Season 1 Episode 9
Summary
‘Tis the season to mute social media accounts whose perfect photos cause too many feelings (just until January, maybe). This week we talk about how to tap into your own desires for the season and ask, “What do I want this Christmas to look like?” We explore how to successfully make memories with your family and experience some magic with maximum joy and minimum effort. Layne lays out a plan for collaborating with your kids to wrap a good narrative around expectations and Jess speaks to the pressure to make everything special in early motherhood while feeling so, so tired (Spoiler: if you’re keeping the baby alive and fed, well done! Enlist family and friends to help with the celebration part).
Once again, we talked to each other for too long and ran out of time for a listener question but we promise to get a handle on it in the future 🤞
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Find Jess at Jessica Hover on Youtube and @jess_hover on Instagram
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Transcription
Jessica:
My daughter turned to this week Layne, which by the time you’re watching this, she will have been two for a little while, but she arrived to two the morning of her birthday and had the biggest meltdown of her life tantrum that I’ve never seen, bigger than I recall my other two kids having tantrums. Shaun and I couldn’t help but laugh because we’re like, wow, she really she understood the assignment here. She knew I am two and I’m gonna go hard. I actually felt so thankful for you because then so she turned two on Monday, it’s now Thursday, and these tantrums have happened every day and I was like, I don’t really know how to handle this. And I could think of hanging out with Layne every single day. Because I at least have something to say, so I told Shaun, I’m like, no, you’re a sea cliff, she’s a wave. You’re like, wow, that was a wave and I’m not a surfer, you know? Yeah, it’s a lot even for him. But what I also learned was that there is a two year old sleep regression. And so her sleep has been really bad. She’s been up crying at night. And then obviously she’s miserable during the day. And last night was the first night she slept through the night again. And then today she hasn’t had her major tantrums she’s had she’s definitely pushing back in a way that is big and bold and beautiful like her but I’m here so now I’ve got two toddlers, and I’m just going to be- whenever we talk about toddler stuff, I’m no expert. I am just listening to you as my mentor friend to know how to navigate this because wow, even yesterday I directly said good thing Layne is crazy about two year olds because there may be a moment when we’ll call her in for some reinforcements.
Layne:
I’m working my way in slowly with Jules. There’s so many adults in her life
that want her attention. She’s so cute.
Jessica:
She’s very sought out.
Layne:
She’s a little bit withholding, which everyone likes in a two year old. Everyone’s like, what do you think of me?
Jessica:
Yeah, she’s learning there’s some power in that. People draw near with gifts and treats.
Layne:
So I’m trying to do it back to her a little bit.
Jessica:
Oh, that’s good. I think that’ll work.
Layne:
Yeah, I am curious about what her interim triggers have been. Because sometimes it’s pretty funny.
Jessica:
Oh, they’re everything. So it’s like I got her dressed in clothes. Which I’ve actually been doing most of her life there. There are plenty of days when she is naked at home but like we’re leaving the house now sweet Julsie, you’re putting on an outfit. Do you want this one or this one? The answer is none of them. And it is the meltdown that you throw your back, you’re down on the ground, I go to pick her up- she slides out. I go and put her in a room and like we’re gonna sit together and take some deep breaths honey and she just makes this sound. My other two kids have tantrums too but this she’s good at it. Oh here’s what I was going to tell you. So Jules was a preemie baby. She was born six weeks early. And people have told me like you know around her second birthday you should be able to know if she’s developing properly or if she’s a little bit behind. So I did think the fact that the morning of her second birthday, she threw a tantrum so big that anyone who saw it was like, Oh, terrible twos. I’m like she’s caught up. She’s here.
Layne:
We’ve arrived. She’s letting us know she doesn’t burst through the barricade. I’m sorry, who is behind? I’m Juliette.
Jessica:
So that’s where I am this weekend. Even the call I led in the very good mother’s club community. I had to call in for someone else to lead them because she kept having tantrums right before it. So I would just be on the call but basically need some time to decompress and be like okay, how do I come back from that moment? And there’s one thing to go from that to like, Alright, we just we made it through. We’ll just live this next moment mostly dressed? But then to be like,
hey, mom’s welcome to the happier mother check call. I retired.
Layne:
I’m out of the happier mother game.
Jessica:
If you ever want to join our community, we are not promising to be expert mothers. I said that from the beginning of starting our business. I’m not an expert when it comes to this stuff. But we try hard and if you are moms who try then we are your people, and if you’re tired. Join us because we all are.
I’m Jessica Hover.
Layne:
I’m Layne Deyling Cherland and this is very good enough a podcast from very good mother’s club.
Jessica:
And we’re so glad you’re here because it’s Christmas.
Layne:
It’s Christmas. You did it. You did the Thanksgiving. Wow. Whatever it was, I hope it was great.
Jessica;
It was great.
Layne:
What do you hope it was like?
Jessica:
I am filming this beforehand or recording this beforehand. I don’t actually even know where I’m going to be. But I hope that we all laughed a lot. I usually hope that there’s a lot of laughter in my life. In fact, whenever I tell the kids stories I always end it with and we all burst out laughing. Have I told you? I probably told you that it’s like a Peppa Pig episode. If you ever watch Peppa, they always end every episode with everyone laughing and that’s a little bit my heart likes is when people are laughing. So whatever we do, I hope that all of us laughed because that’s a really good feeling.
Yeah, pretty simple.
Layne:
I love that. I hope my pies turn out. I hope my meringue is tall.
Jessica:
I don’t really know how to cook or bake. So that’s why I just go with laughter and hope that I’m friends with someone who makes pies.
Layne:
That’s perfect. I have a grandfather who is very impressed by lemon meringue pie.
Jessica:
Will you be with him?
Layne:
I think so. That’s a good question-I’m not sure where I’m going either. I come from quite a large family. Just a lot. And all the parents have lots of siblings and all those siblings have so many babies, but all my cousins also have so many babies. And my grandfather has a lot of granddaughters and has continuously told each of us that we’re the favorite for our whole entire lives. He started out giving everybody Disney Princess nicknames. But then it got to be more granddaughters than he knew princesses. And so we doubled, just doubled up.
Jessica:
Can I guess your princess name? Are you Belle?
Layne:
I’m not but I should have been. I don’t think he knew that one. I’m Tiger Lily from Peter Pan.
Jessica:
Oh wow. That is so cute. I like Peter Pan.
Layne:
It’s a good one. But also so is my cousin Jennifer.
Jessica;
Hopefully she’s also great.
Layne:
She is also great, but in adulthood, I don’t have any babies and he’s pretty mystified about it.
Jessica:
So you’re bringing a pie
Layne:
I’m a little bit of a coastal elite and got married at the ripe old age of 25 and don’t have any babies and I left so I had a lot to sort of catch up on but I bring some peach ice cream and make lemon meringue pies and he’s pretty charmed by that.
Jessica:
Shaun has a grandmother who has passed away now but at the end of her life, she’s actually like fantastic she was so fun to be around. She had memory trouble. And before having kids I was given the job of hanging out with her for a little while maybe Thanksgiving food is being made and she was so cute. She would be like, so who’s husband is yours again? It’d be like, Shaun your grandson. She’s like, Do you have any kids? And I would say no, because I didn’t at the time. And her answer each time would change. So it would be like do you have any kids and I would say no. And she said you’ve got time and then literally moments later we would begin the conversation again. She’d say so do you have any kids? And I’d say no Gram and she’d say, Well, you really need to get to it. Everything was like well don’t take your time.
Layne:
That’s revealing of what we are really like.
Jessica:
It’s amazing because for her she really was amazing because even as it just kind of got worse memory wise she was so fun and funny. And you know, you do end up seeing people who get quite elderly and then all of a sudden they’re really grumpy and you realize they spent a lot of time filtering. Yeah, she didn’t. She was just so fun. We gave her a tin of cookies. And she would be sitting chatting with us and then be like, Oh, what’s this? She’d open them up…my favorite! She’d take a bite. Keep chatting. What’s this? My favorite!
It was beautiful and I aspire to be this way as I age. Hopefully my memory can stay intact but yes, I hope to be.
Layne:
Yeah, whatever is just coming out without my ability to filter I hope is pleasant to be around.
Jessica:
That’s true. Yeah, that’s a good aspiration. So today’s topic is expectations surrounding holidays. We both felt like this is I mean, we talked to you already a bit about this before Thanksgiving, but just holidays are kind of a tender time. They are a bit sensitive we have a tendency to have high expectations and be let down or just not be aware of our expectations. And then feel disappointed that we don’t really know why. Because we never took the time to think through like, what do we want? And then why does this feel so bad?
Layne:
Yeah, we also have a lot of like pictures and stories and ideas in our mind as adults of either like how great it’s going to be and what we want to happen and how our kids are going to be so excited about this part. Or like it’s really actually really stressful for me and I’m like, doing my best and holding it together. And none of those stories get actually passed down to these children who don’t know what you’re excited about or don’t know that actually is like kind of a tricky day for you and you’re really doing your best. Your best might be medium. You know? My best is definitely amoving threshold. Yeah, day to day. So yeah, wanting to think about like, if you can in the lead up now. Think about how do I want this to go? Tell a really good story. Yeah, that is reasonable to yourself and then also tell that story to your children. Tell it to your family and be able to sort of decide a little bit more like where you can.
Jessica:
Yeah. What it’s going to be like? How do you want this time to go? Right? Okay. How does that work? Take us there. I will say this to start off. I am coming out of several years of feeling like I was in a fog during the holidays. And I think it’s that I did the baby stage back to back and so when the holidays were here, I would really hope they would be amazing, but I felt like I didn’t have the capacity to be amazing. It would be sort of miraculous when things would go well and it would really hope that other people in my life would step up to the holiday game so that I could just you know, feed the baby and hope the baby would sleep and so to you who are listening who maybe feel some pressure because now that we have kids like we’re responsible for their memories and their traditions. I mean these are things I thought is like oh my gosh, these I have I’ve limited time, limited Christmases with these kids, and they’re going to look back and I’m going to be responsible for how this all feels to them. That’s a lot of pressure, especially when you have very young kids and you’re barely sleeping or hardly feel like yourself because you’ve undergone this huge transition of having a child. So I would just say release the pressure on yourself. It’s cool for me now having two toddlers, I feel like I can actually make some special memories and I can think for myself about what do I want this to look like and what would be a cute tradition for that. Social media is a little bit weird. So you might be feeling like you’re barely getting by, you’re living off of fumes, you know just just barely making it and then you get on Instagram and you see that some other mom who had a baby or maybe triplets is like also pulling off elf on the shelf and they go to every tree lighting and crafts galore. Maybe mute everybody who makes you feel like you’re not doing enough because if your baby is alive and well and you are keeping it fed, like well done, that’s a milestone worth celebrating. And eventually you’re gonna feel ready to tap into whatever holiday memories feel special for you. And if this isn’t your year, then let’s ask some loved ones for help. Maybe friend, dad, sister mother. Anybody. Ask them if they can tap into making some memories for you guys.
Layne:
I love that I actually I love the idea of a nice, nice evening holiday mute on just everybody who you follow as sort of like an aspiration or out of obligation as being like first off let’s start by clearing out everybody else’s stories about how these are the stories that I’m telling when I see these things.
Jessica:
If you are not able to be inspired by them. If you’re not feeling like you’re connecting to even their celebration. Sometimes there’s people in my life that I love, and I’m like I’m really happy. They’re doing so great. And I don’t think I can see it right now and feel pretty weak. Still want to get on there but I just don’t want to see everybody living their highlights when I’m feeling a little low. Yeah, not enough to unfollow but just enough to mute for a few days.
Layne:
You can mute and unmute at will no one will ever know. There’s no limit. You can them mute today. You can unmute them tomorrow.
Jessica:
Yeah, that’s right.
Layne:
Yeah, I like that. Just a nice little New Year’s unmute when it’s all behind you. I’m really into that. Yeah. My first little note is about just like the idea of setting the stage and I feel like that’s a good first one actually, like first let’s just clear the stage so that we know actually, these holidays haven’t happened yet. All my images, all my stories and my thoughts about them. Those aren’t real yet I still live now here today. So this is actually just looking to a clear stage that’s ahead of me. It’s future days and right now me gets to take some time even if it’s just a quick little second and do a little check in. What do I want to happen? What will I say yes to and what will I say no to this Christmas? What will I allow to come in and what will I block from coming in? We just did an episode with boundaries in the lead up to Thanksgiving. And that’s worth a little listen in thinking about Christmas as well as that same kind of deal. After thinking about boundaries I’ve been thinking about desire. And desire is an interesting one for me as a person, because my background has this interesting element of not really trusting your own insides. Like maybe there’s a sort of like fundamental darkness to your inside. So you have to like go outside of yourself to find out what’s good and find out where you should face and so I’ve never really checked in with myself on what I want seems almost irrelevant. And then bad is sort of the way that religious training happened to me as a young person.
Jessica:
I don’t think that’s uncommon. I think a lot of people would say the question of what you want brings up something of like, am I even allowed to ask what I want? How dare I ask what I want? Either what I want is that or why would I ask what I want when there’s a roomful of people here shouldn’t I ask what they want? I would probably say, yeah, you can do what do you want? What do they want?
Layne:
The idea of you can do both this new idea for me. And this has happened very recently, like in the last month or so I had the sort of crushing realization I was like, Oh my gosh, I don’t even ask. I have no idea what I want. Because my desire has felt not important. And then probably kind of funny. So now I’ve been in this difficult practice where I’m like way going overboard being like, I don’t know, what do you have for breakfast? Do you want to go on a walk? Or do you want to go on whatever? Just like really trying to hone in on like, what does it feel like when I desire something? So however that feels for you. It feels revolutionary for me, and I would just encourage everyone to take a moment even just before you’re falling asleep. Sometimes your underlying self can come to the surface a little bit more then and ask what do I want Christmas to look like? What do I want this year? And like really feel free to just dream about it for a second. And some of those things without kind of trimming the wings of the dream, without trying to keep it within the parameters of what you can have. Just take a moment to hear the desire of your own heart and breathe it in and realize this is what I love about Christmas. This is what makes me feel joyful. This is who it would feel nice to be near or just these sights to see. I want it to look green or I want to see this, I want to see this I want twinkly beautiful and I want it to smell great. Like little and then big, just trying to create your own desire of what would be beautiful for you. Because of course you are the person who is curating that early life memories of some other people and you have a partner to negotiate with and you have a family that’s around you, but also you are a person living a life. Your experience is as real as all of the other people in your family.
Jessica:
That’s beautiful. I love that.
Layne:
It’s worth asking totally.
Jessica:
And then you have some vision for what you’re trying to do next versus when we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to think that stuff through, then sometimes it makes us just feel a bit like in a frenzy, like, Oh, I really think I want this to be special, but I don’t know what special means or looks like. And so you’re kind of frantically putting your energy everywhere versus I know how I want this to feel. And then I know what you will have right now within this stage of life with the resources that I have.
Layne:
Yeah, how can I do that? Yeah, and then I would use that to start telling yourself a really good story. Like I would find some words to wrap around that experience for yourself.
Jessica:
And when you say tell a story, are you meaning like, put words to your feelings are you meaning like, tell a story that you will try and live into? Is it like you’re telling sort of a visionary story?
Layne:
Yeah. That’s what I’m thinking. I’m thinking for myself this year, I have a new nephew that I’m very, very excited about. And he’s like two seconds old and insisting on almost standing up and I just want to push him down all the time. So he stays so little, but I don’t.
Jessica:
He has incredible hair. She like, he’s so little I want to eat him in soup.
Layne:
I want to cook him in a little stew. So I’m really looking forward to being a witness toLincoln’s first Christmas. Oh, what’s gonna happen to me this year? I’m gonna witness that. How special is that? What’s the part that feels really important to you? What is it when you envision closing your eyes? You’re like, I want to be super Christmasy. Is it that it’s very twinkling? It smells a certain way. Is it that there is a physical tree? Like what’s the, I mean, what’s the minimum? Yeah, what do you actually accomplish? Is that for you, and then that’s part of your story. I’m like, well, as long as I make sure that I have these couple of things that are in my control, I’m going to be with Lincoln, I’m going to be with Conner. I can absolutely make sure that at some point this Christmas season, I smell Christmas trees, right? Like these are simple things that I can rest on. They’re reasonable. They’re accomplishable and that’s a good story. What a beautiful story. I’m gonna get to witness this little baby and some Christmas trees and snuggle Connor.
Jessica:
And that’s a really cool thing for a mom of a baby who might feel like I don’t know how to think about Christmas. Something really precious just you witnessing them experiencing Christmas. And it’ll be sweet.
Layne:
Yeah, it’ll be super sweet. I actually think this is just like tangential now, but I think like the more joy Tangentially, the more joy that you can take out of the tiniest of things like that. You can take that equation and be like maximum joy- smallest thing. At minimum your baby is going to look at ornaments and lights and when they’re big enough to eat food, they’re going to taste cinnamon for the first time like these are like wow big. And for those of us who are not big at things like ornaments and things, someone else’s putting up Christmas lights outside. Yeah, it doesn’t have to be you putting in a lot of effort and honestly, most of your effort, these people are too little to really notice that but if you think about their senses, like here’s the thing, this is my story about Christmas, this Christmas, my children are going to see lights and we see a lot of lights whether it’s inside or outside however that looks like their little eyes will be full of lights and their little nose is full of the smell of whatever, they are going to taste this one particular kind of thing. They’re gonna hear my favorite Christmas song or my favorite Christmas book, love their senses. Oh, feeling. They are going to feel the bristles on the tree, they are going to tear paper. Your baby wants to tear paper. It’s gonna be torn and they want to suck on a bow.
Jessica:
Shaun and I’s first Christmas that we had as parents we were like, You know what, our daughter is probably gonna get a lot of gifts from people. So what we’ll do is we’ll just take a water bottle and fill it with beans and wrap it in paper and that’s the only gift we got her and it was a hit. She loved it. It lived in our house until she passed it and then we felt fine- like it was all about affordability. And then just realizing that a lot of people are probably gonna give her stuff that just fills a house. It’s amazing how fast that happens. For the sake of time because I just like talking to you. Like I’m just talking and forget that we are here with these people who have lives. Okay, on behalf of myself and others who have children that are old enough to understand the holidays, how much do we involve them and I don’t know am I responsible to make this special for them? Is there like a collaborating that happens?
Layne:
I think that there’s a very important role for communication and collaboration with children in sort of like we’ll stick with the story that you’re telling about this holiday. Christmas, especially because like strangers on the street are going to be like, what do you want for Christmas little boy?I said that kind of creepy, but in real regular life there is a lot of hype and all these words around it.
Jessica:
It’s not even Halloween yet here and target is already Christmas.
Layne:
Costco too.
Jessica:
So already the kids in my house were talking about Christmas. Wow. And Wilson, he said, I don’t want Santa Claus to come here. Really? I don’t want anybody else to come here and then I realized oh, because Santa is just a strange man. The only one of the three kids. Eloise’s totally comfortable.
Layne:
I appreciate that about Wilson.
Jessica:
An interesting secret you can know is that I believed in Santa until I I mean, I still sort of do. So I was one of those kids so at the ripe old age three to have a son that’s like not in my house
Layne:
Santa is coming into the house. He just won’t leave any presents. Do you like that better?
Jessica:
That’s probably what Eloise would say.
Layne:
That such a good example of like, we have no idea what they actually think it’s going to be like. They’re just intaking their stuff from movies and some of these are claymation and some movies or people and what do they think right like, it’s all weird? Yeah, and it’s just like a big ol swirl inside it. So getting to know from them like I’m sorry, check with yourself. You’re the adult, what do I want for Christams? And then spend some time talking with the kids? What do you think it’s going to be like? What do you think would be fun about Christmas? What do you know about Christmas? Yeah, and then you can work together on like, Oh, that’s interesting. That one I don’t know if I could pull that off this year. But you know, what I could do is we could definitely this other thing that you like. I can make absolutely sure that happens. What color do you want that to be?
Jessica;
Yeah, you know, that’s right.I have a friend that I grew up with. And her family did not do gifts at Christmas. They did travel. So each child got a book, and then they would get something that had to do with their trip, like a bag or something. I guess actually now as a parent I realized that’s a gift but as kids we were like they got no gifts. Just a book and a bag, and a trip to Tahiti.
Layne:
Which like those two different children or a child who has been gifted a really good story around that and a child who just has that information. Those two children will experience that it’s so differently, but for you to wrap the context or what’s gonna happen to the narrative in your house around this time. So my answer is a lie. Yes, a lot of collaboration that can happen. And then once you all have like, the clear story that’s being told, not saying the children are gonna just get all the way on board necessarily, but you like set this expectation, then you can really arrive in the now and like, put the full force of your joy and celebration behind the thing that you decided on?
Jessica:
Something I love about the holidays that are making me think and I just think it’s worth saying is it’s a really special time to let life be magical. Like life is hard. And we face a lot of stuff and especially as you’re raising your kids or managing your finances or figuring out your relationships. It’s just hard. I think it’s so special how at Christmas time things just light up and people are connected. And ideally we’re around loved ones. And so if we can release the pressure and do this storytelling bit of like, how can I receive the magic that’s available to me and my family at Christmas time? Because kids experiencing the holiday? It is magical. If you watch the holidays through them, it is magical. It’s absolutely like twinkly, sparkly, whimsical, there’s imagination. I have one child who throws ornaments. It’s adventurous. I have another child who is obsessed with hanging ornaments. So every day there would be more ornaments on the tree because we have this extra stash of ornaments and she would just keep finding them and adding them. And there’s certain things that when it’s just us in our grown up worlds we don’t always easily tap into the wonder that life is, we just get into the seriousness of what it is. But holiday times are a great opportunity to look for magic to create magic to enjoy what’s there and using your children’s senses to help navigate how you do it. Even for ourselves like what would make our space smell good, what would make our space look good, feel good? All of that. I think it’s so practical and doesn’t have to cost a lot of money and doesn’t have to cost even a lot of energy. It can be a really special thing when life is just you know, sometimes heavy.
Layne:
Yeah, you know what I do that’s free? I take out my contacts and look at Christmas lights.
Jessica:
Are you serious?
Layne:
Because my eyesight is really bad and blurry than their big sparkly stars.
Jessica:
Oh my gosh. I have never thought to do that. But okay, how blind are you?
Layne:
Only a little bit.
Jessica:
Okay, like what’s your prescription?
Layne:
That’s a good question. I don’t know. I have a stigmatism in one eye. My depth perception is really bad. And it just makes all the lights look like actual little stars around them.
Jessica:
That’s so cute. So my eyes are like negative 5.5 which basically just means I can’t see a thing like my glasses are here and they fall down there. I am crawling around like a blind mouse looking for them. Yeah, but I’ve never considered taking out my contacts to look at Christmas lights. I can’t tell if it would be magical or disorienting. Yeah, I’m hoping that one day I get surgery that makes my eyes 20/20 , but I don’t know maybe I’m not hoping that. I also sometimes hope for a boob job since we’re here, but I also might never do that.
Layne:
So whether you hope for sparkly lights or a boob job this Christmas…
Jessica:
It might be available to you.
Layne:
But maybe you can have a nice little push up bra.
Jessica:
Yeah, those are much cheaper.
Layne:
Yeah. Merry Christmas you guys.
Jessica:
It’s fun becoming friends with you. Thanks for being here. We really believe in you and we really appreciate that you’re here also for those of you who leave comments. It helps us a lot. It helps direct the way we do this- conversations we have so feel free to give feedback if you’d love something if you’re laughing at something if you’re struck by something. Let us know. I completely forgot that this is relevant to you, but if you need gifts for your loved ones, we have them at our little shop- very good mothers club.com. We have gifts for mom gifts for Dad gifts for the little ones really cool apparel that we’re so excited for you to have. So if you need a gift please go get them. I will probably be there packing orders for you. So you’ll get an order sent with a lot of love. And if you want to join our community, especially during the holidays if you’re feeling like you need friendship or you just need a place to come and vent and talk about what’s going on or be encouraged or hang out with Layne. We have a community we’d love for youto be a part of it. It is through very good mothers club. Actually the URL is quite long. I apologize but it’s very good mother’s clubhouse.com We thought it’d be cute and catchy because it’s like a clubhouse because we’re a club we realize it’s very long. So if you can’t remember all of this stuff through our Instagram, all of the links are listed there. And our website should be easy to navigate, but we’re getting over time so I don’t know where this all falls in this podcast, but we have everything you need and we would love to be a support to you in this holiday season. So thank you for being here.
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