Katie - Solo Toddler Mom

[00:00:01] Welcome to Season 3 of You and Me, Kid, a podcast about starting and raising a family on your own. Where I speak with other single moms, those still considering, and experts in relevant fields to give you a real sense of what the day-to-day experience of solo parenting looks and feels like. So wherever you are in the process, I hope this podcast provides some support, helpful info, and most importantly, humor. Thanks so much for listening. Now let's get to it.

[00:00:33] Katie, so you and I were just catching up a little bit on the comedy I think that is maybe just life at our age, but also just being single moms that we met two years ago. I was pregnant. You, I think, had a three-month-old. That's the number that I have in my head at the time. It was your first big night out. I was still like wrapping my head around being a single mom. I think you were one of the only like single moms that I had met at that point.

[00:00:57] And then we haven't gotten really to talk that much about our experience except for a random text here and there about just the comedy that is single parenting. So I'm so excited to actually talk to you today about the past couple years with your kiddo and just kind of see how much our experiences overlap or not. I'm excited.

[00:01:19] So just for those listening, remind me how old your kiddo is and then what you do for a living. And you're in Denver, correct? I am in Denver. My daughter, Laurel, is two and a half, a very precocious two and a half. My career journey, which we will probably get into here, I am working in manufacturing right now, which is not where I thought I would be.

[00:01:44] I am working for a family-run metal fabricating business, which is not my skill set. I think it's fair to say it's also not my passion. But in having a two and a half year old, it is a job that came up that has afforded me the ability to sleep in my bed every night and spend time with my daughter. So previously was in consulting and finance, traveling a lot, and I'm now in a small family business here in Denver.

[00:02:11] Amazing. Okay, great. So let's back up a little bit. As you know, you've listened to the podcast. I just want to get a little bit of the brief kind of how you became a single mom. When did that idea start? When did those decisions start being made? Back me up a little bit. Two and a half years. Yeah, I think it goes back, ooh, maybe eight years or longer. I don't know. It's just such a part of who we are.

[00:02:38] I mean, I guess I'll start with I struggled with dating in my 30s and was single, but living a really fulfilling life. I was traveling a lot for work. I was having great adventures on the weekends. I was traveling a lot. I had a fantastic group of friends, but the dating piece just never really clicked. And I wasn't terribly panicked about it. It was something in the back of my mind where I was like, at some point I want a house, a dog, a kid, a partner, all of those things. But, you know, day to day, things were pretty good.

[00:03:08] I went to visit a friend in Minneapolis, and her husband was diagnosed with leukemia a year into their marriage. And she pretty quickly had to make the decision of what they were going to do for their family planning. And she froze her eggs. She did what he needed to do prior to starting treatments. And so we got started on the egg freezing conversation. I'll just add the little snippet. He is doing fine now. They have two kids. He's in remission.

[00:03:36] She's still a very close friend. But she was the first one who approached the conversation with me of, well, have you thought about freezing your eggs? And at the time, it just – it was easier not to think about. And this is probably eight years ago. And I will say that in the last eight years, and maybe it's my friends getting to, you know, getting closer to 40 or advancements in egg freezing or just the industry changing. But no one was really talking about it then.

[00:04:02] And so it was this specific friend who was doing it for a very necessary reason that broached the conversation with me. And I started thinking about it, and I was traveling a lot for work. I was busy. I was like, you know what? I'm just going to – I'm going to do it. And at the time, I felt kind of embarrassed about it. I didn't talk about it. A lot of friends didn't know I was doing it.

[00:04:25] But I ended up having to tell my boss because I was traveling so often for work that you can't do all of the appointments. And it was a really wonderful conversation. I knew I had a great boss at that point and that he opened up about his wife's fertility journeys, and we were able to share that, which was helpful because, as you know with fertility treatments, I missed a flight. I was supposed to be in Chicago one afternoon for something, and I have never overslept in my life.

[00:04:50] Maybe you pump enough hormones into you that, like, I will have slapped through two alarms and was like, oh, I'm supposed to be somewhere, and I cannot be there. So interesting process of egg freezing. It's amazing to think about what women go through in the workforce. And then I made it to Chicago, and I'm sweating in a meeting and bright red. Everybody goes out for drinks afterwards, can't have a drink, but don't really want to tell anyone what's going on. Oh, yeah. That was my egg freezing. Did that, but never thought that I would do it on my own.

[00:05:18] I remember shortly after that, I was talking to an acquaintance who had used the same fertility clinic, and we were just kind of sharing stories about the process. And she asked if I would ever consider having a kid on my own. And I remember being so offended. And that's maybe not the right response, but the back of my mind was like, I'm great. Why would I ever have to do this on my own? Like, clearly, somebody is coming by that, you know, maybe I'm a little older and I'll need to use those eggs.

[00:05:48] Like, I'm not doing this on my own. Time passes. It's amazing. All these things happen. I am on a text chain with a bunch of friends from grad school, and we share life updates. And at some point, one of the women in the group announced that she was pregnant. And she is more on the periphery of my friends. And I remember having to text another friend to say, hey, is she dating someone? Did I miss some steps? What's going on? And at the update that, no, I didn't miss any steps.

[00:06:17] I didn't miss any updates. But she had opted to have a kid on her own. And that was one of the first moments where I thought, maybe I could do it. And I don't know why it took knowing someone personally who made the courageous leap to do it that I thought, oh, I could do that. And then having a conversation with her really helped some of my fears around having a kid on my own involved, like, how do you pick a donor? Is there shame around this?

[00:06:47] Many of the same fears I'm sure you and others have had. But had a conversation with her, got put in touch with a couple of other women who had gone down the same path and got inspired. I will also say, and I'm trying to think of how the timeline all lines up, but at this time, we're also in the middle of a global pandemic. I had taken a year off to a private world, which only lasted for about a month.

[00:07:14] I was in Spain when the borders were closing. I had rented a cute little apartment, was going to take Spanish lessons for a year, like, figure out what I was doing with my life, and ended up having to rush back to Denver. So I had rented out the condo that I owned to someone. She ended up moving out, which was great, so I could move back home. But I found myself in Denver without a job, couldn't travel, couldn't really see my friends. I mean, it was a weird time for everyone, but I got a dog.

[00:07:43] I got the rushed pandemic puppy, and I love her more than anything in the whole wide world. I went from being like, I'm going to wait until I have a partner in a yard and all these things to get a dog, to I'm a crazy dog person. And in realizing that I built this little family with a dog. What was your gateway, Drell? My dog is 100% my gateway. Wow. Yeah. And it was this thought that, huh, you know, fuck it. I can make a family. Go ahead.

[00:08:13] I should change the name of this podcast to Fuck It, I Can Make a Family. Funny, right? Because I had a similar experience, and I don't remember what the aha was, but it's like we're just so programmed to not think of that as an option. And then it just takes one person. Or for me, strangely, I remember Hoda Kotb, who's on the Today Show, being one of the people that I was like, wait a minute, you just adopted babies in your mid-50s? Like, huh.

[00:08:39] And something just like that switch flips of, wait a minute, I can do this on my own? Like, that's allowed, you know? And then the minute that opens, something really changes, I think, in your ability to then be like, oh, could I? Do I want to? What does that entail? And then, you know, the do I want this and do I want it maybe more than a partner, at least in the short term, are some of those big scary questions. But I think that's right.

[00:09:06] It's not a question for me that, like, was there always. It just someone lit the light, and all of a sudden I was like, well, duh. I didn't think of this before. For me, it was one of the things that I waited. I sat on it, and I stewed in it. But then once I was ready to do it, I was like, okay, now we're doing this now. What did I get? Especially with COVID, right? We all got – I was in a similar boat. I was going through IVF stuff in COVID, and it's like, man, did we have a lot of time to think.

[00:09:35] And I feel like I explored every corner of my brain and, you know, every corner of Netflix as well. But it just – it gave me so much time to think and analyze and overanalyze. And so coming out of that, I think I probably was in a similar boat than you were, which is like, let's go. I also waited. I'm very much a planner. So I'm at home. COVID has happened. I don't have a job.

[00:10:02] I have this dog, but I'm in downtown in a three-story walk-up. And I was like, well, I need to line this up. I need a job so I can get a house with a yard for the dog. And then once I do that, then I can start the kid process. And nothing has ever lined up in the way that I've planned it in that sense of like, oh, I got a job. And then I got this house that I love. And then I waited until I got vaccinated. And I made the appointment shortly after I got vaccinated to implant an embryo. Yeah.

[00:10:31] How was the structure of what you ended up doing in the fertility world? Did you do IVF? Did you have an embryo donor? Well, how did that all work? So I froze my eggs in my early 30s. I was fortunate. And then I had a lot of eggs. And then I picked a donor and had embryos created from that. Season 3 of You and Me Kid is brought to you by Seattle Sperm Bank.

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[00:11:25] and grab a free all-access pass using the code YOUANDMEKID to start your search today. And then implanted one of those. I sat on the decision of should I do an IUI, try that a couple of times, or should I just go straight to IVF? And it was my fertility doctor endocrinologist who said, you know, just go straight to IVF. And in the back of my mind, I'm thinking that's because it's more lucrative for you.

[00:11:54] I'm being really dismissive in the whole process. And in hindsight, I'm really glad I did. I don't think I had the patience or the mental strength to do this multiple times. I felt really fortunate in that I had good embryos coming out of fine fertilizing, et cetera, and the first one worked. Yeah. Did you have an easy time picking a donor?

[00:12:23] I thought the process was horrible at first. Tell me more. Sure. And as I mentioned, it was the thing that I got really hung up on in this whole process of will I do this on my own. It felt yucky and weird. And I had just all these preconceived ideas about who the person would be. And it's the conversations with women who have done this before. One in particular was like, it's going to be your kid. It's not that big of a deal. Just pick one. It's your kid.

[00:12:53] And it seemed so flighty or just easy at the time to hear that. But I now prescribe to that very much that she is very much my kid. So I tried to do it on my own. Again, I was a little closed off or maybe secretive about the process of not really ready to share the news with everyone. And so I started looking at donor registries on my own and got completely overwhelmed.

[00:13:22] I don't know if you had the same experience. Like too many pictures, too many things. It almost felt like a weird online dating situation again. For sure. Yeah. And so I ultimately narrowed it down to one clinic and I got four of my closest friends on a Zoom and drank some wine. And at the end of it, we were like, we're going to pick one.

[00:13:51] Because the other thing, and you may have had this experience, is like once you pick one, you have to purchase the next day. Which is – Yeah. In like an Amazon checkout. I will never forget that in my entire life. Like adding it to my cart and buying it. And I took a screenshot of it because I was like, is that – wait, what? This really feels like Amazon. Having friends, having, you know, them around me that have known me some since elementary school, some since college in the prime time, giggle and enjoy the process was really helpful.

[00:14:21] Because I still, even in that moment, I was like, I just don't know about this. And they were so wonderful and supportive. And one made a spreadsheet. And it was – it ended up being really great. And it was like, okay, check. That's done. Yeah. Isn't it so funny now? I mean, I feel like especially with the podcast, that is the topic I end up answering for people the most.

[00:14:44] It's the one that feels really kind of strange to folks to have their kid have half the DNA of this person they're never going to meet or maybe they will. But now with a two-year-old, I'm like, it really like couldn't matter less at this stage in my life, right? She's not talking about the donor. We're not potentially meeting up with other donor siblings. Like we'll get there and it'll be a bigger part, I think.

[00:15:11] But right now it's like she's my kid and she's her own person. And it – for me at this moment, it really just like could not matter any less how she got here. But she's mine and she's her own thing. I completely agree. I will say the one thing. My daughter has this wild curly hair that I do not have.

[00:15:35] And so it's funny to field some questions on that and the way people broach asking the question whether they know my situation or not. Yeah. And she has bright blue eyes. I do not. But genes are interesting. There are things that are recessive. Yeah. My daughter is the same. She has like bleach blonde like surfer hair and she has a dimple. I don't have a dimple. But what was interesting is one of the things that I – I felt this weird connection with the photo of the donor as a baby.

[00:16:03] And I was like, this just looks like a happy, fun little kid. And my daughter looks exactly like the donor baby photo. So I really did get exactly what I ordered is my joke. And that's great because that's what I connected to the most was that visual part of the donor. But, yeah, I mean it's two years in I think it's just so interesting looking back on some of those decisions that my feeling at this point is I wish I'd gotten started earlier so I could give myself a chance to actually have more kids.

[00:16:32] Because the experience for me in the past years has been just so joyful and fulfilling and transformative. And I wish – I wish I'd given myself more time. I wish I'd done it earlier. But looking back, there wasn't an earlier date that I would have been ready to navigate all that came with I think the getting pregnant part to be honest. I think earlier I could have managed the parenting part.

[00:17:00] It was the like IBF, the decisions, the financial piece. I wouldn't have been ready until when I actually did pull the trigger. Do you think there's something to a shift in the last 10 years of this becoming more normal? I even feel that since having Ellie. Yeah. I mean when I started this process, nobody was talking about it. I was the only person that people knew. I still think I'm – a lot of times I'm the only person that people know that's a single mom.

[00:17:27] But I think talk of fertility treatments and IVF and all that is so pervasive in my life now. It's everywhere. I think it's just been a phenomenal shift in even the past five years. Mm-hmm. I would agree with you that I don't think I was ready 10 years ago. I don't think the conversations were being had. Agreed. It enabled me to be ready. Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. Which is part of the reason I started a podcast.

[00:17:53] Also to kind of help people fast forward a little bit through what we had to do which was like find the questions themselves and then find all of the potential answers and then choose the answer that was the best for us. And it just took – for me, it just took so much time to figure it out, how it was going to work and what my options were. And to this day and especially with this podcast, I'm now – every time I talk to somebody, I'm hearing about an option that I didn't even know existed.

[00:18:20] Like all these international options and embryo donors and, you know, I'm – my world is being opened up even further the more I have conversations because I think every single mom that I talk to is doing this differently, which I love. But, yeah, it's a very fascinating industry, I will say. So you have a two-and-a-half-year-old.

[00:18:44] How is parenting and motherhood different or the same than what you thought that it would be going in? It's interesting to think about parenting as one timeframe. Yeah, totally. Because there's parenting an infant and there's differences and challenges there.

[00:19:10] And then I marked on my calendar two weeks ago that I think my daughter's transitioned to being a kid. And parenting a kid is very different than parenting an infant. A hundred percent. Great point. How did the infant stage go for you? It was great. Frankly, there were parts of the infant phase that I thought were easier than I expected. I have been blessed with a great sleeper.

[00:19:36] And so this idea of sleepless nights, she just – she's been a good sleeper. And so that wasn't as challenging as I thought. And that's my own unique experience and I fully recognize that. So the question of what's different or like what didn't I expect? You have mentioned this too. There's a lot more joy to this than I thought.

[00:20:04] And again, to that earlier piece of I can build my family, there's a lot of joy in building a family and getting to do with it and create it in a way that I want to. And laughing and setting our norms and our traditions and getting to be goofy with a little kid. It's a lot of work but it's a lot of joy. Yeah.

[00:20:28] There's a – what I have a lot in terms of conversation with people is the perception is that it's a lot harder to be a single mom and there's less freedom in it. I think there's more freedom in it than people realize in that it is just us deciding what we're going to do on any given day at any given hour. It's just you deciding what you want to do about breastfeeding or feeding or sleep or travel or finances or whatever, right?

[00:20:57] And maybe there are moments where that feels lonely but I also think I feel an incredible amount of freedom to just build this family the way that I want to build this family. And even saying like my family, I was talking to Ellie about like this is our family this morning. And it still like hits me in this really like amazing way that like I have a family and I built it. And it's us now and we get to decide what we want to do.

[00:21:27] And it can be different than the way that I was raised or the same but gosh, there's something just so empowering about that. And it feels really free to know that nobody else gets to decide what we're going to do. We want to watch a movie all day on a Saturday? Great. Want to, you know, take a trip or change our, you know, how we're doing this or that? I find it just really empowering to be able to do that whenever I want. I would totally agree with that.

[00:21:53] There have been a few moments where I seek out others for some just decisions or guidance. I don't think that's unique to being a single mom. I think that's just being a parent of texting the friends, when do you move to a big kid bed or… Really. I do that all the time. With moms who I know parent like I'm parenting.

[00:22:18] I find those relationships for me more valuable than like a single mom friend necessarily. I just need friends who parent in a similar way to help me answer the, you know, call me back to reality when I'm like, gosh, this pacifier thing is really bugging me or… I'm thinking about a big kid bed and they're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Take it from the… Take it from those who've come before you, you know. Make the, you know, do this or do that. And it takes the weight off the decision alone, I think.

[00:22:46] I will say that is one of the advantages of being a little behind time-wise to a lot of close friends. There's just this wealth of information and it is seeking out the people that parent similarly and you know you're going to trust with their advice. Yeah. Yeah. I've found that a lot in toddlerdom because I'm a little bit behind you in that.

[00:23:06] We're about to go through potty training, crib to big bed, like transitions and we also have this pacifier thing and we're moving houses in the next couple weeks. But it's like we've got some big milestones coming up where it's been really refreshing to me to reach out to friends and be like, what did you do? What was your potty training strategy, right? And they're all different and you kind of take them and put them in a blender and decide what you're going to do.

[00:23:32] But yeah, I certainly have my like cabinet of advisors and without them I would be lost. It's interesting to me you brought this up. The number of people who tried to put me in touch with like their one acquaintance or somebody far removed from them who is also a single mother in this hopes that like this is going to be a unicorn friendship that I never would have considered. I am so appreciative and I recognize that we have a lot of probably shared experiences.

[00:24:02] But I have a lot of great mom friends and I don't need the single mom specifically when I have a mom friend over here I've known since I was seven and I trust every single thing she says. And I really enjoy hanging out with her and I enjoy hanging out with her kids and it just seems exhausting to me to try to make a new mom friend just for the sake that we have this part in common which is such a small piece of – it's not a small piece but it's like the infancy of Laurel's story. Yeah.

[00:24:31] Going into something bigger. Well, what I heard in that as well which I talked to – at the end of season two I interviewed a woman named Kristen Hargrove and she founded this incredible single parent community called Co-Tripper and she was like I don't stamp myself with the single mom stamp. Like it is not the most defining factor about me but strangely like when people introduce me sometimes the common thing is like oh Sarah's a single mom and they mean it really lovingly right?

[00:24:58] But it's not like the thing I define myself by and I kind of heard a little bit of that in what you just said as well. I totally agree with that. I generally avoid the single mom term unless it's around logistics of no I don't have that second person to do for the second mom. But otherwise – See it just needs to be the day as I can. Yeah.

[00:25:21] It does take a little more planning for us to do things with kid and without kid than someone who can just like pop out of the house for 30 minutes or a couple hours. Yes. In your toddler life, our most recent text exchange was about you taking a fairly big trip with your daughter.

[00:25:44] Travel has become a common theme across almost all of my discussions over the past two seasons and so I'm interested in what your experience as someone who traveled pre-baby a lot and clearly enjoys travel has been with the kiddo. I did just take a big trip. I'm going to take a step back a little bit though and say that in the last two years I have not traveled that much and it has been really refreshing and grounding and just as joyful.

[00:26:12] I mean maybe I'm exhausted from going backpacking every weekend and skiing and counting up number of ski days and all of these things that it was really fun in the first few years to like throw a kiddie pool in the backyard and have another little kid friend come over and just hang. Yep. So this idea that, oh, I'm just going to bring my kid with me everywhere and we're going to keep going on these adventures, like maybe I just needed to slow down a little bit.

[00:26:39] But that said, I did take a trip this summer and I have traveled with her before. She's camped twice this summer, which was great. Wow. I still haven't gone – I haven't done the campaign. Were you solo or with other families? With other families, the first one was actually with other families I didn't know. We went bike camping, so loaded it all in a cargo bike. Oh, fun.

[00:27:04] Then met some new friends and went camping and kids don't sleep in a tent very long. At 4.45 in the morning, she was awake and like ready to go. And then the second one I did was car camping, which was infinitely easier with all of my high school friends and a whole – I think there were like eight or nine children that just ran around feral for the day and all crashed really easily. So it was fun. I love that. You're making me hopeful.

[00:27:31] I haven't quite – I just haven't crossed that bridge yet. Okay. So this big trip last – this summer was like a multiple flight. It was a big commitment in terms of kind of the two of you being solo. So tell me how that went. Yeah. We flew to Portland, Maine.

[00:27:51] I have two friends from college who both randomly moved to small towns in Maine, and it seemed like a good way to travel with destinations that I knew would be helpful when you had a kid. Like I was going to have support when I was there. So we flew Denver to Portland.

[00:28:11] Portland, my daughter had not had an iPad at this point, so I bought the Amazon Fire the night before, and I also did all of the Googling on, I think she's too big for the infant travel car seat. Do I rent a car seat out there? Like so many of these questions. Yes. Yeah. Just – I was right there with you. So much stuff. Yep. But I also do not understand how you could do this without being physically strong.

[00:28:38] I think – I think mothers just inherently are physically strong, but I have a huge bag. The only stroller we have is not small. I have got a car seat. I've got a not small toddler. And I have to get all these things. Like once you check in, I'm like, if she screams the whole flight, that's fine, but I'm not carrying like 95 pounds of gear. It's the car to the luggage check-in. I feel like I've succeeded when I get to the gate. That's the hardest thing is car to gate.

[00:29:08] Yes. I will say that maybe one of my biggest travel hacks – and I realize this is a luxury, but it's also a result of many years of corporate travel – are the airline lounges. I love the United Lounge with a toddler. I would pay for one time to do it. What's the biggest benefit? Because they're contained. Yeah. And the food options in the lounge are exactly what a toddler wants.

[00:29:37] Oh, you want all of this sliced fruit and blueberries? Eat as many as you want. Great. And you can run around in circles. The Denver Airport, as you know, is so chaotic that if you can get a little bit of a respite of like, just be contained here for a little bit. Again, not a luxury that everybody has, but I will take one fewer trip over the course of her childhood to simply pay for the lounges. Yeah. God, I'm so glad you brought that up. I have a United card that I've had for like, God, 12 years at this point. And there's a new card.

[00:30:07] And it's basically the same fee, but you get the addition, which is like primed for parents' is my baggage is free. Two bags are free. So I'm also very conscious of how much money I'm spending on baggage because as a corporate traveler, I never checked a bag. Heaven forbid. And then it's two complimentary lounge, you know, tickets. I don't even know what they're called. Lounge passes a year. And I'm like, oh, heck yeah.

[00:30:36] Let's go. Totally agree. In there. Yeah. You're locked in there. The bathrooms are bigger. The bathrooms are well stocked. I don't – it just – You're not leaving your stroller at the gate while you walk 10 gates because your kiddo wants to be on the moving sidewalk. Okay, cool. I love this. So overall, how did the three – how did the whole move go, trip go? Well, I mean, again, airports are tough. So we get to the other side. We're in Portland, Maine, and I see someone I kind of know on the flight. Oh, no.

[00:31:07] Oh, no. It's great, actually. So I'm getting everything in, and I was like, Kate, can you watch my stroller while I go to the bathroom? Because it is really hard to get a stroller at all of this into the – like, these are the little things that traveling with one extra person would help. Where you're like, I can just dash over here, do this, come back, as opposed to like in and out and all of these things. She did great. So it was a four-hour flight. She wanted to watch the back of the United screens.

[00:31:35] I believe it was Bad Baby was across two different screens. Didn't care about her iPad because I couldn't figure out how to get the kid shows on or how to get the headphones to work. Felt very dumbfounded by modern technology, which I'll have to figure out. Yep. You've got that. She has also been a very carsick kid. I hate driving, and I don't know if I've instilled that on her – in her. But she's not been great in the car.

[00:31:59] And so we were driving to a friend's house that is four hours north of Portland, maybe three and a half, and I was petrified. Do you do it before nap? Do you do it after nap? Do you – how do you squeeze it in there? Do you – because as a single parent, if she pukes in the car, which she has done numerous times, you have to – like, there's no second help, and you're on the side of the road. And these are just things to think about that make me not want to drive in the car that often.

[00:32:25] I mean, the number of times we've driven to the mountains, and she has thrown up all over herself, and she looks miserable. I'm hoping she gets out of that. But I switched her forward-facing earlier than they recommended because I was like, well, we're not going to go anywhere until she doesn't puke. But we made it to Maine, and she was fine. She did the drive just fine. She watched – the roads weren't windy. She watched Paw Patrol on repeat, managed it the entire time.

[00:32:55] And then there were just all these cute moments that made it worth it and that were swimming in the ocean. And she hates sand, so I have to carry her out there. Like, there's a lot of physical labor of toddler life, so I have to carry her out there and, like, dunk her in the water because she refuses to put her feet on the bottom of the ocean or any sand. And so I carry her, and she's, like, slashing around. She's having a great time. And she somehow, like, gets water on her body, and she licks her arm.

[00:33:23] She's like, Mom, Mom, it's salty. Try it. Try it. And it just – there are these little moments that kind of snap you back where I'm like, oh, yeah, that drive was tough. And you just experienced the ocean, and I got to experience it with you, and it was great. Yep. Gosh, that just, like, really sums it up. I feel the same way about travel of any sort. It's like you go into it with, like, game face. Like, we're getting on a flight. We're going to do this thing. We're going through security. It's going to be a little crazy.

[00:33:53] But being somewhere new – you know, I love being somewhere new as a 43-year-old woman, right? And as a 2-year-old, it's like seeing new people. And I'm taking Elly to Mexico, as you know, in November to see the ocean. She's never seen the ocean, you know? And there are those incredible moments where, like, you watch them grow up, and you get to experience that with them. And it's not just the same old playground in the neighborhood or same breakfast over and over and over again, right?

[00:34:20] It's like that – the newness is really magical when I think it's shared. And so for me, those trips have all been very, very well worth it. Yeah. I think it's an interesting and really fun phase of life, too, as well, to visit other friends who have kids or partners or dogs or whatever family they have created and get to share mine with them. And so often I've done girls trips, weddings. That's how I've seen a lot of my friends I went to college with on the East Coast.

[00:34:48] But it was fun to have my daughter play with my college roommates' three kids. Yeah. Take all their clothes. She came home with a whole suitcase of hand-me-down clothes. And this morning, she insisted on wearing Allie's boots to school. And there are just these moments of a broader community that are really rewarding as well. Yeah. And I don't know if you found this when you were visiting your friends, but when I – a lot of our travel is visiting friends and staying with them and with their kids.

[00:35:16] And it's – for me, I have an okay sleeper. Allie does not sleep well on travel. And so I know that what I'm going into is like a multi-night, fairly bad sleep scenario. And so I have to like gear up for that. But what I also know is that there's other people in this new house that know me and care about me and that when parents of any sort, but maybe moms in my scenario specifically, are together, it's like everyone just raises each other's kids.

[00:35:44] And it's chaos at all times, but it's this strange controlled chaos where like I don't even have to think if I'm running to the bathroom in the morning, like of course my daughter's going to have yogurt and fruit in front of her two minutes later because like there's another mom or dad in the kitchen. And of course at five o'clock, they're going to pour a glass of wine and I'm going to have one too. And like it is really nice to have that support and just that like feeling like you're all

[00:36:10] kind of working together to make sure everyone is fed, including yourselves and everyone's cleaning and everyone's, you know, I love that. I find it really heartwarming. And I think my daughter loves it too, having other people, you know, other adults kind of spend that much time with her. We were in Maine and I'm at my college roommate's house and she's got three kids. And again, my daughter's a good sleeper, but she was off schedule. I put her down, something disturbed her. She was awake.

[00:36:38] There was no consoling her because the other kids are making noise. And I'm okay with a little bit of you got to cry it out and fuss until you get to sleep, particularly in this situation. Like there was no consoling her. And unless I lied down with her for the next three hours, it was just going to be faster and easier if she cried it out for a little bit. So I go downstairs, roommate's husband pours me a glass of wine, college roommate's still

[00:37:04] doing bedtime upstairs, and her son storms out of his room like marching. Where is that girl's mom? I got shamed by a seven-year-old for a parenting tactic. And my friend had to explain to him that he often did that too, that this is just a normal phase of parenting. Yeah, it is really funny, right?

[00:37:31] And it's like I also feel like similar to what you were saying before in that we reach out to our friends for those comments. Whether it's meeting another mom after school for two hours or going on a trip with people I like am really close and love. It's the amount of ideas and support and like brainstorming I get to do with those parents in that target amount of time. Like I leave exhausted, but I also leave being like knowing how they're parenting.

[00:38:00] And I'm like, oh, I haven't even made that thing for my daughter, you know? Or gosh, you guys are watching this show? That's cool. Or you're trying this thing with potty training? Awesome. It's just like more intel, which for me is really helpful. And you get to see it in action of how other people are raising, you know, kids at the same age or different ages. And then see how your kid responds to their kind of different energy. And I love watching that. I think there is something to that though of you have learned that as a mother. Or maybe that's me.

[00:38:30] I remember in those early days, I didn't ask some of these questions and some were to my benefit. I didn't know that I was supposed to be afraid of kids choking. I don't know how I missed that, but like I was never nervous with feeding her food. And that was great. I also missed things like it somehow escaped my mind that I was supposed to size up on diapers. And so it wasn't until a friend came over that she was like, why is she still in newborn diapers? And I was like, yeah. What in there was a day? Yeah. I mean. Clearly.

[00:39:00] Ellie's teachers did that for me. They're like, it's time to size up diapers and change the nipple speed on the bottle. And I was like, didn't know either of those were a thing. Thank you for that. Is your kiddo in daycare school, nanny? How are you working and mothering at the same time? Yep. She is in daycare. You have discussed this on your podcast. I love daycare. I love my daycare. I love the daycare work. I am like the PR rep for daycare. Yeah. It's phenomenal.

[00:39:30] It's the only one she got into. Not that there's a lengthy process, but it just, that time, it's really hard to get an infant into daycare. And so it's not the direction that I want, like location direction that I wanted to go, but it has ended up working out so well. They have fantastic hours. I get a lot of friends' advice on this when they're like, what do you look for in a daycare? Hours? Yep. Staff retention? How long has the teachers been there? And do they provide meals? And vacation.

[00:39:59] How many vacation days do they take? Because in Boulder, we've got schools that are, I think everyone like want, they're the want to go to schools that take so many breaks throughout the year and that I didn't think about that a couple of moms gave me like warning signs like, oh, that place does look great, but just a heads up. Check out the calendar. Because you don't get those days off. I know. I had a friend who was talking about the two weeks between Christmas and New Year's. The dark days. I like to call them the dark days. Oh.

[00:40:29] I do think the teachers at my daughter's school are given enough vacation time, but they are only closed Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Ooh. I know. And they're open 6.30 to 6.30 every day. Wow. I call those two weeks the dark days because I have, it's usually like 10 days after Christmas where it's just us and it's like the post-Christmas magic has gone away and man, within the first

[00:40:58] couple of days, it's like we've done all the fun things and it's just cold and dark and I am completely over it. I have a dream. I just interviewed this woman from this incredible company called Boundless Life. Have you heard about Boundless Life? Well, you're coming with me now. So Boundless Life is this company started by some very brilliant people who realized the concept of families traveling was that they didn't want to plan logistics and they didn't want to

[00:41:27] have to deal with housing and childcare and a workplace. So they have 10 locations across the globe and when you kind of buy into their packages, most of which are three months, it's Airbnbs that are already family-friendly within their network as part of your fee, your childcare for all ages, school, Montessori English-speaking school for kids of all ages and then communities. So you start with like 30, 20, 30 other families in a cohort and you all live by each other and

[00:41:56] there's a co-working space. So you just show up and it's like here's your new friends, here's the school, here's your workspace and here's your house that we have already made sure is child safe and has little kid cups and all the things that you need. Like have the most incredible time in the mountains of Spain onward and I'm so obsessed with it and I can't wait to go. In January is my point to bring it full circle. That's when I want to go because that is the saddest time for me as a parent. Can we join you? Yes.

[00:42:25] I did this job and under the premise that it was flexible, you can work wherever you want, that's fine, but my daughter needs to be in daycare. There were – I needed to do like three hours of work the entire time I was in Maine and friends ended up being really helpful, but there's not the like, oh, let me sneak this. No. I can't write an email. No. Like there – yeah, I totally agree with you and yes, you should come. You should Google Boundless Life the minute we get off the call.

[00:42:55] I want to ask you before we run out of time, in this kind of two and a half year old stage that you're in, are you guys starting to think of some bigger trips? Do you have some plans as you're turning this corner of like things you want to do together or as your little gal kind of grows more personality and character and stuff, are you getting excited about this next phase? Yes. And sad. Are you sad? I'm sad. I'm a little sad.

[00:43:22] It's the moments where we finish reading a book at night and she's just really long now and there's – That's the exact same for me. That's the exact same thing for me. I'm like, are you as tall as me? I was thinking that last night. I'm like, are you going to stop sitting on my lap during reading time? I'm going to die when she stops sitting on my lap. That's going to be hard. But then there are other things like she loves her Strider bike and I'm looking forward to more bike rides, more ski trips, doing some of the nerdy things that I like to do.

[00:43:52] Like she loves to do floor puzzles. I'm like, can we get a little better so we could do a puzzle that we can both do together? Oh, nice. So you asked about big trips. I want to do puzzles and I want to ride bikes and – I love that. I'm at big plans. It doesn't need to be travel if that's not on the agenda. I don't – nothing imminent. I'm going to take her to southern Arizona to see a friend in kind of a rural location in a couple months. So that'll be super fun. Okay.

[00:44:21] We've done like some of the good – Yeah. Camping, backpacking. We just rented a house on the lake with two other friends and their kids and it was just really fun to see all five kids. And my daughter's the youngest by a couple months. But she's inching to this phase where they can all go play in a basement together or go play outside and it'll be fine. And many friends have described that as like a wonderful milestone of – you know, the two friends got to sit on the porch and have a glass of wine.

[00:44:51] I still sat a little bit closer inside like making sure – Listening for things crashing. You can fall down stairs. Like she's still a danger to herself and so I'm looking forward to kind of getting over that hump. I am right there too with you and I had a mom recently on a podcast interview say she'd just gotten to the point where she could go to the pool and read a book and didn't have to watch her kids. And she had had that aha moment like sitting in the chair like, oh my God, I don't have to watch you all the time.

[00:45:21] That's incredible. I have to ask you and I'm getting a sense of what I think the answer is here but I'd love to hear from you. We are told prior to becoming – whether it's parents or single parents that our balance in life will go completely away, right? It's chaos and self-care goes out the window and what is self-care and things will just kind of I think be chaotic from then on out.

[00:45:45] I have felt quite the opposite and I'm interested in how the balance of your work life, friend life, life and parenting life are feeling at this stage. I think it has definitely ebbed and flowed over the last two and a half years. There were some phases of newborn life that were a heck of a lot easier. Like there wasn't a fight to get out in the door in the morning. And now I know that like from the moment she wakes up until we walk into that classroom,

[00:46:15] it is a bit of a battle. And so that's just a challenge. That's not necessarily speaking to balance. I feel out of balance. I'm not going to lie. So I maybe don't share the like I have mastered this. I've had a lot of friends say, oh, you make it look so easy. I'm like, yes. And I forget the silliest things because the mental checklist of things that I have to remember for my daughter, for me, for the household, for the dog.

[00:46:45] Particularly in taking a new job recently that I'm now in the office a lot of days and that's been hard. So I'm now commuting and having to show up to work every day. Like I didn't just fight that battle. So it's tough. I'm trying and actively working on things like taking a day off every quarter just to do life admin. Like some of the basic stuff of cleaning out of closet.

[00:47:13] How are you supposed to change over a toddler's clothes when they're sleeping in their room when you need to be cleaning their room? Some other little things I've done that have helped. I've gotten better about asking my neighbors who live close enough to watch the monitor so I can go take my dog for a walk at night. Like my dog is... Yeah, the dog baby. When I dog sit, which I do a lot, that's a tough balance. It's a tough balance.

[00:47:38] She spends a couple of two nights a week at a loving family's house that love her and take her on a lot of walks because it's just too much sometimes. That's great. I love that you outsource that a little bit. I outsourced that. I bought a treadmill. One thing that I have really struggled with is just the amount of home time. She sleeps from 7.30 to 7.30 and I can't leave. And that's really hard. And you're like, I just want to go for a run.

[00:48:08] And in the hours that she's awake, I need to get her out the door. I need to get her to daycare. I need to do all my work. And it just... So now that has been a big game changer of like, I can do something for me for 20 minutes in the morning that I love to do, but I can now do it at home. It's not the same. Yeah. But that helps. I also just found a woman in my neighborhood to do my laundry every Monday. She's doing my laundry and Laurel's laundry. And I will pay for that.

[00:48:38] That's incredible. I've thought about outsourcing their laundry as well. There are just a few of these little things that I'm like, I've just worked a full day. I've cared for a child all day. I've tried to keep myself healthy and sane and do something like reading a book for a few minutes. I'm like, I can't hold laundry right now. Nope. Good. I love that. I love the hacks. I think that like those little things where we like let ourselves off the hook are so... They're so key. And it is.

[00:49:08] It's like, I don't by any means mean to sound like I've mastered the balance. It's so many checklists at any given time. And my job, I'm a realtor. So my job is incredibly inconsistent. And so there are times when my balance is completely off and it happens out of nowhere because real estate happens out of nowhere. And there are days where I feel like I have the whole day to do all that life maintenance and I feel great by the end of the night.

[00:49:32] But it's every day and even like by the hour, I think with children the age that we have, it's like recalibrating how I'm feeling, what we need. Do we need to be alone? Do we need a break? Do we need to see other families? Do I need to nap? Do I need to do laundry? Like it is, it's a lot more brain power for sure. I have to try to convince you and I will cut this off the podcast to come to Mexico with me and Becca and Andrew.

[00:50:04] It's, I think my family is going to do a vacation at that time, which would be hate for about my mom and... Okay. But I want in on the next one. Awesome. I want another family to come. I think it would be so fun. Yeah. I love it. That's really great. Yeah. Well, regardless of whether or not you joined me in Mexico, thank you for chatting. It was so good to catch up. We really, really, really need to actually get together in real life and hang out.

[00:50:33] You have half the conversation you had on. Exactly. Get through maybe four sentences in the two hours we're following our kids and making sure they don't kill themselves. Yeah. But you'll probably bring snacks and I'll bring snacks and my snacks will be more exciting to Ellie than the snacks that you brought. Nailed it. You absolutely nailed it. This 100% will be the longest conversation we ever have, even if we're friends for 20 more years. Because with kids, it's just you can't get through anything. But it was so good to see you. You too. Thanks for inviting me and sharing my story.

[00:51:03] Yeah, of course. Okay, Katie. Talk to you soon. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I hope you enjoyed it. For more information about the podcast or me, go to youandmekidpod.com. See you soon. The Rodecaster Pro 2 is the world's most powerful all-in-one audio solution for all types of creators, including podcasters. Graffiti and Julius use one at the plug.

[00:51:31] It offers studio quality audio and revolutionary features for creators. While being incredibly easy to use, Rodecaster Pro 2 all-in-one production solution for podcasting. It's on sales for $690 right now. And there's a link in this episode description. Check it out.