Hello! Welcome to episode 90 of I’d Rather Stay In. This week, we’re learning all about life coaching with our friend and life coach Jen Farley.

Quick links

• Blaschko’s Lines
• Jennifer Farley Coaching
• Follow Jen on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenniferfarleycoaching/
• The Life Coach School Podcast

Episode transcript

Megan 0:00
Welcome to I’d rather stay in with your host Megan Myers and Stephie Predmore. This week we’re learning about life coaching with our guest Jennifer Farley. Stay tuned.

Stephie 0:10
Do you love listening to I’d rather stay in and want to support the podcast? Well now you can visit our website or the link in our Instagram profile and click Buy me a coffee or visit buy me a coffee.com slash IRSI podcast. For the price of a cup of coffee, you can help us cover the costs of creating this podcast. There are no monthly memberships and you could support us at whatever level you’d like whenever you like. Whether you buy us one coffee, many coffees or simply continue listening as always, we’re so grateful for your support.

Hello, Megan.

Megan 0:52
Hi. Stephie You know what? What? I cannot believe that last week we did not talk about people having stripes.

Stephie 1:01
Oh my god, the stripes people. Oh my god. Yeah. Okay, um, please explain what you’re talking about. For the listeners that are like, What the fuck is she talking about?

Megan 1:13
So for whatever reason, if there’s articles started going around on social media, about how people have stripes, and it’s not a new article, it’s actually you know, it’s been out for a while and people have talked about it before. Just for some reason someone picked it up and like went out on like tik tok and in some Facebook groups and everything and so people were just like, what stripes? What? So it’s this thing called blaschko’s lines which is a pattern of stripes on your body, but you can’t see them because you can only see them with like UV light or something so like you have stripes like your cat and your cat can see them

Stephie 1:59
right that’s the thing Okay, that’s the thing that really blows my mind is like I mean the stripes in and of themselves are are is weird and I’ll link to what we’re talking about in the show notes in case anyone is like what like if you google you can literally Google humans having stripes and this will show up but like yeah, the call blaschko’s lines. And so like that’s it’s weird. But then the fact that our cats apparently can see that we have stripes because there’s something about their eyeballs i don’t know i

Megan 2:39
there are certain there are certain animals that can see UV light. So like pigeons can see UV light as well, which I learned from watching spies in disguise. But he fat doesn’t really but I just couldn’t believe we were so like so obsessed with it last week. And also I brought it up to my family at the dinner table. And they were like, okay, admin started talking about something else. And I was like, Are you are you not hearing me? Did you not hear me just tell you you have stripes?

Stephie 3:13
Well, apparently like and apparently there are different like skin conditions that can crop up that like will follow whatever your your stripe pattern is. Which I think is interesting. And like, I guess sometimes, like moles and stuff will kind of follow, but there’s like different. There’s like different patterns.

Megan 3:37
Yeah, just a cat.

Stephie 3:38
Yeah, just like cats just like cats. So um, yeah, I don’t I don’t really know what to do with this information other than I hope I have a cool pattern.

Megan 3:52
I am just very disappointed that I never took any pictures of myself when I had full body rashes because I feel like maybe I would have been able to see some sort of pattern.

Stephie 4:02
Yeah, well apparently you just need to get you really stressed out again and then see if we can figure out what what pattern of strength bait you have.

Megan 4:14
I mean, you could also just give me some like, amoxicillin but also I could die so you know.

Stephie 4:20
Yeah, I mean, Max, we could just give you any the things you’re allergic to and see what happens or, you know, it’s fine.

Megan 4:30
Either one totally. Okay,

Stephie 4:33
here’s some banana bread. Wing.

Megan 4:35
I can eat banana bread. I can’t eat regular bananas. Oh, well, okay.

Stephie 4:39
Here’s some bananas not in bread. Wink wink.

Megan 4:44
I don’t think that would give me a rash though. I think that might only make my throat

Stephie 4:49
really counter counterproductive to what we want to do. So anyway, guys, I will link to some info about blaschko’s lines in the show notes in case you are As curious, as we were about the invisible stripes that apparently makes us look like cats and that our cats can see, honestly, the fact that we are more like cats that I thought is delightful to me.

Megan 5:17
It makes me question a little bit more of the way cats treat us. But you would think that if they think if they see that we have stripes, wouldn’t we be more part of their tribe? But

Stephie 5:27
apparently, we see how humans treat each other.

Megan 5:31
Well, yeah, I’m

Stephie 5:32
just gonna leave. I’m just gonna leave it at that

Megan 5:35
go there. That’s too deep for today.

Stephie 5:41
Well, thank you for thank you for bringing that back to the top of my mind, so obsessing over it for another week. Appreciate appreciate you, Megan.

Megan 5:52
That’s what I’m here for.

Stephie 5:55
So this week, we’re gonna talk about life coaching.

Megan 6:00
Yeah, I feel like I have been seen so much about life coaching and popping up lately. And I actually know quite a few people who have become life coaches in the past few years. So we decided to learn more about it. And we invited our friend Jen Farley. Welcome, Jen.

Jen 6:20
Hi, thank you guys so much for having me.

Stephie 6:23
Thanks for being here. Why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself?

Jen 6:27
Well, apparently I have stripes. I just learned that I’m a lot more like my cats than I thought. So maybe they’ll start paying attention to me. I live in only Maryland, which is a suburb of DC. We just bought a new house here, which I’m super excited about. I live with my husband, Jeff, and our two stripy cats, sage and Eleanor Rigby. I was a food blogger for 10 years. And I sold the blog at the beginning of this year, and decided I wanted to shift into life coaching. So I’m currently finishing up training at AIPAC, which is a really incredible school and getting my certification while I am working as a coach.

Stephie 7:24
That’s awesome. So tell us about your first experience with life coaching?

Jen 7:30
Well, I think I’m gonna combine the first and the second experience if that’s okay, because I feel like the first one almost doesn’t count. But it would be weird to not include it.

Stephie 7:41
You get a pass this time. Thank you.

Jen 7:43
Um, so like, five or six years ago, a friend introduced me to another podcast called the Life Coach School podcast. And it was really interesting, I had some mixed feelings about it, that the host, but that’s why I started learning the basic concepts of coaching. And I found that really interesting, and enlightening. And like everything that I heard there made so much sense, but it wasn’t actually translating into my life. So at a certain point, I was like, this is all great, but I’m not doing it. So whatever, and it kind of fell off my radar. And then I sort of made my way back to it because the world kind of blew up. You know, even before the pandemic, it just seems like, like, I was depressed, everybody I knew was angry and overwhelmed. And then the pandemic hit. And it just, I started thinking about the life coaching concepts again, because they’re very focused in like, how we view the world, our mindset, and I just I felt like I needed something like that. So I sort of randomly came across a different coach decided to work with her. And that was amazing. And that’s when I really like I feel like that’s, that was kind of my first real experience with coaching because that’s when I started applying it to my life.

Megan 9:24
You are what I would consider a pretty successful food writer. And, you know, you talked about talked about the pandemic and I totally agree even before COVID started things were just kind of weird. I think I was also one of those people who was like, depressed about life and just stuff in general was kind of crazy. But how did you decide after you know you had those first couple of sessions, that life coaching was the thing that you wanted to pivot to for your career.

Jen 10:01
It all happened really organically. I, I’ve always loved cooking in photography, and baking. And I loved blogging when I first started, I didn’t even know that I could make money at it, you know, it was just sort of becoming a thing. And I decided to start a blog. And then, you know, it turned into a really good career, but just the way that the industry kept evolving, it didn’t. It just wasn’t, I wasn’t connecting with it anymore. And I kept having really bad burnout. And I kept waiting for it to pass. You know, I loved it so much. At one point, I’m like, Oh, just, you know, this will pass, everyone gets burnout. And you will, you’ll, you’ll love it again. And when the pandemic actually hit, I decided to just take a break, because like, I was already having trouble with it. And, you know, I, it wasn’t gonna happen. And then, you know, some point in the middle of the pandemic, I don’t know, times kind of liquid, I just, I realized I wasn’t going back to blogging. And it just sort of, after a while, it felt like coaching was had like a flashing neon sign sign that was right in front of my face. A lot of a lot of my reasons for pivoting were kind of selfish. I, when I started, you know, by the time I decided I wanted to do it, I’d been working with the coach for say, I’ll say, like, six to eight months. And I was just saying all these like, dramatic changes, I was feeling so much better. And I wanted to selfishly immerse myself in the work as much as possible, so I wouldn’t kind of drift away from it. And so by shifting my career to life coaching, I get to help other people, I get to really get sucked into these concepts on a really deep level, and I get to work from home, which I’m very used to at this point. So it’s just kind of like, a perfect package.

Stephie 12:25
So who is life coaching? For who? Who should hire a life coach?

Jen 12:33
You know, anybody? I think, you know, that’s kind of a generic answer. I think so many people would benefit from working with a coach, because we’re all constantly evolving with time. And so you know, to get down specifically, I think anyone who feels like they need a little bit of help getting clarity while working towards goals that they want to achieve. They could be personal, professional, whatever. It could be anybody that’s suffering from situational depression, or overwhelmed, just feel like, you know, it’s feeling negative. And, you know, coaching isn’t all about positivity. But like, it’s sort of about finding that balance. So you know, someone that feels like, they might need a mindset shift. I also think it’s great for people who have done a lot of therapy, and they’ve kind of gotten to maintenance mode in therapy, where like, they don’t, they don’t feel like they need a therapist anymore, necessarily, but they don’t like they want to keep working on themselves. So life coaching kind of, is it there’s overlap with therapy, it’s very different, but it’s sort of, it’s much more future focused, then therapy or therapy tends to dig into the past a lot more. So I think it can be great for that. And then there’s, there’s a ton of niche coaches out there. So like, if you’re struggling with weight loss, or you want to have better relationships with people on your life, if you’re, you know, there’s business coaches. So it really runs the full gamut.

Stephie 14:29
I think I think you I think you made a good point that like this is not a replacement for therapy, but it could be a great complement to therapy, depending on like what point you’re at in your life.

Jen 14:43
Yeah, yeah. And there’s a lot of people who will work with both a therapist and a coach at the same time because at the end of the day, we’re not trained to treat you know, to work with trauma recovery, teachers. treat any kind of mental disorder is, there’s a, there’s a, there’s a lot of reason we are clinical depression and coaching, you know, we can sort of touch on that stuff, but it’s, um, you know, therapy serves one purpose. And I think coaching sort of while there’s overlap beers in a different direction, but they really are complimentary.

Megan 15:28
So walk us through the process of what it’s like to work with a coach, like what are the first steps? What do you kind of I know every person will be different, but what do you work on? How do you progress through the the life coaching journey?

Jen 15:45
Well, like you said, everyone’s gonna have their own style, every coach is a little bit different. But a lot of coaches offer a complimentary session, where you can talk to a person, like will talk to a person explain stuff, like how coaching is different from therapy, kind of what to expect, if there’s any goals that the person is interested specifically, like, if there’s a reason that they’re coming to life coaching, just sort of go over those things to make sure that make sure that it’s chemistry, make sure it feels like a good fit. And if it feels like a good fit, then the sessions after that are really all about following the client’s agenda. So, you know, we, we can work on short term or long term goals, it can be changing careers, any kind of transitions, getting healthier, whatever. And the sessions could also be one off, you know, sometimes I’ll come to a session with a coach and, you know, there’s something very pressing, and I don’t care about long term goals in that in that moment, because I just, I just need to figure out what’s going on in that moment. And so we can, you know, we can help people work through specific, specific scenarios and circumstances.

Megan 17:12
We, you know,

Jen 17:13
it might involve, like I said, just shifting the mindset, mindset and seeing things from a different perspective, because we all look through the world through a very particular lens, based on our own life experiences. And sometimes we just need someone to hold the space for us and ask us questions and get us to sort of get out of our own heads, because we all have a lot of different and our blocks, assumptions, interpretations, negative self talk, all that stuff that like, it’s really easier for someone on the outside to sort of give you a, an outsider perspective and asking questions. And we, we help people, we help facilitate that awareness by asking questions without giving advice. So you know, it’s really hard. If I’m, if I’m coaching someone, and I see something of my own life where I have an opinion about it, I have to keep those opinions out of it, because my opinion is completely irrelevant. It’s not advice. It’s not mentoring, it’s it’s, it’s there’s a lot of question asking in coaching. So, you know, it’s, it’s really about getting clarity. And that’s, that sort of sums it up.

Megan 18:34
It sort of sounds like it’s a lot to do with getting the person that you’re coaching to kind of answer those questions that they have themselves.

Jen 18:48
So yeah, that’s exactly it. Because a lot of times, I mean, I remember saying, to a coach one time, just tell me what to do.

Megan 18:58
Please, tell me what to do with my life.

Jen 19:02
And it’s hard because I think when we’re when we feel stuck, we all want someone to just make decisions for us and tell us what to do. But, you know, if, if someone comes to me with a question about what to do with their food blog, I obviously have opinions that don’t relate to other, you know, other people’s experiences. I’ve only lived my life. I haven’t loved the client’s life. So they, they they need to figure out those answers. for themselves. It’s my job to get them to look at things from different angles so that they can figure out the answer themselves.

Stephie 19:42
What has been the most rewarding thing about being a life coach for you so far?

Jen 19:48
It’s been it’s been so much more rewarding than I thought it would be. Not only do I get to help people, but my entire outlook, I feel like my entire outlook on life has shifted, which is kind of a dramatic statement. But it’s, it’s, it’s true of a lot more just day to day, gratitude, less judgment, definitely less anger, less depression, and you know, the world is still a mess. So it’s really just about for me, it’s been about learning to not see circumstances and our lives as good or bad. But I look for the opportunity in every situation, because every experience is an opportunity to learn and grow somehow. And if I, you know, before, where I might have a real harsh judgment about someone’s actions, I think there’s a lot of that right now, you know, I, I remember that every person that I meet is both my teacher and my student, I can learn. So there’s something that I can learn from, from them, I can learn about myself, based on my judgment in the moment, it’s like, there’s a whole world of stuff, and it’s really good stuff, I love it so much, and I’m always excited to share it with people.

Stephie 21:20
That that’s awesome.

Megan 21:24
Is there anything surprising that you have learned along the way, either about yourself or from working with other people in such a different way than your previous career.

Jen 21:36
Um, I don’t want to sound Pollyanna about some of this stuff. But, you know, a lot of what I’ve learned is just, um, so there’s a, there’s a line from our training that has always stuck with me. I mean, there’s a lot of them, but one of them is, each moment describes who we are, and gives us the opportunity to decide if that’s who we want to be. And when you really, when you really let that sink in, it’s so it’s so powerful. I think that before, before I started all of this, I, you know, I didn’t even realize it, but I just I spent a lot of time in victim mode. You know, if I was trying to get traffic to my blog, and, and Google wasn’t giving it to me, I would be like, This isn’t fair. Why me? Why her like, you know, and there’s so many different ways to approach these situations. And we have total control over the way that we experience life. If I only if we only focus on what’s wrong in front of us, and what’s the negative stuff in front of us, we miss all the good stuff around us, you know, we only focus on the first example that just popped in my head is horrible. We only focus on like, the dog poop that somebody didn’t pick up behind their pet, we mess like all the beautiful trees. Why I went there, but that’s just like, once that was in my head, I there was no other

Stephie 23:23
damage. And it was

Jen 23:25
I couldn’t I had to say it. So there we are. That’s basically it. You know, life is short, we’re only here for a short time. And we get to decide what we want to do with that time, and how we show what so we can either look at this shit, or Look at the beautiful changing leaves of fall. So

Stephie 23:48
something that I’m curious to know a little bit more about and to touch on, is the is the financial piece to life coaching? And how that can be financially feasible for folks. Like, you know, if you’re wanting to work with a life coach, but maybe you’re on a budget, like, is it feasible to like, are you able to typically, like, break it up in such a way that like, you can still meet with somebody, but maybe you’re not meeting as often or for as long so it’s a little bit more financially feasible? Can we talk a little bit about that?

Jen 24:28
Absolutely. And I have so many opinions on this. It could be an entire separate episode.

Stephie 24:34
I mean, Megan, and I have a lot of opinions about things that should be more financially feasible for the general public in general. So

Megan 24:42
Well, I think part of it too, is because there used to be such a stigma on life coaching because it used to be this thing that only like, white stay at home moms could do and it was like very hoity toity kind of thing. Hi. Yeah. So yeah, I would love to hear more about this.

Unknown Speaker 25:00
Yeah, yeah, that, I think that that’s still a problem that I would like to see addressed a little more, if I’m being completely honest. One, one thing, and this isn’t all the things but so my mother is actually a therapist, and we’ve had a lot of conversations about this. And she thinks that when she started working as a social worker, it was looked down upon, it wasn’t seen as serious in the way that a psychiatrist or a psychologist was. And that has completely changed and now insurance covers them. And I’m hoping that eventually, insurance will cover coaching, but we might be a ways away from that, I think there needs to be more regulation, that’s, that’s a whole other thing. But um, you know, you will find a lot of coaches, especially the ones that have been around longer, they charge a lot of money. And I, I struggle with that a little bit, because I, you know, we’re trying to help people and change the consciousness of the world or whatever, like the Wu hoity toity stuff is like, it can’t just be changing, you know, helping middle and upper middle class people. So there are a lot of different things that I’ve seen. You know, I’ve seen a lot of expensive things, I’ve also seen people offer, you know, this is the price for an individual session. And then if you buy five, it’s cheaper, if you buy 10, it’s even cheaper. One of the things that I’m interested in launching, eventually, hopefully sooner rather than later, but I feel like this is gonna take a good amount of logistical planning. And this is not my idea, originally, I’ve seen other people do that See, this is available right now is group coaching. So, you know, instead of getting an hour, one on one with a coach, you have several people that are signed up for it. So it might come out to you know, I’m just gonna throw out random numbers right now, it might be like 25 50 $75 a month, whatever, once a week, there is an hour session and people that have pressing things can work with the coach. And one of the things that I’ve gotten over time, so I’ve done some of these coaching these group coaching things as you actually can get a lot of insight from watching other people be coached in some ways, completely differently than you will when you’re being coached yourself. So I feel like that is one way to make it more accessible to to people, but I agree that is a lot of what’s out there right now is pricey, and I’m, I’m trying to figure that out.

Stephie 28:16
I mean, it’s, it feels a little bit like almost like Personal Training in that way. where, you know, it’s, it’s fair, it’s typically like it says, My husband was a personal trainer before he pivoted to become a chef and then make them need personal trainers. Um, but he, you know, like there’s, there’s this like, I think when you typically think of careers like this, you think of you know, and the the people who can afford it is typically like the rich people, the the upper middle class people, but there are plenty of people who are not as financially stable or financially independent, who could, I’m sure can benefit from life coaching and, you know, setting some goals and figuring out what they want to do next, just the way that anybody can benefit from working with a personal trainer, you know, for to meet different, you know, personal health or fitness goals, or whatever it might be. So, yeah, I and of course, like, I think many of us know, like you said, like, therapists are covered by insurance, but not every therapist is covered by insurance or not on every insurance plan. And so even like getting that stuff covered is is hard. And so working with a therapist that is really great for you can be a luxury too. So I think overall in our country, we just need to be working harder towards making some of these things, less of a privilege and more financially feasible to the greater public, but I Love that that’s something that you’ve been thinking about, and thinking about how you can build into your business model because I think that’s important.

Jen 30:09
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, it’s so interesting that you You brought this up cuz I’ve been talking about this with other people and thinking about it quite a lot lately because I really agree with everything that you’re saying. And I don’t quite have the answer yet. You know, there’s a lot of people that a lot of people who will pay for what’s important to them so someone might think that life coaching seems weird, but they’re willing to pay for the therapists that’s out of network because it’s really good for them or they want to get a massage once per month or they want to only eat organic you know, we all have you know, if you’re talking about people that have extra money to spend, people will spend the money on what they think is important, but to for people that that can’t afford something like this, you know, sometimes those are the people that need it the most. And it really is, it is an issue that I don’t quite have an answer for. But I would love to see there’s so much reform in health care that I would love to see that impacted me personally, I have a medicine that my bed generic doesn’t work for me and my insurance company won’t cover. And that’s, that’s that’s stupid.

Stephie 31:29
Nicely many rants on that. So. Yeah. So Jen, how can our listeners find you to learn more about what you’re doing? And also, just if life coaching is of interest to them in general, where do you recommend they go to find out more about just what you’re doing and life coaching in general?

Jen 31:57
Well, if you want to find me, and I do offer complimentary sessions, you can. My website is Jennifer Farley coaching.com. And there’s a link right on there to schedule a session. I’m also on Instagram at Jennifer Farley coaching. I wanted to do something besides my name, and I could not come up with anything clever. And like I’m thinking about that while I’m reading it and I like yeah, like every pool word combination has been taken by another coach and I’m bitter about it.

Unknown Speaker 32:35
And you know what’s ridiculous? There’s another Jennifer Farley coach. Yeah, I am. If you go on Instagram, I am not coach Jen Farley. Jennifer farley coaching. But what are some other good resources? That’s a really good question. Um,

Stephie 32:58
I think it wasn’t a podcast at the beginning of episode. Yeah.

Jen 33:04
There’s a lot of podcasts at this point. That’s the only one that I’ve listened to. It’s called the Life Coach School podcast. I would recommend it it’s a great place to get introduced to some concepts mainly in the first season, but that is a very I hesitate to recommend it a little bit because it’s a very, very specific type of coaching. It doesn’t it’s not necessarily all coaching but it does give you an introduction to a lot of the mindset concepts.

Stephie 33:43
Awesome. Of course we’ll be sure to link to all of this along with the blaschko stripes in the show notes so you can learn life coaching and your stripes all in one place.

Unknown Speaker 33:55
Yay.

Stephie 33:58
Get all the important things all in one location. That is where we are here for.

Megan 34:06
Jen, thank you so much for joining us today.

Jen 34:10
Thank you for having me. This has been great.

What’s bringing us joy?

Megan 34:13
And we end each week with what’s bringing us joy. So what is bringing you joy this week? Jen?

Jen 34:20
Oh, definitely my new house. It has a some porch. And mosquitoes love me. So being in a sun porch is amazing. And the weather’s been spectacular. So we’ve been eating dinner out there almost every night. My cats are out there all day. they’ve forgotten about us. But I am so happy for them because you know it’s just it’s beautiful back there. And I love this weather so much here and our new our new house is in very close distance to two farms with breweries on them. So that also brings me Enjoy

Stephie 35:02
the house I grew up in had a son porch like three season room situation and I looking back I did not appreciate it and when I was growing up but also one of my cats Cora she back when my parents were still living in that house and like we would take her over there sometimes on long weekends she would spend like the entire time like out on the porch and she would just like roll on the concrete floor and like lie in the sign and like when it was too cold to go out there. She would just sit at the door and yell like scream at my mom and my mom would be like it’s too cold the court would be like fuck you I’m gonna go on my porch.

Jen 35:46
We’re waiting for that to happen they’re going to be so mad at us at our at our at our rented for a year before we bought the house because the housing market is crazy right now. And the other house had a son porch and when it was so they went out there to and when it was winter, and it was snowing and they’re looking outside and we’re like Alright, let’s do this. So we opened the door and one of when you get some l&r stuff for pa out, touch the snow, put her call back in and walked away. And sage, like charged outside with excitement, did a lap around the Sun porch and came right back in. Oh, they

Stephie 36:24
were like I guess you were right.

Jen 36:27
Nope, nope. Doubt.

Stephie 36:34
Megan, what’s bringing you joy.

Megan 36:37
This past weekend, I my family was able to go to Madison for a little weekend getaway. We sit at the hotel where everyone has their own beds. Well, not everyone but like my kids did not have to share a bed and no one had to share a bed with the kids, which is always like, oh huge. And I got to go to the Madison farmers market which is huge and amazing. And I bought apple cider and drank it, drink it straight out of the jug. Because I’m classy like that. And there was an afternoon where my dad watched the kids and my husband and I went and had lunch together like grownups and then like wandered around to little shops in town. And it was really lovely. Amazing was like real life.

Stephie 37:34
What is this craziness?

Megan 37:37
I know it was super weird. And it was it was funny too because my teenager is a teenager and you know all that all the way and

Stephie 37:50
what she’s trying to say

Megan 37:53
well in the car he said something about is like you know, I was really apprehensive about this trip. But I’m having a really good time and I was like Oh, I got I’m having a good time to my teenager

Stephie 38:09
who will be 14 tomorrow that’s not right.

Megan 38:12
No. And we got to have ramen and I have not had ramen we have not been to a restaurant to eat ramen since 2019

Stephie 38:21
yes there’s no good ramen places here so

Megan 38:24
no it’s very strange. It’s

Stephie 38:26
really disappointing.

Megan 38:27
So especially with the otology you would think that there would be one by now but but it was a lovely trip and I bought lots of like little food goodies back home with me so extend my joy.

Stephie 38:42
Love it

Megan 38:43
Stephie What about you?

Stephie 38:45
My kid is walking you guys Yes. Oh exciting. It’s been a long long journey to get here. She’s been working so hard in physical therapy and finally like she kind of was she was at the point where we’re like we’re pretty sure you can do it and you’re just like not come from like not confident enough or just don’t want to or something and then something just clicked and like we can have a couple weeks ago she finally like walked to me for the first time but of course I like lost my shit entirely. I was like sobbing um, and she’s like she’s still it’s still not like her only mode of transportation but like every day she’s walking a little bit more so she’s getting close to like it’d be in her primary mode of getting from point A to point B and I’m just so proud of her she’s worked so hard so she loves It’s so cute because she loves to like hold your hand and like take you into like the next room to do whatever it is she wants to do. She’d be like, she like take you in so it’s just adorable, so adorable. Also it means that I don’t have to carry her as much as I did, which I am a big fan of she’s getting heavy.

Megan 40:00
Gotta say get so heavy Oh,

Stephie 40:02
she’s tall and she’s getting heavy and a white girl you are dangles all dangles like what’s happening so also she’s like they were laughing at her at daycare because she’s like well no now at daycare for being the kid that just like refuses to keep her shoes on like she just like gets there and she like rips her shoes and socks off and drops them in various places and then is like then she’ll like walk all over the place there. And so every time I go and pick her up from daycare they have to like go find where she’s like stashed her shoes and socks. Be like, here are shoes and socks so but

Megan 40:41
she also knows

Stephie 40:43
Yeah, I think they’re just like it’s not straight I can be barefoot it’s fine.

Megan 40:47
Okay, she just knows it’s a no shoe house

Stephie 40:51
it is I mean we are like pretty much a no shoe house.

Megan 40:54
Just yeah My house is a no shoe house so like

Stephie 40:57
ours isn’t even like by policy no shoe house I just like being barefoot so me too. Yeah, like my preferred state of being but it’s it’s really funny because I also think like the daycare lady’s like, they also like aren’t gonna argue with her about not wearing her shoes because they notice that she walks more when she isn’t wearing them and they want to encourage her to walk so they’re like, whatever kid You’re so cute, you can do whatever you want.

Megan 41:24
I mean, it’s really not that important. They like it’d be more like you know, they don’t want someone else to step on her toes with their shoes

Stephie 41:33
and like they do go play outside. And like the other day she was there as a picture because they will send us like pictures through their little app or whatever. And they sent us some pictures of her playing outside and you can see the progression like there was one she had her shoes on. And the next one she just sat her socks off and the next one it was just her bare feet like stupid. Stripping things off of her feet as she come will come winter it might be tricky to get get something on her feet to keep her toes warm, but I guess we’ll cross that bridge and another month or so.

Megan 42:08
I mean when it comes to eat and they should be happy it is just her shoes and socks.

Stephie 42:12
Honestly Yes, guys, I guess I should give everyone a diaper update as many of our listeners will know if you’ve been paying attention. she’s a she’s a diaper stripper and her crib. And so there was a period of time where we were having to like put duct tape and packing tape on her diapers to keep them on her. Well, she outsmarted that system and figured out how to get the tape off. And so now we have to do like the zipper pajamas that don’t have any feet on them and put them on her backwards so that the zippers on her back and then she can’t get her pajamas off and strip in the middle of the night. Yep, so so far that system has worked for a few weeks. We’re just going to keep going with it until it doesn’t work anymore. But it also means that we have I have this like whole drawer of adorable pajamas that she cannot wear because she they have feet on them or they’re like two piece pajamas. So rip cute pajamas. You were lovely while you served us.

Megan 43:19
I mean it only needs to last as long as it takes to get her potty trained.

Stephie 43:24
Right which at this rate now that she’s walking I’m like actually you know trying to potty train you might not be that far behind. The the ladies at physical therapy are always just like amazed by her she because she she’s incredibly smart. And the one gal was like, I think this is the first child I’ve ever seen that learned how to jump before she learned how to walk. She taught herself how to jump. But she still wasn’t walking.

Megan 43:51
Sure.

Stephie 43:52
I was like yeah, that sounds about right. So she’s funny, she’s going to go places she’s gonna she’s either going to build the world up or burn the world down. And you know what? I’m here to see what happens.

Next week’s episode

Megan 44:09
I love it. So I don’t know about you Stephie but right now I am running an internal list of all the things I need to do after we record because you know, otherwise the house might burn down.

Stephie 44:22
Yeah, pretty much same constant never ending lists. What do we need to do? What’s happening next? Where do we need to be? What do I need to do to get to where we need to be? It’s truly never ending. So, in case you guys haven’t figured out that means next week, we’re going to talk about mental load. In the meantime, leave us a review on Apple podcasts and listen to us on your favorite platform. You can also follow us on social media at IRSIpodcast or send us an email at idratherstayinpodcast@gmail.com. We’d love to hear from our listeners. Bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai