The Biggest Sun Competition

it was the right move? Yeah, it was a little disappointed, um, but then I realized, So I drove the kids up to your parents house or met your dad halfway. So we were planning to get rid of the kids and then have a cozy, romantic weekend, two romantic nights alone in the woods in a cabin, and um, we just did it at home. And by romantic getaway it was it was me sleeping most of the day in my bed while you were in the other room ignoring me.

Did you want me to not ignore you? I mean, I wouldn't have hated it to be brought a cup of herbal tea or something. At some point I did not exactly tend to your every night um, but I figured having no children around was the greatest gift of all. Yeah. As I slowly die, Yeah, here we are, UM on Saturday when the kids are still here, may Haven kept being like, what are you going to get up? It's

like lazy mom. The kids they would play with toys right next to my head, like in character, and I was like, please do that in the living room and they actually listened. For once things have changed, They've like they become huge adult children. They become huge adult children. Do you want to know the incredible are a huge

adult children? Moment I had with him. Yeah. So I drove them about two hours ish up to Sturbridge, where I made the past I passed them off to granddad at a local McDonald's and Maven historically, as we all know listen to the podcast, it gets car sick very easily. We all know, No, she doesn't very easily. She gets carsick on multiple our trip. Some people's kids get car sick if they're in the car for like a half

You're right, she she reliably gets sick. An hour and a half to two hours into I think an hour and a half into a drive, she'll start to get sick. I don't know why I didn't give her the medication, but it's because she's little and she can't see out the window. It's hard. Yeah, well, brand never had the same level as her as consistently, but that's her thing. That's great, she's unique. She's made that choice. And so

I was in on four heading up towards Hartford. There's a big carpool lane where you get off in this lane and it's like you can't get out of the carpool lane for like miles. So the second I go into this one pavement goes it feels sick, like, oh no, she goes, I'm gonna throw up. And I can see I don't know where this is about to happen. So I'm like, um, okay, hold on, And I opened up the middle arm compartment the console and inside is uh the secret stash of Beth's bag of combos that seemed

to always be there. Well, probably because I've left them in there for five months or something. Is it the same bag every time? I don't know, Almost completely full, of this bag of combos but open and I that's all I have. And so I'm driving and I grabbed it. I go here, maybe it hold this throw up into this And a miracle occurred, which is she grabbed the bag, she looked inside. She barfed into the bag twice, and then went, they are you okay? Just I'm okay. She

gave the bag back to me. I rolled it up. It didn't smell. I put it on the ground and we just kept driving. And then she was fine and I didn't pull over, and we made an incredible time, kept right well like it was a long time to get an exit. By time I got there, she was super happy and we were like twenty minutes away. Um, and I was like, wow, she just handled her own vomit and there's no mess anywhere. Can I tell you my Maven grown up story, which um, Saturday morning, she

found this box. Someone got this for her for Christmas, this craft of yarn unicorns. Goddamn yarn unicorns made out of yarn. It's a craft. You have to make the unicorns by wrapping a bunch of yarn around piece of cardboard. And she found it somehow it had gotten down. She got the box, and then she came. She came into the bedroom with the box and a butter knife, and she cut open the tape that was holding the box shut, and then she pulled out all the yarn and unspooled

all of the yarn. Yeah, and she laid it out all over the floor, and she kept being like, help me do these yarn unicorns. And I was again comatose and could not I could not move um. And eventually she got you to make the yarn. I came in. I saw that she was the most effort I did to keep her away from you. It's like, come on, let's do the yarn unicorn. By the way, you know, I'm sick and not nowhere close to where you are,

so I don't want to do this yarn unicorn. But but I'm I am totally fine compared to what you're going through. It's like, oh, come on, let's do the yarn unicorn. This excuse my French. This fucking yarn unicorn was super hard and like there's no way Mavid could ever do. I'm sure it's for older kids. That's why it's February and I still have not attempted to make yarn unicorn. I mean, what age I didn't look. I could look at the box, but I had a tricky

time with it. I don't think it was an age appropriate. I spent two hours on one of these yarn unicorns. But she did like it. I mean, she loves it. Um. But I was rushing in the beginning and I forgot one of the At the end, I realized I didn't put one of the pieces of cardboard in. So our yarn unicorn was a little skinnier than it normally normally should be. So every time I pull out, like they're like seven yards of this yarn, I'd measure all of it, and I keep getting to the end, and I'd be like,

why do I have all this extra yarn? I like these moments where do you feel like a failure of a mom. The yarn unicorn is too skinny. It won't stand up. The adhesive strips are impossible. To get the paper off of both sides. I had to get a pair of tweezers, a yard stick, some scissors. But boy, it's pretty beautiful yarn unicorn that's already falling apart instantly. Yeah, oh well, oh well, you're in unicorn you had fun with it for a while. I had fun with it.

It's you know, it's like legos or I kea furniture. I love instructions. I love put any thing together. But the last forty five minutes where Maven was like can I put the horn on? And she can't. She wants to help, but there's nothing she can do to help. It's so complicated, and so I was just getting frantic trying to end it. And then I had to I had to braid the reins, and so I tried to have Maven I tied these three pieces together and not I go here, hold the end and then I'll braid it. Boy,

she was really crap at that job. I was like holding pole, Paul. Did she get distracted? Not as old as we think. There's also I think it was yesterday. You're trying to get her. We were trying to get her to get dressed and kept wandering around and we're like, Maven, can you just go get dressed? And she's like okay, and then she just goes and starts playing. And there's a moment where you were like, Maven, do you know

what I'm going to ask you to do? And she goes to get dressed, like, yes, sorry, sorry, what that's like, Gilly, She sounds like the sorry. Um, I can't believe. I mean, this is not a unique parenting complained, but the amount of times I now I have to say put on your shoes every single day is driving me insane. Put on your shoes, put on your shoes. I go, Britt, how many times have I said put on your shoes to no? Forty forty times? Oh, he had a bit of a freak out and I picked him up at

his friend's house the other day. Um, that's that's that whole story. That's the whole story. It's not interesting. Yeah, he doesn't like to leave. I texted his friend's dad and I was like, please give my kids a twenty minute warning. It didn't help. No, of course, what can we talk about our neighbors? Next story that we don't really know what? What about them? I can't figure out who lives there? What. There's definitely a little kid that's there, right,

but then there's also like at least two older kids. No, yeah, they're there right now. That's like their cousins. Well, they're they're a lot. They're there once a week on like a Sunday. But to whom do they belong? That's the cause. Since they're so loud, we moved in. They have one two year old child. He is so loud. I'm not complaining. I mean, he's not louder than our kids. Yes he is. You might be if you go back to the view of the podcast, you might have heard them all yelling

at each other. You are underestimating the noise that our children make through the walls. Oh, I'm not saying our kids are not loud. Our kids are very loud. When I first met our neighbors, he the dad introduced me to the little kids. Apologize now, this one's very loud, and I was like, oh, I think we'll give you a run for your money. But since then I'm like, no, that guy was right, this two year oldest intense. I think we're just as loud over here. Should we have

a competition? No, yeah, I don't. I don't know how you engage what that competition is? Can you hear him now? Speaking of competition? My so, our kids are with my parents and they were doing chalk drawings today on the driveway and they started drawing, you know, like stick figures and sons and then they had the biggest son competition where they just threw the biggest circle around the driveway and then Maven was trying to carefully put little lines

on the outer edge all the way around. It looked like so painstaking. You know what this reminds me. I had an interesting parenting moment relating to drawing. So Brit is not he's very smart boy, he's he's he's ahead of the game and reading and math and all that um. But he's his hand eye coordination and his drawing is creative but not great, Like he can't drop inside the lines. Uh. He was doing this project where he needed to of like filling these circles and he can't even begin to

do a circular motion to fill in the colors. And so he filled it in and it was all a mess. And he commented on it like he knows that about himself. He goes, I'm not very good at drawing. Didn't seem or of coloring, didn't seem that upset by it. But then I forget what happened to. Maven was there and Maven was like, I am I'm the best at drawing. I'm better than Bryn. Mommy, and I are better than Bryn,

and you could see it's sort of it hurt Bryn's feelings. Um, I feel like kids at school have to have commented on his drawing because he colors things in so haphazardly, and like he's clearly rushing through his school work at school.

He just scribbles all over it and then he's like the next page and he's told us they're like, we're talking about his best friend at school, and he was like, yeah, he's so funny and he does jokes, but like the other kids are like telling us not to do jokes and telling us to do our work, and and I was like, there's definitely other kids who have commented on

Britain not focusing on what he's supposed to be doing. Yeah. Well, it's a funny thing because it's that fine line of between knowing that you're not as strong at something as something else and like knowing it and owning that identity suddenly makes it more true than maybe it needs to me needs to be because I remember I was at uh, not a strong reader, and I couldn't spell, and I have very strong memories of other kids noticing and like making fun of me and I wonder, I wonder what

would be different if if I hadn't seen myself as that. Well, yeah, I think he's not actually bad at drawing. It's just they have a lot of assignments at school that's kind of like busy work where all the kids have to color in the same five pages. And I think that's where he's like, whatever, let me just get this done. Yeah, well there is I mean in pre k, you know he couldn't do he couldn't use the scissors. Well, he can't follow the line. There's something. And you know, Maven,

I think it's it's not his greatest strength. She's better at throwing and catching in general. So there's a hand eye thing there. I'm not worried about it at all, Um, but it is that, you know, kids get cruel as they get older. Ah, this is what every parent worries about his teasing. It's you know, he's like, he's pretty resilient to teasing. I think, I mean, his confidences rock solid as a rock. Baby. And now it's time for

we knows wins. This is where we discuss a parenting victory. Um, that's happened in our lives, Beth, Well, this is sort of a you win. But uh, do you remember this week when you acknowledged that you went to the grocery store and bought band aids and conditioner for the first time in maybe your entire life. Um, yep, yeah, Um.

Explain why this is significant. Well, this is significant because historically these are the types of purchases where you'll turn to me and say, we need better band aids, we need more conditioner, or why don't we have conditioner, and you like, you actually do most of our grocery shopping at this point, but you love to do like a ninja strike type of grocery shopping, a surgical strike where you buy five items and come home. I don't want

to throw anything away. Um, I've loosened that up. But the band aids in some ways felt like a real coming of age of dad age. I think because a long time ago we had I don't know if it was a big fight, but we had some hitty band aids. They're generic whatever band aids. And because I say everything I'm thinking out loud without really thinking, I put on one of these band aids and they were just sort of cheap, and I was like, well, I guess I'm

crappy band aids. And of course, in your mind, you were the one that bought the band aids and so and I said, you've never bought band aids in your entire life. You don't get to complain about the band aids. It's not true. I have about band aids in my life. Well, now you have. I bought band aids in college. Maybe maybe really maybe one time. Every college male has a well stocked band aid supply, as we all know, probably

bought a single, probably found a band aid. I'm thinking of the time I found a you're thinking of when you went into another dorm room where a female student lived and said, can I have a band aid? And she said, okay, you know what, I'm not gonna say that's never happened. Uh, And it turned into a big fight. I didn't understand it at all at the time, because in my mind, I wasn't criticizing you. I was just I was more like, wow, I didn't know band aids could be so shitty. And you got so mad at me.

And I got so mad because I'm like, this isn't

even about you. I'm just talking about this band aid and and you took it as a personal attack, and and I thought it was overblown and didn't understand that it's a larger thing, which is that like there's there's band aids here at all because it's something you thought about, uh, And there's a lot of things like that that you know in my life up to that point, I'm like, oh, I'll buy shampoo because it's been five days of not having any shampoo, and I'm like, I really need to

solve this problem, uh, as opposed to now in my life, when I realized, oh, this shampoo is very low. Do we have any backups? And I look at it now, if I'm like there's one spare bottle, that's when it's time to buy new shampoo, and not when it's been absent for a week. And so I noticed we had one band aid left recently, and so I went to the store when I was there about a big, multi sized box of band Aid brand band aids. And I didn't think it was a big deal, but your reaction

to it, um made me feel good. Well, no, you've announced it like it was a big deal. And you were like, do you know I bought shampoo? Um, well I didn't. I'm not the one who brought it up like it was a big deal. It was. It was what wasn't what we were talking about. We were talking about you were talking about the kids shampoo. What I refilled the kids shampoo? Okay, I told maybe I was bragging.

I'll tell you though, when when you had a positive reaction to it, um, alarm bells went off in my head, which were the Peter, do not celebrate yourself for doing the what is in no way an above and beyond thing, which is to get band aids because we need band aids. Um So I was very mindful not to congratulate myself. But um it looks like I didn't. I didn't succeed in that. Like anyway, it was sort of a win. I didn't. I didn't know the wind was going to be.

I'm so torn right now because the wind is. I take it one of two ways. One the win is Beth is pleased with her husband. The negative side is like Beth is pleased that she's trained her man to be a responsible adult, like it no longer the animal he once was. I was pleased, and I then you started changing the story of what happened, and then it anyway, how do I change this story. I don't want to relive it. No one wants to relive what we just discussed, Beth.

I just want to say that I'm am very pleased with our relationship right now. I feel like, Ah, I feel like we're communicating better than we ever have. Do you agree that's true? Oh, that reminds me of another win, which is that we had a date night. Oh my gosh, Yes, Valentine's we had it. Although that is unfortunately the start

of my slide into extreme illness. It's like I was getting sick and I was like, on a normal healthy occasion, I would stay inside tonight while I feel sick, But because it's such a rare opportunity, I'm going to go out and have two drinks and then my body completely revolted on me. But anyway, we had a really great dinner night out. Um and we it was nice to be alone, the two of us and talk in a way where we're not talking to an audience. Um and yeah.

And I don't want to get into it, but even the point we even talked about politics in a very civil way. We even talked civilly about politics. Um, it was great. There is something insanely weird about this podcast, which we've joked jokingly and not jokingly described as our therapy, because we do have to talk about our relationship and our kids and our lives, knowing that their styles of

people listening. So we have to be on our best behavior, which has been super productive, and I've started giving friends advice. I was like, don't. I was like, well, maybe it doesn't matter if anyone listens to it, but do the equivalent, which is pick an hour a week where you're have to be five ft away from five that's the exact distance you have to be five feet away. You should have a microphone and sound muffling equipment in front of

your face so you can barely see each other. I can't see you at all, Um, I can see the top of your head. Oh yeah, that's charting why it works for me, Um, But for say that you have to be together for an hour and you without looking at your phones or a movie and talk to each other and uh boy, I know more about you as

a result. But it was suddenly interesting to you know, have time away from the show, what we can tell all of our real secrets that we don't talk about here, of our real deep dark secrets right in to guess what our deep dark secrets are or tell us your deep dark secrets. Yeah, tell us something weird about you. Um, here's a question. What would you not share on a podcast? What I don't know who I'm talking to, to whom I'm speaking There's a few things we don't talk about here,

but mostly we're pretty honest. Boy. This is a great segment. This is a segment where we let's talk about refer to the things that we're not going to talk about. Is this good content? Yeah? This is great. This next segment is called Listeners Want to Know. So that's where we take questions and comments from you guys. Oh right, all right. First, UM, a quick fun one. Ah. This one comes to us from Jade. There's no manual dot dot dot Indonesia. Hello. I'm in my late twenties and

have no children yet. I have loved listening to your podcast since near its beginning. I just had to write to tell you I'm currently seven months into a one year trip with my partner. We are in Indonesia walking through Java airport awaiting our next flight. Much to my partner's bewilderment and then embarrassment, I shrieked and hurtled myself toward the bookshop, coming in at high speed, arms flayling, I collided with the books and several went flying. Embarrassed,

I apologized, yet still brimming with excitement. I held up your book, Beth. There's no manual, turning to my partner, are grinning, exclaimed, it's my podcast. We have one bag each for the entirety of the trip, and your book is now in mind along for the ride. Thanks for what you do, Jade. It's not a small book. That's great, that's so sweet. I love that the book is in

Indonesian airport. It's exciting. It's in a lot of places. Yeah, people have been sending pictures from bookstores where the book is facing out, which, um, if you haven't written a book, or if you don't if you're not familiar with these things, you know, putting the book faced out on the shelf instead of like just seeing the binding is like, it feels very special when I realized this. But you can see more of them, You can see more of the book, and it says to people, hey, look at this book

in particular, and that is exciting. It really says that people is Hey, there's a book here, and if you wish to purchase it, you may. Yeah, that's what it's saying. Um, send us your pictures of Beth's book. Yeah, please, it's ah, I mean it's I obviously know it's in bookstores, but it's still surreal to see it in bookstores. Yeah, no joke. If you see it in a bookstore, take a picture of it on the shelf and then send it to us and let us know where where it is. Um,

because that's fun for my sick, sad wife. She's so sad. Capitalism can feel better with capitalism. Um, that's fantastic, Jade. Good luck on all your your journeys. Um, and uh read that. Enjoy that trip? Yeah, enjoy that trip. Are we got another email? Are you ready? Do you need more drugs? How do you feel? Hmm? Let's mull over whether I'm ready or not for this email? Um, okay, I'm ready? Okay, good. This comes to us from Lisa. Subject line help us our brains are broken. Hi, Beth

and Peter. Longtime listener, first time emailer here. You guys work irregular hours and have two children's worth of stuff to do, so I wonder how do you keep your lives organized. Do you have shared calendars on your phone? A physical calendar in the kitchen. Since having our daughter fourteen months ago, my husband and I have both missed dentist appointments, and it's not unusual for one of us to sprint out the door after realizing we have a

haircut in three minutes. Before this child, I would have described us as reliable people, but now it feels like our brains are broken and we're barely on top of anything. Do you have any advice, any tips on how to remember to check the calendar? You're the best, Lisa from Quebec oh Man, Yeah, that's relatable. Um, your brains are supposed to be broken. UM. We do have a shared

calendar on phones and computers. UM, that's really helpful. Um, for I have too many calendars I need to condense to me, it's hard with The hard thing with the calendar is like this week, for example, if you have a trip planned and it's taking up multiple days, it like pushes everything else down on the calendar so you can't see at a glance. I got a notification that you deleted the reservation to the Berkshire's Airbnb and it

was such a sad notification. Again, it was just like, well, because I'm trying to see what's on the calendar, like all the other two does. So anyway, Um, what was he saying? Calendars are good? I think like if you can set a reminder and alert on your your phone calendar that says like remind me thirty minutes before this happens, I think that's always good. If it's like a day where you're not to be necessarily like at your computer looking at the the calendar. Um, yeah, just anything. I mean,

you know your schedule better than we do. But I know that there are certain things in my week that fit into ah the general structure of things that I'm not going to forget about anything A typical, it's a it's a it's a reminder, it's one of those. But then if it's a call, I'll always have the reminder be the moment the call starts. If I get a reminder of fifteen minutes before the call, I'm so much more likely to then forget forget about it in fifteen minutes. Yeah,

me too. The call and reminder has to be like five minutes before I do it at the moment the call starts because I've still forgotten about it, and then you're calling in like last second while everyone's waiting for you. I can call it so fast, well, okay, one minute before. I don't know. And there's other things that, Yeah, I'm like pretty good at checking my calendar and knowing what's

up on days when I'm at work. It's that it's the days where I'm starting to like work from home or on the weekends, if I have stuff to do that it will really slip my mind, and it like especially need the reminders. Like if I'm working from home and I have to go pick up the kids, I have to set an alarm on my phone because I'll get sucked into work and just lose track of time. Routine routine routine. Um, looking at you right before going into bed, looking at the next day. It seems like

a real no brainer. Routine routine routine. When I forget something, it's because I I haven't looked my calendar for two days. Boy, maybe people, just maybe it's just one reminder twenty minutes before bedtime that says, look at tomorrow's calendar. Yeah, I don't know. Life is so hard. I feel like I just feel like at a certain point, if you have too many like alerts and reminders, then you're just like constantly stressed out like it's and it becomes white noise.

You need. You needed time to get away from your calendar and not be thinking about it's. It changed my life the day I spent forever going through every single notification and like beep and ding that my computer and phone makes, and just turned almost all of them off. My phone doesn't give me a lot of beeps. First of all, my phone is always on vibrate. Second of all, what would I be getting things for? I don't None of my apps are allowed to tell me anything that's great.

That's you don't need that. That's what drives you crazy. Um, I have a The v I P function on my mail is huge. There's a few people like our real litteral at my agent. But the second a tone goes off, ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding, Peter, it's your agent, not you don't know that you've been released from the PEPSI spot. I don't need to hold those dates anymore because you're not getting paid. I don't think

I've ever auditioned for PEPSI. I don't know where that came from. Did book a commercial this week? Congratulations? Are you so excited? I'm so excited. I'm so excited for us to have health insurance. That is, that's the only thing I care about these days, health insurance. Um. So, anyway, how do you share? Well, okay, so she's mostly just asking about calendar. She she she's not asking about other

shared responsibilities. Well, I think it's it's communicating. Logistics of communicating with your partner about kids is something you have to figure out. Yeah, we do not have a kitchen calendar. Were very digital. Folks were very digital. Um, we do have like we know when your classes are, we know when your shows are, and then we kind of like have like a first come, first serve basis in terms

of claiming nights on the calendar. Well, for a long time, because I taught so much, I just I didn't really have claimed any of the other ones. And I didn't because I knew if I did, if that's something I'm asking you to cover the whole week over time. Well, I also wasn't claiming them because it was like, well, I could go out that night while I'm exhausted, or I could maybe have our whole family be in the

same location for two hours. Yeah, there was a hard learning curve when Britain was born because I taught a lot more and we've settled into a much better system. Yeah. And once we went to Brooklyn. Ah, oh, you guys, the commute time I'm gonna save like ten hours a week not being on a train. Yeah. I mean we're being a little bit over optimistic about how much our life is going to be easier when we moved to Brooklyn. But just travel time is undeniably the travel time will

be better. The other logistics of living will not. We don't know, we're gonna We're always going to find something to be stressed about. Um, Like like the seller of their house who won't let anyone in. Guys, we're trying to do work on this place and she won't let the architects and to take measurements. Yeah, she was recovering. But for how long we're going crazy? You know what, Let's not get into it. It's not stressful at all to move. That's the lesson here. Well, friends, you know what,

everyone's sick. We're gonna we're gonna take a good night early, um, because listen to us, listen to us. We're terrible and you're sick, sad wife over here. We have one more night with no kids, so like, let us leave us alone, leave us alone. We're all alone. We have no kids. That's never happened, and we're recording a podcast as insanity. We're hanging up right now, all right, thank you for listening. Guys, you're the best. If he liked us a minute question,

your story gives some advice or a parenting hypothetical. First, would you know segments? Send a picture of Beth's book in a in a fun place, yeah, or a boring place. You can email us at we knows Pod at gmail dot com or leave us a voicemail at three four seven three eight four seven three nine six. Find us on the social media's Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, There other ones we knows Pod and rate review, subscribe by Beth's book. There's no manual, honest and Corey wisdom about having a baby.

Wherever you buy books, and we'll see you next time when our children our home by