April 29, 2020 • 45 mins
This week Bryn breaks everything, Maeven decides to pee in her pants (a lot) and Beth and Peter brainstorm Coronavirus baby names.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
This is it, it's we knows parenting. I'm Peter McNerney,
I'm Beth now and where here we are here we
are now, uh, still living in quarantine like the rest
of you, or most people at least, still surviving. Um,
everything's every day blurs into the next in some ways. Yeah.
(00:35):
I just sat down, as I often do with being
these recordings, and I have a moment I go what
happened this week? And then I next thought was what
is a week? What is time? It's I feel like
it makes us really have to lean into the routine
of the week and like go hard on Friday night
and Saturday to like feel like it's the weekend. It's
(00:58):
so funny because the weekends have are now we haven't
had full real weekends for our entire relationship because I'm
usually teaching in from class on weekends. And know, it's
what I've always wanted, is like for us to actually
have downtime, and we do it. We do, although I'm
sort of inevitably there's sort of some work being caught
(01:19):
up on because we only have half work days throughout
the week, but it is better than before. But I'm
doing housework and you're doing we're getting ready to two.
Being homeowners, we do have like a weird Saturday cleaning routine. Um,
I took a lot of garbage to the dump. There's
(01:40):
no garbage service here, so I go to the dump
and I love it. You love the dump. I could
just sort all my recyclables. You love errand's like I do.
I think I do. That has not always been true.
You know. My next task is what I'm going to
redo the horseshoe pits. There's horseshoe pits where we are.
(02:03):
They're like sixty years old. Okay, if you read those though,
can you make me some um garden beds? Can you
put build extra squares for plant and budgies and stuff?
All right? Is this a challenge? Yeah? I don't know
when we're if we're ever going to leave here, but
I think I'm just gonna mentally prepare for it, being
(02:25):
like not until summer or later. Yeah, We've we've planted
all those herbs. We have to be here until at
least we Yeah, I just feel like planting makes me
feel like I'm like preparing for sort of like a
good time and not like being trapped in a place
that I don't normally live, you know, just like this
is my home and making it my home. Things things
(02:48):
are alive here because of me. It's my home. I
made the life here. You made honestly, you made almost
you know, almost half of the life here. Almost half
of the life here. Yeah, okay, um no, but I
did today, so I had this is so boring, but
(03:09):
this is my life. Now. There had been some herbs
that your mom planted at this house last summer, and
so they were in this pot outside and they were
like roots, but they were kind of dead, and there
was like a couple that seems sort of salvageable, but
it was still really cold outside. So I took some
of the rosemary inside and put it in a glass
of water, hoping that it would grow roots. And then
(03:30):
it like sort of grow root, and then when I
touched it, I like accedentally broke the root off, and
then it like and then like three more weeks went
by and now it has a root, and now I
put it in a pot of dirt, and I'm like,
just like, these are the things, like it will make
my day if this plant grows these this is my life.
(03:51):
It's like I've I've been fixing door knobs and hinges,
and it is so satisfying. There are two doors upstairs
there are so old that they're all warped. That the
door wouldn't close because the just the door is too
bigger than the doorframe. I went in the basement and
I found a planer and I went up on top
(04:14):
of the door and I just scraped like a quarter
of an inch of the wood off the top of
the door and it closes. The doors never closed for
my entire life. And I fixed the lock on the
bathroom door upstairs that shouldn't lock, So that was very satisfying.
There you go, and you got this ship. The bathroom
in our room has a window on it. Yeah. For
(04:35):
some reason, it's like a French door to the bathroom
where you with like a cheer curtain hanging over it
that was on the outside of the door. So whenever
I would go pee, the kids would come in the bedroom,
pull the curtain aside and stare at me. And it's
like just not like how what I want to be
thinking about when I'm sitting in the bathroom. And now
(04:56):
you can't see see that shade at all. That is
rock shade. And I put on the inside of the door.
That didn't even occur to me that the shade was
on the outside. I understand why why they did that,
because if you're going to put like a curtain, you
don't necessarily want to getting steamed up and moldy the
master bedroom. So anyway, it's yeah, it's well in This
(05:19):
house also has like has had additions put on at
different times, so sometimes there's just like weird little quirks
of like why is this window to the other room.
So I which went for a little walk today. It's
been raining, it's going to rain all week here, and
I went to the mailbox that I built, and uh,
(05:39):
you're so proud on the way back your crowning. It's
just something I had never even considered. Well, now that
we know that you know how to poor concrete. My
sister is really eager for you to put up a
basketball hoop. I'm not against that. She's dying for you
to do. Not a great place for it, but I
(06:02):
just don't know if and how we could get a
hoop delivered right now, if that's possible, maybe to have
one home depot um probably not home depot. I've been
going to lose anyway, um um, we've had our children
(06:23):
have been still slightly insane, pretty good. I mean, Britain,
I feel like we're over sending Brent to his room,
but it's been a really rainy couple of weeks and
so they're cooped up and I think sometimes he just
like he gets overloaded and then he's like beyond help,
(06:46):
you know what I mean. This morning I met you
made them. They're nice little worksheets, which was a nice
surprise when we sat down to start Daddy school because
we started we I do it in the morning, and
you made these little things to drop a picture of
day right, a thing, here's your name. Tracey'd copy it
so that Maven and Britne could do together. There's a
(07:07):
nice balance of like things that they both could do.
And uh Brin said, I'm not doing this, and when
I walked out of the room, he ripped it up
and put it in the trash and I got so mad.
That is really annoying because I spent a minute making that.
But then Maven did the same thing with the other one,
(07:28):
and then when they calmed down, they then both did
the remaining page that you made for them. So you
did twice as much more as you need to where
they went the trash for somebody. I think that a
weekend of so much TV and then they woke up
the morning, watched TV and it was hard to get
back into the Monday routine. Yeah, they've been doing a
(07:49):
lot of that sort of thing lately. Maven has I
think I had heard somewhere that like a lot of
children are regressing right now because the coronavirus and routines
are not going correctly and they're just feeling unsettled. So
Maven has started peeing her pants again, which is not
(08:10):
something she really did for a long time. Yeah, I
mean here and there. Yeah, she's had occasional accidents here
and there, but it's not like a thing she ever
really had a problem with. This week, she has peter
her pants like ten times twice today she's been she
wore three dresses today. I think it was yesterday. She
peter her pants definitely four times in one day. And
(08:33):
I'd like keep trying to explain it to her, and
I'm trying not to get team mad at her because
I don't want her to be ashamed about it, like
I just want she doesn't seem to be ashamed. I know,
but like when you you were kind of getting mad
at her, and then she like has started lying to
us about it. So now it's more annoying because you
don't know how long she's walking around and like sitting
(08:54):
on stuff with peepye pants, and so I like, I'll
like grab, I'll pick her up or something and feel
her butt, and her pants were all wet. And I
don't know how long she's been doing that. And she
keeps when I tell her she paid her pants, she
keeps being like, no, it's just sweat. It's like so
much p I'm like, are you your little girls won't sweat?
(09:16):
Like you're a bad liar three year old? She's she's
lying so much lately. I walked into the room now,
and I feel like I immediately to see Brin or
may even look up at me, like Hi, the face
just said I wasn't doing anything, so don't look in
my hands behind my back. I didn't just eat an
entire bag of Reese's peanut butter chips. So this morning
(09:43):
she got ahold of a bag of chocolate chips that
I kind of knew she knew about, but she was
being kind of sly about. I would see her sneak
a couple of chocolate chips out and then put it
back in the drawer and then like go about her business.
And I was like, at least she's being like sort
of like considerate, like on Brand, who would just like
dumped the whole thing all over the floor, you know,
(10:03):
and so I just throw them all over the room
and go, what, Yeah, he would just eat. So I
hadn't really like put an end to it because it
didn't seem like as big of a problem with some
of their other raids. And then this morning she had
chocolate all over her face and I found out from
them that they're eating chocolate chips, but I didn't see
them anywhere. And she was walking around carrying this like
soft cloth easter basket. She got like carrying it like
(10:27):
a purse. And all of a sudden I look in
I realized she has a whole bag of chocolate chips
in the easter basket. She's just been like carrying it
around the house like a little psycho. What does psycho?
And that little psycho is about to turn four, I know,
on Friday. I can't believe it's already here. And you know,
(10:49):
it's the weirdest. The weirdest thing about her birthday I
think is the fact that we won't have any wrapping paper.
I know. I was trying to decided to just do
anything about that, and then I it's like I don't
care well for I realized for a few days as
I was like, well, we'll just use newspaper, and then
I was like, I haven't touched a newspaper in how
(11:10):
long we don't have newspaper? Do you think we have
newspapers because I've had a newspaper. I'm in this house
which I connect to my parents. I connected being home
where there was always newspaper. I mean, I didn't think
about it. It was a half thought. I'm just put
it in boxes. Maybe we'll make it a scavenger hut.
(11:33):
Would that be a fun way to open your presence
because it's actually just annoying to hide stuff on Easter
because then you have to mentally remember where everything is
when they can't find it. Um, But what if you're
a parent that loves that? I disagree. It's about idea. Wow.
(11:56):
I she told me this today that she wants a
narwhale cake, which I'm like, how the hell am I
going to make a narwhal. I mean just not easy.
You make a cake. The narwhal face is easier than
a unicorn, and we'll just make a little cone with
paper and put it on top. Yeah, I guess so.
(12:18):
I love this idea, you know, the narwhale in Elf. Bye, buddy,
I hope you'll find your dad. I feel like that's
the design, like a little mouth, and I that we
should go for. Okay, great, I'm so glad you're so enthusiastic. Um,
(12:41):
what else? We can't go outside because it's raining for
the rest of our lives. Um Brin smashed a lamp
this week, among other things that was destroyed. If you
want to see all the things that Britain has broken
since we've been here, um, go to my Instagram. He
also to day I thought for a second that he
(13:01):
broke his nose because he was trying to play fight
with me and then just whirled himself towards me, and
I like sort of caught him, but his face flew
into the side of the couch really hard. And then
he pulled back and I was like, are you okay?
And he was like no, and and and then I
just see his nose was like I could see him
(13:22):
like squinting, and I could see him like trying to
decide how bad his face hurt, because he slammed his
nose inside and then he was just like squinting and
like feeling it for a second, and then slowly blood
started dripping out of his nostril. I was he's handled
it well at first, and then he didn't stand still
(13:45):
well because then you were like, oh, hey, buddy, do
you want me to graphically describe how this blood is
coming out of your nose? I knew. I was like
you were like you were like, what does it taste
like in your throat? Blood? What does blood taste like?
You were actually this have a scarier sense of experience.
That caught his attention. That was the most successful thing
I did know you. Once you left, we talked about it,
(14:07):
and he was he was like, well, it distressed him
when he wanted to know how I knew what metal
tasted like, and I was like, that's a good question,
because it tastes like blood. Um. But when I came
over there, I knew. I knew. I was like, I
need to stay calm because the other day you and
Alison were out and when Britain broke the lamp. He
(14:33):
was doing so he loves Monsters, Inc. And Monsters University,
the two fine Pixar films. And in Monsters University there's
a whole plot where they're doing like the scare games
in college, and one of the events is like they
have to sneak by this librarian, so it's a sneaking game.
(14:55):
So Brin loves to sneak around as if he's one
of the members of Uzma Kappa. And uh so he was.
I was like walking a room and he'll like sneak
with Maven around the edges, and of course they couldn't
be louder because they're on all fours, like quiet, quiet,
and so he was sneaking around the back of the
(15:16):
couch and the table, and of course that's where the
plug to the lamp was. The lamp is a basically
a giant glass jar that my mom filled with pine
cones and it's very cool and then a lamp plugs
it on top. So he pulled that off and it
fell basically on top of him, um and it shattered
(15:39):
on the wall above his head, and then he got
wedged between the table and the window. So that it
didn't follow out of the ground, but all of the
shattered glass fell down to the ground where he was
on all fours and so I saw the shot shatter,
and you know, very pan necked. I screamed. I said,
(16:03):
don't move, like stop stop, and of course would Brant do,
but he was totally freaked out by the fact that
I freaked out and just started like in my mind,
he'll like get food on his hand or something, and
I'll be like brand and he like starts flapping the
food all around the kitchen, like just like splashing it everywhere.
(16:26):
I don't know how he did not cut himself, but
he then was like on knees, his feet, his knees,
his hands, all of them running like like a Fred
Flintstone starting his car. They can think they're way out
of there. Um. The whole time I was like stop,
don't move, no freeze, stop eddie where they got out
(16:48):
there like Brant? And then I quickly calmed down and said,
it's like the reason why I was yelling of glass
and I don't want to get hurt, are you okay?
I'm not mad at you, um, But it was a
really scary moment where I thought he's going to have
like five cuts all of him. So when he had
a bloody nose and I knew he was going to panic,
(17:09):
I went straight to that and I was like, hey, buddy,
we're fine. Blood buddy, the blood, it's cool, right. Can
we talk about the Mann pee pants incident, which which
one where you got very angry? I don't when did
I get angry? You were like, she pewed her pants,
(17:33):
and then we took them off and put them in
the laundry, and then she went to the laundry basketball
put the pepe pants. She put the pea pants back on,
and then you were getting really mad at her. So
he took the pants off again, and we're hiding them
and she's still trying to get them up off a
high shelf. Or you forgot the step where I in
front of her put them in the sink to wash
(17:54):
them and got them all wet. So I was like,
well now you can't. In my mind was like, well,
she won't want to wear him now, and so I
threw him in the washing machine and she immediately rushed
for the washing machine. I was like, I was like,
come on, I had to go do a story part
live show, in the basement and prepare all the tech
for it, and so I was so annoyed, and then
(18:15):
I put it up high, and then I don't remember
what happened. Well, at one point you got so angry
at her that you were They were like, you want
to wear peep pants, Fine, you don't get close. And
then you took her shirt off and took that away.
And then she was standing there naked, like pouting and
(18:35):
stomping her feet for so long. And it sounds cruel,
and it was, and it was weird because she was
being she was stood in the mudroom. So I put
her pants up the highest point in the mud room.
There's no way she could ever get to it, and
then she kept reaching for it. She knew she can't
reach it, it's like more than double our height, but
(18:56):
looking at me going But she also had no pants
and no one wear on and just her T shirt
and was weirdly getting self conscious, so she would try
to cover herself with jackets and then I would ignore her.
But then she peek around the corner to see if
I was looking, and then I wasn't looking, but then
she wanted me to look so that she could be
defiant and then I did look, but then she was
(19:18):
self conscious because she was naked, and so it was
just like there was so many complex emotions. I was
like sure, and then I was like she was like
that door aside was like cracked open, and she was
standing in your coat that was hanging on the hook,
and she was like huddling in it, shivering, and so
I went to shut the door. So then of course
(19:39):
she's so angry. She goes over and opens the door
back up and then goes back into your coat to
like shiver naked, and she just kept like staring at
me through her like dirty bangs and just like being like,
we ate dinner while she stood in the mudroom and
we're just trying to ignore her because we tried to
help her, like hey, let's do this, and then we're
(20:02):
like all right, we're gonna ignore you. And then she
was so mad that we were ignoring her that for
all of dinner she was in the mud room and
I kept peeking over and she would just lean back
to look. And then the second we caught I she's
like hid and be like she's like I want you
to constantly know that I'm ignoring you. And then I
(20:22):
lost my mind and she I found her again, trying
to find her clothes, her wet pep clothes, try to
grab him, John, you don't get that. You don't get close.
And I took her t shirt off. I mean, but
also in my mind, I was like, she's about to
go to beds. She had to put on Jammie's so
(20:43):
I just took this off. And I was like, that
was an insane thing to say. This is such a funny.
You don't get closing sounds terrible. Ah, that's your punishment. Um,
oh boy, what are your hopes for the week ahead? Um?
(21:07):
You know, just less punching from less p and pants
from mayven. Let's rain Friday, Saturday's six degrees sixty plus
hopefully no rain. Yeah? What else? You don't get? Closed?
(21:39):
This next segment is called Listeners Want Knows, where we
take questions and comments from you guys. All right, First
of all, we got a nice handful of emails from
folks emailing just say congratulations on a hundred episodes. Um,
so thank you to all those individuals. They weren't even
asking questions nothing for the part. I guess they just
(22:00):
said congrats, thank you guys. How thoughtful. Thank you if
you wrote in. Um, this email comes to us from
Ah from a friend of mine. Uh, this is somebody
of did improv with in New York City who I
have not seen in a long time. Uh, Noel, who
(22:23):
I'm gonna read this email? My partner and I live
in downtown New York and are expecting a baby in
a few weeks. We don't want to do anything as
absurd as naming him or her COVID or anything like that,
but do want to do something to help communicate to
them what a crazy and historic time they came into
the world during. What are some ideas that won't seem
(22:46):
horribly morbid or depressing once this is behind us. Also,
how long after you you had kids that had take
to regain a comfortable headspace to start performing again. Congrats
on a Hunter episodes. Here's the pick of my partner, Noel. Look,
this picture is incredible. Oh my god. They're pregnant belly
(23:09):
outside with a coronavirus mask on her face. That's really
she looks really cute. That's a very cute cheese jacket. Um,
she's ready to go, She's ready to pop. It's a
great photo. Well. Uh, this is a great question, Noel,
and I could not help the so the very immediately
(23:29):
my brain. So Noah's last name is denin no Denin
the very first thing, I was like, well, it's got
to be quarantine toned right, quarantine to No, it's not
and it should not. But I do want to say
quarantine to need. Yeah, that's our answer, quarantine to al right,
next action, Um, I mean I don't do Do you
(23:51):
name your child Rhona? No, it's Rona. I don't need
more poetic about it, and I don't have a good
answer right now. Like I think you've got to find
a meaningful metaphor for yourself about what this time means
(24:13):
for you. Um uh, name your child inside inside? I
mean that I think you could, you know, like evoke
sort of like you're the meaning or positivity that you're
(24:34):
finding in this time. So it's like something that makes
you feel safe, like haven, you know, like you like
find haven, or like Maven, like maven um or Bryn,
which means hill, like the hill that you stand on
in a troubled time, say Maven denin um. Yeah, But
(25:00):
I think like, well here's a question. It probably it's
you know, obviously doesn't have to be. You shouldn't name
you child, your COVID or quarantine. But what is something
if it was us right now, Beth, what is something
that's very prevalent in our life right now that wasn't
before all this happened? Um drinking? It is literally you
(25:28):
should name your child old fashioned, mean um bitters. Simple syrup.
Oh here comes old simple syrup. Oh boy, simple syrup
is delightful of the town simpleton. But it's me simple Syrup.
(25:53):
I was trying to come up with the name for
a cocktail I made up the other night, and I
was like, it's kind of like a bloody orange. I mean,
I'm sure Noel will come up with something much better
than we have. Well, he's asking us bath. I need
time to think about this. I need to give them
(26:13):
a questionnaire of like what resonates for you guys culturally,
like um, in terms of your family, like I don't know.
I feel like the name has to make sense. It's
very personal, social distancing, distant, dustin dustinything like game. It
(26:39):
after some saint that's like a hermit. That's the most
that's most of them. St. Francis. St. Francis was a hermit. St.
Francis is of a c C. He's the one of
animals I know. But because he was out in the wilderness, right,
I don't think so this Franciscan friars there they secluded
(26:59):
well anyway, Francis thorough Yeah, um boy, this is the listeners?
What is it great or terrible? Uh? Coronavirus? Baby name?
(27:22):
Did they say if they're having a girl or a boy?
They don't think they know because they kept saying him
or her? Um? Uh. I think like you can look
at like what what they're reading right now or watching
or feeling inspired by, Like sometimes you take a person's
(27:48):
last name or you know, like they'll find something. How
did you because you came up um with most of
our kids names. I was smart enough to recognize that
you had some good ideas. Um was that? Did you
find those? Just from? I mean I sort of know,
(28:09):
but um of the typical like just going through all
the lists until you find something cool? Uh? No. I
think I searched more specifically, Like I was into like
very British Isles names and like nature e sounding names,
(28:31):
and like you can kind of search by different terms
and like like I was looking for a while her
names that were associated with the ocean, because as you know,
I have a deep love for the ocean. But it's
just like those names felt like too much like Oceana
and like, um, but I told you my Oceana story.
Keep going on, me tell them at the end. Okay. Anyway,
(28:54):
I do think like that if they keep like thinking
about the things that they're most drawn to, they'll just
sort of they'll hone in on it. Um. Great, Uh,
what is the most Beth? What do you think the
most pervasive? Is that the right word? What is the
(29:18):
what is the biggest thing in our lives right now
that it's just what was not really any part of
our lives a month and a half ago? Um? Yard work, sweeping, cooking, Uh,
going to the dump dump McNerney would be our next child.
(29:44):
Arcle comes old Dumpy McNerney and his friends. Simple syrup. Um.
I think you know once again, like I said, you
could be more poetic, Like I don't know, I'd be like, oh,
I love that the house were in as lots of woodwork,
(30:08):
and a type of wood is rowan, and rowan is
a nice name something like that, um wood so Um.
The other question was how long after having a child
did we get back into performing? How long after child?
(30:31):
I mean you were back like immediately basically, yeah, I
didn't really stop. I don't think. I took Britan to
a reductor show when he was about a month old,
and it was like my first big outing with him.
Was it a month or maybe two months? But I
felt so insane leaving the house? Oh, maybe it was.
(30:55):
Maybe it was a month in that I did a show.
I did a show without him. I think I left
him at my such as apartment and I ran down
town to do a show. I was not more than
like I guess I was like eighty blocks away, but
it's still I felt like he was going to die.
(31:16):
Every second I was away from him. I was just like,
Jesus Christ, I need to get back. Why am I here?
I was like, you know when you're like on stage
and you're just like, I'm really weird. I haven't spoken
to a human in a while. Anyway, you're trying to
pretend to be a fake human when you don't remember
how to be a real one. I just like, the
(31:37):
reason I'm acting like this is because my child is
away from me for the first time. Like, I just
like was very like literal, there's a lot of fight
or flight signals going on. Yeah, anyway, I, um, but
I'm not a super regular performer. I think I probably
just did that to prove something to myself, like to
prove that I would eventually leave the house again. Well,
(31:59):
you mean at that point, I think you were excited
to get out of the house. I think I was
like terrified. I think I like said, I like probably
agreed to the show in advance, thinking like I'll be
fine by then, and then I was just like, oh
my god, what have I done? Um but I think
it's different when you're a mom and you have a
lot of hormones in your body screaming at you to
(32:22):
hold your baby every second. Um. I will say the
amount of performing that I did dramatically went down after
that point. I mean not, I mean I still did.
I did one show a week for a long time,
but before the all this happened, I was down to
(32:43):
every other week, which was the least I have performed
the last fifteen years. From some oh, now I'm doing
two shows a week from my basement. What all I
will say about this, though? The advice that I gave
someone else a while back is like if you're planning
on going back to performing after you have a kid,
(33:05):
I think it is important to realize that, like career
wise or like joy wise, I think sometimes you can
get what you need out of a less frequent performance
schedule for a little while. So depending on whether this
is like your career or just like a creative outlet
or what, I think you can like cut down your
(33:27):
schedule a little bit. Yeah. I will say when I
do get to do a show, I appreciate it a
lot more because I don't do nine shows a week. Yeah.
And I think like if, just for example, if you
were hosting a show that was like twice a month
and then you have a new born at home, it's like,
no one's really going to care if you cut that
(33:48):
show back to once a month. You know, it's just anyway.
Um So yeah, Ronie, that's my my suggestion. What do
you Rony? And we got some more listeners want to
(34:13):
know for you guys, We got some more. Here we go,
Mother's Day question. Hi, Beth and Peter listened to your
hundredth episode today. Congratulations, Thank you. I've been listening to
you guys since the start, which was quite a while ago.
Oh sorry, which was quite a while before I had
my son, Bertie, who is now eight months old. I
(34:36):
really enjoy the podcast, especially you're keen attention to gender
and how you manipulate norms around it as you both parent.
I have included a picture of Bertie. I apologize to
Beth that he isn't a fat baby. He's big though,
ten pounds eight ounces that birth a million pounds now,
I guess based on how my back feels carrying him
(34:57):
around all day as some background information, and my wife
and I conceived him using reciprocal reciprocal I F V,
which means we used her egg and I carried him
fun times. That is so cool. I gotta pause to
show Beth, don't don't apologize for your baby not being fat,
and all baby photos are welcomed here. Oh yeah, no,
(35:19):
don't apologize. Oh my gosh, we got a little redhead.
Oh boy, oh boy, Bertie, Bertie boy. Um reciprocal I
F I VF. I've heard of that, but I've not
heard the term. That's awesome. I have a conundrum regarding
Mother's Day, which I thought you might have some ideas
(35:40):
on probably the whole idea of Mother's Day and Father's
Day is quite heteronormative, but that hasn't stopped my wife
and I from wanting to play along in some way.
But how do same sex couples participate in this tradition?
I feel like it's not fair if we both have
to quote unquote share Mother's Day, because it would be
nice to spoil whoever special day it is. It would
(36:02):
also feel very weird for one person to be assigned
Father's Day, because the whole point is that neither of
us is the father. I'm also very aware that I
don't want to position myself as being quote unquote more
of a mother than my wife. Being pregnant and birthing
a baby are not the best or truest way to
become a mother, as evidenced by the many non gestational
(36:26):
mothers I know, adoptive foster step as well as queer moms.
Sometimes we think we should just come up with two
whole noon days. Do you have any fun suggestions for
a way to celebrate both of Birdie's mothers which I
suppose could be applicable to any of your queer listeners. Also,
what did you guys do for Beth's first Mother's Day?
(36:48):
Is it a big deal in your family, sending you
extra love in these hectic pandemic times. Rosalie from Adelaide Australia, Well, um,
that's a good question. I don't. I don't. I think
that solved really depends on your preferences. Because my first
(37:10):
instinct was like you just do like a week after
Mother's Day the next Sunday and have that be like
Mom's Day so that you each get your own day.
But then I thought, maybe that's stacking the holidays too
close together, just in terms of family planning overloads. I
(37:30):
think it has to do with how much you really
love holidays. I think we wouldn't go for that. Um.
I think we like being recognized and appreciation, but we're
not huge gift and event. Yeah, we're not big like
(37:50):
like Valentine's Day or Mother's and Father's Day people. I
don't remember what I did for my first Mother's Day,
to be honest, Um, we've never done anything extravagant um um,
but we That's when I was growing up, it was
never you know, it was whatever mom wants to do,
(38:11):
that's what we do. I remember as a teenager being
really like mom wants to take a raft on the
mini ha ha creek come on. Well. So like in
my family, Mother's Day is like a week away from
my dad's birthday and then Father's Day is like a
week before my mom's birthday in June, and so it
(38:33):
feels both times I get just totally overloaded because like
me and my sister are like, okay, we have to
plan four guests right now, Like it just sneaks up
on you, you know, I don't feel like super well,
you know what I always feel about Mother's Day is
it's never about that one person because there's always so
(38:54):
many people have to be have to spend a whole
day honoring all the moms. So I never feel like
I've been in a situation where all the attentions on
one mom. So if it was us, we would probably
just say, oh, would do the same day. What there
is something really exciting. This is maybe not what you want,
but in my mind, how cool is it to have
(39:15):
a day where you go, hey, we're going to celebrate
our parents. Um uh, that's that's the unique thing. I'd
never considered a day where we celebrate both of our parents.
But isn't part of celebration like that someone else gets
together the event or the gift or something for you, right,
(39:36):
like if you have kids and then you're getting the
gifts for them and then you know what I mean.
It's like I was sort of picturing more grown up
kids now that I'm thinking about it. Yeah, well you,
I'd say, if you really love events to two things
spring divine. One you do Mother's Day, ah, and then
(39:59):
in six months you do inverse Mother's Day. That's a
bad name for it, bad Mother's Other Mother's Day, your
Mother's Day, and you do other Mother's Day, and you
alternate every year who gets to be mother and who
gets to be other mother? What? Maybe you just call
(40:19):
them both other Mother's Day, others others Mother's Day and
the other other other Mother's Day. It's just a biannual.
If you picked two random days, you'd have to call
it others mothers Other Mother's Day, and the other one
is other other Mother's Day, or it's Mother's Day weekend
and one of you is Saturday and one of you
(40:41):
is Sunday. But okay, so if you do six months away,
that would put Other Mother's Day in November, which is
terrible timing. Well no, but there, but they lived down under,
so it's it's better. I guess if they if they
don't celebrate Thanksgiving. Yeah, it's perfect. Well, that's a great question.
(41:03):
I mean they did say Mother's Day's coming up. I
assume Mother's Days. I don't know is that international holiday?
I assume because you're writing about it. I think it
might be one of those ones that has different days
in different countries. I'm not sure. Well, they mean they're
writing about it now, so it must be the same time. Yeah,
in which case you should really try having Mother's Day
(41:23):
in the spring. It's way better than fall. Um. Yeah,
other mothers, others mothers, other Mother's Day, others mothers who
Other Mother's Day is when you celebrate moms that aren't yours,
other mothers, smothers, brothers, the mother's brothers. Um uh, yeah,
(41:54):
you know what it's There's there's no right way, obviously.
I think you guys seem to. That's the way you
were at this email. You've got a healthy attitude about it.
Make your own traditions. Holidays don't mean anything universally. It's
the holidays about what your family makes it. Yeah. I
mean it's like you could also just make it like
apple picking Day or whatever. Thing is fun for you
(42:16):
specifically to do to celebrate yourself being a parent. Um, yeah,
other other the other, mothers, brothers Day. What was your
favorite holiday growing up? I love Halloween interesting to fourth
(42:38):
of July interesting? Um mine was Christmas was number one always,
then my birthday, then Halloween, then it's then it's a
real then Thanksgiving and then who cares Fourth of yourly? Maybe?
What was your Mother's Day traditions growing up? I don't remember.
(43:03):
We probably had like a brunch or like, there was
definitely a brunch involved, Like we probably made pancakes and
gave my mom something, and then depending on the year,
we might have taken her out to dinner or something.
I don't know, depending on the year, like if it
was an even year or an odd year, but my dad,
(43:26):
whether how much my dad got a ship together that year,
I don't know. We probably all realized it was happening
about two days beforehand, and then we figured something out.
It was fine. That was that was about my family too.
They're never a huge Mother's Day. Then just became, um no,
(43:51):
I'm mixing up. I just suddenly had a memory of
my mom sending me a cardon Mother's Day. But I'm
thinking of Valentine's Day. Don't let me forget to call
only you could like come up with a memory a
Mother's Day being about you. No, you know what I thought? Why?
I thought that because on Valentine's Day, my mom would
always send me a card and I'd always feel really
(44:13):
bad that I, once again, like, didn't send her a
card on Valentine's Day, So it felt getting a card
for her. I have memories of feeling selfish she did
not send me a card on Mother's Day, but that
would be even worse version of that feeling. Ah. Well, Oh,
(44:37):
I almost called you Adelaide Rosalie from adelaide Um. You
do you. That's what we say Adelaide. It's a really
nice name. If Noel wants to use that, it's just
very pretty. You could just because you so you never forget.
Just connected to that podcast episode that you listened to
(44:59):
right before you had baby during the coronavirus um old
Adelaide pure El Denin. Well, this has been another episode
of We Knows parenting, and that's a fact. If you'd
like to reach out, share a story, tell us how
you're doing coping, what's new in your life, what you
(45:20):
would name knowles baby. You can email us at we
knows pot at gmail dot com, or give us a
phone call even voicemail at three four seven three eight
four or seven three nine six. Find us on the Instagram,
on the Twitter, and we knows odd rate reviews. Subscribe.
If you know any pregnant people, get them my book.
(45:42):
There's no manual, honest and gory wisdom about having a baby.
It is still an excellent book and we'll see you
next time.
This is it, it's we knows parenting. I'm Peter McNerney,
I'm Beth now and where here we are here we
are now, uh, still living in quarantine like the rest
of you, or most people at least, still surviving. Um,
everything's every day blurs into the next in some ways. Yeah.
(00:35):
I just sat down, as I often do with being
these recordings, and I have a moment I go what
happened this week? And then I next thought was what
is a week? What is time? It's I feel like
it makes us really have to lean into the routine
of the week and like go hard on Friday night
and Saturday to like feel like it's the weekend. It's
(00:58):
so funny because the weekends have are now we haven't
had full real weekends for our entire relationship because I'm
usually teaching in from class on weekends. And know, it's
what I've always wanted, is like for us to actually
have downtime, and we do it. We do, although I'm
sort of inevitably there's sort of some work being caught
(01:19):
up on because we only have half work days throughout
the week, but it is better than before. But I'm
doing housework and you're doing we're getting ready to two.
Being homeowners, we do have like a weird Saturday cleaning routine. Um,
I took a lot of garbage to the dump. There's
(01:40):
no garbage service here, so I go to the dump
and I love it. You love the dump. I could
just sort all my recyclables. You love errand's like I do.
I think I do. That has not always been true.
You know. My next task is what I'm going to
redo the horseshoe pits. There's horseshoe pits where we are.
(02:03):
They're like sixty years old. Okay, if you read those though,
can you make me some um garden beds? Can you
put build extra squares for plant and budgies and stuff?
All right? Is this a challenge? Yeah? I don't know
when we're if we're ever going to leave here, but
I think I'm just gonna mentally prepare for it, being
(02:25):
like not until summer or later. Yeah, We've we've planted
all those herbs. We have to be here until at
least we Yeah, I just feel like planting makes me
feel like I'm like preparing for sort of like a
good time and not like being trapped in a place
that I don't normally live, you know, just like this
is my home and making it my home. Things things
(02:48):
are alive here because of me. It's my home. I
made the life here. You made honestly, you made almost
you know, almost half of the life here. Almost half
of the life here. Yeah, okay, um no, but I
did today, so I had this is so boring, but
(03:09):
this is my life. Now. There had been some herbs
that your mom planted at this house last summer, and
so they were in this pot outside and they were
like roots, but they were kind of dead, and there
was like a couple that seems sort of salvageable, but
it was still really cold outside. So I took some
of the rosemary inside and put it in a glass
of water, hoping that it would grow roots. And then
(03:30):
it like sort of grow root, and then when I
touched it, I like accedentally broke the root off, and
then it like and then like three more weeks went
by and now it has a root, and now I
put it in a pot of dirt, and I'm like,
just like, these are the things, like it will make
my day if this plant grows these this is my life.
(03:51):
It's like I've I've been fixing door knobs and hinges,
and it is so satisfying. There are two doors upstairs
there are so old that they're all warped. That the
door wouldn't close because the just the door is too
bigger than the doorframe. I went in the basement and
I found a planer and I went up on top
(04:14):
of the door and I just scraped like a quarter
of an inch of the wood off the top of
the door and it closes. The doors never closed for
my entire life. And I fixed the lock on the
bathroom door upstairs that shouldn't lock, So that was very satisfying.
There you go, and you got this ship. The bathroom
in our room has a window on it. Yeah. For
(04:35):
some reason, it's like a French door to the bathroom
where you with like a cheer curtain hanging over it
that was on the outside of the door. So whenever
I would go pee, the kids would come in the bedroom,
pull the curtain aside and stare at me. And it's
like just not like how what I want to be
thinking about when I'm sitting in the bathroom. And now
(04:56):
you can't see see that shade at all. That is
rock shade. And I put on the inside of the door.
That didn't even occur to me that the shade was
on the outside. I understand why why they did that,
because if you're going to put like a curtain, you
don't necessarily want to getting steamed up and moldy the
master bedroom. So anyway, it's yeah, it's well in This
(05:19):
house also has like has had additions put on at
different times, so sometimes there's just like weird little quirks
of like why is this window to the other room.
So I which went for a little walk today. It's
been raining, it's going to rain all week here, and
I went to the mailbox that I built, and uh,
(05:39):
you're so proud on the way back your crowning. It's
just something I had never even considered. Well, now that
we know that you know how to poor concrete. My
sister is really eager for you to put up a
basketball hoop. I'm not against that. She's dying for you
to do. Not a great place for it, but I
(06:02):
just don't know if and how we could get a
hoop delivered right now, if that's possible, maybe to have
one home depot um probably not home depot. I've been
going to lose anyway, um um, we've had our children
(06:23):
have been still slightly insane, pretty good. I mean, Britain,
I feel like we're over sending Brent to his room,
but it's been a really rainy couple of weeks and
so they're cooped up and I think sometimes he just
like he gets overloaded and then he's like beyond help,
(06:46):
you know what I mean. This morning I met you
made them. They're nice little worksheets, which was a nice
surprise when we sat down to start Daddy school because
we started we I do it in the morning, and
you made these little things to drop a picture of
day right, a thing, here's your name. Tracey'd copy it
so that Maven and Britne could do together. There's a
(07:07):
nice balance of like things that they both could do.
And uh Brin said, I'm not doing this, and when
I walked out of the room, he ripped it up
and put it in the trash and I got so mad.
That is really annoying because I spent a minute making that.
But then Maven did the same thing with the other one,
(07:28):
and then when they calmed down, they then both did
the remaining page that you made for them. So you
did twice as much more as you need to where
they went the trash for somebody. I think that a
weekend of so much TV and then they woke up
the morning, watched TV and it was hard to get
back into the Monday routine. Yeah, they've been doing a
(07:49):
lot of that sort of thing lately. Maven has I
think I had heard somewhere that like a lot of
children are regressing right now because the coronavirus and routines
are not going correctly and they're just feeling unsettled. So
Maven has started peeing her pants again, which is not
(08:10):
something she really did for a long time. Yeah, I
mean here and there. Yeah, she's had occasional accidents here
and there, but it's not like a thing she ever
really had a problem with. This week, she has peter
her pants like ten times twice today she's been she
wore three dresses today. I think it was yesterday. She
peter her pants definitely four times in one day. And
(08:33):
I'd like keep trying to explain it to her, and
I'm trying not to get team mad at her because
I don't want her to be ashamed about it, like
I just want she doesn't seem to be ashamed. I know,
but like when you you were kind of getting mad
at her, and then she like has started lying to
us about it. So now it's more annoying because you
don't know how long she's walking around and like sitting
(08:54):
on stuff with peepye pants, and so I like, I'll
like grab, I'll pick her up or something and feel
her butt, and her pants were all wet. And I
don't know how long she's been doing that. And she
keeps when I tell her she paid her pants, she
keeps being like, no, it's just sweat. It's like so
much p I'm like, are you your little girls won't sweat?
(09:16):
Like you're a bad liar three year old? She's she's
lying so much lately. I walked into the room now,
and I feel like I immediately to see Brin or
may even look up at me, like Hi, the face
just said I wasn't doing anything, so don't look in
my hands behind my back. I didn't just eat an
entire bag of Reese's peanut butter chips. So this morning
(09:43):
she got ahold of a bag of chocolate chips that
I kind of knew she knew about, but she was
being kind of sly about. I would see her sneak
a couple of chocolate chips out and then put it
back in the drawer and then like go about her business.
And I was like, at least she's being like sort
of like considerate, like on Brand, who would just like
dumped the whole thing all over the floor, you know,
(10:03):
and so I just throw them all over the room
and go, what, Yeah, he would just eat. So I
hadn't really like put an end to it because it
didn't seem like as big of a problem with some
of their other raids. And then this morning she had
chocolate all over her face and I found out from
them that they're eating chocolate chips, but I didn't see
them anywhere. And she was walking around carrying this like
soft cloth easter basket. She got like carrying it like
(10:27):
a purse. And all of a sudden I look in
I realized she has a whole bag of chocolate chips
in the easter basket. She's just been like carrying it
around the house like a little psycho. What does psycho?
And that little psycho is about to turn four, I know,
on Friday. I can't believe it's already here. And you know,
(10:49):
it's the weirdest. The weirdest thing about her birthday I
think is the fact that we won't have any wrapping paper.
I know. I was trying to decided to just do
anything about that, and then I it's like I don't
care well for I realized for a few days as
I was like, well, we'll just use newspaper, and then
I was like, I haven't touched a newspaper in how
(11:10):
long we don't have newspaper? Do you think we have
newspapers because I've had a newspaper. I'm in this house
which I connect to my parents. I connected being home
where there was always newspaper. I mean, I didn't think
about it. It was a half thought. I'm just put
it in boxes. Maybe we'll make it a scavenger hut.
(11:33):
Would that be a fun way to open your presence
because it's actually just annoying to hide stuff on Easter
because then you have to mentally remember where everything is
when they can't find it. Um, But what if you're
a parent that loves that? I disagree. It's about idea. Wow.
(11:56):
I she told me this today that she wants a
narwhale cake, which I'm like, how the hell am I
going to make a narwhal. I mean just not easy.
You make a cake. The narwhal face is easier than
a unicorn, and we'll just make a little cone with
paper and put it on top. Yeah, I guess so.
(12:18):
I love this idea, you know, the narwhale in Elf. Bye, buddy,
I hope you'll find your dad. I feel like that's
the design, like a little mouth, and I that we
should go for. Okay, great, I'm so glad you're so enthusiastic. Um,
(12:41):
what else? We can't go outside because it's raining for
the rest of our lives. Um Brin smashed a lamp
this week, among other things that was destroyed. If you
want to see all the things that Britain has broken
since we've been here, um, go to my Instagram. He
also to day I thought for a second that he
(13:01):
broke his nose because he was trying to play fight
with me and then just whirled himself towards me, and
I like sort of caught him, but his face flew
into the side of the couch really hard. And then
he pulled back and I was like, are you okay?
And he was like no, and and and then I
just see his nose was like I could see him
(13:22):
like squinting, and I could see him like trying to
decide how bad his face hurt, because he slammed his
nose inside and then he was just like squinting and
like feeling it for a second, and then slowly blood
started dripping out of his nostril. I was he's handled
it well at first, and then he didn't stand still
(13:45):
well because then you were like, oh, hey, buddy, do
you want me to graphically describe how this blood is
coming out of your nose? I knew. I was like
you were like you were like, what does it taste
like in your throat? Blood? What does blood taste like?
You were actually this have a scarier sense of experience.
That caught his attention. That was the most successful thing
I did know you. Once you left, we talked about it,
(14:07):
and he was he was like, well, it distressed him
when he wanted to know how I knew what metal
tasted like, and I was like, that's a good question,
because it tastes like blood. Um. But when I came
over there, I knew. I knew. I was like, I
need to stay calm because the other day you and
Alison were out and when Britain broke the lamp. He
(14:33):
was doing so he loves Monsters, Inc. And Monsters University,
the two fine Pixar films. And in Monsters University there's
a whole plot where they're doing like the scare games
in college, and one of the events is like they
have to sneak by this librarian, so it's a sneaking game.
(14:55):
So Brin loves to sneak around as if he's one
of the members of Uzma Kappa. And uh so he was.
I was like walking a room and he'll like sneak
with Maven around the edges, and of course they couldn't
be louder because they're on all fours, like quiet, quiet,
and so he was sneaking around the back of the
(15:16):
couch and the table, and of course that's where the
plug to the lamp was. The lamp is a basically
a giant glass jar that my mom filled with pine
cones and it's very cool and then a lamp plugs
it on top. So he pulled that off and it
fell basically on top of him, um and it shattered
(15:39):
on the wall above his head, and then he got
wedged between the table and the window. So that it
didn't follow out of the ground, but all of the
shattered glass fell down to the ground where he was
on all fours and so I saw the shot shatter,
and you know, very pan necked. I screamed. I said,
(16:03):
don't move, like stop stop, and of course would Brant do,
but he was totally freaked out by the fact that
I freaked out and just started like in my mind,
he'll like get food on his hand or something, and
I'll be like brand and he like starts flapping the
food all around the kitchen, like just like splashing it everywhere.
(16:26):
I don't know how he did not cut himself, but
he then was like on knees, his feet, his knees,
his hands, all of them running like like a Fred
Flintstone starting his car. They can think they're way out
of there. Um. The whole time I was like stop,
don't move, no freeze, stop eddie where they got out
(16:48):
there like Brant? And then I quickly calmed down and said,
it's like the reason why I was yelling of glass
and I don't want to get hurt, are you okay?
I'm not mad at you, um, But it was a
really scary moment where I thought he's going to have
like five cuts all of him. So when he had
a bloody nose and I knew he was going to panic,
(17:09):
I went straight to that and I was like, hey, buddy,
we're fine. Blood buddy, the blood, it's cool, right. Can
we talk about the Mann pee pants incident, which which
one where you got very angry? I don't when did
I get angry? You were like, she pewed her pants,
(17:33):
and then we took them off and put them in
the laundry, and then she went to the laundry basketball
put the pepe pants. She put the pea pants back on,
and then you were getting really mad at her. So
he took the pants off again, and we're hiding them
and she's still trying to get them up off a
high shelf. Or you forgot the step where I in
front of her put them in the sink to wash
(17:54):
them and got them all wet. So I was like,
well now you can't. In my mind was like, well,
she won't want to wear him now, and so I
threw him in the washing machine and she immediately rushed
for the washing machine. I was like, I was like,
come on, I had to go do a story part
live show, in the basement and prepare all the tech
for it, and so I was so annoyed, and then
(18:15):
I put it up high, and then I don't remember
what happened. Well, at one point you got so angry
at her that you were They were like, you want
to wear peep pants, Fine, you don't get close. And
then you took her shirt off and took that away.
And then she was standing there naked, like pouting and
(18:35):
stomping her feet for so long. And it sounds cruel,
and it was, and it was weird because she was
being she was stood in the mudroom. So I put
her pants up the highest point in the mud room.
There's no way she could ever get to it, and
then she kept reaching for it. She knew she can't
reach it, it's like more than double our height, but
(18:56):
looking at me going But she also had no pants
and no one wear on and just her T shirt
and was weirdly getting self conscious, so she would try
to cover herself with jackets and then I would ignore her.
But then she peek around the corner to see if
I was looking, and then I wasn't looking, but then
she wanted me to look so that she could be
defiant and then I did look, but then she was
(19:18):
self conscious because she was naked, and so it was
just like there was so many complex emotions. I was
like sure, and then I was like she was like
that door aside was like cracked open, and she was
standing in your coat that was hanging on the hook,
and she was like huddling in it, shivering, and so
I went to shut the door. So then of course
(19:39):
she's so angry. She goes over and opens the door
back up and then goes back into your coat to
like shiver naked, and she just kept like staring at
me through her like dirty bangs and just like being like,
we ate dinner while she stood in the mudroom and
we're just trying to ignore her because we tried to
help her, like hey, let's do this, and then we're
(20:02):
like all right, we're gonna ignore you. And then she
was so mad that we were ignoring her that for
all of dinner she was in the mud room and
I kept peeking over and she would just lean back
to look. And then the second we caught I she's
like hid and be like she's like I want you
to constantly know that I'm ignoring you. And then I
(20:22):
lost my mind and she I found her again, trying
to find her clothes, her wet pep clothes, try to
grab him, John, you don't get that. You don't get close.
And I took her t shirt off. I mean, but
also in my mind, I was like, she's about to
go to beds. She had to put on Jammie's so
(20:43):
I just took this off. And I was like, that
was an insane thing to say. This is such a funny.
You don't get closing sounds terrible. Ah, that's your punishment. Um,
oh boy, what are your hopes for the week ahead? Um?
(21:07):
You know, just less punching from less p and pants
from mayven. Let's rain Friday, Saturday's six degrees sixty plus
hopefully no rain. Yeah? What else? You don't get? Closed?
(21:39):
This next segment is called Listeners Want Knows, where we
take questions and comments from you guys. All right, First
of all, we got a nice handful of emails from
folks emailing just say congratulations on a hundred episodes. Um,
so thank you to all those individuals. They weren't even
asking questions nothing for the part. I guess they just
(22:00):
said congrats, thank you guys. How thoughtful. Thank you if
you wrote in. Um, this email comes to us from
Ah from a friend of mine. Uh, this is somebody
of did improv with in New York City who I
have not seen in a long time. Uh, Noel, who
(22:23):
I'm gonna read this email? My partner and I live
in downtown New York and are expecting a baby in
a few weeks. We don't want to do anything as
absurd as naming him or her COVID or anything like that,
but do want to do something to help communicate to
them what a crazy and historic time they came into
the world during. What are some ideas that won't seem
(22:46):
horribly morbid or depressing once this is behind us. Also,
how long after you you had kids that had take
to regain a comfortable headspace to start performing again. Congrats
on a Hunter episodes. Here's the pick of my partner, Noel. Look,
this picture is incredible. Oh my god. They're pregnant belly
(23:09):
outside with a coronavirus mask on her face. That's really
she looks really cute. That's a very cute cheese jacket. Um,
she's ready to go, She's ready to pop. It's a
great photo. Well. Uh, this is a great question, Noel,
and I could not help the so the very immediately
(23:29):
my brain. So Noah's last name is denin no Denin
the very first thing, I was like, well, it's got
to be quarantine toned right, quarantine to No, it's not
and it should not. But I do want to say
quarantine to need. Yeah, that's our answer, quarantine to al right,
next action, Um, I mean I don't do Do you
(23:51):
name your child Rhona? No, it's Rona. I don't need
more poetic about it, and I don't have a good
answer right now. Like I think you've got to find
a meaningful metaphor for yourself about what this time means
(24:13):
for you. Um uh, name your child inside inside? I
mean that I think you could, you know, like evoke
sort of like you're the meaning or positivity that you're
(24:34):
finding in this time. So it's like something that makes
you feel safe, like haven, you know, like you like
find haven, or like Maven, like maven um or Bryn,
which means hill, like the hill that you stand on
in a troubled time, say Maven denin um. Yeah, But
(25:00):
I think like, well here's a question. It probably it's
you know, obviously doesn't have to be. You shouldn't name
you child, your COVID or quarantine. But what is something
if it was us right now, Beth, what is something
that's very prevalent in our life right now that wasn't
before all this happened? Um drinking? It is literally you
(25:28):
should name your child old fashioned, mean um bitters. Simple syrup.
Oh here comes old simple syrup. Oh boy, simple syrup
is delightful of the town simpleton. But it's me simple Syrup.
(25:53):
I was trying to come up with the name for
a cocktail I made up the other night, and I
was like, it's kind of like a bloody orange. I mean,
I'm sure Noel will come up with something much better
than we have. Well, he's asking us bath. I need
time to think about this. I need to give them
(26:13):
a questionnaire of like what resonates for you guys culturally,
like um, in terms of your family, like I don't know.
I feel like the name has to make sense. It's
very personal, social distancing, distant, dustin dustinything like game. It
(26:39):
after some saint that's like a hermit. That's the most
that's most of them. St. Francis. St. Francis was a hermit. St.
Francis is of a c C. He's the one of
animals I know. But because he was out in the wilderness, right,
I don't think so this Franciscan friars there they secluded
(26:59):
well anyway, Francis thorough Yeah, um boy, this is the listeners?
What is it great or terrible? Uh? Coronavirus? Baby name?
(27:22):
Did they say if they're having a girl or a boy?
They don't think they know because they kept saying him
or her? Um? Uh. I think like you can look
at like what what they're reading right now or watching
or feeling inspired by, Like sometimes you take a person's
(27:48):
last name or you know, like they'll find something. How
did you because you came up um with most of
our kids names. I was smart enough to recognize that
you had some good ideas. Um was that? Did you
find those? Just from? I mean I sort of know,
(28:09):
but um of the typical like just going through all
the lists until you find something cool? Uh? No. I
think I searched more specifically, Like I was into like
very British Isles names and like nature e sounding names,
(28:31):
and like you can kind of search by different terms
and like like I was looking for a while her
names that were associated with the ocean, because as you know,
I have a deep love for the ocean. But it's
just like those names felt like too much like Oceana
and like, um, but I told you my Oceana story.
Keep going on, me tell them at the end. Okay. Anyway,
(28:54):
I do think like that if they keep like thinking
about the things that they're most drawn to, they'll just
sort of they'll hone in on it. Um. Great, Uh,
what is the most Beth? What do you think the
most pervasive? Is that the right word? What is the
(29:18):
what is the biggest thing in our lives right now
that it's just what was not really any part of
our lives a month and a half ago? Um? Yard work, sweeping, cooking, Uh,
going to the dump dump McNerney would be our next child.
(29:44):
Arcle comes old Dumpy McNerney and his friends. Simple syrup. Um.
I think you know once again, like I said, you
could be more poetic, Like I don't know, I'd be like, oh,
I love that the house were in as lots of woodwork,
(30:08):
and a type of wood is rowan, and rowan is
a nice name something like that, um wood so Um.
The other question was how long after having a child
did we get back into performing? How long after child?
(30:31):
I mean you were back like immediately basically, yeah, I
didn't really stop. I don't think. I took Britan to
a reductor show when he was about a month old,
and it was like my first big outing with him.
Was it a month or maybe two months? But I
felt so insane leaving the house? Oh, maybe it was.
(30:55):
Maybe it was a month in that I did a show.
I did a show without him. I think I left
him at my such as apartment and I ran down
town to do a show. I was not more than
like I guess I was like eighty blocks away, but
it's still I felt like he was going to die.
(31:16):
Every second I was away from him. I was just like,
Jesus Christ, I need to get back. Why am I here?
I was like, you know when you're like on stage
and you're just like, I'm really weird. I haven't spoken
to a human in a while. Anyway, you're trying to
pretend to be a fake human when you don't remember
how to be a real one. I just like, the
(31:37):
reason I'm acting like this is because my child is
away from me for the first time. Like, I just
like was very like literal, there's a lot of fight
or flight signals going on. Yeah, anyway, I, um, but
I'm not a super regular performer. I think I probably
just did that to prove something to myself, like to
prove that I would eventually leave the house again. Well,
(31:59):
you mean at that point, I think you were excited
to get out of the house. I think I was
like terrified. I think I like said, I like probably
agreed to the show in advance, thinking like I'll be
fine by then, and then I was just like, oh
my god, what have I done? Um but I think
it's different when you're a mom and you have a
lot of hormones in your body screaming at you to
(32:22):
hold your baby every second. Um. I will say the
amount of performing that I did dramatically went down after
that point. I mean not, I mean I still did.
I did one show a week for a long time,
but before the all this happened, I was down to
(32:43):
every other week, which was the least I have performed
the last fifteen years. From some oh, now I'm doing
two shows a week from my basement. What all I
will say about this, though? The advice that I gave
someone else a while back is like if you're planning
on going back to performing after you have a kid,
(33:05):
I think it is important to realize that, like career
wise or like joy wise, I think sometimes you can
get what you need out of a less frequent performance
schedule for a little while. So depending on whether this
is like your career or just like a creative outlet
or what, I think you can like cut down your
(33:27):
schedule a little bit. Yeah. I will say when I
do get to do a show, I appreciate it a
lot more because I don't do nine shows a week. Yeah.
And I think like if, just for example, if you
were hosting a show that was like twice a month
and then you have a new born at home, it's like,
no one's really going to care if you cut that
(33:48):
show back to once a month. You know, it's just anyway.
Um So yeah, Ronie, that's my my suggestion. What do
you Rony? And we got some more listeners want to
(34:13):
know for you guys, We got some more. Here we go,
Mother's Day question. Hi, Beth and Peter listened to your
hundredth episode today. Congratulations, Thank you. I've been listening to
you guys since the start, which was quite a while ago.
Oh sorry, which was quite a while before I had
my son, Bertie, who is now eight months old. I
(34:36):
really enjoy the podcast, especially you're keen attention to gender
and how you manipulate norms around it as you both parent.
I have included a picture of Bertie. I apologize to
Beth that he isn't a fat baby. He's big though,
ten pounds eight ounces that birth a million pounds now,
I guess based on how my back feels carrying him
(34:57):
around all day as some background information, and my wife
and I conceived him using reciprocal reciprocal I F V,
which means we used her egg and I carried him
fun times. That is so cool. I gotta pause to
show Beth, don't don't apologize for your baby not being fat,
and all baby photos are welcomed here. Oh yeah, no,
(35:19):
don't apologize. Oh my gosh, we got a little redhead.
Oh boy, oh boy, Bertie, Bertie boy. Um reciprocal I
F I VF. I've heard of that, but I've not
heard the term. That's awesome. I have a conundrum regarding
Mother's Day, which I thought you might have some ideas
(35:40):
on probably the whole idea of Mother's Day and Father's
Day is quite heteronormative, but that hasn't stopped my wife
and I from wanting to play along in some way.
But how do same sex couples participate in this tradition?
I feel like it's not fair if we both have
to quote unquote share Mother's Day, because it would be
nice to spoil whoever special day it is. It would
(36:02):
also feel very weird for one person to be assigned
Father's Day, because the whole point is that neither of
us is the father. I'm also very aware that I
don't want to position myself as being quote unquote more
of a mother than my wife. Being pregnant and birthing
a baby are not the best or truest way to
become a mother, as evidenced by the many non gestational
(36:26):
mothers I know, adoptive foster step as well as queer moms.
Sometimes we think we should just come up with two
whole noon days. Do you have any fun suggestions for
a way to celebrate both of Birdie's mothers which I
suppose could be applicable to any of your queer listeners. Also,
what did you guys do for Beth's first Mother's Day?
(36:48):
Is it a big deal in your family, sending you
extra love in these hectic pandemic times. Rosalie from Adelaide Australia, Well, um,
that's a good question. I don't. I don't. I think
that solved really depends on your preferences. Because my first
(37:10):
instinct was like you just do like a week after
Mother's Day the next Sunday and have that be like
Mom's Day so that you each get your own day.
But then I thought, maybe that's stacking the holidays too
close together, just in terms of family planning overloads. I
(37:30):
think it has to do with how much you really
love holidays. I think we wouldn't go for that. Um.
I think we like being recognized and appreciation, but we're
not huge gift and event. Yeah, we're not big like
(37:50):
like Valentine's Day or Mother's and Father's Day people. I
don't remember what I did for my first Mother's Day,
to be honest, Um, we've never done anything extravagant um um,
but we That's when I was growing up, it was
never you know, it was whatever mom wants to do,
(38:11):
that's what we do. I remember as a teenager being
really like mom wants to take a raft on the
mini ha ha creek come on. Well. So like in
my family, Mother's Day is like a week away from
my dad's birthday and then Father's Day is like a
week before my mom's birthday in June, and so it
(38:33):
feels both times I get just totally overloaded because like
me and my sister are like, okay, we have to
plan four guests right now, Like it just sneaks up
on you, you know, I don't feel like super well,
you know what I always feel about Mother's Day is
it's never about that one person because there's always so
(38:54):
many people have to be have to spend a whole
day honoring all the moms. So I never feel like
I've been in a situation where all the attentions on
one mom. So if it was us, we would probably
just say, oh, would do the same day. What there
is something really exciting. This is maybe not what you want,
but in my mind, how cool is it to have
(39:15):
a day where you go, hey, we're going to celebrate
our parents. Um uh, that's that's the unique thing. I'd
never considered a day where we celebrate both of our parents.
But isn't part of celebration like that someone else gets
together the event or the gift or something for you, right,
(39:36):
like if you have kids and then you're getting the
gifts for them and then you know what I mean.
It's like I was sort of picturing more grown up
kids now that I'm thinking about it. Yeah, well you,
I'd say, if you really love events to two things
spring divine. One you do Mother's Day, ah, and then
(39:59):
in six months you do inverse Mother's Day. That's a
bad name for it, bad Mother's Other Mother's Day, your
Mother's Day, and you do other Mother's Day, and you
alternate every year who gets to be mother and who
gets to be other mother? What? Maybe you just call
(40:19):
them both other Mother's Day, others others Mother's Day and
the other other other Mother's Day. It's just a biannual.
If you picked two random days, you'd have to call
it others mothers Other Mother's Day, and the other one
is other other Mother's Day, or it's Mother's Day weekend
and one of you is Saturday and one of you
(40:41):
is Sunday. But okay, so if you do six months away,
that would put Other Mother's Day in November, which is
terrible timing. Well no, but there, but they lived down under,
so it's it's better. I guess if they if they
don't celebrate Thanksgiving. Yeah, it's perfect. Well, that's a great question.
(41:03):
I mean they did say Mother's Day's coming up. I
assume Mother's Days. I don't know is that international holiday?
I assume because you're writing about it. I think it
might be one of those ones that has different days
in different countries. I'm not sure. Well, they mean they're
writing about it now, so it must be the same time. Yeah,
in which case you should really try having Mother's Day
(41:23):
in the spring. It's way better than fall. Um. Yeah,
other mothers, others mothers, other Mother's Day, others mothers who
Other Mother's Day is when you celebrate moms that aren't yours,
other mothers, smothers, brothers, the mother's brothers. Um uh, yeah,
(41:54):
you know what it's There's there's no right way, obviously.
I think you guys seem to. That's the way you
were at this email. You've got a healthy attitude about it.
Make your own traditions. Holidays don't mean anything universally. It's
the holidays about what your family makes it. Yeah. I
mean it's like you could also just make it like
apple picking Day or whatever. Thing is fun for you
(42:16):
specifically to do to celebrate yourself being a parent. Um, yeah,
other other the other, mothers, brothers Day. What was your
favorite holiday growing up? I love Halloween interesting to fourth
(42:38):
of July interesting? Um mine was Christmas was number one always,
then my birthday, then Halloween, then it's then it's a
real then Thanksgiving and then who cares Fourth of yourly? Maybe?
What was your Mother's Day traditions growing up? I don't remember.
(43:03):
We probably had like a brunch or like, there was
definitely a brunch involved, Like we probably made pancakes and
gave my mom something, and then depending on the year,
we might have taken her out to dinner or something.
I don't know, depending on the year, like if it
was an even year or an odd year, but my dad,
(43:26):
whether how much my dad got a ship together that year,
I don't know. We probably all realized it was happening
about two days beforehand, and then we figured something out.
It was fine. That was that was about my family too.
They're never a huge Mother's Day. Then just became, um no,
(43:51):
I'm mixing up. I just suddenly had a memory of
my mom sending me a cardon Mother's Day. But I'm
thinking of Valentine's Day. Don't let me forget to call
only you could like come up with a memory a
Mother's Day being about you. No, you know what I thought? Why?
I thought that because on Valentine's Day, my mom would
always send me a card and I'd always feel really
(44:13):
bad that I, once again, like, didn't send her a
card on Valentine's Day, So it felt getting a card
for her. I have memories of feeling selfish she did
not send me a card on Mother's Day, but that
would be even worse version of that feeling. Ah. Well, Oh,
(44:37):
I almost called you Adelaide Rosalie from adelaide Um. You
do you. That's what we say Adelaide. It's a really
nice name. If Noel wants to use that, it's just
very pretty. You could just because you so you never forget.
Just connected to that podcast episode that you listened to
(44:59):
right before you had baby during the coronavirus um old
Adelaide pure El Denin. Well, this has been another episode
of We Knows parenting, and that's a fact. If you'd
like to reach out, share a story, tell us how
you're doing coping, what's new in your life, what you
(45:20):
would name knowles baby. You can email us at we
knows pot at gmail dot com, or give us a
phone call even voicemail at three four seven three eight
four or seven three nine six. Find us on the Instagram,
on the Twitter, and we knows odd rate reviews. Subscribe.
If you know any pregnant people, get them my book.
(45:42):
There's no manual, honest and gory wisdom about having a baby.
It is still an excellent book and we'll see you
next time.
We Knows Parenting News
Hosts And Creators
Beth Newell
Peter McNerney
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