Evenings Routines & Logistics with Sarah Powers.

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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 seventeen, which is first airing in late October of twenty nineteen. Today we're going to be interviewing Sarah Powers. Sarah hart Unger and I are a fan of hers that she's one of the co hosts of The Mom Hour, which is one of our favorite podcasts and certainly one we've learned a lot from as we've been building our podcast over the years. And one of the topics we're really going to be drilling down with Sarah about is evenings and how she handles her evening routine, how she thinks about it. Lots of great tips from her, So, yeah, what's your evening routine looking like right now? Sarah Heart Hunger, Yeah, I mean Sarah's. Yes, it is the episode of many Sarah's. I mean, I think this is just a great topic because I don't know anyone who's like, my evenings are so relaxed, perfect, They're wonderful, their children just do their homework effortlessly. Yeah. So I figured since Sarah Powers is kind of like the routine guru, that she would have some great tips for you guys. And I also was like, I'm oh, I don't know about anybody else, but whenever I see a family that's my family projected forward like three four years, it's the sweet spot. I am so fascinating because I just assume, oh, what my life is going to look like? Like we had this family of They were three girls who lived near us on Miami Beach, and they were like exactly same spacing three years older than us. And I guess their youngest child was friends with Cameron, because that's the way it lined up. And I was just like eager to hear every detail of what was going on with them. So anyway, that's to me what this episode is our current routine isn't terrible. I feel like we've actually done a lot of you know, I've done a lot of conscious thought about it because my husband's honestly, he's kind of maybe more fifty to fifty here now, which is a lot better than it used to be. Maybe maybe forty sixty here and not here. I don't know, something like that, but it's not He's not never here, and so it's really my purview to just kind of decide how it runs, because even though he's sometimes there, I can't count on him being there. I am like the primary parent for evenings. And now we've added in, We've have like an interesting mix because with a toddler, she has a much earlier bedtime, you know, still like seven to fifteen she's done, and the older kids are going to bed a little bit later. And now the two big ones have basketball too, like two nights a week and often at either five forty five to six forty five, which isn't too bad. That means you get home at seven or six forty five to seven, which is like, yeah, we have that tonight. It's like whoa, Yeah, So I don't know, I've just I'm like just a lot of things that we're figuring out. One thing that is working. Though I mentioned in a prior episode how I got these giant Aaron condur and whiteboards and how I had grand plans for them, it's actually, you know, we're like, we're like a month into the school year and it's actually going pretty well. They enjoy going through, so they don't check it off as it's happening. They now know what's on the board because they've been doing it for a few weeks and we have I'm looking to my left here because it's actually in this room. We haven't put it on the wall. We left it leaning against the floor so they can reach it. So that may just be permanent. I don't know. But for homework, piano, cleaning up toys, doing bath a behavior one which is like a Gestalt one that I just get to decide whether it's check or not. You're the dictator of the evening. Well, no, it gets even more so reading and then the face. And the face is where I look at all the check marks and decide if it warrants a green smiley face, and if it warn't a green smiley face, they get a point. If it Lawrence only a I think we decided it was going to be a blue straight across face. They don't get a point, but they don't lose a point, and if they get a red frown face, they would lose a point. Now we have not actually awarded any red frown faces yet, but we have awarded some blue straight across faces. I'm not going to say who and when, but logistically, can camera and read no, so I have little Well he can read enough, like he knows the letter p so we can figure out that that says piano. And initially I had little pictures. So next to piano was like a music note and next to homework with a pencil. So he started to kind of and again since it's the same list week after week and we do it together, so I stand there and I'm like, camera, and here's your homework list. Check it off. And then they gleefully checked it for a child who can't read yet. Sort of, that's a whole other podcast. Worms. I mean, it is like, yeah, it's got a hand, but that, yeah, that's another episode. Yeah. So I mean, yeah, we're in the honeymoon phase. We're only a month into the school year. You can ask me in May if we're if this is still working, but it's been a nice way to get into the school year and oddly motivating for them. So we do that and Genevieve has already been in bed by that point, like usually I'm putting her to bed while they're finishing with something on their checklist, or if they've finished everything, maybe they're watching a TV show. And then you know, then I put the big kids to bed by we just like read and they've already had their baths with our nanny and they already usually have dinner with her as well, so I don't do that, and then then they go to bed, and it's it's it's not terrible even alone now actually I would say it's you know, it's better than it was when I had like a newborn that might wake up and scream and need another feeding or something. So the harder a part is the activities and when there's only one parent and activities I need our nanny to cover, which I'm just figuring out that it's necessary. Yeah, I mean that's why we needed it too. I Mean we realized, like they you're either loading four children in the car and bringing them all and it happens sometimes because I mean, both of us travel and and so then our nanny winds up doing it. But I try to minimize the number of nights that needs to happen. And that's one of the reasons we have our calendar meetings so that if I am traveling, is it possible for Michael to kind of protect that evening to help with driving and we may wind up with some longer term things for this. It's more of an issue if Jasper and Sam need to be places, because then they're the ones who can also stay home so they wouldn't have to be loaded into the car for the little kid stuff. You only have four years till you have another driver. Well, so hopefully he'll be a good safe driver for the other people. I've got s saf sixteen year old boy as a chauffeur. We'll see, but yes, that is true. That is true. But our we when we created our evening sort of schedule, I made my activity spreadsheet for the fall and understanding that it would have to change depending on the sports seasons or if a kid decides to do something different than before, because some time stuff comes up, like they didn't know about a school play that now want to do or another club that just got launched at school that they want to do or something. But my goal was to have activities on three of the five weeknights. So we currently have Wednesday completely off and we have Friday completely off. That may change over time, but right now that's our two days off, and so I find that, you know, helps keep it in perspective. It's like, yes, we have a lot of stuff on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, but we have nothing on Wednesday and Friday. So if you can kind of get your head around that, then then it doesn't feel so much. You know, the nature of having older kids, some of the stuff does wind up being later in the evening, which, yeah, again is why you wind up needing the other adult around or carpooling or other such solutions for that. Sports practices can be till like nine o'clock. Yeah, I mean, unfortunately we haven't had too much of that night. I with the ones we have, like our swim team, I made sure to choose like Jasper has the option of going like five or six days a week, and we only have to do three, So I chose the ones that were earlier because it's more convenient for us to have those be the regular and obviously if those days don't work, we can make up the time other days later, but it's not the first choice. I would say. One thing that's changed with us. I mean, obviously in our current iteration, this is going to change in January, but now the kids are all getting older and earlier. Alex had been going to bed early enough that our nanny was already often putting him to bed while I was dealing with stuff with the other kids. That ship has sailed. He is fully in the big kid thing now. The upside though, is bedtime is so much easier with him. I mean for years it was, wow, that's fantastic a battle. So I was doing it almost every night from zero to about two. She took over like three nights a week from two to three and a half. And then I've started doing it more again as it's moved later, and you know, it's a lot easier now, especially I mean, you know, people get really into kids in sleep. If they're not tired, they're not tired, and he isn't tired until later, So it's just either a huge battle, like why you know, he's like a low sleep need, a low sleep need kid, so now he's usually in his bed more like eight thirty, and I can find you know, I go up eight ten, eight fifteen, brush teeth, go potty, read some stories, have a little chat in his bed, snuggle, and then he hits his music box thing and he will go out quickly, and there's no fighting about it. I would say six out of seven nights a week he is no longer fighting it. There's one night where he's like, oh, I want to I don't know. He probably wants to stay up and watch the right stuff with my husband and Jasper, but no, not happening. Not ready, not ready, not ready for that. You are not officially a big boy yet. So funny, but the problem is I have to go to bed as soon as Jasper and Sam go to bed. I'm trying to move Sam's bedtime earlier because I think he needs more sleep, so I'm trying to get him down lights out nine thirty, which is about when Ruth goes down. Ruth's supposed to be down earlier, but she doesn't go down, so the two of them lights out nine thirty, Jasper lights out ten. I am often ten fifteen. You know, my kids need so much more like if my well, I have to give them up pretty early. I guess that's part I don't. I don't Jasper what kind of ruth and jaspering it up? Well, so Jasper's up seven fifteen, seven twenty, we'd like leave at that point. Yeah, it'd be like leaving out. And then so he you know, if he goes down at ten set, ten to seven is nine hours of sleep and he's in middle school or that's plenty. Yeah, and then Sam, we're trying to do nine thirty to seven forty five. So again that's you know, like ten hours your day. Just that's the difference, like your day is shifted like we would do like eight thirty to six forty five, which is exactly this name is just an hour different from based on school start time. Yeah, so that's us. Yeah, No, cool. Excited for you guys to all hear from Sarah Powers. So, Sarah Heart Hunger and I are thrilled to welcome Sarah Powers to the program today. We know from her work with the Mom Hour and other things. So Sarah, can you introduce yourself to our listeners? Sure? Well, thank you for having me, ladies. This is so much fun. I feel like we have a few parallels with our show, even just yeah, it's fun, fun to be here. I am Sarah Powers. I'm co host of The Mom Hour, which is a weekly plus parenting podcast, parenting and motherhood podcast that I co host with Megan Francis, who I know you go way back with Laura. I am a mom of three. I live in southern California, and I came to podcasting via a career in kind of writing and corporate communications. But podcasting is my close to full time gig right now. I say that I work a part time on steroids kind of schedule, which is to say, work every minute that the kids are in full time school, and then a few more hours as I can squeeze them out, So that probably adds up to full time. You should just give me that. I know, but given the nature of your show, I am not forty hours a week in an office employed. But yes, I am, for all intents and purposes, full time. Oh that's awesome, And can you tell our listeners a little bit For those of you who don't listen to Mom Hour, by the way, you should. I love that show and it was definitely one of the shows as we were creating best of both worlds. Laura and I started listening, like I think it was around that time I was like, Okay, I need to listen to what other podcasts are out there. And I was like, oh, this one's so great, and I still listen. Oh, thank you, and you are listeners of our show. Remember that we did have Megan on a year ago, more than a year ago, and she was fantastic. But tell everybody a little bit more about how that evolved, like it was a kind of an organic change over time. Yeah. Yeah, So Megan brought me on as managing editor of her growing blog at the time in twenty twelve. We met in twenty eleven on the internet as one does, and I had a background and kind of communications management, more of the kind of business side of managing content, and so she brought me on to help manage the content of her growing blog. And as you guys well know, blogging really changed a lot in twenty eleven twelve thirteen, and Megan had an early interest in podcasting herself, was just an avid podcast listener way way way way back, and started her own podcast called The Kitchen Hour in twenty twelve, and at that time I was just kind of supporting and watching from the sidelines, but she decided to shutter her blog and transition into podcasting as kind of her main focus twenty fourteen. Twenty fifteen, and asked me if I wanted to start a mom podcast with her, And at that point we'd been working together for a couple of years and we knew we had a great rapport. She has five kids. I have three. Hers are older mine at the time. My youngest was two when we started the podcast newly too, I think, and so Sarah probably write about where you are actually age. Ye, yeah, that's about where my kids were when we started the podcast. And our thing was we're not experts, but we between us eight kids and a big range of ages, and we live in two different parts of the country, two pretty different backgrounds. We land around the same place philosophically on a lot of things, but we have very different personalities. So, as you know from listening, like the way we get to the decisions we make is pretty different. Although I think we're aligned enough to make you know, we're good friends and we agree on a lot, but we're also very different. And so our whole thing was we're just going to have conversations about motherhood and parenting topics every week, and we do occasionally bring on quote unquote experts or an author or something, but it's really never been the focus of our show. We actually didn't do that for the whole first year because we wanted this to just be a validating conversation for moms who are maybe a few years behind where we are, a conversation to normalize the things people are going through and not necessarily like here's the expert on picky eating, and here's the expert on sleep training, and here's it. And there's great stuff out there in podcasting that does bring those expert voices to light. But our thing was, what if we just have a smart conversation every week and then the people, the people came and they listen, and we are it's actually more than three hundred episodes when you count all of our interviews and bonuses, so we're more than three hundred episodes and four and a half years in, and we don't take breaks. We don't. This is our full time gig. Yeah. And when you started working with Megan, just doing that blog stuff, it was just i mean, your kids were very young. It was just the sort of like a couple hours of your day here and there, and then as your kids got older, it felt right to be kind of jumping in more hours and chanting your own career. Pop. Yeah, that's about right. So I worked in an office, more traditional employment through my first baby as she became a toddler, and when I had my second baby, I decided to stay home for a period of time. And I never looked at it as like I'm going to stay home for the rest of motherhood. I just at that time, with two little ones in daycare, I was like, I'm going to see if I can figure this out to just be home for a pause. And I did. And then the work I started to pick up freelancing was in this kind of blog editing, content management area, and I did it for another site locally, wrote for some parenting magazine. So I was doing a bit of freelancing, but really, like you said, maybe five hours a week or as I had the capacity. And when Megan hired me, I had been, you know, dabbling in that stuff a few hours a week for a couple of years, and I said, you know, I'm pregnant with my third kid, right. She approached me in September and I was due in January, and she was like, oh yeah, And of course she had five young kids at this point. She's like, oh yeah, I figure you'll be fine. I was like, okay, if you think I'll be fine. So when I started working for her, I want to say it was seven hours a week, was our arrangement, and over the next couple of years, i'd go up to ten. And that was just for Megan, So I did have a few other things I was doing on the side, so I sometimes worked five hours a week and sometimes more like fifteen or twenty for about four years, probably until the mom hour really took off and I had more predictable childcare in preschool. So it really truly was a ramp up, and I feel very lucky that I was able to pick and choose projects and people to work with like Megan, and it ebbed and flowed a bit as kids came and preschool schedules changed in summers and all of that. Well, And it's a nice example because you know, we have some listeners who choose to certainly not take a break, and we support that strategy, but we also know that some people want to be home, and you know our podcast, we do tend to challenge the narrative that any one way is better for kids, but there's certainly different ways that work for different families, and we absolutely respect that. So I think you're a great example of someone who's like I wanted it to be like this, but then I still know that I could ramp it up later, and then you did. So I just think it's a nice testament. Well, thank you, And I guess the other thing I'll say about that is, I'm not sure at twenty seven. Well, I guess there was twenty nine when I left a more corporate environment. I'm not sure at twenty nine that I thought I wanted to be doing that thing forever. Anyway, kids are no kids full time schedule or part time schedule. So I also think it gave me a really nice opportunity to find out other things I was good at and explore this other whole world that I might not have if I hadn't decided to take that pause. And I realized there's a ton of privilege in that statement. But I am sometimes not someone who looks like five years ahead, what do I want? Where do I want my career to be? I was kind of just in the moment, and it allowed things to fall into my lap that probably wouldn't have otherwise. Awesome. Well, I love the story all right. Well, if anybody listens to the mom hour, they know, actually, before we get into her routines, which she's amazing at, we're going to take a brief break and we will be right back. 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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, So, just as I had promised, Sarah Powers is kind of the I don't know the queen of routines and planning of her podcast. And I should say that's in comparison to Megan, who will admit that is not how she runs her life for parents. She's super intuitive, very flexible, and I gain a lot from being paired up with someone like that, which is interesting. And actually that's a nice thing about your podcast. Laura and I think, have a lot of probably more similarities than differences, although our jobs are very different, so that is a nice kind of a contrast. But you guys are very different personality wise, and you are the planner logistics queen, and those are some of my favorite episodes from you guys. So I thought that you could speak about one of the pain points that we all have, which is evening logistics. Yeah, yes, this is a big challenge. And I mean as someone whose kids are moving into well they're all in elementary or middle school now, so I don't have any toddlers or preschoolers left. I'm not going to say it gets easier necessarily, it just gets different. Like the things that are, We're still very much active, actively managing bedtime and evening routines. So maybe there is a point where it becomes more plug and play, but I'm not there yet. So yeah, reminder remind our listeners. Well, well, first of all, give us a little logistics in terms of like when does your recue have help, does your husband get home? And also how old your kids are right now? Okay, so right now, my kids are eleven, nine and six and a half, so that puts them in sixth, fourth and first grades. My husband is home most evenings. He does occasionally have late work events or travels, so and he actually used to travel quite a bit. When I was in your stage of life, Sarah, I was solo more evenings than not, and now I am not solo more evenings than not, which is great, but I've had experience on both sides of that. We do have some evening activities. It's something I held off on a long time as having those. I mean I didn't hold off on all activities, but I really try to avoid the ones that were like at five thirty or something. But now that this is our life, so we my older two kids do taekwondos several days a week and at least a couple of nights. The classes are like at five thirty and six fifteen. Luckily it's very close by. One of us can be bopping back and forth to taekwondo. We can drop them off. It's not it's not like the whole family is schlepping down there. But you know, it does affect the dinner time. So as a big picture, I do have my husband home and we are co parenting the bedtime most of the time, and we do have some evening evening activities in the mix, but for the most part, we're in early to bed. My kids are early to bed in their rooms by my choice and design, because I am not a great night person. I'm great in the morning. We're doing this interview first thing in the morning. That's fine with me, but I get really tired and I really stop wanting to actively parent after about eight o'clock. And I know that. I mean, for a lot of people, they get their second wind and they're writing a novel from ten to midnight every night. And that's just not me. It's not my natural energy patterns. Well, and your kids, you know, we started talking before we started recording, but your kids are out the door at like seven twenty or something, so it actually probably necessitates a little bit of an early early orchestra evening routine or else they'd be wake up. It does, And it's like a chicken and egg thing because I don't know if I've made them early risers because we always put them to bed early, or if they biologically take after me, or like you said, now the schedule had just reinforces it all. But we are I do feel lucky that I just I don't have kids who want to go to bed at ten and sleep till nine in the morning. Like that's never been our friend. Yes, that's awesome. Okay, So what are your strategies for forgetting that slow moving bus to move from dinner to baths or whatever you guys get done? Like, what are some of your concrete strategies and routines? Okay, Well, I made a note of a few, and they're a little all over the place. But one that we did a long time ago that still is in operation is we set up a playlist, an evening playlist. I want to say, made this playlist on Spotify years ago, maybe eight years ago, when I had little itty bitty toddlers. And it has some lullabies, but not just baby CD lallabies. It has songs that I like that feel wind down, lullaby ish. And the great thing about a playlist is you only make it once and you can enjoy it forever. And this playlist comes on in our upstairs speakers. We use Sonos for our like home speaker system. But I know there are a lot of things you could probably do this with your Alexas and your various things. I don't know how it all works nowadays. I just know it still works, and it's an evening music playlist that comes on upstairs. I think it comes on at seven oh five or six fifty or some time that I chose a long time ago. And what I like about it is it's not like an alarm that everybody like. When you hear the music, drop what you're doing and do the next thing. I've actually tried things like that in my house with varying degrees of success, because I have some kids who require a little bit more of an easy transition and don't like to just be arbitrarily like ding, now you've got to go do this. So I like that it's kind of in the background and just sort of like cues our environment in the same way that you know, lowering the lights or you know, shutting off technology or whatever it does. And I think it's now it's almost nostalgic for me because I'm not sure that we need it or even notice it, but it's just this sort of background environment thing that I appreciate. And I'll be upstairs, you know, getting the kids, reminding them to do their thing, and there's just this comfortable playlist going. So I've always enjoyed it's probably like a subliminal power. I will say that we have the alarm type of playlist In the morning. The Descendants soundtrack goes on our sons and if you get to like the song that did I mention, it's like we have to leave, yeah. And then we have Mozart's Twinkle Twinkle Little Star varations that come on at like seven thirty, which is our it's time to start getting ready for bed. Warning, yeah, I get you on the playlist. I love that, and I love that you do the morning one and I did also, And then it just for my middle son who just runs anxious, it became this like the song would come on and he'd flip out because he could didn't have thirty more seconds to do what he was doing. So I guess if there's a tip in there is that you might have to play around with how you use this. But I yeah, exactly, so cool. Okay, what else? Okay, Well, I have one that this is a tip I learned from my sister in law that is so simple and I didn't do this and I wish I had. And so this is specifically for those families where having mommy or daddy help with bedtime is an option, So two parents or co parents are both home, and you know how little kids will get very opinionated and demanding about who reads the story, who tucks them in, and it can become I mean, having a parent preference is like super normal, but I think at bedtime it can just become a thing like Mom's got to maybe she's breastfeeding, she's got to be with this kid. Dad does these kids, and then it becomes a whole thing like who's who's the preferred parent. And so my sister in law with her little kids, they started alternating every other night, no matter what, like just taking turns, and there was no because it was never an option. It was like, it's mom's turn, it's dad's turn, it's mom's turn, it's dad's stern and the little kids understood that, and they still had their parental prefers. They still liked, you know, the way daddy read a story or the way mommy tucks them in better, but the option was off the table, which removed so much of the negotiating. And I realize this doesn't apply to all families if you're solo parenting, or it just might not apply, but I looking back, I wish I had done something like that, because we still to this day have a little bit of like, well, dad's reading this book aloud to the big kids. But it's been a while since this happened, and I just feel like it's a you don't need more decisions and more it's sometimes more of a cluster when more bodies are involved. Actually like, I think my husband does better putting them to bed if I just disappear, and I'm like, I definitely do better if he's like doing you know, like decidedly not in the picture that night, versus both of us sort of half heartedly. And then they want one person to wants and then they think if they think it's open for negotiation, then it's just everything is that much more complicated. But the other side of this, I think is the positives of having routines built in with multiple parents, which also then makes it easier if you've got a grandparent subbing in or a sitter. I think if you are one of the primary pudder to betters, then you know all the things right. You know how they're going to game the system and ask for water, you know their favorite Levey, you know it all, which is a wonderful position of bonding and power and connection, but it can set you up for trouble down the road. So I love having a built in Maybe it's mom does weeknights, Dad does weekends, or whatever it is, but if there's again I always come back to, if the kids know what to expect and there's some kind of little built in game or system. It removes that negotiating and that little bit of negotiating every night. It can add up. Oh gets old gets old fast? All right, Well, tell me about your checklist system, because we have our own, and I think I've probably spoken about it before, but I'm interested in the evening checklists on the mirrors. Okay, So I just did this for this back to school. And as process oriented as I am, I've never been a big like let's print out a cute chorchard and have stickers, and like, I just never got there with all the chaos. So I'm u like, the quickest, easiest thing is what works. And my youngest is six and a half, so all of my kids are reading or almost reading, like reading ish, which has really opened up like a lot of things. Actually. But I got these. I guess they're called wet erase markers because they're the kind that go on specifically on glass and mirrors, so they look like dry erase markers. But I think if you're shopping for them, and we can link in your show notes to the ones I got, but they're meant for glass and mirrors, and so they look like dry erase markers and you can write on any surface, they could just wipe it off with a washcloth. And in our kids bathroom, I just wrote each of the kids like nightly checkless and this is not rocket like, this is not complicated stuff. This is like brush your teeth, floss your teeth, go to the bathroom, like the basics. This was not chores or anything fancy. But what I found is going back to school is briant. My husband and I were kind of tag teaming and we were losing track of who had done what. And as the kids are getting more independent, it's also easy to assume they're doing their stuff because they're cape and so the checklist was just a super visual thing. I really wanted to get back to flossing more regularly with the kids, and so just by writing it down because it felt like they'd say flaws. We never flaws at night, like, well I should be flassing at night. So it felt like this, if it's on the list, then don't talk to me until it's done. And we're you know, with the younger, we might be helping. With the older, they might be managing their own. But it's literally written on the wall like they can't miss it. And also they don't have to put their own checkmarks or they just follow the list. They just follow the list. It gives us. My eleven year old wanted to get fancy and she made little checkmarks for herself. But again, anything any barrier to just getting through it seemed to overcomplicate it. So they could if they wanted to put a checkmark, they could, But I think having it in that central location was the most key thing. It's in the bathroom where we already are and they don't need their mirrors for you know, styling quite yet, so the mirrors are covered right now in evening checklists, got it. My kids are highly motivated by the act of checking off because they're younger, and I think they think it's fun. But right, yeah, that's different. I love that. Tell me about your flexible evening blocks of time. I'm interested in that because our evenings tend to our kids are already in like some sports, which are making it so that we can't always follow the same routine every night, right, And I do think this is something that's coming to light more recently as we're getting older. But there's there's a couple things that I think of as like usually they happen on say Monday or Thursday, but they can shift. So like the blocks to me would be like showers. My kids don't shower every night at this age. My oldest showers more, but the younger it's like twice a week, and so we have our set nights for showers, but if life happens, those blocks can kind of easily move to another night. We also like to watch a show as a family together once a week. We're usually watching like The Amazing Race or some competition show like that. That's fun for us as a family, and the kids really look forward to that. Well, if showers have to move because of something, you know that happened with the schedule, then probably our night, our weekly show has to move to. And I think one thing I noticed is I was so good about routines and schedule that I had to actually really coach my kids through being a little more flexible with their expectations. So just like when you hear advice about picky eaters, you always hear like, look the look at what they're eating over the course of a week or two weeks, not every day, And I think the same can be true for evenings, like maybe you're not doing the lovely read aloud with everybody cozy and reading for a full half hour every night. But if that block can be a couple nights a week, and then the best and showers a couple nights a week, and then you know, the really well done family dinner a couple like if you kind of have your priorities those rocks and then you know, look at that over the course of a week, look at your week ahead of time, and realize, maybe not all the things are going to happen on all the nights, but maybe over the course of the week you'll still touch on all those priorities for your whatever those priorities are for you. It's the one hundred and sixty eight hours version of that time. I love it well. Two more questions for you. Number one, do you feel like, like, how have things changed since your kids have gone from like think back to the days of you know, babies and toddlers mixed up and actually yours your's a little You're you have more even spacing that I and I did, so a little bit different experience. So think back to that and like what's changed and what were your go to What was your go to back then? Yeah, gosh, I feel like my go to back then was getting getting to bedtime, like making it, making it through. But you know, I think I I cut some corners. Maybe sounds hard on myself. I let a lot of things go in those days. I would say the biggest thing I let go is dinners, like dinners that I cooked and that we all sat down and ate at the same time, all five of us. I really, we are really enjoying that now, But it took a really long time to get there. So I always favored in early bedtime, and so usually my highest priority was what what do we need to do to get everybody to bed on time? Because that's my sanity. And so I probably would do something really easy for dinner if I was solo parenting ksidias or scrambled eggs or something like that, cut up fruit. I mean I was doing those, not once a week like most of the time for years, I was just doing those quickie dinners. I also thought baths were actually more often baths were a help rather than like something we had to get through my children, like a calming thing. Right we were all in the same place. I actually, for a while could bathe all three of them together when they were like four two or maybe five three and you know one, Yeah, probably that didn't last very long. I just have the picture, like I have mental pictures and actual pictures of all three in the tub, but two of the three, and then you know where they are right like you know, and you're right there with them. I have this mental image of almost shrinking our environment in the evenings to as small as space as possible. We had an upstairs downstairs house and I would just close the baby gates. We would be upstairs, that playlist would be playing, and we are closing in on bedtime. As early as in those days, as early as six fifteen, six thirty, we were upstairs and they were in bed at seven, seven fifteen. And it makes it sound like, you know, I was like super rigid or but it was for my own sanity, I think. And it was because at that point I'd had long days home with little kids or maybe solo parenting, and so those were the those were the years then those that was the objective. And yeah, I have I have fond memories, but it was tiring. I love it. Well, it's like hope for the you give me hope for the future of family dinners, which right now are not really in our radar, but yeah, some day, yeah, yeah, definitely some day. My last nighttime routine question is do you have I know you're in early to bed kind of a person, so maybe the answer is it's going to be I go to bed. But any tips for making the most of your own evenings. I know Laura likes to do something nice where she'll put the kids to bed sequentially and like while she's lying with them, she'll like read in bed, like on her phone, so she gets through a lot of reading that way, so it's like self care but also being with the kids. So I thought that's a cool tip. I like, you have things that you like to do for yourself after you put the kids to bed and make it the most of that time. Yeah, yeah, And there is probably a couple hours between when the kids are in bed and when I am in bed. A couple of things. First, I always try and do a couple of little favors for myself in the morning, even though I'm a morning person. It's just mornings are so much easier if you wake up to the coffee already made. So in my case, like we're always setting up the coffee pot the night before, little things like I don't really like to be barefoot in my house. I have wood floors and they get dirty and I it like just feels gross. So I try to make sure I know where my slippers are. And it's so silly. But if I wake up and I come downstairs barefoot and I don't know where my slippers are, that's like kind of a bummer in the morning when you're just waking up. So I try to do a couple of those little things for myself that will make the morning easier. And then this sounds so simple, But my husband and I are big TV buffs, Like we're big. We don't passively watch TV, like have it on in background, like we are actively enjoying a show or a series together, not with our phones in our hands, like almost like more like you would enjoy a changed I love that it's our thing. It's our thing, and so we usually, you know, by eight ten, everybody's kind of upstairs. Probably the middle schoolers maybe like wandering shows it now, like a wandering around habit, like because she is more independent and stays up later, and we're like what go go, Like this is not goodbye? This is not your time. So we are on the couch and we usually kind of debrief about the day a little bit, and then we are watching something that is making us laugh or that we're super into for probably an hour and that's like, that's my wind down time. I feel like I wish it was more meaningful than that, but it is. With TV sounds great, What is it? What is the best show you're watching right now? Well, we are rewatching The West Wing from the beginning, so that is a popular thing to do. I think it is. So we love a lot of the HBO, both comedies and dramas, so there has been a lot of that. We also just watched season two of mind Hunter, which is a Netflix original that's about the CIA in the seventies. So we're a little bit all over the place. We usually try to have a drama going at all times and then like a comedy for filler. So and we will rewatch, We'll go back and rewatch all of thirty Rocker, all of Parks and rec or I'm thinking about a Seinfeld rewatch maybe sometime soon. So it's just yeah, ambitious, yeah, great, All right, Well it is time for our Love of the week. Segment that all of our guests get to contribute to Laura, would you like to lead off? Yeah, no, this is awesome hearing about all her evening routine stuff. So part of my evening routine I read most nights now to Alex, my four year old, and Ruth, who when this comes out will be eight. And with Ruth we are still working our way through the Magic Treehouse Merlin missions, right, and this is I don't know, this could probably take us to our teenageers. I presume she will not still be interested in them then, but they're the sheer volume. Oh my gosh, looks has been helpful for this so that I can just keep, you know, getting new ones, and there's always new one, and you know, it takes at least if I do a chapter a night, it's about eight to ten nights, and you know, we have stuff some nights, so it takes about two weeks to get through them. But that pace like it's going to take us while to run out of them. So you know, we've been going through those and I don't mind them as much as I've definitely minded some other books that have found their way into her shelves that I've been you know, tried to misplace. But with Alex, we're reading these little Golden books that are about superheroes. So I remember like the Little Golden Books as being like the Fairy Tales or the Little Pokey Puppy or whatever, But in recent years they've done some sort of tie in with like Marvel superheroes and stuff like this. So now we have the story book about the thor, we have the story book about Captain America. And he asks for these things like literally every night. And the upside is they're really short. So so we're reading these little golden books about various superhero characters, and he is he's so happy sitting through them. Not really you know, great literature, but of the books that get asked for again and again, I would say that those are there. So yeah, a little duel love of the week time. What's that that said? A duel love of the week? We love of the week? Yes, exactly, I love it. I I yeah, No, I was just going to say, I've given the tip before that little Golden books are great for travel. There's like they can slip so easy because they're so small and so they're super portable. So I love that. Yeah, yeah, all right, what's your love of the week. So my love of the week is college football, and I will explain why I'm not. We actually did a just in an episode about whether we are sports fan families Megan me to which we answered kinda is somewhere in the middle. But actually we are taking the kids this weekend. We leave tomorrow. We're going on a long weekend to Chicago, where my husband and I went to school at Northwestern, and taking the kids to a college football game. And I'm just I'm just really excited. Not because I am obsessed with college football or football in general, or sports, but it's one of those things we'll probably only do once or twice. It feels like a thing that the kids will remember. They'll get to walk a college campus and just see that whole vibe. I wish it was going to be a little more fall weatherish, that would just be the icing on the cake. But yeah, and I think that's just another celebration of the stage of life my kids are at now. We travel really well together as a family, and we can do things like go to a college football game without worrying about naps or diapers or any of that. So that's my love of the week College football. Go Cats. So jealous of you being a good age for travel because I've like sort of given up for a year or so. Anyway, my love of the week is we've been trying to find water bottles that don't leak for the backpacks because they need water and I hate it when everything gets all wet and they do too. So there's a brand called Pura p you are a which my friend introduced me to, and actually I got it for baby bottles initially, like they have these like straws that are good for toddlers because it's kind of like a cross between a bottle and a water bottle. But they also have like sports bottles for kids and they don't seem to leak. So Pura water bottles, however, I wrote in my notes, I wish they were resistant to getting lost to tracking device on the so yeah, that'd be cool. Yeah. Well, Sarah, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been great, and remind listeners about how they can find you. Yes, it's very easy since we are podcasts and podcasters only for the most part, So you just look wherever you're listening to this search for the mom Our. You can also head to the momour dot com and there's a little button that says new start here, and we've curated some of our favorite episodes because there are so many by agents, so that might be fun to check out. And then we're on Instagram, which most of you listening probably are too, and we're at the mom hour everywhere you can find us. Awesome, awesome, thank you so much, Thank you, ladies. This was fun. All right, Well, that was awesome. I hope you all enjoyed hearing from Sarah. We definitely enjoyed speaking with her. Our Q and A is from a listener that wrote to Laura Hi. Their question for you and Sarah. I've decided to go back to work full time after being home a few years with the little ones. Honestly, your podcast had a lot to do with it, making it feel even possible. I'm sorry, I just had to read that part. Sometimes we edit those letters, but we're no, no, no, we'll put that in keep that part. I'm really happy with the kids preschool, so I think we will go the nanny route. My question is, how do you find a nanny? I know there are agencies and online posts, but where do you start, how do you build the trust? It sounds like you both adore your nanny's and I would love to hear how you found them and how you knew they were the ones. Yeah, I mean we get versions of this question a lot, and I mean one of the things I think people find us sort of when they're newly in the parenting stage and maybe looking for child care, and so we definitely get a lot of questions about figuring out how to do this. And you can go in a a number of ways if you've decided to go to the nanny route, which is which is wonderful. One way is to ask friends, colleagues, neighbors for recommendations, because there's often people who are transitioning out of this stage of their lives, even either that all their kids are in school or getting older, or you know, somebody's decided to stay home for a while or whatever it is. But there are people who are transitioning out of needing a full time nanny. And obviously, if you've been employing somebody for a while, you want to help them find their next position, so you can get this through through the grapevine and then you've ideally you're getting someone who comes highly recommended and you don't even need to go through the whole process. I mean, you might want to look around a little bit, but it's great when you can find somebody like that. I have used an agency. Sometimes it's worked, sometimes it doesn't. It just kind of depends, you know. Sometimes people will send you exactly what you're looking for, and I've definitely found a couple of great people and sometimes even you know, part time sitters through that way. On the other hand, sometimes you know they just have a list of people and they're like, Okay, who hasn't gone on an interview in a while, let me shove that person over. So you know they're they're running a business as well. They're trying to place as many people. So if you know you have sort of strong ideas of like what will work for your family, what won't, you may be better off doing something like going through care dot com unless you can be totally transparent with your agency of like this is what I'm looking for. But going through care dot com, then you can kind of look and see, well, who applies. If you post the job with all your specifications or also just perusing listings, you might find somebody a couple people who look great to you, invite them to apply and interview and choose from that. So I've gone, I've gone all those routes. I've generally found good people. You want to ask questions about their their job history, you know, talk about how they deal with situation. Try them out with the kids, like have them, you know, hire them for an hour or two to watch the kids, maybe while you're still there, but just to see how they interact. And if you like interacting with the person, definitely check the references. Call all the references and ask the references questions like you know, what do you wish they did differently? You know, and then you can get answers to that. I think references are so key, and I really also feel like phone or FaceTime in speaking with the references is much better than an email. Anybody can put whatever into email, but when your people are speaking, they tend to be more frank. You can kind of hear what they're saying between the lines. You can hear whether their tone is truly truly enthusiastic or not. And like, you know, I hate talking to people on the phone, and I know a lot of our generation does as well. But this is one instance where like you just got to like do it, suck it up and do it. Yeah, yeah, and our I mean, I've only hired one nan. I've had lots of babysitters, but I've only hired one nanny. And I also used care dot com. I mean the other advantage to care dot com is when you go through an agency and then some of the money gets siphoned off by said agency, which they're providing a service. I mean, oh no, no, I mean, but in the it's kind of like you know, for travel, like it can also be great to work with an agency if you want to, but if you don't mind doing a little bit of DIY, then usually you may be able to go without it. I'm not saying anything against either of those types of agencies, but you may want to try first to go on your own. I don't know my personal bias, and of course I'm biased because I had a very good experience. I put out an ad got a bunch of us. I was very specific. I was like, I want the answers to these questions because then you're you're at itself can serve as a filter, like can this person speak English? Can they follow directions because if they can't respond to your questions the way you you know, ask them to, and then you probably that's at least for me, that's probably like a red flag. The other red flags if anybody like reschedules or doesn't show up for their interview, like it's over Like yeah, done, over done. And I've had that with babysitters. And if I hire a high schooler and there's one time they text to cancel, I'm like and I'm moving on, because if you need reliability, I mean, this is the full thing you need. I mean, And yeah, we had one bad situation without when we were trying to go through it at agency once and I had come back early from an amusement park to meet somebody for an interview and then she didn't show, and I was like, wow that, I mean a you know, I would never I mean, I'm sure even if it's a good reason like it just this is it's a red flag of something that is great. Yeah, a great. So I mean I think if that happens, just tell yourself it happens to everyone, and good you didn't waste any time meeting this person, interviewing them and then having them no show on a job. Better to have them no show on an interview. But yeah, I mean putting out your stuff and then interviewing as many candidates as seem reasonable. I actually only interviewed one, which is crazy, but I spoke to her reference two or three of her references, and well, first of all, she was one of the only people that like answered all the things that I asked for. And then I spoke to two people she had worked for for like years, and I could hear the like. One woman was like, oh, I wish we could still afford to have an like because it was like a couple that had divorced, and she admitted they had kind of like lost the ability to hire someone. But you could tell she was like, oh, what a loss, you know, but recommended her highly. And I just could tell from that and the way we clicked that it was likely going to work. And she's worked for us for now more than six years, so clearly it was you know, you don't need to interview fifteen. Yeah. One thing I would say, you know to add to this, though, is you definitely want to because it's not just about you choosing candidates. I mean, which is you know you may have done this in your professional job as well, right, like interviewing people and your choose a kid, they're also choosing you. Oh yes, and you want to make sure that it's somebody who's really happy about working for you and is excited about doing so, and there are things you can do personally to make sure that that is the case. I mean, obviously you want to pay above market rate. You want to pay on the books because you know, somebody doing this legitimately is a job. Definitely, you know, it's just legal. But this deserves to have things like their Social Security paid into and employment insurance. You should put that in your ad because some people, unfortunately are not willing to do that and it's better to find, you know, have them just not apply, like put in your ad. Like we expect, we will be friendlies, will be on the books, not trying to nickel and dine people. I mean, and we've always said, you know, we we turned the paycheck off on, we never turn it off. Like so there's there's you know, you get paid vacations, like that's paid days off. Things like that. We we would never like say like, oh, well, you know they were off for two and a half weeks and so we should stop paying for half a week ors I know, I mean, just don't nickel and dye people. You want to be the sort of professional employer that people want, and it's as someone continues to work for you. You want to, you know, incentivize loyalty, like add vacation days is something we did, or different types of bonuses or just different things to make sure that someone wants to continue to have that relationship exactly. All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking with Sarah hours about evening routines and her career as well. We'll be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore 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.