Hi.
I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.
And I'm Sarah hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer, and course creator. 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 episode is airing in mid to late August, not right before Labor Day, but getting close on there. This episode is going to be our long Weekend Little Kid Survival Guide.
Why did we want to do this episode?
Well, long weekends our thought of is usually being relaxing, but that is from the perspective of people who do not have young children in their care over this longer period of time when everyone is off their usual routines. And I was thinking about this over July fourth weekend, which is kind of the last long weekend that people experienced. My kids aren't even that little anymore, but we were off, so to speak, with childcare perspective since Tuesday at five pm.
And I remember at the end of Thursday thinking, wow, it's not even the real weekend weekend yet. And yet there has been a whole weekend of time between Tuesday at five pm and the end of Thursday, and we had three more days to go at that point. If you do have little kids, this is just a note of solidarity. People talk about how relaxed they are, and long weekends with little kids are just not relaxing, right.
Sarah, Absolutely. I mean that feeling when everybody at work is like, Oh, I can't wait to just relax, and I have these plans and I'm going to do this and that, and then thinking like, I have a two year old and I have to fill up so many hours. And for us, I'm not sure I have a specific nightmare weekend to share, but let me just say that many times when there are three day weekends, one of us is on call, usually more often my husband on call,
because he takes more call than I am. So I have the double whammy of like, yes, I'm hanging out with kids during an extended period of time, but also I'm doing it on my own. I know I'm not the only one in that scenario, and some people do
that all the time, which is incredibly hard. But let me just say, if I have like a three day weekend coming up, even now with my kids being a lot older, I'm not that excited about it when I'm going to be doing it all on my own, And we'll talk about strategies that I often employ to make things better. So for me, the most difficult ones have been the long weekends that also happen to be solo parenting endeavors.
Yeah, and this episode, as we give you our solidarity shout out for people who are planning long weekends with little kids, we will also want to say that there
are ways to make them more manageable. Right that we always think with best of both worlds that we can come up with practical solutions that even if you know it is a tough situation, like, there's no reason to be miserable more than one might need to, because there's lots of ways to at least have some fun, get some time for you, hopefully make some memories, even if you do have little ones and are filling a lot of time. So the first part, we have kind of
a lot of different strategies here. But the first strategy is to know that the long weekend is coming right, like, don't get blind sided. So especially if your office, you know, isn't closed as many hours as school or daycare might be,
you might need to make arrangements. But whenever the school calendar is posted, you want to make sure that you are getting whatever half days are coming up, what other random teacher in service days, whatever days they happen to be off for conferences, that you have those on your calendar. Know about all your daycare closures, I know, make sure if you have a nanny or regular babysitter, you know
what their vacation days are. And so when these things are coming up, right, Sarah, you're gonna have two schools worth of random days now.
Oh yes, and they all coincide, just kidding, like none of them do it. So I would like to reiterate that our very first tip is to plan. Yay, that is our tip because it's so true, like knowing that this three day weekend, whether it is because of a holiday that you celebrate, a holiday that you don't celebrate, or just a random school teacher planning day, is going to go better if you have time to think about what you want to do with those hours in advance.
And I have failed on this on occasion and kind of learned the hard way when I'm like, oh, you know, we'll just like stay home and do whatever, and when you have toddlers, like I again, like we're trying to avoid misery, and that has been That has been sort of the low lights of my longer weekends. The best ones happen when I've really taken the time to think about what could we do to make this more fun?
Because often you will be able to come up with some stuff and we'll talk about the specifics of that in a second, but really it's true. The awareness means a lot and is such an important first step here.
Yeah, I mean I feel like we have this discussion about Christmas every year, Like wait, I have like two weeks I have to cover or something like that. And the earlier one knows that that is coming up, the more mental time spread out over a longer period of time, you can sort of devote to making sure that it is more enjoyable. So first, know that they are coming up. Second, this is the official make a plan one.
Right, yes, like actually put something in writing to actually think through those actual hours and what you might want to do with that. Now, your strategy has to do with like having some anchor events. Can you talk about that.
Yeah, So, I when I'm planning out weekend or vacations or anything like this, I think of each day as having one anchor event, and that is something that you say like, oh, like, well, what are we doing this day? And it doesn't mean that that's the only thing you do that day, but that's kind of what the day is built around.
So for instance, I mean.
Especially if you have little kids toddlers, it's almost always better to do this in the morning, right, So get ready, get up, go somewhere as soon as the children's museum opens, or the zoom opens, or if you're going to visit friends or something like that, go to the science museum. But choose something that gets you out of the house that you go do it, get the kids to have ideally something that you don't find terrible as well, look at the weather.
Plan it in. It's good to have kind of a local bucket list of this sort.
Of thing, so if you know wherever you happen to live, sometimes people just wind up going to the same thing over and over again because it's there, and it's hard to think of things when you're taking care of little kids.
But it might behoove you at some point to make a local bucket list, like things that are within an hour of you that your family or at least a majority of members of your family find reasonably enjoyable, so that you can pull from that list when you're planning out your long weekend, as opposed to just sit in and be like, jeez, what is there to do? There's nothing to do. I don't know what do we want to do?
So yeah, knowing what that is ahead of time, one hundred percent agree with the getting out of the house piece, especially when kids are really little, because let's all be real,
what do the kids do in the house? They destroy that? Well, my kids maybe not your kids, but my kids just find stuff to like wreck, especially when they were younger, sometimes still now, and they get bored and they get antsy and they want screens, and like, do I want to give it to them at ten in the morning, Probably not, because I'd rather relax later, And you get
what I'm saying. So knowing ahead of time, like we're going to one, we might as well give some concrete examples, because you know, why not this might spark your ideas the zoo a different smaller zoo, to a children's museum, to the science museum, to the cool art place where you spatter paint all over the place, to the paint your own pottery place, to the bouncy house, whatever, you know,
just somewhere something. And bonus points if it is something where you can do it recurrently and subscribe, like be a member, because then you can kind of go in a very low pressure way and just be like we're going for a couple of hours and at least we're out of the house. Yeah.
And again, if it's someplace that you personally don't mind that much, that is always a benefit. I mean, I've we've gone a lot to Longwood Gardens, which is a little bit of a drive for us. But again, if you're doing this in the morning, maybe you've got more energy for it. But the flowers are pretty. And then they have a children's area that the kids have wound
up in a lot. We have a ton of photos of our kids at various different ages in this children's garden that's inside the green house and has various things that they can do, but you know it's something I like, but then they don't hate it either, So I think figuring out if you can hit both of.
Those is good for me. The best way to make one of those community outings more fun is to find a friend to go with me. So that's like another really helpful thing. You're probably not the only one facing the labor day doldrums. And the best is when I can find somebody else who also has to solo parent fairly frequently, because then it's like woo, Like we want companionship, we want to hang out together, but it's maybe just
us and our kids. And how fun it is if we can actually have a conversation and catch up while our kids are running around. So even more fun for me if you can also maybe turn that into a social event, and that requires planning, Like people aren't going to be free like when you ask them that morning most likely, but even a week before to be like, hey, it's this holiday and we're not going anywhere. Want to meet up at the whatever museum at ten am on Saturday?
Done?
Absolutely, We're going to take a quick ad break and then we'll be back talking a little bit more about the structure of a long weekend planned. Well, we are back with our long weekend little Kid Survival Guide. We strongly suggested getting out of the house in the morning with your little ones to go do something in the zoo, the park, the children's museum, whatever it is. You probably then want to come home for lunch in a mid
afternoon downtime or nap for little ones. So this is a great time for obviously the youngest ones to have their rest or quiet time, for the older kids to read or have some screen time, and then the supervising adult can have a little bit of leisure time for themselves as well. People are told to stay in their rooms under severe penalty for coming out or something like that, only at emergencies. You play your cards right. Ideally you can get two hours or so to chill, right.
Sarah, Yes, I mean it is hard when they're in that post napping year. Maybe the older sibling doesn't nap and then the younger one does. But figuring out a way that everybody can just Usually if you've done something active in the morning, this is easier because everyone is more ready to just kind of chill and rest.
Yeah, and then make sure you have something for that post nap slot. I think this is you know, what separates the newbies from the veteran parents. But you know, the kid gets up from the nap three three thirty, it's like, well, you know, all this, all the normal stuff is closing at five, so it's kind of a pain to get there. Or oh it's kind of like maybe they slept a little later. I don't really feel
like doing anything. But then you're stuck there from like four to five thirty as people are melting down, and it feels like you're counting minutes till everyone can be in bed or something like that. And we don't want to wish time away, So figure out something some intention for that post nap slid. Doesn't have to be intense, but something.
Like go to a playground, right, Yeah, I feel like this is a time or at least for us, this is like the really low key piece, Like the morning thing is like the big anchor, but the post is just like I mean, it doesn't for us even always have to be leaving the house, but this is when you whip out that activity from the garage that they you know, haven't seen, or go for a walk around the block or just like knock on the door of a neighbor's house and say hi, like the it doesn't
low bar, but like something something.
Right because then when they've got something to distract them from melting down until it's dinner, and then it's after dinner, it's kind of like sliding into bedtime bathtime anyway, So it's worth figuring out or a low key playdate, especially if you have someone who doesn't mind a little bit of flexibility on when it starts. So if the baby wakes up at three versus three thirty, you know, it's all good that you can go to that.
Or again, if you do have.
A membership somewhere that's close by, even if it does close at five, it's fine to go at four and just stay for an hour because it's you remember, you don't have to pay to go in.
The member thing with kids is like the best anyway, just because kids are so unpredictable and it just takes the pressure off of every outing having to be awesome. Like and also like if there has to be some situation where a kid does something where you're like, well, the consequences we have to leave, you can feel great about that. If you're a member because you can come back. You didn't waste your money then, right, Yeah, no, totally true.
The third suggestion and remember the first to be aware of when these long weekends are happening, because they don't always perfectly match up with holidays that we normally think of. Second, have a good plan for something in the morning as an ancor event, downtime, early afternoon post nap slot. Third, plan in something fun for you. So we want to get a break somehow.
So that it doesn't feel like all, you know, you have your work work during your regular time and now you have your family care work. You want to have something that's at least moderately fun for you. We just had a whole episode about trading off, so that's always a good idea.
Trading off is awesome. Or this was actually when I think I was best about hiring a babysitter for short stints. If Josh had a call weekend that was like over a three day weekend and my kids were little to the point where like I really couldn't ever just like zone out and let them do their own thing, I would be like, okay, fine, I'm getting a babysitter for three or four hours. It didn't feel like a huge expense,
but it felt like enough of a luxury. And I used to like use that time to go to bar class back in the day when we lived in Miami Beach. So I agree like having one little treat in there. It doesn't have to be something huge. I don't even know that it has to be every single day, but like something that you're looking forward to that's just for you. Obviously, if your partner is not working on call and in the hospital, then this can be accomplished via trading off, like we talked about recently.
Yeah, I mean, and one way to think about this is that you look at when each of you is going to want to do your particular forms of exercise, right that that's a very easy thing for each person to trade off and say, Okay, this person is going to do a run on Saturday morning and this one's going to do a run on Sunday morning, and so you both explicitly agree that you are trading off for
that time. But you know, little things you can do, like even a post bedtime sort of treat for yourself as you're thinking about your daily After I get the kids into bed, I want to watch this show, which is a favorite show of mine. Or I want to take a bubble bath. People always have these nice bathtubs in the primary bedroom bathroom and then they.
Never use them.
So you know, if you have built this nice bathtub, you should use it. Maybe it's having a glass of something festive on your porch if the weather is nice. Maybe it's that you got a new magazine in the mail. I'm a big fan of magazine subscriptions because that's something that you can do at home for entertainment, reading edition of a magazine as it comes out. But that might be fun. Or maybe it's a new book or a
new puzzle or something like that. Sarah, what are your favorite kind of I know you go to bed pretty soon after your kids go to bed, but what were your favorite sort of naptime treats?
Oh? I mean usually just reading, Like I love to get my lovely livery hold whatever it is, or that I'm like reading, or some other kind of book that I have and just relaxed, lay on the couch, maybe have a nice snack. But I was going to say that, like, my like favorite source of fun on a three day weekend is also just having a date night for those nights. I mean, sometimes you need a break in the middle.
So Sunday night can be awesome for this, Like normally a night that we wouldn't typically go out because thinking about early wake up's Monday morning. But how awesome if Monday is a day off to have that the night be to get a babysitter and kind of like celebrate the middle of the week, getting through the middle and getting.
Through the middle.
Yeah, which is again another reason to know that these weekends are coming up in advance, because then you can text whatever sitters you have to see which of them is not traveling over a long weekend and might be
interested in coming for a few hours. And having that and knowing you can look forward to that can often be the difference between being like, oh, geez, this is a lot of time versus, hey, we've got a lot of you know, I'm going to the zoo and I'm going out for an adult dinner, So I have a little bit more energy for this zoo in the morning because I'm also knowing that I'm going to be having my margarita and guacamole at night or something like that.
Yes, like a little kid free conversation break can be amazing.
Yes, exactly, And make sure you acknowledge when this cool thing is happening, like if you have built in a little bit of a treat. It's helpful just to have that mental narrative of like, oh, look, yes it's a long weekend with little kids, but I got to go on this nice run in the cool morning hours in a pretty place. Or yes, it's a long weekend with little kids and there's been a lot of meltdowns and things like that, but I got to go out for coffee with a friend. Or I got to read the
new whatever you read Southern Living. H you had a brand novel, Yeah, the new Ellen Hill and Brand lovel at night after an hour after my.
Kids went to bed.
So acknowledge that it might even help to like list it, because you know, a lot of time is just our mental model of it anyway. And so when we see these good things along, you know, side the fact that your kid had a diaper blowout in the children's museum while you were there, you know, it makes makes the weekend feel a little bit better in general.
Absolutely so.
Our fourth principle for our long weekend Little Survival Guide, Little Kid Survival guide is that screen time is not evil. Now, of course, we all would like to not have the kids zone out for say, seventy two straight hours on screens,
but that's probably not happening anyway. If you're the sort of conscientious person who is listening to a podcast about planning your long weekends, you're probably putting things like going to the children's museum and the zoo and the aquarium and the playdate in there anyway, So they're not going to be on all the time, which means that if they are on during some of the downtime, it's fine.
Which I mean, at what age did your kids start being reasonably entertained by screen?
Sarah? I think Genevieve was like the earliest because she had the earliest opportunity to do.
So because she's the youngest kid.
Usually does the youngest kid and a COVID toddler like, so it was like, well, get used to it, child, and still today like I'll be impressed. Like she was watching some Spider Man that I have trouble following the plot, and Cameron's like is loving it and she's like watching it really into it, So I don't know, maybe I shouldn't this kind of stuff, but yeah, she'll do fairly sophisticated stuff. And I feel like it started around age two wish maybe, yeah.
It was three, three, three and a half. I mean it was interesting to me. We took a road trip up to Cape cod when Henry was about three and a half last year, and I remember that being kind of hard to keep him entertain on that trip for long hours in the car, with being very aware of the fact that we were in the car with a little kid for a long period of time. We did the same trip about a year later, maybe thirteen months later,
and it was fine. Like he played Minecraft on some device I think may have even been Michael's phone because we didn't have his kindle working or something, but he played it on like for hours in the car. That there's something that like the your ability to focus on an actual game, like just probably the executive function gets there between maybe three and four.
So that was an interesting thing to observe.
Yeah, And I feel like movies like Disney movies can be captivating even earlier, like we definitely I think I sat through like all of Frozen with Annabelle when she
was like two. Wow, and that can be a wonderful break when your kid is sitting there wrapped by Elsa and Anna, and I don't know, I don't even feel bad about that kind of screen time, Like it's a movie, it's I don't you know, Like I've read The Anxious Generation too, but it didn't say anything about like watching Little Mermaid being so terrible.
Well, I don't know, Little Mermaid might make me anxious. I mean it's kind of a scary bad guy.
But yeah, true, bad example to.
Know your kid on that.
But yeah, I mean, and that could be you know, a family activity too, Like if there is a new little kid movie out and your kids are maybe even four and up, that's something that you guys could go do as a family on a long weekend. They often are released over holiday weekends precisely because people are looking
for stuff to do during that time. But you can stream anything these days, so thinking in advance of like, well, what would be a cool movie for the little kids to watch, Maybe even talk it up so they're excited about it.
Wear a costume or something.
It makes it more of a party with the screen time versus just you know, zoning out while watching YouTube kids.
No, that's a fun idea we I mean for a long weekend. My approach is just the same as always, which is like kind of delay it for as long as we can in the day. My kids kind of know they have to ask for it, and it's generally not going to be granted until one or two, like after lunch. So it's fine, we're out and doing stuff in the morning, we come in, we have lunch, and then we're past the nap stage. But let's say I
still had a napper. It would be pretty natural for the napper to be napping and then my older child maybe watching a movie or doing stuff like playing a video game or something like.
Yeah, and if you don't want it to go to bedtime, then at that point, that is again the upside of having a post nap activity because people won't just and to know what that is in advance, because people won't just want to stop playing Minecraft at four o'clock to go do something. It needs to be that there is something arranged that you are stopping to go do, like, oh,
we're going to go play at Billy's house. Now, that's why we're stopping, because in the moment, yeah, nobody's gonna want to do that.
Totally. Yeah, a natural stopping point is great.
Let's take one more quick ad break.
We will be back with more on our Long Weekend Little Kids Survival Guide.
So we are back.
This is our long weekend Little Kid's survival guide. If you are looking forward to Labor Day, or maybe not so much looking forward to labor day because it's gonna be long for you, these are some tips and strategies that can help manage sort of lengthy periods of time with little kids. We first were talking about being aware that they are coming up. Second, having a plan that involves an anchor event each day and something for the
post nap slot. Third, planning in something fun for you. Fourth, recognizing that screen time is an evil, like you can put it in in a way that can feel good and make life feel sustainable, that the kids won't necessarily be zoning out for seventy two hours, but having fun with it. And finally, fifth hit the easy button where poss So this might be a weekend where you use Uber Eats or grub Hub for a meal or two, Sarah, is this something that happens in your house? Oh?
Yes, I use uber each, I use door Dash. I
am indiscriminate. They are all very helpful sometimes, and this is the kind of weekend where I do that, And especially when the kids were little, what an amazing thing it was to be able to do that when we needed to, and just I don't know, just making things like not trying to like do all the laundry and keep up with it every second of the day, and also speaking of easy, like not expecting the house to look awesome all day long, like deciding like, okay, once
we are at bedtime, I will spend twenty minutes getting things to be like reasonable, and that's like all we're gonna do. Just keeping those expectations really low, because I do feel like, you know, you see these Instagram videos of kids playing with a perfectly clear floor and like one wooden toy out, And aren't you supposed to run around after your children making it look like that all the time so they can get their maximum enrichment out
of their Montessori selected playset. Well not at our house.
Yeah, well it just I mean, the housekeeping can expand to fill the available time. So if you are trying to relax and enjoy yourself over a long weekend and you already have the little kids, so the messes are being made constantly. I mean, you would be spending all your time cleaning it up, so you need to put a limit on it, Like don't spend the entire nap time cleaning up the house, right, like maybe five ten minutes, but do your fun thing.
First, Like, don't do the cleaning first.
Go do whatever fun thing you wanted to do during nap first, and then maybe do ten minutes of cleaning toward the end when it you know, if it's about ready to be interrupted, because it's fine if the cleaning gets interrupted, because the toys aren't just going to come out again, right, whereas you will never get that time back. Same at night, like put a limit on it, set a timer, do not spend more time than that because you have a date with your magazine, your bubble bath,
and you want to enjoy yourself on this. With that, I would say, don't assign yourself big house projects. I mean people often think of like, oh, you know, the weekends are where I need to get these big things done. We're going to clean out the garage this weekend, Like you are not, like you know, just maybe that stuff
happens after your youngest child is four or five. I mean, you know, unless you're going to hire professional assistants with various things along these lines, like you're just not going to personally have time for a lot of the extensive Homer projects when your kids are little and if you are responsible for them, So that is what it is.
Just accept it.
If you're not ordering in for meals, very easy meals is also a great idea. Pasta is a meal.
A lot of good jarred sauces out there. There are a lot of good jars and things you can dump in a.
Yeah, so you can get various like Asian type sauces to you know, we've been doing like well some people like taking masala or you know, rogan josh or you could get like tie red curry or.
Something like that.
You can get chicken that is pre chopped up, so all you have to do is just like put it in the pan and cook it.
Then you mix the sauce.
In, you do one of those boil in a bag things of rice and like you've got a meal and maybe heat up some frozen corn and it's even a healthy meal.
So's it's like pretty easy to do some of these things.
Yeah, you have to maybe be okay with like some repetition, But honestly, in that phase of life, I think a lot of people would just embrace it like whatever is easy. And that's so true about the big projects. I would say, any big project or any work project. I mean, I enjoy working on the weekends now. When my kids were toddlers, I couldn't do much of it because the only time would have been either if I was going to like have a block of childcare, which on occasion I did,
but if I didn't, then it would be nap. And I don't want to use my nap for that because it's such an incredibly limited time that is my only downtime, and so so to spend that time like organizing something like just doesn't it doesn't make sense and feels kind
of unsatisfying. So I really do agree, like take the pressure off, You're gonna feel better about just like leaning into it and being where you are versus having these lofty aspirations that are just not really possible and then feeling guilt about what didn't happen.
Yeah.
Absolutely, but then a quick message of hope that it gets better. So a message for people, I mean, obviously We've both have lots of kids, and so we've been in the little kid years for a long time, including many years well we've had this podcast going. But we're starting to kind of age out of it, and I have actually started to enjoy my weekends a lot more now that it is possible to relax without making prior arrangements to relax. I guess is how I would put it.
It was never impossible to relax. I just have to be like, Okay, Mike got the kids now, and now is my relaxing time. And then I'll take them and then it'll be his relaxing time, or we have a
sitter and now we have the relaxing time. But once Henry is able to do something like play Minecraft, it introduces the possibility that you can in fact sit on the couch with a magazine and if he's absorbed enough in it, then you probably won't be called up for at least a little while, and you can start to do more things, especially now that I have older kids who can be babysitters, Like if I want to go
somewhere for forty five minutes, they can, right, And that's fine. Again, don't have to make huge prior arrangements to how it happened.
So it's definitely gotten a lot easier.
I agree, And there's almost like a subtle realization when that shift's like, huh, it's Friday night and I don't have like the slight feeling of dread that maybe did tend to come on back in the day, and that feels really really nice. I will also say it's when you don't have to It's like that period of parenting that's just absolutely constant reactivity than the less somebody else is on your kid. You have to be responsive to
their needs absolutely immediately. It's pretty long. I mean it's like a number of years, Like a two year old's not going to wait. But once they get to the point where like they can do some things for themselves and even if you're caring for them, their needs are
just less urgent. It just becomes so much more relaxing and fun, and they are more likely to want to do things that I find like legitimately fun and that is super cool, like when we want to go to movies that are you know, maybe I mean, well, I took my five year old to Spartable Me for no. I mean some might not want to take their younger kids to a movie like Barbie, but like we did, and like I love that movie, Like I legitimately enjoyed myself and the kids liked it, and like that's a
big milestone.
Yeah, it is.
It is.
So it does get better.
So shout out to anyone who is planning a long weekend with little kids.
We see you solidarity.
But in a few years it'll be feeling more relaxing, and then you can be the one telling your colleagues about your relaxing long weekend and providing encouragement to the colleagues who have the two year old and who are going through it themselves. So this week's question, should I buy a minivan? So this listener is expecting kid number three and never thought of themselves as a minivan person, but you know suburbs and kid number three, So should they buy one? Sarah, you resisted the minivan.
Yeah, I mean, I don't think you need a minivan, but I do think it's helpful to have a car bigger than I said Dan. So we've been extremely happy with a like mid to larger sized suv. We have a three to row Highlander and actually we have the hybrid version, so a little bit less gas guzzling. I love that car so much. I love driving it. I love how my kids fit in it. I love how
much we can fit in the back. I've never actually driven a minivan, to be fair, but like they don't look like they be like that fun to drive, and I actually enjoy driving the suv. So I don't know, Like, I guess i'd just say, you don't have to have a minivan, Like I think there are other larger cars that do a lot of what a minivan does. But I know people love their minivan, so it's definitely a good option as well.
Yeah.
I mean, so when we had kid number three, I didn't want to buy a minivan, so I wound up with an Accura, which we still have and you know, Jasper will mostly be driving it now. Is an suv, a three row suv, but it's kind of hard to get in the back row.
It was only for.
When we had to use it as a seven passenger of a person kind of thing. But then when we had Alex, it was like, okay, well we need the family minivan just to have the ability to have like two car seats and then two other kids in the car at the same time.
And I gotta say they're pretty cool.
I mean, now again, I didn't get rid of my accurate so I was not the one driving the minivan all the time. Our nannies have been the one mostly driving it, and then we drive it on weekends or family trips or you know, family activities things like that. But they're pretty cool, Like there's a reason everyone has that. Like I was picking Ruth and a friend of hers up at camp the other day and I parked in the carking lot and then I walk up to the car and I start like pulling on the car, and
I'm like, why is it opening? Like when I have my keys in my pocket, why is this not opening? Because it was somebody else's Toyota Siena that was parked two down from mine, because everyone else was the Toyota Sienna, and the lady.
Was like right behind me.
She's like, well, god, she didn't see me, but she saw my kid trying to get in the car, and she's like, I didn't think I had to take another kid home. I mean maybe my daughter inviting somebody else home.
I don't know.
So it was just like all fun and games but I mean the sliding doors are great because your kids cannot hit another car in the parking lot. With a sliding door, you can get into the back seat quite easily. You can't get around the laws of physics. I mean, you still have like this somewhat crunched no matter what
car you're in. But I feel like minivans feel like they are spacious but are not quite as huge as some of the bigger three row SUVs, and so with that the gas mileage might be slightly better too.
So you know, I don't know.
I think you don't have to buy one, but they do have their upsides. And you know, if you think you might wind up with a fourth kid, it might be worth going ahead and switching to being a minivan family.
Yeah, I could see that. And I'll also say that you can get away when your kids are little with probably not even like an suv like we did have I think all three kids in the well. No, we did buy the suv and Genevie was born, but we were able to fit all three car seats in a Toyota Prias. And if you have to do it, you do it.
Yeah, there are some car seats that are designed to be a little bit thinner, and so you can fit it now. I will point out then that you have three children crammed on top of each other in the back seat, and if they are not perfectly behaved, they may be arguing and fighting and have easy access to hit each other in the back seat.
I'm just throwing that out there as a reason that you might wish.
To have a very theoretical, theoretical possibility.
I am not saying this would ever happen for us or anyone else who is listening to this, but I love it. Something to keep in mind, all right. Love of the week, Sarah, what is your love of the week.
My love of the week is that we were able to get a like I don't know that there were really good back to school deals on laptops, and we were able to get an Apple laptop for Annabel for like, way less than I thought you could get one for. So look for the tax free shopping, look for the back just if that's the thing in your state. Florida has that. Look for the back to school deals because that was exciting.
That was exciting.
Yeah. No, if it's something you needed to get and you get a significant discount, that's always great. I guess my love of the week is solo swimming. I'm sure I've said this before, but usually when I'm in the pool, i am lifeguarding for other folks, So it is really kind of nice to just relax. Speaking of the long weekend with little kids, to be in the pool without that responsibility as a great way to feel the sense of bliss long weekend, even if it's just for a
little bit of time. So this has been best of both worlds. This has been our long weekend little Kid's Survival Guide, hopefully some strategies that people can use. 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 podcast. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together. Out of a Man