'm just ready to not think about hurricanes. So I'm so sorry for those of you who are entering snow day season. But this is our snow day season and it's about to come to an end, and I'm so excited. And then the other thing is that I appreciate it so much. Every time I go out for a run, if the temperature is under seventy, I am just so happy. And hopefully I'll have more of those days in the coming months, at least, if history goes usually by December, I'll have a lot of those days, So you can't wait. Sounds good. My thing I am grateful for. And the realm of nature is to have a little trail in our yard, so we have a wooded area. And when we bought this house, there were a bunch of dead trees on the land of various places, which you know, some you can leave, some you can't. Some if they're dead trees that are still standing, like some of them need to come down so they don't come down in a way that you don't wish them to come down during a storm. But you know, we hired a company to chip a lot of them up, and then they took a bulldozer and went through part of the wooded area that was just kind of brush and made a trail. So they put down all these woodchips, made a little trail through it. And obviously it's not long because it's just in my yard. Like you're not talking like miles of trail here. But it's really fun to be able to walk on it. Like if I'm taking my ten minute walk before three pm, as I aim to move every day before three pm tranquility by Tuesday rule number three, I can just go take a ten minute walk and like you know, go outside circle the yard. Then I get to go down the trail and back and that adds minute or two to the experience. But it's like I'm in this deep nature in a wooded trail, even though I am not. I'm in my yard. It feels more special than it probably is. But I think it's really cool. Love it, Love it. Yeah, So these have been some things that we are grateful for. We'd love to hear what you are grateful for as well. I guess all of these are kind of our love of the week this week, right, this has sort of been another all Love of the Week episode, but we have somewhat of a perhaps longer question. We wanted to get to it. I know that people will have some strong feelings about as well, so we'll go ahead and dive into that one. We had a listener write to us, and we've had questions of this version before as well, that she would like to have a third child. They have to sort of the norm. She would like a third Her partner not very excited about the idea. Thanks too is a good number, So she wanted our advice on either how they could have a discussion about this or otherwise make your peace with the family size as it is. So Sarah, you got any thoughts on that? I mean, I went around in circles thinking about the answer to this question. I guess the first thing I'll say is I don't have personal insight, because when this person wrote to us, she kind of implied that I took Josh on a trip where I then strong armed him in having it. I don't think she's strong hard. I think she was looking for your what you said on the trip, right, because you guys had taken a retreat together and one of your goals is to talk about having a third kid on that Even if that is more, it wasn't so nefarious about that. I had just are not nefarious like that there was nobody was talking. Yeah, it wasn't goal directed per se. I had just gotten too a place where I was really excited about the idea. And you know, when you have two young kids at home, it's hard to talk about anything serious or the logistics of how that might work. And so I never felt like we could have those conversations. And we took a trip to all In, Texas I believe in like fall of must have been twenty sixteen, which that math makes sense, and I was like, I really feel pulled to have another child, like do you think we can do this? And it wasn't to convince him to do it. I think the difference with us is that Josh was open to having a third he was afraid that logistically we might not be able to handle it, like from a financial perspective, having the childcare that we felt like we needed just the chaos of him working late, and would I be too stressed out doing things on my own. And so that trip was helpful to kind of nail down what a third kid might actually look like and you know, do some math and crunch some numbers and think about things in more detail. Those kind of conversations that take a lot of brain power and a lot of energy and a lot of time that we just didn't have at home. And so I would say it's on that trip that we solidified the idea that we could do it. But I don't feel like I was convincing him of anything other than that it was feasible if he was also interested, which he was. He comes from a family of three children. They grew up together very with a lot of harmony and love, and I think he had nothing against the idea of having a third kid. Even from the beginning, and before we even started having kids, I had said I want three kids. Then I dialed it down to two because I found it so difficult in the beginning, and he went along with that as well. But when we went up to three, it wasn't that I was convincing someone who was like, nope, too much, like I mean, I equate this, and I'll stop talking in a second to not equate. But so my family wants a dog, the kids want a dog, Josh wants a dog. Kind of I do not want a dog, and I know that if we got a dog, that it would be a lot of responsibility on me no matter what anybody says right now. And by the way, please dog lovers don't get mad at me. Like I could totally see welcoming a dog into our lives at some other point in time. I enjoy other people's dogs, mostly when they're nice, enjoy other people's good dogs, But I just don't want one on my plate right now. Someone would have to like strong arm me. But that wasn't what we were dealing with when it came to the kid's side of things. And I guess with all that said, I think if someone really is against adding more, someone just really feels maybe like they and either party the you know, male or whichever party of this relationship feels like they just don't want an extra person in their lives or they just truly don't feel like they have the bandwent to handle it. I almost feel like the default should be like then just wait, like, at least don't do it at that point when someone adamantly doesn't want it, Because I do think to some extent that's like asking a lot from someone I don't know. See, I can't answer this question. Yeah, it's a question. It's a very hard question. I mean, I think it's just on the practical front. If they're with any negotiation, right when you are asking someone to do something that they are not currently excited about, it helps to give them a little bit of space about it. And so first, I mean, you want to make sure that your partner knows that you do truly want a third I mean, if maybe it's something you've just discussed casually and he's made comments of like, oh that would be crazy, or like can't imagine, or like look at this other family with three kids that's going nuts right now, maybe that's just where you're getting this idea for. So you want to be clear that you want one and you are asking him if he would be open to this. Then as part of that, you say, you don't need to give me an answer right now. Why don't you think about it for some amount of time, I don't know, a month, whatever it is. Let's meet together again in a month and we can talk it through again. But that way you know that he is at least aware that this is what you truly want and he needs to think about it for the next month and give you an answer. You can also think about any particular objections that your partner might have, whether that is, you know, financial, Does he worry that you will quit your job once you have three kids and you know your life is based on you being a two income family. I think that's a very common one that people have. So that's something that you need to work through, like are you going to quit your job with a third kid? And if your answer is no, I'm actually pretty confident I will be able to manage this, unless you know there's something you know, a child has intense special needs or something like that, which is an entirely different thing. But if you assume that it will go sort of in the normal range of things and you're pretty sure you will be able to handle, that's something you can bring up with him, Or you know, have you thought through what the childcare arrangements are going to be? Anything else? Like your space? Do you feel like you have enough space anyway? Think through what these objections are likely to be, and then maybe the two of you can kind of work through some strategies to gather and so then you know, in a month or two when you have your meeting again, you'll know more clearly what his opinion is on this. If it is an absolute no, then probably that's just going to have to be respected. I mean, you can leave it open so that can we discuss this again in six months. But if it is a very strong no and you wish to continue in that relationship, that's probably going to be where it is. But if he seems more open to it, then that's something that then maybe you can start moving forward with. So that would kind of be my suggestion there. If listeners have input for this one, we would love it because obviously this is a very kind of tough and sensitive question. And I do feel for this person because I would have been I know, I would have been really really sad if at the time when I really wanted Genevieve, if it had been impossible because I was the only one who wanted that, it would have been really hard. Yeah. No, it is very hard when people want different things, different visions of what their family would look like. And you know, you may talk early in your relationship about what you want, but people's experience then becomes different once they actually have the kids. I mean sometimes people are in the abject like, oh, I'd love a dozen kids, and then they experience what it's like, and they're like, wow, that was a little bit ambitious. But you know, sometimes people think they'd want just one maybe, and then they totally love the experience or find you know, the difficulties, you know, able to take them in stride, and so then they wind up having bigger families. So you never really know until you experience it. It's true. All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. We've mostly been talking about giving thanks our Thanksgiving favorites, the dishes we like. We've been talking about little things that we are grateful for in different realms, and then answering a listener question about wanting a third kid and not knowing that her partner would be on board. So 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 shoe Box on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.