Explaining How Babies Are Made to a 6-Year-Old – Ep. 232

Laura

Welcome to Big Fat Positive with Shanna and Laura. This week we have our weekly check-ins, we have our special segment, OMG I'm Freaking Out, where we talk about smells, stealing, and stuffies, and we close with our BFPs and BFNs for the week. Let's get started! Hi, everyone. Welcome to the show. This is episode 232. Hi, Shanna. Hello. Hello, hello. So let's get right to it. Let's get down to brass tacks.

Shanna

Let's find out what's been going on with your week. It has been a great week, mostly because my friend Melissa was in town from Austin for a few days this week. And I haven't seen her since before the pandemic. She used to come out a lot and come to the girl's birthday parties and stuff. And I miss her so much. And she came to visit. That's so fun. I'm sad I didn't get to see her. I love Melissa too. I know. Yeah, we usually all end up getting together when she comes out. She was here for a few days before a conference and it was really nice to see her. And it was so cute. The girls just took to her instantly. Like she is their auntie, right? But they don't really remember her that much because it's been a few years. And so I was really prepping them beforehand. I was like, All right girls, Melissa's coming into town.

Laura

It's really fun to watch. I remember that feeling from when I was a kid. Do you remember that? Oh, yeah. I was huge show off for sure. Yeah. I wonder if all kids are like that or if it's just like the performers in us, you know? Because I wanted to show everything to guests. I wanted to like perform my piano pieces and like...

Shanna

While she was here, I was like, okay, you're going to have to witness me like trying to make some TikToks for the podcast. So I had an audience too. It was so hilarious. One of my ideas was like, I'm going to suggest like my top three or five like body positive books for kids, you know, because we have these books laying around and I really think it's important to introduce kids to these things when they're young. So I'm like trying my hardest to like make this TikTok video and explain these books and she's just like sitting there hanging out. She was so nice about it. She wasn't like cracking up or anything, but I couldn't do it without laughing. And I was like, ugh. So I haven't made that one yet, but I really, it's still on my to-do list. I need to do it.

Laura

I cannot do TikToks with an audience. I've learned this because one time I tried to just record a reaction TikTok, like a response stitch to someone while sitting in my car. And I kept having to stop because people were walking by and looking at me and I got so self-conscious.

Shanna

Yes, yes. I get really self-conscious too. So I get it. I admire these people who can just walk down the street with the phone in front of their face and talking and stuff. Wow, no self-consciousness whatsoever.

Laura

Yeah, yeah. No, I can't do that. If Corey is coming downstairs, I'm like, oh, God, stop doing the TikTok. It's embarrassing.

Shanna

So funny. Well, anyway, so as a result of me working on this TikTok, I had all of our sex books, sex and body books, mostly body books. all over my office. And I realized that's kind of awesome to have them out of the bookshelves and all over because the kids are more likely to stumble across them and discover them again and want to read them and stuff. So they've been looking at all these books all week. And Elle really got interested in It's Not the Stork, which is our favorite kind of body, puberty, baby's sex book. And she's like, read it to me at bedtime. And I was like, okay, cool. So she wanted to start right at the part where it describes all of the male and female body parts. She just digs right in. All the stuff I felt uncomfortable with as a kid. She's just like, tell me the names of everything. So that's cool.

Laura

That's really funny. I mean, yeah, fair enough. It's a cool origin story. Also, we worked so hard to get the egg and the sperm and combine them in the lab and all that stuff. Yeah, it's a very cool story when you think about it that way.

Shanna

Yeah, and probably more likely for me to share the details of that story than the details of the other story, which, let's be honest, I don't even remember at this point.

Laura

You didn't write it down in your diary?

Shanna

Dear Diary, today I made love to my husband for the 12,000th time.

Laura

Weren't you on like, um, Clomid or something like that, too?

Shanna

I was taking clomid, yeah. So there was a little science there.

Laura

Yeah, there you go. You can tell her that. And also, like, yeah, I mean, you're not remembering it because you probably were having sex, like, every other day to, like, catch an egg.

Shanna

Oh, my God. Yes. Yes. Exhausting amount of sex in those years. Like, don't worry, honey.

Laura

You were made by sex, but it was very perfunctory sex that we were doing because we knew we wanted to have a baby. It was very robotic.

Shanna

See, you were made... You were made with robotics.

Laura

Luckily, it was like a long weekend, and he got sick at the beginning of the weekend and was fine by the time Monday rolled around, so... Oh, that's good. He didn't miss school, but he was like... He was, like, just sick enough that he would get into a coughing fit anytime he would, like, I don't know, you know, start running around or playing too hard. And he was coughing a lot. Like, one night he did cough so much he ended up throwing up, which really scared him. It's a poor guy. Every time he starts coughing now, he, like, gets really scared and I'm like, honey, it's okay, it's just a cough. He's like, I don't want to throw up. Yeah. Poor guy. But anyway, the point is that he just has a cough, basically. And, you know, those coughs last forever. Like, he's better, no fever, blah, blah, blah, but he still has a cough. But he wasn't sick enough to, like, not be energetic. So. Of course.

Shanna

What was I thinking? Your brain was offline clearly when you were online ordering these umbrellas.

Laura

I was trying to save money. You know like we got two kids and in care in preschool and daycare right now like it was like a twenty dollar umbrella and it's not gonna bankrupt us but you know that it's forty bucks. Let me find this picture for you okay so the first picture I'm sending you is of Augie very excited to get his umbrella but you'll notice something in the background.

Shanna

Okay, here we go. Oh, he's so excited about that cute umbrella. Oh, look at that. Oh, jealous eyes from the younger one. Oh my God.

Laura

His eyes are on that umbrella. Yeah. And so here's the picture of Sebastian when he got his hands on the umbrella.

Shanna

I love toddlers with umbrellas. It's like as big as he is. It's so cute. It's so happy now.

Laura

And then, you know what? I've been saying 36 hours, but it looks like it was only 24 hours later when they got the second umbrella in their hands.

Shanna

There we go. There we go. Now they're ready for a little rendition of singing in the rain.

Laura

Yeah. Of course, they arrived after the rain had stopped. Of course. Maybe it will rain again someday in Los Angeles. Don't hold your breath. But I have learned a lesson, Shanna. The lesson has been learned that if it's a really high value item, like an umbrella. Very interesting to kids. You get two of them. You get two.

Shanna

Yes. Yes. Two umbrellas. You learned your lesson, automatically set that quantity in your cart to two, and you should be set.

Laura

What does this mean for Christmas presents, though? That's what I want to know.

Shanna

Yeah, there are some things I've gotten two of automatically for the girls. Like I got them this jumper Pogo thing last year. And I was like, oh, they're going to just like fight over this. They're going to have to get two. And then like they barely even played with it, you know. And I was like, oh, why did I get two? They could have easily shared that. So there is trial and error. I don't know.

Laura

Yeah, I'm gonna have to dig deep, think about things, and just have to deal with the discomfort, I guess, if they only have one of a thing. But this time I gave in and they have two umbrellas.

Shanna

But that's useful for when it does rain, they'll both stay dry.

Laura

Yeah, right. Like Sebastian's old enough to keep it over his head to stay dry.

Shanna

Yeah, that's true. Cece didn't use hers quite correctly for a long time there when she was younger.

Laura

But we'll see. We'll see. Right now it's sunny again, so we don't know. So yeah, that was our week trying to keep Augie from running around and Umbrella Gate 2022. And that's, I think, all I have to talk about. Shall we move on to our special segment?

Shanna

Yes, we should.

Laura

All right, so mine is inspired by a podcast I listened to. It was called Sold a Story from American Public Media. Have you heard of it? No. Oh shanna maybe you shouldn't listen to it i don't know it was a great podcast it was like it's i'm just saying it's caused me to freak out oh and here's why it was a six episode like investigational series from american public media and it was very much like it was very reported very scripted really well done podcast i must say.

Shanna

Well, it sounds like it's up my alley so far.

Laura

Yes, but the topic of the podcast was about how American schools teach reading and more specifically about how sometime in the mid 90s they stopped teaching phonics apparently and started teaching something called the queuing system. I had no clue. I had no idea, Shanna. This podcast illuminated all of it. Apparently, there was a woman, a researcher named Marie Clay, who came up with this queuing system. And the basics of it is that instead of using phonics to sound out words, her research showed that struggling readers did better with this sort of three pronged attack to try to figure out the meaning of words in books. And so it was like, you look at the meaning derived from the context or pictures. That's like the one cue. So like you're looking at a book and Susie and the picture Susie is holding an apple. And the book says Susie is eating a blank.

Shanna

Yeah. So what did we do when we were young?

Laura

Worked through phonics books? Well, I definitely did phonics. I definitely did phonics. I remember doing the phonics stuff, like all the time, sounding out words and all that. And to be fair, like it's getting back in folk. So like this podcast is a result of one reporter who's like done a lot of work on it over the past few years. So like it's definitely the tide has been turning and the podcast has all this interesting like political background on it. I guess like phonics became like a sort of political hot potato for a while. So yeah, it's. It was super interesting. The podcast was fascinating, but like I I've definitely been googling like how to teach my own kids to read like phonics books, like all this stuff.

Shanna

That's so interesting. I didn't know that phonics was out of schools. I'm really curious if else school does any of that. Maybe not. Like, I don't even remember what phonics like problems look like. But I will say, when Cece was doing speech therapy, I feel like a lot of what she was doing was phonics, like learning the sounds of letters and the right way to say them. And that made her so curious about letters. And she's reading small words now, right? And I can see that she's sounding them out. If she sees the word no, it's like, oh no. And so, I don't know. I feel weird and conflicted about all this.

Laura

Well, I mean, it sounds like she's learning phonics, so that's good. I was frantically googling, like, Glendale Unified School District, reading curriculum. I couldn't find anything. So basically now I'm freaking out because I feel like I need to teach Augie to read before he gets to public school. Just do things.

Shanna

You know, I did not work with Elle on reading before kindergarten because it was the pandemic times and my brain was zapped out. So my feeling is that Augie is going to be okay, whether or not you help him with this or not. Do you think that he will kind of start taking to it on his own before school or what?

Laura

Well, he's already really interested in like sounding things out. Like he'll just sort of, like you've talked about with Cece, he'll just sort of like find a word and be like, you know, he'll say like, Daddy, duh. Duh daddy duh and i'll be like what does what do you think daddy starts with and he'll get it right sometimes i'll be like duh duh d you know so i think he's definitely like inclined to it and i think that you're right he probably will just have a natural interest in it but one of the things about this podcast that like continued to make me freak out was that they talked about how there's like groups of kids who like one group does what our kids seem to be doing which is like they're interested in sounding out words and they kind of learn how to read very easily. And then there's another subset that really needs like explicit instruction about it.

Shanna

Well, I think maybe you need to call the school board president or something and ask about the reading curriculum.

Laura

Hello, I am a concerned citizen. My child is three and won't be in your schools for a while, but I'm very curious about your curriculum. That'll be received well.

Shanna

I bet people do that all the time, though. I mean, that's probably not uncommon.

Laura

Anyway, so that was my first OMGM freaking out. Thank you for letting me talk about it, process it. How about you, Shada? What is your first OMGM freaking out?

Shanna

Okay, mine didn't come from a podcast, but it did come from a TikTok that I watched. I watched a couple of videos from this woman. Her name is Carrie. She's a lawyer, and I'll link to her profile in our show notes. But she did kind of one of those, here are the top five things I would never do based on my experience being a lawyer, right? Yeah. I'm such a sucker for these top five videos. I love them. Oh my God, me too. Getting to end.

Laura

Me too. I always want to know.

Shanna

Yes, tell me everything. So I'm totally sucked into this lady's video. And the first is like, I would never ride on the back of a motorcycle, whatever. I'm like, yep, me neither. Did that, my 20 is not going to do that anymore. The second was you self-check out. I'm like, what? Oh my God, I saw this.

Laura

You saw it too? And every time I use self-check out, I'm like freaking out now.

Shanna

Oh my god, I'm not alone. Okay, so you know where I'm coming from. So her number two, she's like, oh, never use self-checkout. And I'm just like, wait, what? Like we went from riding on a motorcycle to self-checkout. The most benign thing I do all the time. All the time. All the time. So she goes through her list and I'm like still thinking about checkout.

Laura

You're caught up on number two. Like you didn't hear anything else.

Shanna

No, nothing else. I couldn't even tell you what the rest is on her list. And apparently a lot of people had that same thought process because a lot of people were like, wait, what's up with self checkout and put that in her comments. And so she made a follow-up video talking about self-checkout. And apparently she deals with a lot of people who get arrested for shoplifting using self-checkout. And she's like, there are different groups of people that get arrested for shoplifting and have to spend time in jail before they can get out on charges and stuff. She's like, first is obviously the people that are going in there purposely to steal. I'm like, yeah, okay, I'm not one of those people clearly. She's like the other group of people are the people who accidentally like forget to ring something up.

Laura

Which is very possible. And if I recall, there was another group of people that was getting in trouble, which were people who checked everything out, but they paid in cash or something, and they didn't have proof that they paid for everything and that store security was going back and trying to find things. I mean, okay, I have a couple reactions to this. The first is like, oh man, that's really fucked up. And the second is that like for like the first two times I use self-checkout after I watch that TikTok, because like the truth is like I still had to use self-checkout sometimes because you're in a rush and it's empty while the rest of the lines are super long at Target or whatever. She was like, oh, what you should do is like hold up everything you're checking out to the security camera so they can see you scanning it and putting it in.

Shanna

Truly, you're just like narrating to the camera like here is the toothpaste I'm checking out.

Laura

And then the other thing is like my first reaction is very telling, which was, oh, they're not going to arrest me, which is probably true. And you know why? Because you're a white woman. I am a middle-aged white woman. And that is my privilege in action. Like I watched that TikTok and I said, you know what, they're probably not going to arrest me anyway, or they're probably not even going to question me because I am a middle-class, middle-aged white woman with no arrest record. You know, like no history of shoplifting. What are they going to do? They're not even going to look twice at me. And that's so fucked up, Sean. Like that's so fucked up. Yeah. Because that's not the case for a lot of our friends. You know what I mean? Like if you're a person of color, if you're a middle class, middle aged person of color, you might not get that treatment itself. Check out. Yeah.

Shanna

So it's interesting. I would think that people would accidentally forget to ring stuff up a lot or purposely. I mean, I don't know. It feels like a setup for mistakes. So that's on them.

Laura

Well, It's not just like a setup like it could be a trap, you know, like if you are a person who doesn't enjoy the privileges are white privilege right our protection privileges that we get to have by just like waltzing out of sprouts with who knows how much stuff our kids just dropped into our basket. It is. like could be a trap, right? Like the store security is there waiting to pounce. And yeah, it makes me feel icky. So another reason to go through the regular checkout.

Shanna

It's interesting because the people running the target self-checkout usually do not seem intimidating whatsoever. Like they don't appear to be security, but I'm wondering like, are they watching me? Are they staring at me? Like I'm just more like paranoid about all of it now.

Laura

Well, welcome to the state of big brother, Shanna. Everyone's watching all the time.

Shanna

Yeah. It puts more context into this one guy I saw at self-checkout recently. He was checking out and the woman who was monitoring everything just kind of like came over near him and he was like, get away from me. You are in my personal space. I was like, whoa, calm down, dude. I don't know. It's putting everyone on edge, basically.

Laura

Yeah, well, maybe the answer is just to hire more people to do regular checkout.

Shanna

Yeah, there you go.

Laura

Although my kids will be so sad because they love doing self-checkout. Like they argue over who gets to scan the next item.

Shanna

Oh yeah, my kids even ask the Trader Joe's checkout people if they can like run the thing. over the beep beep thing, whatever it is.

Laura

The beep beep thing. Well, we'll definitely have to post a link to that TikTok so that everyone can be educated on this and hopefully no one's run afoul of the self-checkout line.

Shanna

Yeah.

Laura

All right. Do you have another OMG for us? I do. And this one is actually a little bit of a mystery.

Shanna

Ooh, I love a good mystery.

Laura

Okay. So here's where this story starts. About a week ago, I started noticing a smell in our house. Uh-oh. But I was the only one who was smelling it, Shanna. Okay. I would go upstairs and I'd get a faint whiff of something, not something that smells good. I'd get a faint whiff of something very foul. And I was like, hmm, is there something rotting like a grape like you had, right? Like in a trash can. It was very faint, but I there was very distinctive to me. And so I was like, OK, maybe I just need to gather up the trash. And I asked Corey, I was like, do you smell this bad smell when you go upstairs? He's like, no, I don't smell anything. I was like, okay, I think I just still have the pregnancy super smell. Like we've talked about this before, right? That my super smell has never gone away. So I have very sensitive nose these days after two pregnancies.

Shanna

That's what I'm thinking.

Laura

Yeah, sometimes you change a diaper and you're wrestling with an alligator that is your child trying to get a diaper change and you forget you put it off to the side and you never took it to the diaper pail or the trash. No, couldn't find it. Then I remember that we have this clawfoot bathtub in our guest bath upstairs that we never use, right? Because it's antique and doesn't have a shower. And I remembered that you have to put water down the drain every once in a while or it evaporates out of the pee trap. And so the sewer air can come up like through the drain, right? I'm like, okay, I put water down there. That's got to solve it. Nope. Next day, it's even worse. And then finally, we wake up on Saturday morning and I go downstairs and it is putrid downstairs. Just disgusting.

Shanna

I love that Corey was just like, nope, not that bad. Was he congested that day or does he just not smell

Laura

To be fair, he kind of picked up a little bit of like Augie's cough or whatever, right? Like he's a little congested. But like the difference in our experiences is just so fast.

Shanna

Oh, that's so gross.

Laura

Yeah. So anyway, all week I was freaking out about the smell and being told that it probably wasn't anything. You should just open the windows. It's probably just the trash. But we borrowed that snake cam from my neighbor Amy.

Shanna

How did it get into your HVAC system?

Laura

Well, apparently the previous owners kind of did a shitty job setting up that vent. They created this bay window and apparently they cut into the flooring and created a hole that little animals can get through. And so these little animals were getting through and then they were chewing and gnawing away at the vent so that they could get in. I'm sure they were cold, right? And it was warm. So now that vent is deleted. They got rid of it. It's covered up completely. And we have to figure out what to do about that. But yeah, that was that was what I was freaking out about this week.

Shanna

You got to trust your nose. You know, I've learned that lesson, too. It's just like if I smell something and Steve doesn't. Oh, it's probably there like that whole grape situation or anytime there's a rat that's dead in the attic or Whatever, but yeah, it was um It takes a while I guess for them to get really stinky.

Laura

Yeah Well, we had an HVAC guy come out and fix it and he was like yeah, I'd probably been dead for about a week and I was like I know I knew it. I've been vindicated. Yes.

Shanna

Oh, I'm sorry. That sounds like quite the unpleasant experience.

Laura

Yes, it was. And then I got to have a fun discussion with Augie about dead squirrels.

Shanna

I do. It's not stinky at all. But let's take a break and come back with it. Okay, good idea.

Laura

Okay we are back and Shanna has one more OMG I'm freaking out to share with us Shanna. Tell us what have you been freaking out about?

Shanna

Well this is an incident that happened recently that I was freaking out about. The other day CECE was really tired in the middle of the day, wasn't Feeling great. And so I was like, oh, you know what? Why don't we go on a walk? We still have that Bob stroller. It's like a really big jogging stroller that she still fits in and will sometimes like for me to walk her around in and I'm like, well, go for a walk and you can just relax in the stroller. And I knew she would probably fall asleep and take a little nap. And she's like, yeah, that's a good idea. As we're out the door, she's like, I want to bring my squish mellow. And I was like, OK, that sounds nice and cozy. And it's not a giant one. It's more of a medium size. And she loves it. It's been her favorite stuffy lately. She sleeps on it like a pillow. It's really cute. It's a white cat and it has like rainbow stars all over it.

Laura

That's some real detective work.

Shanna

Oh my god, I found a video like her bedroom camera, her wise camera video of her playing in her room one day and I'm like, there it is. It's on the bed and I zoom in and I try to do a reverse Google search and it's like bringing up crap. I'm like, oh my god, this is impossible. And still I'm trying to be so calm with her about it and like act like it's no big deal. Like we lose stuff all the time that we love. And finally, I'm just like looking through a squish mellows. I'm like, well, I don't know that we'll find that one, but. Here's one of toast. Here's a toast squishmallow, like a piece of toast, basically. Just throwing any ideas out there. She's like, yeah, I want that one. I was like, what? She's like, yeah, I want that one. I'm like, that's it? That's how we're solving this problem? I'm like, yeah, I want the toast. I'm like, OK. So I ordered the toast and she was fine with it.

Laura

So now she has a toast squishmallow. This one shaped like a wrench. Do you want that? Yeah. I want the wrench. Yeah. I'll take that.

Shanna

So she has a toast squishmallow now, but I didn't give up. Like I went home. I was like calling DIY. I was like, I've got to go back to Ross tomorrow. Maybe like someone put it on the toy shelf thinking it was a toy for sale. DIY did not have it. Ross did not have it. It's just gone. Talk about a mystery. I'm just like, how is it just gone? I don't know. Maybe someone picked it up between when she dropped it. Must have, yeah. So it's gone. I'm still sad about it, but I was definitely freaking out about how she would react to it. I really didn't want her to be sad.

Laura

Is this karmic retribution for stealing a bunch of shit from Sprouts?

Shanna

I think it is. It all comes back full circle to my thieving ways from the self-checkout.

Laura

You handled it so well because I could easily see myself being like projecting a feeling onto Augie with this, you know, be like, you know, instead of just letting him sort of react the way he wanted to react to sort of anticipate how he was going to react and make it a lot worse that way, you know. Yeah, that's what I was worried about. So I feel like you handled it like a pro.

Shanna

Oh, thank you. Thank you. This doubles as a mom win, maybe. Yeah. So how does she like the toast? Oh, she loves it. Has the toast arrived? Yeah, the toast arrived. That's now her favorite stuffy. She named it Toasty. And before she goes to bed every night, she's like, where's Toasty? Where's Toasty? It's cute. So now I'm just never going to let her take toasty on walks or buy a second toasty. Have it stashed and ready to go. Oh, smart. OK, smart. Good idea. All right. Well, that's mine. Shall we move on to our BFPs and BFNs? I think we should.

Laura

OK, so we close every episode with a Big Fat Positive or a big fat negative from the week. Shanna, I'm going to put away my phone where I'm googling to see if I can find a cat with stars off brand squishmallow and instead listen to what your BFP or BFN is. What do you got?

Shanna

Okay. It's a BFP. Oh, good. So Elle's softball season ended. She had her last game. And as the team mom, I was charged with throwing an end of the season party for the girls, which is right up my alley, right? I'm embracing all of my team mom duties. And I was very excited about this. And so I threw the girls a party at Menchie's, which I mentioned earlier, the little frozen yogurt place near us. has a big patio and a big party room and stuff. And it was so fun. Like I decorated with balloons, pink because they're the pink panthers. And like the pink bead necklaces, I brought my computer and an external monitor so I could set up a slideshow of the girls and show them pictures and videos from the season. And it was, I was like, that's so extra, right? Like I was a little bit embarrassed by that.

Laura

Again, I think that you are built for the role of team mom, but I also think you will become a coach before long because you have the organizational skills and the passion. I do think it was extra to bring the monitor, but I think in the right way, right? Also, when else should you be extra? You know what I mean? It's a six-year-old's sports team. It's okay to have enthusiasm and do fun things. We're not too cool for school yet.

Shanna

Yes, exactly. Well, how fun! We were gonna project the slideshow, like on a wall or something, but you know, it's like bright outside, that couldn't be seen, so I had to problem solve. And the highlight for me of the whole thing was the coach was handing out medals to the girls. They all get a medal and saying nice things about them. And then he pulled out a special award, which was a trophy that the league gives to every team. They want every team to pick a most improved player. And the coach is like, I have a special award for most improved player. This is a person that started this season with no experience, had never played before. And I just saw immense growth in her throughout the season. Like halfway through the season, like I just saw her focus, like really click in and I'm so proud of this person, Elle. And I'm like, oh my God, like just, ugh.

Laura

What if you had told that whole story and then it was like, and it went to Brittany, some other random kid.

Shanna

Yeah, I hope she wants to stick with it right now. She's really into it. I really still think that the social aspect of it is her favorite thing. She was. She was at the All Stars practice recently, and they were running bases or whatever. She was playing third base. She doesn't know what to do at third base, right? A ball gets hit to her. She doesn't know the rules or what to do yet. She's still learning. But every time a runner, one of her friends came around and made it to third base, she was like, hi, how are you doing? And chatting and having so much fun with them. And then the next girl would come around to third base. So she really loves all of that stuff. You know, she's also improving her skills, too. So it's just been very positive all around for us.

Laura

Wonderful. Wonderful.

Shanna

What about you? What do you got for us this week?

Laura

I have a BFP, too. Woohoo. And mine is that I got our asses in gear this year to actually do a family photo shoot.

Shanna

Yay, I have never done that. Oh my gosh, I'm so jealous. No, no.

Laura

You got to do it. Here's the thing. I was getting very frustrated because we didn't have like a single photo of all four of us that was halfway decent. I mean like we have maybe two or three photos that are all four of us altogether. You know, like from this year that are just like selfies, but they're always crappy and like we're never looking our best. And I, you know, as I mentioned with the umbrella gate, like I was wanting to save money, so I didn't want to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on a photo session. And then on one of my mom's groups, I noticed that someone was advertising that her husband is a photographer and he was doing a special. Just for the moms in the group, he was offering a 15 minute mini session for $100. And I was like, what a great deal compared to like a lot of people charge $300, $400 for that sort of thing.

Shanna

Oh my gosh, they're so cute. Oh, so it looks like you guys went out to a trail or something. There's a beautiful like oak tree in the background or something.

Laura

Yeah, we went to the lower Arroyo Park in Pasadena.

Shanna

Oh, Augie Huggy knew is the sweetest thing. And there's a nice photo of all four of you. Look at that. This is inspiring. We're all looking at the camera. I know. That is a miracle. There's Sebastian doing booboo time and Augie clinging on your shoulder, begging for attention, I assume.

Laura

Yep, yeah, there's a whole series of like from this where he's like basically begging for my attention.

Shanna

Oh, these are so sweet. Cool. We'll have to post some of these on our Instagram so people can see them.

Laura

Yeah, for sure. And we'll link to the photographer. So hopefully, if anyone's in the area, the $100, that's a special he does for a limited time, but he is a great photographer. So if you want to book him, his name is James Michael Juarez, if anyone's looking for him. Awesome.

Shanna

But that's it for me this week. I think we should wrap it up. We should, but I have a five star review to read. Okay, let's hear it. This is from Katie Moss 16 title of the review is best podcast ever five stars. I started listening to BFP in late 2019 when my husband and I began trying to conceive. I learned so much about TTC, pregnancy and parenting. through binging the podcast on my daily commute. I found out I was pregnant with our son in July of 2020 and soon after found out that Laura was pregnant with Sebastian and we were due around the same time. I loved getting to listen to Laura's updates as they tracked along with my pregnancy in real time. I feel like Laura and Shanna are some of my closest friends and I look forward to catching up with them on Mondays. PS, y'all should go on a tour and meet fans from other states as I'm all the way over on the east coast in North Carolina.

Laura

Yeah, so we need to do on a tour to North Carolina, Canada. I think we've had a request from Scotland, right? Oh, in Finland, so yeah.

Shanna

Finland, Australia.

Laura

Let's get that world tour on.

Shanna

Thank you so much, Katie, for leaving us that review. Listeners, will you do us a favor and head over to Apple Podcasts and leave us a five-star review telling a few things that you love about our show? As always, that is so helpful for encouraging new listeners to take a chance on the show knowing that you love it and that you get so much out of it, too. So thank you, thank you for doing that. And if you do, we might read it on an upcoming episode, so head on over and drop us those five stars. If you have any OMGs, I'm freaking out. We want to hear them. Laura, where can everyone reach us?

Laura

We're on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok at BFB Podcast. We have a website, bigpapositivepodcast.com. And if you want to send us an email, you can always throw a voice memo in there. Just send it to contact at bigpapositivepodcast.com. Finally, if you want to join the coolest group of people on the internet, just search Facebook for Big Fat Positive Community. It's a private group, so you have to request to join and answer the two membership questions so we know that you're not a robot. And if you're indeed a human, we will let you into the amazing conversations we're having in there.

Shanna

Our show is produced by Laura Birek, Shanna Micko, and Steve Geiger. Thanks for listening, everyone. Bye. Bye.