Unforgettable Mom Moments & Little Acts of Love: Mother's Day with CK & GK

00:00:25 - Caitlin Kindred It's literally no words. What am I saying? Hi, everyone. We are so glad you're here today. Oh, goodness. Oh, man, my cheeks are burning. Okay.

00:00:39 - Jenny GK I'm really proud of that one.

00:00:42 - Caitlin Kindred My voice is all wobbly right now. Okay. Today we're singing songs and also we're talking about some Mother's Day things. And so if Mother's Day is difficult for you for whatever reason, we're just putting this out here right now so you know that you can skip ahead or skip to the next episode or go backwards because we don't have the next one out yet. So whatever you need to do. You can time travel, right? That would be so cool. Anyway, we're talking about Mother's Day and we're talking about awesome things that mothers do that are like those little things we already know. Moms are amazing, superhuman people. Right. But these are those tiny little things that either you remember from when you were growing up or that you do for your kids that you're like, I wonder if they'll remember those little things that I'm doing. So that's what we're talking about today for Mother's Day. This is an early Mother's Day episode. Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there.

00:01:33 - Jenny GK Happy Mother's Day. I already know that John got me a present. He said that he accidentally ordered something one night and he's just going to give it to me for Mother's Day.

00:01:48 - Caitlin Kindred How thoughtful. Exactly.

00:01:50 - Jenny GK I don't know what it is. And I was like, wow, that's a lot of thought. He goes, no, once you see this thing, you'll really like it. And you'll know that I thought of you when I bought it. I just wasn't thinking of Mother's Day.

00:01:59 - Caitlin Kindred All right, then that just means that you should get a random present and then also Mother's Day gift. Right. To me, it's like, if you thought of me right now, I want that present right now. And then you can go ahead and get another one supplement for Day. That's just me, though.

00:02:14 - Jenny GK Oh, well, that is you. You are Caitlin, but we're going to call you Chicken noodle because you're a soup or mom.

00:02:23 - Caitlin Kindred Oh, my gosh. Well, anytime she says bad things about herself, I say, shut your mouth. You have all the strengths. That's my co host Jenny over there. Yeah, shut your mouth. You have all the strengths. Allah. Leslie, no. Let's do some circle time. What's up?

00:02:39 - Jenny GK What's going on here's? What I'm obsessed with right now, a lot of times it's something exciting, like a product or a new TV show. Today what I'm obsessed with is the chopped vegetable salad from Flowerchild. Oh, my gosh. It has heirloom carrots in it. Have you ever even heard of heirloom carrots?

00:03:03 - Caitlin Kindred I think it's the ones that are.

00:03:04 - Jenny GK Like, orange and yellow and, like, purple.

00:03:08 - Caitlin Kindred Did I just say carrot or orange? Yes.

00:03:10 - Jenny GK I decided not to call you out on that and I was just going.

00:03:12 - Caitlin Kindred To let it ring the purple carrot in my head. But guys, it's been a morning already. I'll tell you why in a minute. But yes, purple and orange carrot. Yes. Got it.

00:03:26 - Jenny GK So good. So one of our parents at our school brought this salad in for all the teachers, and it was so good. And it was on a Friday, so it wasn't really going to last in the fridge over the weekend for the leftovers. And they were all talking, who wants to take a salad home? And I was like, oh, I am taking a salad home. Don't even worry about it. Like, I'm going to take it home.

00:03:47 - Caitlin Kindred It's so good.

00:03:48 - Jenny GK And then I called John on my way home to let him know I'm coming home. And I said, and I'm bringing a salad.

00:03:54 - Caitlin Kindred And he's like, okay.

00:03:55 - Jenny GK That's the tone of voice you use when you say, I'm bringing home ribs.

00:04:01 - Caitlin Kindred I got ice cream. Yes.

00:04:05 - Jenny GK So needless to say, the salad was disappointing to everyone except me, right?

00:04:11 - Caitlin Kindred You're like that's? Okay. You don't like it? That's fine. I'm just going to just pour it right here into this bowl. Yes.

00:04:16 - Jenny GK I will eat all of this. Alice, what about you?

00:04:19 - Caitlin Kindred So you know this. I have multiple ear piercings, like a lot of them. I have three going up the lobe, and then I have two on my cartilage. And I like wearing earrings, but I don't really do dangly earrings. I'm more of like a studs or small hoops person. But lately I've gotten back into my big hoops, and there is something about big hoop energy when you're wearing your big hoops, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's a different feel, and I am loving it. So I'm back to wearing big hoops, and I'm just here for the big hoop energy right now.

00:04:53 - Jenny GK Love it. Love it. Okay, so here we come. My favorite part of the week, the gem of the week.

00:05:00 - Caitlin Kindred The gems.

00:05:01 - Jenny GK The gems. So mine is a series of gems that all culminate and connect through a hailstorm.

00:05:12 - Caitlin Kindred Like the movie Crash, right?

00:05:16 - Jenny GK It's exactly like that.

00:05:17 - Caitlin Kindred They all come together.

00:05:18 - Jenny GK Yes. It's 100% the same cinematic classic. In fact, if you happen to be a screenwriter or director, please turn off this episode so that you don't steal my beautiful story and make a million.

00:05:35 - Caitlin Kindred Dollars and make us money or pay us.

00:05:37 - Jenny GK Yeah, turn it up.

00:05:39 - Caitlin Kindred This is trademarked.

00:05:40 - Jenny GK Okay. We knew that there was going to be a storm yesterday afternoon. We knew it was coming.

00:05:47 - Caitlin Kindred Yes.

00:05:48 - Jenny GK Nobody believed that it was the storm of the century, but of course, the weather is calling it that because of sensationalism. So I am giving a test that is a timed test, a standardized test, to some 8th graders, and the test window will not end before the storm is supposed to hit. But the person who's giving the test with me shows me her phone, and it says, from her husband. I just ran into Carl Rove's wife at the park. They have closed the Capitol. This is going to be a bad storm. You might want to think about coming home. So she shows me this, knowing that I live very far from the school and she lives very close. So Carl Rove got me out of work yesterday afternoon. I am driving home and the sky is turning green. And that's always the color that it turns right before the tornado comes in.

00:06:55 - Caitlin Kindred Twister. Right.

00:06:56 - Jenny GK So I got Helen Hunt sitting in the car with me. We're trying to figure this out. I'm driving to pick up Kit, my four year old, and the phone rings and it's my husband. And he says, look, the thunder is so loud here that it shook a picture off the wall.

00:07:14 - Caitlin Kindred Whoa, that's crazy.

00:07:16 - Jenny GK He said, if you get caught in this, just pull into a gas station or a car wash or whatever and just protect the car. Stay, wait, be safe. I'll see you when I see you.

00:07:26 - Caitlin Kindred Protect the car, then be safe.

00:07:28 - Jenny GK Oh, yeah, please.

00:07:29 - Caitlin Kindred Got it. Okay. Understood.

00:07:30 - Jenny GK Right? We have our priorities straight in our marriage. So I get Kit, the thunder and lightning is going around, but no rain is coming. So I'm like, okay, maybe we can bolt home. It's only a 20 minutes drive. We can probably get there. So we drive and then the rain starts. But there are no spots in any car washes or any because everyone else is doing the same thing.

00:07:53 - Caitlin Kindred Because everyone else's spouse also told them to go protect the car. Yeah, got it. Right.

00:07:59 - Jenny GK So I said, okay, I can drive in rain. No big deal. Yeah, that's fine.

00:08:02 - Caitlin Kindred Rain is fine.

00:08:03 - Jenny GK And I know hail is coming because my parents lived north of us and the storm was moving from the north to the south. And they already told me that they had nickel size hail at their house. So I know hail is coming, but I figure if I can just make it before the hail, we can cover the car at home. Everything's going to be fine. I start driving, I get stuck on a two lane road and it's just like a funeral procession. Like these cars are not moving. And speaking of funerals, on one side of me is a line of cars, on the other side is a cemetery. I don't really have options.

00:08:33 - Caitlin Kindred Yeah, no, you really don't.

00:08:36 - Jenny GK So we finally make it past the cemetery and the hail comes. And because I drive a car that's all wheel drive and I care about my own safety more than my vehicles, I just drove right up on the sidewalk and drove under a tree in someone's yard.

00:08:51 - Caitlin Kindred Yeah.

00:08:53 - Jenny GK Said, you know what, I'm just going to park under the tree. So we're sitting there kits in the back. He thinks it's hilarious that I'm parked on the sidewalk. I can't believe you can do this. Can Daddy do this? No. Daddy's car isn't four wheel drive. That's why we had to tow it out of the rocks. The storm breaks down. The hail is gone. It's just raining now. And I realize I have to get out of the spot without tearing up someone's yard and without getting in an accident trying to get into a two lane road. Right. It's not like I have a lane to merge into, and then I have to be able to pull and turn at once.

00:09:35 - Caitlin Kindred Yeah.

00:09:36 - Jenny GK So I just drove down the sidewalk until I got to a ramp at a curb and used the intersection of two streets to be able to turn into the road.

00:09:49 - Caitlin Kindred Did you jack up your axle? Like, were you doing right? Okay.

00:09:53 - Jenny GK No, I got a Subaru, man, these cars are made for this stuff.

00:10:00 - Caitlin Kindred Oh, you did what you had to do. It's fine. You protected the car. Yeah.

00:10:05 - Jenny GK Their yard doesn't have ruts all through it.

00:10:08 - Caitlin Kindred Right. So now you're good. You don't have to yeah. There you go.

00:10:11 - Jenny GK If you are wondering, listeners, I was not the only car parking on sidewalks under trees.

00:10:16 - Caitlin Kindred No. Let's be fair.

00:10:18 - Jenny GK I was the only car. There were lots of other pickups doing it. But you can't do that in a sedan.

00:10:24 - Caitlin Kindred No, you can't.

00:10:25 - Jenny GK But if you got a station wagon like it's 1974, you can.

00:10:30 - Caitlin Kindred Oh, my goodness. So, you know, my family calls Carl Rove Uncle Carl, because one time I.

00:10:39 - Jenny GK Don'T even need to know why.

00:10:41 - Caitlin Kindred It's funny. One time, Sam was a baby. Like, baby, baby. And we went out to dinner, but we brought him, and Carl Rove was at the next table. And while politically I do not necessarily align with Carl Rove, that's fine at all.

00:10:58 - Jenny GK He's still a person.

00:10:59 - Caitlin Kindred Right? He was so happy to see a baby. He was just, like, playing with Sam's feet and making him giggle. And so, yeah, he lives in town. He's got grandkids. He was really nice. So we were just like, while my insides and my brains are, like, dying, I'm also like, oh, this is Carl Rove playing with my baby. You know what I mean? And he is, like, entertained, so it's fine. But so that is hilarious that Carl Rove got me out of work. Carl Rove entertained my child.

00:11:36 - Jenny GK That's hilarious.

00:11:38 - Caitlin Kindred You know what?

00:11:39 - Jenny GK We have so much in common, Caitlin.

00:11:40 - Caitlin Kindred I know, right? Goodness. That green sky last night when you told me about that, I was like, oh, my gosh, no way. And then we're driving home with Sam, and I was like, it's totally like an old gross bruise.

00:11:55 - Jenny GK That is exactly the color.

00:11:57 - Caitlin Kindred Gross.

00:11:59 - Jenny GK That's the green that they use at Disney World to make you not notice behind the scenes stuff.

00:12:06 - Caitlin Kindred Interesting. That like grayish, purpley, green.

00:12:09 - Jenny GK There's a special name for it. Like, don't notice me green or something. But that's the color. Yeah, but it's their own shade that they've developed that basically people don't look at so that you won't notice that there's a wall there, and on the other side, the cast members are working.

00:12:26 - Caitlin Kindred Interesting.

00:12:27 - Jenny GK Yes.

00:12:27 - Caitlin Kindred I'm sorry.

00:12:28 - Jenny GK Continue on.

00:12:29 - Caitlin Kindred Okay, so I have a different gem for this week, but I just need to say congratulations to my son's baseball team because they won a game today. Yes, exactly. And this has been a rough season. They won their first game, but they haven't won since. And it's been hard on them. But looking at it from the teacher perspective, the growth that I've seen in these kids is unreal. They are so much better than they were like, two months ago. It's unreal. And I'm so impressed with that.

00:13:00 - Jenny GK It's because they have such a great coach.

00:13:02 - Caitlin Kindred Well, that's my husband. It's not me. I'm just the one in the dugout yelling, okay, you're batting up and setting all the music up and everything. And when the kids are like, what position am I playing? I'm like, remember how I told you you were playing shortstop? You're still playing shortstop. Casey's Go. I'm just like the coordinator, right? Like the puppet master.

00:13:20 - Jenny GK He's the one general manager.

00:13:23 - Caitlin Kindred Oh, yeah, maybe. Okay, I'll take that. I'll be GM. That's fine. So they win their game. It's very exciting. The kids are so stoked that when I put the snacks in front of them, which were like, granola bars and some fruit snacks and Gatorade, you can imagine what some of the kids chose to do. Now, my husband is not covered in Gatorade, okay? But the children are. They took the bottles of red Gatorade, and like, three of them, including my own child, dumped them on their heads. Okay? Yes.

00:14:02 - Jenny GK Okay, listeners, go back in time and listen to our episode on how to get the stains out of clothing.

00:14:10 - Caitlin Kindred So then some of the kids and we all went out for pizza. We were like, any parent that I could grab. I was like, hey, do you want to come? We're going to go get pizza. But of course, some of them left before I could make that happen, so whatever is fine. And I was like, when we get home, my child, you are going to take a shower. You're going to do this because you have Gatorade in your hair. And I think he just assumed, like, this is going to be a rinse off shower because it's like, middle of the day and I don't have to wash my hair every night or whatever it is. And I was like, no, this is a wash. We're going to wash, right? We get home, he's been covered in Gatorade for approximately 2 hours, and it's in his hair, and he's so sticky. Oh my gosh. And he's got, like, pizza grease, and it's just this mess.

00:14:54 - Jenny GK He just has child all over him, right?

00:14:56 - Caitlin Kindred And he smells like outside. You know that smell, like the stinky, sweaty outside smell. He smells like that plus all these other things. So I get him into the bathroom. And I'm like, you're showering? And he's like, okay, I'm just going to rinse off. And I was like, no, we're washing. This is a wash. No, I don't need to. I just need to rinse off. No, you need to wash. I don't like to argue with my child. I've taken lines from you where I say, I know you want me to change my mind, but I'm not going to. I'm not going to change my mind on this one.

00:15:25 - Jenny GK And that's not even my line. I stole it from a pre K teacher.

00:15:28 - Caitlin Kindred It's brilliant. The line is, I hear you. You're wanting me to change my mind and I'm not going to. It's genius and I use it, right? And in this one, I was using it and it was still an argument. And I just went and I was like, I'm not going to argue with you. You are washing your hair. I don't need to wash my hair. It's all fine. It's not even sticky. It's drying. He like, touches his head and it's like, sticking to his hand. And I was like so I was in a verbal altercation with my six year old, my almost seven year old about what constitutes a need to wash hair. But it was liquid, so it's fine. Sticky, electrolytes crap. You're putting soap on your head and you're rubbing it into your hair and.

00:16:18 - Jenny GK He'S like, it's got what, hair craves?

00:16:20 - Caitlin Kindred Oh, my God. Let's talk about how it's also combined with yesterday's gel that you didn't rinse out of your hair all the way and also probably yesterday's hairspray. So it's just like this sticky and his eyebrows are like dyed red from gatorade. I'm like, listen, you're washing. I don't even know why this is a fight.

00:16:40 - Jenny GK Your hair would be washed by the time you could have had this fight.

00:16:45 - Caitlin Kindred And I was like, I'm going to lose my mind. And who has a fight about this? Do you want your hair to be red and sticky? What is wrong with you? And I completely lost my mind. So for all of us who know that the idea is to gentle parent and we're not going to argue with our kids and we're just going to say, I know you are going to do this. I know you want me to change my mind, but I'm not going to. Sometimes it still turns into a fight for me, too.

00:17:16 - Jenny GK I'm about to make things PG 13. Do it. Parents, if you are listening with a child in the room, know that our show is normally child friendly. But right now, I'm about to swear and the reason I am is because it's very important to the story. I had a similar fight with Abby when she was about seven or eight, and it ended with, I will not be the parent of a child with dirty ass teeth.

00:17:44 - Caitlin Kindred Yeah, I've heard lines similar to that. And I've done the like, oh, mom, you just said the F word. And I'm like, you're right. I did say that word because your Effing is all over my floor. Let's go pick it up. God, like, the fights. The fights now.

00:18:04 - Jenny GK And I said this to Abigail after a long fight about brushing teeth, and another adult that is not in our family was in the house, and she busted, like, could not control herself. She is laughing so hard. I was like, you're not helping.

00:18:22 - Caitlin Kindred You're not helping. No, it doesn't help. It doesn't help when you're laughing.

00:18:26 - Jenny GK But it was pretty funny. This is not what we normally say to our children.

00:18:30 - Caitlin Kindred No. The line that I heard recently about brushing teeth was, we brush at night to keep our teeth. We brush in the morning to keep our friends. I loved it. That's good.

00:18:45 - Jenny GK Yeah.

00:18:46 - Caitlin Kindred So anyway, I'm fighting with your kids. It's a Mother's Day. Yeah. Okay.

00:18:54 - Jenny GK All right. Well, speaking of mothers, we have Mama D coming up. Listen to a promo from Petals of Support. And we're back.

00:19:04 - Caitlin Kindred And we're back. And we're back. Energy. Best show is a great movie. Okay. All right. So we're talking about little things that either we know our moms did or we do for our kids. We've gotten some listener input on these, and so we're just sharing stories today, and I'm really looking forward. Some of these stories are so sweet and so cute and funny. I love them.

00:19:32 - Jenny GK Oh, I love that you went sweet and cute, because I don't know that mine are not.

00:19:38 - Caitlin Kindred All of mine are. Some of them are ridiculous.

00:19:40 - Jenny GK But I did not grow up in the sweet and cute household. I grew up in the wildly sarcastic. Our level of humor is always deadpan.

00:19:52 - Caitlin Kindred Our parents are boomers. So there's a very different generational sweetness. Right. It's not the same sort of parenting that we are doing with our own kids. It's a very different thing. So that's why I'm here for it. These are just the stories that either we remember of our moms or things that we are doing for our kids right now that we remember sometimes. Right.

00:20:15 - Jenny GK So I will kick it off with some things that my mom did when we were growing up. The first one was when we took a bath. Occasionally, it would get to be a bath with color, and she would use food coloring to color the water.

00:20:29 - Caitlin Kindred Are we talking about the dirt that we're scraping?

00:20:34 - Jenny GK My dad had a little poem. It's not quite blue, it's not quite green. Somewhere in the middle is aquamarine, and so you could have an aqua tub. But there was one time that I wanted an orange bath, and my mom, who is very close to colorblind, she has issues with determining color, did not know how to make orange.

00:20:56 - Caitlin Kindred Okay.

00:20:57 - Jenny GK My dad was on a business trip, which he was deployed right. For the military at prairie duty.

00:21:06 - Caitlin Kindred Right.

00:21:07 - Jenny GK And she did not know how to make orange. And this is pre Internet, so she can just Google how to make orange. So she had to call him and say, I don't know how to make orange. He told her it's yellow and red. I ended up doing a finger painting of yellow and red mixed together to make orange. She framed it and hung it up in our house the entire time I was growing up.

00:21:32 - Caitlin Kindred I love that.

00:21:35 - Jenny GK But it's also, like, a little snarky.

00:21:37 - Caitlin Kindred Right?

00:21:37 - Jenny GK Like you didn't know how to make orange. Here you go.

00:21:40 - Caitlin Kindred Yeah, I see both sides.

00:21:44 - Jenny GK I see what you so also under the category of sweet is, because we are a military family, we had to move a lot.

00:21:51 - Caitlin Kindred Yes.

00:21:51 - Jenny GK And every time we moved, the first thing that my mom would set up was be our beds and making them.

00:21:57 - Caitlin Kindred Yeah.

00:21:58 - Jenny GK So even if there's boxes everywhere and we don't have pots and pans, whatever, everyone got to go to bed in their own beds, which was really fun. But because my mom is snarky and her brand of humor is kill them with kindness, if she's nice to you, it's because she does not like you. She loves pudding, but also knew that we didn't, and so we would come home from school, and she'd be like, guess what?

00:22:23 - Caitlin Kindred It's pudding night.

00:22:25 - Jenny GK And she would have made pudding, and she's so excited to serve it to us and have us all turn our noses up at it. Also turning our nose up was she loves meatloaf. Not the food, the artist. R-I-P.

00:22:40 - Caitlin Kindred Right.

00:22:41 - Jenny GK But there is a rule about meatloaf. I don't know if you know this, Caitlin, but you cannot listen to meatloaf unless the decibel level is louder than the airport.

00:22:51 - Caitlin Kindred I did not know. Thank you for teaching.

00:22:54 - Jenny GK So we would put meatloaf on in the five CD changer that we had because we were so fancy. And turn that knob all the way to the right, which, if you're a 13 year old girl, the last thing you want to do is bring your friends over when Mom's blasting meatloaf.

00:23:12 - Caitlin Kindred Celine Dion over here. Thanks.

00:23:14 - Jenny GK Yes. And every single day, every day when I left the house to go to school, she would always say, Ask a good question.

00:23:24 - Caitlin Kindred Oh, that's a good one.

00:23:27 - Jenny GK Which was so annoying to me because it was always the same thing.

00:23:30 - Caitlin Kindred Yeah.

00:23:31 - Jenny GK And so it got to the point where it was a joke that she would say, yeah, ask a good question while I roll my eyes as far back as I could go.

00:23:37 - Caitlin Kindred Right. I'm sure you were annoyed with it. Yeah.

00:23:40 - Jenny GK When I was in college, she used to send cards to me in the mail, but they were always cards that were not appropriate for the so, like, Happy birthday, Grandpa.

00:23:52 - Caitlin Kindred I love I love that. That's great.

00:23:55 - Jenny GK Or like, baptism for your niece.

00:24:00 - Caitlin Kindred I don't even want to know the reasoning behind it because I don't care yeah. This is hilarious.

00:24:05 - Jenny GK Okay, so I will cap it off with, like, a legitimately sweet story.

00:24:10 - Caitlin Kindred Yes.

00:24:11 - Jenny GK When I was pregnant with Abigail and we had a baby shower, she gave me a photograph of me holding a little tiger toy that I had when I was a kid. And it was the at home version of a puppet show that I used to watch in England.

00:24:29 - Caitlin Kindred Okay.

00:24:31 - Jenny GK And then as I dug deeper in the box was the puppet stop.

00:24:37 - Caitlin Kindred I would have cried.

00:24:38 - Jenny GK Oh, everyone cried. Yeah, everyone cried.

00:24:41 - Caitlin Kindred Oh, that's really sweet.

00:24:43 - Jenny GK Yeah. So if you have children and they have something that they love, tuck it away when they're done with it, because maybe they'll have it for their children.

00:24:52 - Caitlin Kindred Yeah, my mom did some of that. I do have a couple of blankets that were like sibling blankets. That my good blanket that I had got stolen by the daycare that I worked at. Or that not that I worked at. Sorry. Excuse me. Went to my good blanket got stolen by the that I went to when we left, we left the blanket there, and then my mom went back to go get it, and they wouldn't let her have it. It was clearly our blanket. Yeah. It was a messed up situation. It was like a handmade blanket. She was really upset. So that one I didn't get, but there was one that I got that she gave me was a sibling blanket for Sam, who was really sweet. So my mom is one of those people who just finds little, tiny ways to make things special, right? So my mom goes big for Christmas. I learned the hard way that Christmas magic is mom, right? Like, oh, man. Or Christmas magic is like mom's pulling out of their holly jolly rear ends. Right. This is not an easy thing to do. And my mom my dad always did cookies with us, and that's great, but Christmas morning magic was they clearly worked hard at it together. But I know who was wrapping the gifts and who was shopping in June and things like that.

00:26:16 - Jenny GK So my parents would do the shopping together, but my mom would always do the wrapping. And I think I've said this on the show before. The gift card or the tag. The tag would be a clue as to what's in there. So, like, if you got a pair of shoes, they would be from Kindred.

00:26:30 - Caitlin Kindred That's really cute. That's a cute one. We love my mom's handwriting. So all of a sudden, we were like, this santa has good handwriting. It was one of those situations anyway. So even though Christmas was extra and it probably still is extra, the smaller holidays that nobody really thinks about, she always went out of her way to make those a little bit special too. So, like, Valentine's Day is my dad's birthday, but also it's Valentine's Day, and there'd be, like, little hearts on the table, and glitter, and she had, like, a garland hanging from the light fixture in the kitchen, and it would be like, a little card with a little pot of green eminem. It was just, like, tiny little things like that. We were like, oh, this holiday is special, too, right? It was really nice. Yeah, I love it. I do that for my own child now for Christmas every year. And I believe that this started after I moved out, but it might have been after all of us were kind of older. But she spends weeks on this. She takes a Christmas carol, a traditional Christmas carol, and she rewrites all of the words to be, like, about what our lives are like right now. Yeah. So she'll take we wish you a Merry Christmas, and turn it into, like, here's where Kate's living, here. Molly's doing this, matthew's doing that, Erin, and she's, like, listing everyone. Kara's in school, aaron lives in Germany. And then it's all just like and now there's a grandbaby. She works on it really hard, and at the end, it's always like, she ties it into, I'm requesting your Christmas list for the year. Make it about yeah, it's really cool. And I've saved all of them. I love them. They're really special. She's also put together little care packages one time for my baby sister before she moved to college. She's, like, getting them ready to ship her out. And ship her out. Karen went to college, like, 15 minutes from where we live, but it doesn't matter. But there was a box that said College Supplies, and it was all this stuff that Care hadn't even thought about needing, and it was just ready to go for her. I mean, at that point, she put four kids into college, so she knew what to do. But it was still really nice to have thought about all of it and put it together for her.

00:28:49 - Jenny GK Right.

00:28:51 - Caitlin Kindred Some of the little other tiny things. Like, my sister was living at home for a while, and laundry would get done, and my mom would bring it upstairs for her. But there would always be a pair of underwear on my sister's lovey. So my sister had, like, just a stuffy that is still special that she has around her, and there would always be a pair, or my mom would, like, position him in something funny, but there would be a pair of my sister's underwear, which I love. My favorite one that I will never, ever forget is when I was little. One of my favorite meals and I'm putting that in air quotes meals, was peanut butter on salties.

00:29:30 - Jenny GK Just oh, yeah.

00:29:32 - Caitlin Kindred She carved every time, every single one, she would carve a little heart in the peanut butter. Every single one. And now I do that for my own. Like, anytime there's peanut butter involved or, like, something that's spreadable that will hold a shape, like nutella, I put, like, hearts on. It.

00:29:48 - Jenny GK That's so cute.

00:29:49 - Caitlin Kindred I love that one. Just little things like that that you just it just made you feel special in that moment. Right?

00:29:55 - Jenny GK Right.

00:29:55 - Caitlin Kindred I want the heart crackers. No, mom, these don't have hearts. Sending it back to the chef. Right? Okay. What are some things that you do for your kids now because you've got these ideas from your mom? What are you doing?

00:30:09 - Jenny GK So little things that we do, I would say nine times out of ten, when we drive home, we stop at the mailbox so the kids can get out of the car and race me home.

00:30:21 - Caitlin Kindred Love it. That's fun.

00:30:23 - Jenny GK There's like, rules. Right? And Abby will count us off and then she'll say, you can't go over 8 miles an hour, or whatever.

00:30:32 - Caitlin Kindred I love that.

00:30:35 - Jenny GK Let's see. We always have glow sticks at our house. Like, it's like on the grocery list when we run out.

00:30:43 - Caitlin Kindred Yeah, I know what you mean.

00:30:44 - Jenny GK But we do glow stick dance parties at the drop of the hat all the time. Things aren't yeah, things aren't going well. Let's have a golistic dance party. We also have one light in our house, kind of malfunctioning, and so if you turn it on slowly, it strobes nice. If you click it fast, it makes the connection and it stays on. But if you turn on slowly we now have dance party lights in our that's amazing. I refuse to fix it because I.

00:31:16 - Caitlin Kindred Think it's so cool. We do glow sticks in the bath. Oh, yeah. So we turn off all the lights and just have in the bath. It's just glow sticks in there. And then I'll leave my phone and just play his favorite songs. And then he gets to have like, a bath time party. That is like deuces. Have your fun.

00:31:35 - Jenny GK Yeah, go for it.

00:31:36 - Caitlin Kindred They're good for that, too.

00:31:38 - Jenny GK So Abby and I have been together at school since she was in pre K. Yes. And I learned very early on that something I had not anticipated happening was her seeing me in the hallway and calling to me even just to say hello. Right. Which is distracting if she's supposed to be walking quietly in a line or whatever. And her teacher is my friend and colleague, and I'm like, sorry, I was just trying to make copies. I didn't know you would be there. So we developed a secret wave. So we have our own little wave that is kind of your hand moving in a very slow motion to represent a jellyfish.

00:32:21 - Caitlin Kindred I was going to say it looks like a jellyfish.

00:32:22 - Jenny GK It looks like a jellyfish. So we can kind of give this wave whenever we see each other. And it started with when she was four and we would see each other in the hallway, but now she's eleven, and we still kind of do it every once in a while when we see each other or she's walking away and going to her friend's house, whatever. We just kind of jellyfish.

00:32:41 - Caitlin Kindred Really cute.

00:32:42 - Jenny GK So now that Kit is older, I'm thinking I need to make up one with him.

00:32:44 - Caitlin Kindred You have to have a separate one. Yeah.

00:32:46 - Jenny GK And his nickname is the turtle. So we'll have to have a turtle wave.

00:32:50 - Caitlin Kindred Yeah.

00:32:51 - Jenny GK Because Abby and I are together at school, every once in a while, we will go for a secret lunch or happy hour date. And so happy hour is our favorite because we can stop on the way home and I can have a drink, and she can have a little dessert or snack, and we sit there and chitchat for a little bit and then get back on the road.

00:33:11 - Caitlin Kindred That's cute.

00:33:12 - Jenny GK But speaking of drinks, my kids also love fancy mocktails. So sparkling water and anything makes a fancy drink.

00:33:22 - Caitlin Kindred I love it. That's awesome.

00:33:23 - Jenny GK We've done sparkling water and apple juice. Sparkling water and the liquid from Marishino cherries.

00:33:29 - Caitlin Kindred That's a cute idea. I like it. Yeah.

00:33:31 - Jenny GK So we do fancy mocktails a lot and then, of course, put it in a fancy glass, makes it even fancier. Oh, yeah. And also, we have these potatoes in our family.

00:33:40 - Caitlin Kindred This is a random sentence already. We have these potatoes. Yes. Okay.

00:33:45 - Jenny GK So the magic potatoes and stay with me on this story. It's a little long, but it's worth it. So fingerling potatoes tossed in olive oil, salt and pepper, and herb de provance, then roasted in the oven.

00:34:02 - Caitlin Kindred Okay.

00:34:02 - Jenny GK Sometimes I'm fancy and, like, cut a little bit of the skin off to expose a little bit of the flesh and get a little extra roastiness. But they're all different colors, right? These fingerling potatoes, kind of like the carrots. They're orange and yellow.

00:34:19 - Caitlin Kindred Yes, Caitlin. Carrots are orange.

00:34:24 - Jenny GK But I've been making these potatoes for years and years and years, so much so that my sister loves them, too. And so one night, my sister is making dinner for her boyfriend and her boyfriend's roommate, and she makes the potatoes. And they're super easy to make, but they are very, very good. So the boyfriend's roommate makes them on a date for his girlfriend.

00:34:49 - Caitlin Kindred Okay.

00:34:50 - Jenny GK And she thinks, wow, you're such a great cook. These potatoes are so good. They're so fancy.

00:34:54 - Caitlin Kindred Yeah.

00:34:55 - Jenny GK And then I start dating this roommate after he breaks up with this other girl, and I make the potatoes, and he's like, AW, these are your potatoes?

00:35:05 - Caitlin Kindred Actually, no.

00:35:06 - Jenny GK And I said, my sister's potatoes. He goes, yeah, your sister made them for me one time, and then I made them for a girlfriend, and I said, no, these are my potatoes.

00:35:16 - Caitlin Kindred Potatoes, actually, that you have used for another girl that I didn't even know.

00:35:23 - Jenny GK Now we're married, right?

00:35:25 - Caitlin Kindred Yeah.

00:35:25 - Jenny GK And we eat the magic potatoes at home, but because they're all different colors, the kids will do a contest where they'll close their eyes and feed them to each other and see if they can switch colors. And guess the colors. So the magic potatoes, when I do make those for dinner, it's a big deal.

00:35:42 - Caitlin Kindred I love that. That's like core memory stuff. They're going to talk about that when they're older.

00:35:47 - Jenny GK Right. And as they get old enough to understand, I will tell them the story of the magic potatoes and just say, hey, not only are these fun to guess the color, but also your dad used them to impress another girl.

00:35:58 - Caitlin Kindred Right.

00:36:00 - Jenny GK It was my recipe the whole time.

00:36:02 - Caitlin Kindred How I met your mother. Yes. That's really funny. Oh, goodness. Okay, well, I don't have magic potatoes because I'm really not a good cook.

00:36:13 - Jenny GK But you're a baker. I can bake and I can't so there you go. We have to get together.

00:36:19 - Caitlin Kindred I do carve the hearts into anything with peanut butter and vanilla, like I said. So I'm really good at cooking like that. Okay. Also, you said you have secret handshakes or secret handwaves. I have a secret handhold that I do with my child as well. So if he's feeling nervous, I squeeze it three times, and it means I love you. I'm saying I love you. If I squeeze it three times and he'll squeeze it back, it's really sweet. This is probably one of the more ridiculous things I do. I turn as many things into songs as I can. So, like, my mom changes lyrics to Christmas songs, right? I also do that, but I do it with random stuff. So I'll be like, sunscreen. Sunscreen. Yeah, the sunscreen is sunscreen song yeah. So do that one as many things as I can. My mom was like, It's creative, right? And I was like, it's totally creative. It's a way to play with language. It's a way to play with tune and rhythm and everything, too. So it's fun when we have tickles. When he wants tickle time, I tell him that I don't tickle. My fingers need exercise.

00:37:29 - Jenny GK Nice.

00:37:30 - Caitlin Kindred So my fingers are always exercising. They need to be stretched and they need to move because my legs got exercise on my Walk, but my fingers really didn't get much.

00:37:39 - Jenny GK Oh, yeah, you have to work them out.

00:37:41 - Caitlin Kindred I also play the tuba, which is me, like, basically making far noises on his stomach. Mom, do you need to play the tuba? Do I need to play the tuba? And I'll just like, into his stomach. We also do little affirmations, like what your mom does, and largely they come about through my husband and I. But he has to, like, listen to his body, listen to his teacher, be nice to everyone. Try and have fun. Those are his and we say them every single day. So now he's running towards the bus, and he's like, Be nice to everyone. Try listen to your bite. One big thing. So we do that, and then my favorite one, because it allows me to be a little bit creative, too, is I put together his snack bag every day, and I just put it in a clear just a sandwich bag, and I write his name on it. But instead of doing notes on a piece of paper, which I used to do right now, I draw a picture, but I use a letter or a number to turn it into a creature. And I do not come up with these. I found them on Pinterest. There's this guy, Harp Tunes, I think is who he is. But you can find it, and you start with like, a number five, and then you add on to the number five until it's like Godzilla. It's really cool. That's fun. And then I write on there, can you find the number five? Can you find the letter F? And it'll have some kind of, like, funky name that goes along with it, right? Like, one of them was like it was a weird looking creature that was kind of derpy looking, and it was called Audodon, and it had an o to start out with. And I was like, can you find the o? So that's really fun. But he says he looks at it.

00:39:27 - Jenny GK Every day and he's like, yeah.

00:39:28 - Caitlin Kindred Is it a five today? So yeah, that's my favorite one. It's really cute.

00:39:32 - Jenny GK That is cute.

00:39:33 - Caitlin Kindred Yeah.

00:39:34 - Jenny GK Well, like you previewed, we also got feedback from our listeners, so I'm going to start with Julissa stay at home mom, and her Instagram handle is at Julissa Sahm, and she does a variation of the birthday plate that I think is so cool. Now, I know a lot of families out there have a special piece of pottery that they use for the birthday. Like, maybe there's a plate that you always serve cake on. In our family, we have a unicorn mug that the birthday person gets hot chocolate in. But this lady, Julissa makes a new birthday plate every year. Yeah, it's super cute. And y'all, you do not have to throw clay at a potter wheel and all this. No. If you use sharpies on white ceramics and then bake them in the oven, they do stay fast to the pottery. Now, you cannot dishwash it, right? You have to wash it by hand, and you have to be really gentle with it. But we've even done this, like, at one of Abby's birthday parties. We had the kids all decorate their own mugs and then we threw them in the oven. And after they cooled down, the girls got to have hot chocolate in them. But it's just kind of fun that every year there's a new plate, and I can just imagine hanging the years up somewhere in your kitchen or something. Yeah. Totally adorable.

00:41:04 - Caitlin Kindred Yes. I found this on Instagram as I was doing some commenting and reviewing for the show, and I just thought, this is a super cute idea. I have to share this one because someone's going to love that. That's just really sweet. I'm sharing a few from a few friends of mine that I got. Cool. So one of my girlfriends tells her son every day, be brave today, as opposed to the effort. Like, just be brave today. I love that. And then also, she told me that when she would have nightmares at night, her mom told her to turn the pillow over because the nightmares are on the other side. So I've heard that one before. But you're turning your pillow over and that's where the nightmares are so they won't come get you, right?

00:41:44 - Jenny GK I love that.

00:41:46 - Caitlin Kindred Another one of my girlfriends on the weekends, you try whether or not you get to is a different thing, but you try to relax and have your coffee, right? And because they all want to participate in that activity, she got each one of her kids their own mugs and they all get to have their own drink in their coffee with her. And she's having coffee and they all get to sit and have coffee together, which is really cute. And then another one I thought was really sweet. She says, Well, I don't really do anything like that, but I guess I have to go give all the kisses. And I was like, what? And she goes, I give three types of kisses to my kids every night. And I was like, I'm sorry, this is adorable. What are you talking about? She gives regular kisses, eskimo kisses, and butterfly kisses to her kids every night. Like, how sweet is that, right? Just these tiny little things that you don't think about that your kids are going to remember that it's really sweet.

00:42:41 - Jenny GK John and Kit always give each other a hungy, which is a New Zealand greeting where you, like, smash your foreheads together and stare at each other. And so that's their little, like, an UGA muga.

00:42:53 - Caitlin Kindred It's just really sweet. Yeah, I love that one.

00:42:57 - Jenny GK Okay, so the next one is f my work life. It's the Fmwl Podcast. So at Fmwlpod.

00:43:10 - Caitlin Kindred This is a very funny show. J K right. I think this is submission earbuds in, but earbuds in show for sure.

00:43:18 - Jenny GK Please. We have plenty of things we listen to that are earbuds in. So it says that their mom would always make lunches for them every day and write a little note on the napkin.

00:43:31 - Caitlin Kindred It's really cute. Also, I love that her mom put napkins in there.

00:43:35 - Jenny GK Oh, my mom. I would just put a napkin in.

00:43:36 - Caitlin Kindred Our lunch, leave it up.

00:43:38 - Jenny GK Oh, yeah. No, we always had a napkin until my mom realized how bad for the environment paper napkins are. And so we stopped.

00:43:47 - Caitlin Kindred You can compost them now, so it's fine.

00:43:49 - Jenny GK That's true.

00:43:50 - Caitlin Kindred But I love that little notes. Apparently, from what I understand, and I did not teach elementary ever, but when I went to the back to school night for my son, they were like, if you write notes on your kids lunches, they love it. They just are so stoked to get notes, so that's a really cute one.

00:44:09 - Jenny GK Yeah.

00:44:09 - Caitlin Kindred Okay, so the mine is from Tessa Nicole. We've done their promos on our show before their Doom Generation podcast. These girls are so funny. I shouldn't say girls. They're our age, right? They recap movies that are like Gen X and movies really funny. The one on Fern Gully had me laughing for hours and they just did Annie and it's really good. So one of them, and I don't know which one it was, but one of them says they're almost grown now, but when they were smaller, I'd yell, children all warm. And when she did that, they would all come running for her and she would have cuddle time with them. So it wasn't like a creepy not.

00:44:57 - Jenny GK Like I'm going to eat you.

00:45:00 - Caitlin Kindred So funny. Love that one. And then she said that another one of them said that her mom and her used to sing Good Night, Sweetheart to each other at bedtime after they watched Three Men and a Baby together. Oh my gosh, so funny. She told me that and I was like, I must go find that clip somewhere, I know it exists. And I just was like, it's so cute watching these three grown men singing good Night, Sweetheart to their baby girl. It's just so sweet. I love it.

00:45:30 - Jenny GK We just watched both of those movies Abby and I did back to back a couple of weeks ago.

00:45:34 - Caitlin Kindred Yeah, we just watched Father the Bride the other day.

00:45:38 - Jenny GK It's a good one. Okay, so Amber from Witches Talking Tarot, we have talked with them before. Their handle is at classiest. Witches with no iron. Witches. Amber says I could take a million of lines of text telling everyone how wonderful my mom is in a million ways, but it's easier to just say she is love. She's pure love.

00:46:05 - Caitlin Kindred So sweet.

00:46:09 - Jenny GK And so when she was a young mom and she didn't have much money, she wanted to make sure that she still gave her kids a really great childhood. So they would have dance parties and all the girls would pick a different song and then they would dance in the living room for like one or 2 hours, of course.

00:46:28 - Caitlin Kindred So sweet.

00:46:30 - Jenny GK And you can make a party out of anything. So she would make parties out of nail pining tea. And now her kids are all in their upper teens and she says they don't remember. But she remembers.

00:46:44 - Caitlin Kindred I'm sure that they do. They do. Sure. They'll be like they will when it's.

00:46:50 - Jenny GK Like cool to remember or like something.

00:46:53 - Caitlin Kindred Will trigger it and they'll be like, wait, I know that song. Because we had a you know what I mean?

00:46:59 - Jenny GK It'll happen because of that light over the bar. That was a strobe light if you turned it on fast, right?

00:47:06 - Caitlin Kindred Yeah. I don't know how my mom did it, but there would be those nights where we would have like it was like snack night, she would just put out all the snacks on the counter and you're like, oh, because mom was exhausted. But you think about how cool that was, and your kids are going to be like, I don't know how my mom did it, but she turned on a strobe light in our kitchen and then it was like a cool dancing light. And you'll just tell them like, oh, that's because the light didn't it was.

00:47:29 - Jenny GK Broken and I could have reinstalled a switch and fix it. But I kind of liked that it sparked a little.

00:47:38 - Caitlin Kindred Totally. Okay, well, this is our last one. This is Tabby from the Gray's Tap Room podcast. We've been on their show before, and Mike and Tabby are truly some of the nicest people. Just amazing, friendly, kind. I love them. And Tabby has fabulous oh, absolutely. I believe her son is nine. I want to say he's nine. Anyway, she said that we watch sand and Slime videos before bed, which is kind of cute, right? And I let him play the DJ in the car on the way to school, and we listen to the same Wellerman song in 14 different ways. This is how you know you're a parent, right? It's like you have 15 versions of the same song.

00:48:18 - Jenny GK But yeah, I want to see her spotify unwrapped.

00:48:21 - Caitlin Kindred Oh, I'm sure. You know, it's funny. Sometimes they talk about horror movies and stuff. I'm sure her music taste is just like the most eclectic. Absolutely. And she can sing. I don't know if you know this about her. She has a beautiful singing voice. Yeah, I'm sure it's just like a mix of all these cool things. Anyway, just to name a few of the things that her mom did, because I want to end this on a special note. She said that her momschooled, her and her brother, and she would get up at 06:00 A.m., even though she worked until midnight. Like superhuman, right? And then she would make her coffee and make breakfast for them every morning. And then she said she taught us to always be creative, and nothing can stop you if you don't let it. I'm just like sweet. And again, like, Tabby and Mike killing it with their show, like, good parents, kind people. I just really love them. So I had to share that for her. And that's our Mother's Day episode. We're just giving it all of our love to really all parents, but in particular, Mom's mother's Day is I hope that you get the Mother's Day that you deserve, that you want. If what you want is time alone, make sure you ask for that, right? It is okay to say, I would like to go spend the night in a hotel room by myself and have no one have to clean up after me or like, I don't have to clean it up. So those kinds of things are great, but we just wanted to give all of the moms in our lives so much love. You guys deserve it. You're amazing humans.

00:49:45 - Jenny GK And so normally, I would say what every mom says make good choices. But today, I'm going to close with three pieces of advice I got from my mom. Doing something is better than doing nothing. If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. And you are responsible for your own happiness.

00:50:03 - Caitlin Kindred OOH. I like that. My mom's rules are different. My mom's are more general about life. Right. Like, what's the number one rule? Do not f thyself. That's my mom's number one rule. Her other one is people are stupid. Yes. She's not wrong. Right? Like, we all know what she's talking about. And if it hurts, don't do it. So those are some of the things that my mom says.

00:50:29 - Caitlin Kindred So I'm going to say, if it hurts, don't do it. And we love you guys. Bye.