Halloween With Little Kids: Fun and Frights – Ep. 225

Shanna

Hi, welcome to Big Fat Positive with Shanna and Laura. On this week's episode, we have our weekly check-ins. We have our special segment, Why Is My Kid Crying, where we explore the things that have upset our kids recently, including spooky surprises and painful pasta. And we wrap it up with our weekly BFPs and BFNs. Let's get started. Hi, welcome to episode 225. Hello, Laura. That's my spooky voice.

Laura

It's a good one. Hello, Shanna.

Shanna

We're talking like this because Halloween is coming up. That's right. We love Halloween. We always do at least a little something on the show for Halloween. So for this episode, instead of doing our normal check-in, we're going to do a Halloween themed check-in and talk about what's going on in our lives and our families in preparation for one of our favorite holidays. Laura, what Halloweeny things have you and your family been getting up to? Well,

Laura

I recently have made like a parenting revelation that- Ooh, I love these. Okay. I feel really like embarrassed that it took me this long, to be honest, because what I've realized is that my extremely dramatic loves to do imaginary play, loves to be a director child, Augie, my three and a half year old, in case you didn't know who I was talking about. My big revelation is that he loves dressing up in costumes.

Shanna

Oh That's fun. That's a great thing to do all year round.

Laura

Yeah, and I'm just like what? Why is this just occurring to me now? Like, and it's just occurring to me now because we've actually like, it's so funny. I asked him, you know, what do you want to be for Halloween? And he was like, I want to be Optimus Prime. And I'm like, okay, cool. I, you know, I have all this cardboard that I'm collecting for my lawn project. I'll just use some of that and I'll make like a really cool, like transforming costume. And of course, like buy it, buy it just buy the costume. I was like, but. But I have this vision. He's like, will you please just buy the costume? And I was like, okay, I see your point. I get it. I'm doing the thing that I do, which is like over complicating things. I will just buy the costume. And so I went on the internet and bought the Optimus Prime costume and I bought a Bumblebee costume for Sebastian, who's 19 months old.

Shanna

A robot bee, got it.

Laura

Yes, robot bee. And of course these arrived Wait early because I ordered them way early because you know Halloween's past I have not been so proactive and I've been scrambling at the last minute for costumes and of course Augie knows what those Amazon packages look like and what may be contained inside. So like I got a text message from Corey one random day. He was like, Augie found the costume. I hope you didn't mean to save it till Halloween.

Shanna

Ooh, this is cool. I don't know what that costume is. Maybe that's the ninja, black and gold. But it also looks like he has a Spider-Man face.

Laura

Yes, you might be confused by that because we went to a birthday party that day that had a face painter, so he has a Spider-Man face.

Shanna

with a ninja body. Okay, Optimus Prime. Oh, Robot Bumblebee. I can see why the grandparents are confused by that one. So adorable. And then what's this one? Oh, C3PO. Got it. How fun! You've got your bases covered. This is good.

Laura

Definitely. And he's having so much fun with the costumes. Like, even if none of them get worn on actual Halloween, Oh I forgot we also have Luke Skywalker from last year because it was like way too big on him last year so I'm sure it'll fit him just fine. Yeah yeah so like he's having so much fun and it took Halloween for us to realize or for me to realize like oh like get my kid who loves pretend play some costumes for pretend play.

Shanna

Oh, goodness. A dress-up bin is always a fun thing to have in your back pocket as a parent.

Laura

Just pull out the costume bin. I need to collect them in one place because right now they're hanging in a closet that's inaccessible to him. I need to have some way to have them accessible. But they also need to not get totally ruined before Halloween. So it's a balance.

Shanna

Yes.

Laura

OK, so I sent you a few pictures of the little decorations I've done.

Shanna

Oh, we've got a spooky cobweb hanging from the chandelier, bats and spiders on the walls. Oh, so fun. Gosh, I love Halloween. So you had fun doing this?

Laura

Yes. So the bats were fun for me. I saw something on TikTok, of course, that was like, how did DIY these like this flock of bats? I don't know. It's not a flock. What is the collective noun for bats? A squeak. Is it? You know that? I don't know. I just made that up. No, I just made that up. I don't know. Oh, come on. That was very convincing. Wait, I'm going to look this up. A gaggle, a flap. Oh, it's a colony, apparently. A colony of bats. Yeah, so that's less exciting. Anyway, so there's a colony of bats flying on my wall. And I got to make it with my cricket machine. Oh nice. So I went to the dollar store got some like black card stock and that little like tic-tac-y stuff that you stick things to walls like do you remember I haven't used this stuff since like high school but it's like.

Shanna

That's so fun. If you come to my house, I don't want you to think I copied you because I bought that from Amazon last year. I have a similar thing, but I bought it and it's not nearly as cool as what you made. But I get like the idea of the three-dimensional of the wings popping up and like, it's a really fun, cool decoration.

Laura

And the pictures don't really do it justice, I have to say. And then there's just some other stuff haphazardly thrown about because Augie got involved. Like I got the big bin of, Halloween decorations out and he decided he was going to put up a few pumpkins randomly. And then the other thing that we're doing is our like trips to various pumpkin patches. So the first one we did, we did when my mom was in town, we went to Underwood Family Farms, which is super fun. It's this huge, like it's like a farm amusement park. I don't know how to explain it.

Shanna

Yeah, it's a combo of both. There's fields of vegetables and fruits. There's animals. There's attractions. And then for the fall, they really go all out with food trucks and pumpkin patches and all kinds of stuff.

Laura

So let me send you a picture of the kids at Underwood. Awesome love a good pumpkin patch pick. And then I have one other hot tip for anyone who's listening to this live like if it's not Halloween yet and you're in the LA area. One of the coolest things you can do is go to Discanso Gardens because they have this like special thing called carved where they have like all these displays of like really cool carved pumpkins and interactive light displays and a big house that's made out of pumpkins, like a pumpkin house. Which is fine, great photo ops and all that stuff. But to go to the event, it's a nighttime event. It's like, it's really expensive. Like the tickets are expensive and it's like after bedtime and all that stuff, it's kind of a pain in the ass to go to.

Shanna

Oh, this is so Halloween-y. I like it. I'll have to take the girls there for sure.

Laura

Yeah, it's a great place. It's a great place in general. And don't get me wrong, if you want to go to the evening one, like support Dysconso, they're a great organization. But if you're like me who's like, that's too close to bedtime, this is a great alternative.

Shanna

Yeah, it's tricky to go places at night with kids. And plus, Underwood Farms is expensive too. We bought tickets to go in a couple of weeks and dropped over $100, just entrance tickets. It's like, I can't do everything.

Laura

Yeah, it gets really expensive. But yeah, I think we are like fully in the Halloween spirit over here. Sounds like it. Are you gonna dress up? You know, I have Princess Leia from last year. I'll probably just do that again, because I love dressing up for Halloween, but with the kids, it's like everything gets focused on them. And I don't know. I don't know if I have the energy to, like, come up with something new. So, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. But check back in. Maybe I'll come up with something exciting. We'll have to post stuff on our Instagram, like, on Halloween so our followers can see it in real time.

Shanna

Yes.

Laura

Yes. OK, so that is what we're doing for Halloween. I'm very excited about it. But I want to know what you're doing for Halloween, because I feel like you go all out with decorations and everything. So I'm excited to hear about it.

Shanna

I love decorating for Halloween and my new tradition is going to the 99 cent store at the beginning of the season and stocking up on Halloween decorations. This year I brought Ellen Cici with me and they just like They were so excited. They were walking up and down the aisles, picking things out. And Elle was like, I want everything spooky and just all about spooky stuff this year. So we got a lot of like creepy skeletons and haunted looking clowns and all kinds of fun stuff. So we've definitely decorated the house already. As for costumes, we had a bit of a journey with the costume situation. So I asked what she wanted to be for Halloween and she was like a doggy like she wanted to be a cute doggy and so I was like okay like let's look online at dog costumes at Amazon because I'm a proponent of get the costume early and let your kids use it because.

Laura

Oh, got it. I was envisioning like a tree stick. Uh, yes. Okay. Like a rudimentary child's drawing of a human figure.

Shanna

Yes. So he's a stickman. Okay. Well, she's like, I want to be a stickman. So I'm looking online for kids, stickman. And there's nothing. But there are listings for various, like one piece leotard type outfits that are coming up. And she saw one in particular and was like, that's what I want. And I was like, what, what is that? Like, what are you going to be? Yeah. It's a full body, black, It's all black. It zips over the head, over the face. It has feet. It has fingers. It's like a complete black suit. And she's like, I don't know. That's what I want to be. And I'm like, I can't tamp the child's spirit. She has ideas and passions. And I, as a mom, choose not to tamp down on those within reason. I was like, OK. And I'm like, maybe you could be a shadow. And she's like, yes, I'm going to be a shadow.

Laura

Yeah, that's like a void. She's just a black void.

Shanna

And I'm like, I'm gonna have to get you a glow in the dark necklace or something.

Laura

Yeah, for sure, because you can barely see her in this photo in your living room. Uh-huh. Steve's is way creepier than I anticipated. It is really creepy, isn't it? Like, I thought, oh, that'd be kind of cute, but it's so uncanny like it. So it's a stickman. I wasn't envisioning the smiley face on the stickman. Yeah, two eyes and a smile. It's very creepy. Like this is definitely some serial killer, you know, showing up at your door in a horror movie.

Shanna

Costume, right? Yeah, I think so. I could definitely see some blood being splattered on that costume.

Laura

Hopefully none of yours. Okay, so what are they holding? Some decorations from the 99 cent store? Oh yeah, some Halloween decoration. Gotcha, gotcha.

Shanna

Yeah. So that's our costume situation.

Laura

I see you also sent me a photo of Cece as Chase, which standing next to this shadowy void really makes a good contrast between like how adorable the Chase costume is and how unsettling the black void costume is.

Shanna

Oh, it's so funny. It's like, I don't know, just having a six year old girl, like, I don't know, I would like think, oh, she's going to want to be like a pretty princess, you know, just thinking stereotypically, of course, like a princess or like a cute dog or like, oh my gosh, it's going to be so cute. And then this costume, it's just amazing. And that's really funny. I just love how quirky she is. Yeah. And as I mentioned, we've got plans to go to the pumpkin patch and Go trick-or-treating and do all that fun stuff. And yeah, that's pretty much our Halloween check-in. All right.

Laura

Well, shall we move on to our special segment then? I think we should.

Shanna

Okay, as I mentioned, we did our Halloween decorating and the girls were really into spooky things this year. And one of our spooky decorations we picked up at a Buy Nothing group event that's called Junk in the Trunk. Every month all the Buy Nothing people gather in a parking lot and open their trunks and give stuff away like a free garage sale basically. That's so fun. I wish my group did that. Yeah, it's so fun. It's awesome. We came away with so much stuff including a few spooky decorations and one of them is a I think it's intended to be like a candy bowl. It's like a white plastic bowl and it says trick or treat on it and looks like it's made out of bone or something. And then at the back of the bowl is a skeleton head basically, but with like really wild white fuzzy hair. And we set it out, and the girls are like, this is so cool.

Laura

Batteries, yes. I don't have a candy bowl with batteries. Never in my life have I had a battery operated candy bowl. So this sounds very elaborate.

Shanna

I noticed a switch on the side of the skull head and a spot for batteries. So I was like, oh, the must need new batteries. So we put in new batteries and What it is is one of those motion sensor bowls where like the kid or whatever trigger treating goes to reach for the candy and then it's like, and it's supposed to startle you. So that's what it was like laughing maniacally. And they're just like cracking up. I think this thing is so funny and blah, blah, blah. And Steve comes by and he's like, oh, this is interesting. Like it looks like the mouth should move and he like moves the jaw up and down and it doesn't. We're like, oh, I don't know. I guess it just cackles. Cut to later that night after dinner, me and Cece and Steve are sitting around the table finishing dinner and Elle as she does. She has a really hard time sitting still for dinner. It's like frolicking around the house.

Laura

Okay, first of all, this is way scarier than I anticipated. I was envisioning a kind of cutesy bowl with like a cutesy skeleton. This is like googly, like the bloodshot eyes. Okay.

Shanna

So these poor girls are terrified of this bowl. And I feel so bad, you know, because they didn't know it was going to do that. It's an old hand me down, right? It wasn't functioning properly, obviously. When we set it out and they kind of fell in love with it and thought it was spooky and scary. And then it did this thing out of the blue. Steve was like, oh, I must have loosened up the job when I did that to it. And she was like, why did you do that? He's like, well, that's how it's supposed to work. I didn't know. And she's like, it's your fault. I mean, they cried so hard for probably 30 minutes.

Laura

Just don't give her a mirror on Halloween because if she sees herself, she's going to be... At least no bloodshot eyes will be bulging out of that. Yeah. Okay. So that is a legitimately scary bowl. I can understand her fear and I'm sure her body was like, flooded with adrenaline, you know, and that explains a lot of it. But gosh, I hope it doesn't create some kind of phobia for her.

Shanna

I hope not too. The next day, she was like, I don't know. I don't know if I'm that scared of it anymore. But she hasn't asked for it to come back into the house. So we'll see. I hope it doesn't either. She still loves looking at decorations at other people's houses, you know, when we drive by. decoration alert, decoration alert. And they love looking at stuff. So hopefully, hopefully they're not scarred for life.

Laura

Well, something's got to scars for life, right?

Shanna

Might as well be a creepy bowl.

Laura

What's interesting to me is Cece crying in that situation. Yeah. Because it's 100% just feeding off of her sister's energy, which is something that I see happen more and more in our house, you know, that Sebastian will feed off of Augie's energy. And it kind of pisses me off sometimes because Augie, he's like full three-nager right now. You know like and so he gets in these moody kicks or he just doesn't want to do anything And then I see Sebastian like copying him basically wanting to be just like him and I'm like no no I don't want this contagious mood to take over the house like everyone snap out of it

Shanna

Yeah, that's so hard.

Laura

But they're so empathetic, you know, especially with their siblings. Yeah. Yeah. So, well, I'm sorry you've lost spooky things.

Shanna

Yeah, me too. I mean, because I like the spooky things too. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see if we can get it back in the house before Halloween. Okay. What's your first why is my kid crying?

Laura

Okay. Mine is with Sebastian. All right. So as we know, Augie is a picky eater. I've gone over this a million times, right? Like we're working on it. Things might be looking up a little bit, but you know, we're still just trying to like have a no pressure, casual feeling around me all times, right? And part of this is being okay with them like exploring their food through play. So this is something that I've kind of had to relearn for myself because I was definitely taught like don't play with your food right like don't push it around the plate don't you know make mountains out of your.

Shanna

Exactly. Backfire.

Laura

Backfire. But yeah, there's not much more to the story. It's just that I kind of failed that one. But my toddler bit his own finger, and that's why he's crying. Poor guy. Did he keep eating the penne after that, or was he done? Oh, no, he kept eating it. He didn't want it on his finger. But he was definitely eating through sobs, you know? He's still a really... He eats a lot, and he eats a lot of variety of things, so he's like... top, top, top. It ain't gonna stop me. Yeah, exactly. Been there, been there.

Shanna

His fear growing up is gonna be of putting foods on his fingers. He's gonna be like the kid that's like, no, I'm not putting those black olives on my fingers, raspberries, mm-mm. Do they still make those bugles? Bugles! Those are the best things to put on your fingertips. If they don't make bugles anymore, they need to restart, because I love bugles.

Laura

Bugles, so good. They have a great texture. Anyway, we digress. We'll look into the bugles situation. But in the meantime, I do want to know another reason your child is crying.

Shanna

All right, here it goes. So oftentimes when we have some sort of birthday celebration or something around the house, we have balloons that we blow up and the girls love playing with the balloons. Elle loves to challenge herself to blow them up and tie them and they're just really into balloons. So oftentimes there are not inflated balloons hanging around the house. And one day, Elle brought them into the bathroom. And I was like, oh, you know what? This would be really fun for bath time. Let me like put water in these balloons and make really giant water balloons for you to play with in the bathtub. So there's a few of them and they're playing with them. And it's like super fun and a great time and everything. And the next day, someone else in the house found the water balloons in the bathtub. That person is Steve.

Shanna

And he made a choice. He came into the kitchen where me and the girls were with two giant water balloons beneath his shirt as if they were giant boobs. Okay. I did not think that's what was going to happen. He saw an opportunity to tap into his high school self and pretend he had boobs and was just being jokey. And walked out and he was like, oh, hey girls, what's going on? You know, like not acknowledging that they were there. But just like, hey girls.

Laura

That is really interesting. Like, you know, she's so familiar with Steve as her dad and the body he's in that seeing him different, I guess, must have triggered something in her.

Shanna

Yeah. Like when you come home with a new haircut or something and your kid's like, no.

Laura

Yeah, I was going to say like, or you've had a beard for a long time and you shave, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I've ever seen my dad without a mustache. If I did, that would be so weird. Yeah. Yeah. So how did Steve react to that? Did he immediately recognize the dire situation he was in or did he like continue to joke around?

Shanna

He did not continue to joke around. He immediately removed the water balloons, you know, and realized that that was not a funny thing to her, gave her the water balloons back. Yeah, I don't know. So it was just like so odd and interesting. And sorry, Steve, for like sharing this story.

Laura

Yeah. I mean, it is super fascinating to me. And yeah, you know what? I love how Elle is always like willing to express herself in that way. You know, she's like, she's very in touch with her emotions. Oh, yes. 100 percent.

Shanna

She will always tell you how she feels. Yes. All right. So that was my last one. Do you have another? Why is my kid crying for us? I do. But I thought maybe we could do it after the break. Yes, I think we should.

Laura

Okay, so this week we had one of Augie's little preschool friends over. It's actually a friend of his who was in his class last year, but now has moved up to an older class. He's a little bit older, about six months older than Augie, so he's already four. And he's just the sweetest kid and his mom is really, really nice. And so we had them over for like a play date for the first time. And they were just having a blast like his little friend and him were just playing with all those toys and then I said like they were getting a little wild so I was like how about we set up a crash pad and they were like yeah and so we set up the crash pad and we made a really elaborate crash pad with like every soft object we could find.

Laura

And we're totally spying on them. And I hear Augie walk up to Max and he's like, Max, I was sad because you went first and I was next on the list. And that's why I was crying, but I'm better now.

Shanna

Oh my God, there's actual reason behind it. Yeah. Yeah, that is incredible. And it reminds me of something Janet Lansbury often says is that, Oftentimes, kids can work out things together on their own. They don't need us necessarily to come in and be like, Max, you need to apologize. And that is almost like this forced fake nicety that doesn't really teach them anything. And they just had a moment where they understood each other's feelings here and then naturally moved on. And that's amazing.

Laura

Yeah. it was just really nice to hear because there are times where you're just like, I mean, how many tantrums have you sat through acknowledging their feelings and you're just like, what? Like, all you want to do is either fix it or tell them to stop crying or whatever, you know, like your internal self wants to do something else, but you read the books and you've watched all the Instagram reels and like, you know what you're supposed to do, so you do it. And it was just such a nice concrete example of like, Okay, like it is sinking in like it's working it's he's able to articulate his feelings and yeah, like you said like you can see a scenario really easily where Augie starts crying and then Max's mom is like Max you went first you apologize to Augie. And it wouldn't have solved anything. It wasn't Max's fault. He didn't know that it was Augie's turn in his head.

Shanna

Yeah. And you could have been like, oh, Augie, let it go. It's not a big deal. Just let it go and keep playing and have fun. You should be having fun. I can see that being an option too.

Laura

Yeah, try to logic it out and be like, you didn't even tell Max, right? I could have been like, how does he supposed to know? You shouldn't be crying. So anyway, that was really a big win. And I was very happy that that happened. So I mean, I wasn't happy that he was crying, but you know, it's nice to see emotional development and maturity there.

Shanna

Yeah, I think one thing that this method teaches, I think, is to not be afraid of those emotions, to not think that, to teach our kids that they don't make them a bad person, that it's just something they're going to move in and out of. They're going to, they're in this emotion, they're going to move out of it. And to feel like not embarrassed about it, you know, it's just that's, that's what his reaction shows to me, like that he didn't feel bad about it, weird about it, shame, nothing. It's just like, Oh, this is a thing I was going through. Let me explain it to you and let's move on. Yeah. And that's really great. And Max was like, cool. Exactly. Yeah.

Laura

Cool. So, all right. That was my last, why is my kid crying? For now. I'm sure there will be more. Give it five minutes. Exactly. But in the meantime, while we're all not crying, shall we move on to our BFPs and BFNs? Oh, yes, indeed.

Shanna

We wrap up every episode with our weekly BFPs or BFNs. Laura, what do you got for us?

Laura

Okay, I have a BFP, but I'm thinking I'm just gonna send you some photos and have you try to figure out what's going on. I like a mystery. Okay, they are on their way.

Shanna

All righty, oh, little Sebastian with a giant concrete mixer truck. Oh, that seems very exciting for him. Oh my gosh, he's sitting in the truck with you. Oh, and there's Augie also in a big truck. I don't know if it's the same one and a police car and some kind of, I don't know my big trucks, but I'm gonna say a bulldozer and you'll probably correct me. It's a skid steer. Oh geez, all right. Wow, lots of big cool vehicles. My guess is that you guys bought a fleet of trucks to appease your children.

Laura

Yes. You got it right.

Shanna

Yes.

Laura

I saw it on the buy nothing group, actually. It was like, do you want this skid steer?

Shanna

Oh my god, you got them for free?

Laura

Oh, no. We do have a big yard, but not that big. No, we were informed of this really fun event by my friend Marilyn, who I've talked about a lot, friend of the podcast. We love Marilyn.

Shanna

Yes. Hi, Marilyn.

Laura

Marilyn followed the Glendale Police Department on Instagram, which I was not following until now. And they had announced that they were doing something called a touch a truck event. Which is exactly what it sounds like. They just bring a bunch of trucks into a big parking lot. And it was like a fundraiser. They had like a pancake breakfast that you could like go and get your pancakes. And it was a fundraiser for something I don't remember what. There was like raffles and stuff like that. But for the most part, otherwise it was just a big parking lot full of, I want to say like 30 different kinds of trucks. There were like four different kinds of fire trucks. The picture of Sebastian driving, he was driving a bucket truck, which might be his favorite of the truck tunes trucks.

Shanna

Oh, cool.

Laura

So he would sit there. I mean, we had to go there like five times. There was the skids here, as you saw. I have about 100 pictures. I just picked the six favorite to show you.

Shanna

God, they must have been on cloud nine.

Laura

They were. OK. So here's the thing. It was Sunday morning. It was from like nine to one. And we lived walking distance from this. Like it was about, you know, three quarters of a mile away. And at first the kids did not want to go. They were like in their PJs at home playing with their toys, watching Moana. Like they were not into it. Obviously, Sebastian doesn't really know what's what. But I was like, You guys let's get in the stroller and let's go to this touch a truck event and agi in full three major mode was like no i don't want to go and was like kind of being a real brat about. We had to coerce them into the stroller was like a whole thing and even as we were walking up agi was like. I don't want to go. I want to go home. Can I have the iPad? You know, all this shit. But then the moment we walked through the gate, everything changed, Shanna.

Shanna

That sounds so fun.

Laura

So yeah, that's my BFB, a really cool truck touching event. That was free. That was within walking distance. Amazing. Yeah. But also the fact that we actually went, you know, that we sucked it up and went. Absolutely. Alrighty. So how about you? I want to know, do you have a BFP or a BFN for us?

Shanna

I have a BFP. Oh, good. Yay. The overarching BFP is that Steve's sister Leslie came into town and visited us for like nine or 10 days. I love Leslie, the girl. Yeah, you know Leslie. I know Leslie. I love Leslie. She's so nice. She's so nice and so fun. The girls really love her and Having someone in town gave us a reason to get out of the house and do stuff. And so we did quite a few really fun things. One was just going to the park, all of us, and playing on the playground. But then what we did was we brought softball equipment, like a ball and a bat and a glove. And we went into this big grassy field and we were pitching to Elle and she was hitting and I was hitting grounders and Leslie was fielding and she was fielding and CECE was doing God knows what catching bugs or something. But it was just so fun. Like it just felt like a fun family afternoon. And it was awesome.

Laura

Corey got me a gift certificate to a spa, not Burke Williams, but another one nearby for my birthday and haven't had a chance to use it yet. But now that Sebastian's in daycare, maybe I could go do that.

Shanna

Yes, do it, do it, do it. It's just so rejuvenating. I haven't felt so relaxed in so long. And then she and I went to happy hour afterwards. So I got a lot of good bonding time with my sister-in-law, and we got to relax and have fun. And it was just a blast. Oh, so nice. I love it. But yeah, so a wonderful week of spooky Halloween and sister-in-law in town and relaxation. And yeah, just a good week. Amazing. Yeah. But I think that's it for me and for our show, so should we wrap this thing up?

Laura

Yes, but you know, I have a five-star review to read. Ooh, give it to us. OK, this is from S. Lewis91 on Apple Podcasts. They say, I wish I found this podcast sooner. Amazing podcast, five stars. I found this podcast when I was 27 weeks pregnant, and the only problem I had with it is I wish I had started listening to it sooner. Laura and Shanna provide lots of information, advice, and laughs on my drive to work or when I'm completing household chores. It is inspirational that they make time to do this podcast while juggling two children, work, and everything else that comes with being a parent. Your hard work on this podcast is definitely appreciated and brightens my day. Well, that brightened my day, hearing that.

Shanna

My too. Thank you so much. You know, Laura, a lot of people say they wish they found our show sooner. Like, I think that we should have OBGYNs, like, slip our podcast to... People when they come in and find out they're pregnant like that first scan or something it's like here listen to this listen to this now Don't wait.

Laura

I know right like that their six-week appointment if you're lucky enough to get one that early be like look I know you don't want to tell anyone in your life yet Yes, but you can just pretend you're talking to Lauren Shanna by listening to their podcast

Shanna

Yes. Yes. This is the right strategy to get this podcast into people's ears. I think so.

Laura

All right. Well, I'll talk to my OB first.

Shanna

Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, thank you so much for sending that in. And listeners, if you haven't had a chance yet to leave us a review, could you please do us a huge favor? And head over to Apple Podcasts and leave us a five star review and say a few things that you love about the show. We super appreciate your efforts in doing that. And if you have any, why is my kid crying situations you want to share with us, please reach out. Laura, where can everyone find us?

Laura

We are on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok at BFB Podcast. We have a website, bigfappositivepodcast.com. If you want to send us an email, just send it to contact at bigfappositivepodcast.com. You can always throw a voice memo in there because we love those. And finally, if you want to join, legitimately, the coolest group of people on the internet, you gotta search Facebook for Big Fat Positive Community. It's a private group, so you have to request to join and make sure you answer those two membership questions so we know you're not a robot. But if you are indeed not a robot, we will send you straight through to all the amazing conversations we're having in there.

Shanna

Our show is produced by Laura Birek, Shanna Micko, and Steve Yager. Have a spooooky week! Happy Halloween! Bye! Forever. No, just kidding.

Laura

Just till next week.