Calvin 0:02
Hello and welcome to the midlife crisis podcast. I’m your host Calvin, also known as Revparblems on Instagram. I’m excited to do this talk show with my best friends from high school and college. Steve and Mikko, what can you expect on this podcast? Well, I like to call it a talk show for Men of a Certain Age. We’re not quite old. But we’re the kind of guys that have to make sure we don’t mix our alcohol on a night out, you know? we’ll chat about current events, trending topics, and things that we just need to get on our soapbox about. Knowing us, we’ll be laughing the whole time. And ladies, don’t worry if you ever wanted to know what your husband or boyfriend talks about in the man cave. Stick around. Now, keep in mind, we’re old enough to remember when Parental Advisory stickers went on CDs. We don’t know what CDs are. You’re too young for this podcast. Speaking of which, make sure you have your headphones in. It’s NSFW as these kids say. We’ll be bringing that flavor to your weekly on your way to work while you’re shaving. Or just sitting around wondering why your back hurts but let’s get this show on the road. Hello and welcome to midlife crisis podcast. I’m your host Calvin here as always with my boy Steve and Mikko, bringing that flavor to your ear on a weekly basis. On today’s episode we’ll be discussing baby making. We’ll be going into details so make sure you grab yourself a notepad if you don’t have one handy, of course bring you a Chris Rock quote of the week and as always get off my lawn But first, how was your week fellas?
Steve 1:25
The week dragged it was a good week. But you know, I think because of the anticipation of the three day weekend coming up for Labor Day it just dragged
Calvin 1:35
Huh, I hear that can definitely happen when you got a holiday on the horizon. Yes, yes. It seems to take forever. How about you Mikko?
Mikko 1:43
You know what? I agree with you guys. The last six, seven days have been kind of grueling, just waiting for the weekend to come. But you know, today was kind of cool. Went out enjoy some sun. Even though here in California. There’s a fire going on here in LA, did hear about that. We still managed to go out grab some New Orleans, French Vietnamese fusion shrimp that’s boiled in that red sauce that you peel and eat. So we do that earlier. So Oh, that sounds good. That made up for the rest of the week.
Calvin 2:17
Nice. And that sounds good. You know, that reminds me of when I was on Long Beach Mikko and you took us to that spot with the seafood. Yeah, the ship comes out. It’s like a homemade like one of those home pans like you would use in your house. Oh, then big long pan of crawfish and shrimp and potatoes and corn and it says all boiled together. Oh my god. sound bad dude. My fingers smelled like Cajun spices for like three days after it. It was so worth it.
was so worth it.
always worth that show. Yeah, that was good. That was good. But yeah, for me this week was pretty cool. We wrapped up our little mini vacation up in Vermont. We were up there working But it’s just a nice change of pace get into the out of the city for a while, but highlight was some friends of mine came over for happy hour. So a colleague of mine that I’ve worked with for years now, she has a two year old then like the cutest kid I’ve ever seen, and always like liking her stuff on Instagram. And it was kind of like meeting a little celebrity. I was like, I’ve seen this kid only online for two years. So it was nice to just kind of be amongst people again and have a happy hour and socialize it started almost felt like you know, yeah, normal life. It was pretty cool. We sat out on the porch weather was perfect, had a few beers. So it was nice, and hopefully life starts to get normal again like that. But, you know, that brings us to this week’s topic of talking about kids. And this is something we wanted to bring to the table because not often that you hear from the male point of view of having children. So Steve has a child and Mikko and I are just practicing right now. Practice makes perfect, baby Exactly kid gonna come out quoting Shakespeare on a walk in. And I thought, when did you guys realize you wanted to have kids? So we,
Steve 4:11
we’d always talked about what we would do when we want to have kids. For context, my wife and I’ve been together 18 years been married 16. And from the get we said, look for the first 10 years, we’re not gonna even talk about kids. We’re just gonna have fun. And so we did. And we were in the middle of our last semester teaching abroad, and the subject came up and I’m like, No, I’m not even thinking about kids right now. And so then kind of paused it for a while and then maybe 2016 you know, we had a good meal together, and we thought it’d be a lot of fun to have a little person to share this with. Nice,
Calvin 4:47
nice. That’s interesting that you guys had that 10 year timeframe. Ours, my wife and I have married 13 years now together for post 16 and we never put any kind of timeframe on a budget. We don’t have kids. But it just kind of happened like that. I feel we got married pretty young. I was 26 when we got married, and she was 22 going on 23 Yeah. And we just felt that went back shit now, right to have a kid, we didn’t have any kind of a career or anything like that. So we just felt like, Listen, we’re young. And it wasn’t even a conversation. I just think it naturally was like, once we kind of get on our feet and get to a position where we can afford to have a child, then we’ll start seriously thinking about doing that. But I think the mistake we made was we got our first dog when we were just dating for like a month. And most people were really shocked by that because we had no idea if we were going to stay together. I mean, we known each other for a month though. We had no business getting a dog, but luckily it all worked out. And we got married. And after we got married, my wife just kind of had this thing and she’s like, you know, I want to get a puppy. I want to get a puppy and I’m like, well, like jello, like, nerf is like, ooh, three now. He was already done with his puppy phase. He knew where to go to the bathroom. He was perfectly housetrain. And he was like, till I’m like, you really want to go through all this again, like you remember what that was, like, come home and their shit all over the house and like, you want to start that over and she just had this things like, I want to get a puppy, puppy. I’m like, Okay, fine. So we compromised and we got a puppy. Yeah, yeah, I know what I’m talking about. compromise. Exactly. Yeah, compromise. I didn’t want one. She wanted one. So we we compromise it. We got one. That’s right. And I think that was the closest thing to any sort of a clock ticking for either one of us, you know where it’s like okay, we want to have a good I think that was it. And we got a second dog and we poured all of our love and nurturing and I think all of that was taken care of by these dogs we had for now snarf died, he was almost 15 and shot was 10. So we poured a whole lot of that into them. And by the We got to a place in our careers where we probably feel comfortable having a kid we just gotten so used to not having kids to just having this life where you could come home, you could just sit on the couch, then have dinner and relax, not have to think about anything else. And I brought up the whole dog part of it because I think the emotional part of it was kind of taken care of by them. So it became more of a logical thing more of like, logically should we have a child and I don’t think having a kid really is a logical decision most of the time just some you feel like and something that’s missing like when she wanted that puppy and it was like Okay, let’s just do it. So it’s kind of interesting sci fi that you and your wife really kind of had a mapped out plan towards because most people it doesn’t really seem to work out that way.
Steve 7:48
Yeah, you know, we we were both just finding our careers and getting our foothold and we want to have fun and so we wanted to travel and I don’t care what you say it’s a pain in the ass to Trouble with kids. Now that being said, That being said, My daughter, who is now four fucking rules, she’s a great kid. She has her moments just like every other kid. But my first fight with her was to Mexico. And nobody knew that she was even a kid on the plane. She just cried. She’s just a good kid. And good. And, you know, my wife and I are pretty laid back, people. And so, you know, we’re not stressing the kid out. So, full disclosure, my wife and I adopted. And so when we talk about where were you when you felt this way, or that was our thing for us. It fit our personalities in a lot of ways because you don’t know who you were getting matched up with. And we know we’re pretty adventurous. So we were leaving it up to a boy or girl just like if you did it naturally. And, you know, it was an incredible way to bring someone into the family. We actually got as close to like a everyone You’d never get an instruction manual with kids and close to possible for having a manual. I mean, we learned all kinds of shit from like a child psychologist, you know, we got four hours with a child psychologist on how to Yeah, well react to toddlers when they start losing their shit. And it was fantastic. And no, that’s, that’s great for everybody out there. If you’ve got a kid who’s about to lose their mind, you just give them shorter compressions. Just little shorter squeezes. It’s one of the reasons why a hug feels so good because you makes you feel compressed like you’re back in the womb. And again, that’s coming from a child psychologist. I didn’t just
Calvin 9:35
make that right. I’ve got to interject real quick story because that’s the you actually told me that last time we hung out. So when when we were married last year for my birthday, came out to New York and your wife were having lunch and I think you mentioned this, and I was like, that’s pretty interesting, right? So no joke like a month after that. My wife and I were having an argument and he’s like getting animated. I did that to her, grabbed her by her shoulder. And I was like, because I was still more than like, silly playful part of it, but she was like, upset and I just did that. She’s like, what? And she just starts laughing and I’m like, yeah,
Steve 10:15
that’s fantastic. I’m telling you. It is Jedi Mind level shit over a kid or an adult as Calvin just proved out. My wife and I’ve done it to us. My one cousin, he’s big shit. You know, he’s got shoulders like a linebacker. I did it to him one time while he was all pissy it’s an amazing Jedi Mind level thing.
Calvin 10:34
Because I think I have is like, wait, what the fuck you doing? Like, you just get distracted?
Steve 10:38
Exactly. And so you do the shoulder compressions. You do like three or four of them or five, and then you redirect them real quick, whether it’s in the door or a kid. But so yeah, we got a ton of time with this guy. We learned all kinds of shit like that. And we had to take classes based on what we were comfortable with. As far as adopting like, are we comfortable adopting a black kid or You know, an Asian kid or whatever. And we were so we had to take classes on how to do hair and take care of skin and all that stuff. That’s awesome.
Mikko 11:09
Yeah, that’s crazy.
Calvin 11:11
Yeah, that’s really cool.
Steve 11:12
It is. It was fantastic. And everyone always gets me with the question of like, because they’ve seen too many lifetime movies about like, is the mother going to come back? And she claimed the kid. And look, I said, the lifetime comment. It’s a fair comment, because a lot of people don’t know what the answer is. No, I’m sure she’ll have questions about it one day. And look, if she wants to meet her. We have a way of communicating. And we’d start there, but I’d fully support it. The kids have a flat rate kid, man, holy shit.
Calvin 11:41
No, she looks great. She really does. There’s a ton of fun. I have this thing where I like to kind of predict what my friends kids are going to be when they grew up just by looking at them. So, for example, we have these other colleagues, right? They’re older kid. He’s a very serious kid. He’s definitely if you’re the He’s kind of people who believe in reincarnation and stuff like ad like this kid has definitely been on this planet before. Like he came in knowing exactly what he’s doing. He’s like a 45 year old man and a four year olds body. He dresses with like polo shirts and khakis, and he’s very serious. He’s always been even as like button, I think, is kind of exactly what he seems like. I’ve seen him. I think last time I saw him, he was around two. And I mean, this kid would just sit quietly, just play, but he always was fascinated with kitchen. And I’m like I told his parents, I said, he’s gonna be a chef. And it’s not just a chef, but he’s gonna be like, a chef that has restaurants all over the world, like this kid is serious. And about a year and a half later, they were telling us how they got him like a kitchen set like a play oven. And every night, he would go in there and he’d played Lucas pizza and he’d make pizza for everybody in the family. I’m like I’m telling you. This is going to be a world renowned chef. So I see Olivia as a star. stand up comedian. She looks like she’s hysterical. She is. And she has a lot of personality. I’ve never met this kid, but I’ve only seen pictures but she looks like she has that kind of a personality like Kristen Wiig type of person.
Steve 13:13
Okay, I thank you very much for the compliment. I think she’s funny as hell. Love it.
Calvin 13:17
Love it. So I definitely want to come back to more about that process. Yeah, later in the show, but Mikko will let you get in there. And like when did you and your wife start thinking?
Mikko 13:27
You know what, for us? Maybe about a year before we got married, I think is when we really started having baby fever I guess. Hmm. I know that my wife, I think she was getting ready to turn 3536 and you know, you read those books. And it was Cosmo magazines that tell you that by the age of 35. A woman’s eggs are like cut in half and you got to have your babies now so she kind of subscribe to that. Thought so we really started getting into like baby making mode at that. point but you know, the wedding had happened. And then a year after the wedding, you know, was when we really started getting serious about going through a UI, which is it’s not in vitro fertilization, it’s the less invasive procedure, whereas, you know, her eggs, my sperm, and then they put it in, I guess, a turkey basis, the best way to describe it and they inject that inner and then we wait a couple of days for like test and then you wait a couple of weeks to see if there’s like some sort of pregnancy test and hormone levels. And but that was about five, six years ago is when we really started that process.
Calvin 14:33
Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. And how long were you guys dating before you got married?
Mikko 14:39
Man, we started. We didn’t date for that long to be honest with you. We just dated maybe a year before I proposed. And then we got married like two years later. Yeah. But a three year timeframe, I guess.
Calvin 14:55
Okay. Nice. Nice. So yeah, as I mentioned earlier, my wife and I are together close to 16 years. And we have 13 year anniversary this past April. And it’s very surprising for a lot of people that we’ve been together this long and don’t have any kids. And as I mentioned earlier, just not something that was really on our radar. But typically, when you first get married, the thing people want to ask you is, when you want to have kids, it’s kind of like that’s the only reason to marry somebody. Right? Yeah, right and, right. But anyway, so about a year or so after we were married. We’re at my mom’s house for the holidays, and we’re all hanging out in the kitchen. And my cousin says something along the lines of Hey, when you want to make a grandchild for my aunt, and we brush it aside, and that kind of with a shrug and I probably said something like, hey, maybe maybe not. We’ll see what happens. And now mind you, this cousin of mine was how much should we say? exploring her sexuality at the time. Okay, so what I mean by that is for Thanksgiving, who put to bed girls. By Christmas, they were two different girls. So I’m like, Hey, don’t don’t hate the player hate the game, right? It’s all good. Now, fast forward to today, this cousin of mine has transitioned from female to male, and is married to a woman. Now, this, wow, this information is only important to the story because of what she said next. After we said a maybe maybe not her response was, well, traditionally, people get married and then have children. Now, I didn’t say this out loud. But what I thought was, well, traditionally, the gender you’re assigned at birth is the gender you live your life with and die with. But here we go. Right. I just share that story because I find it funny to hear when people refer to the word tradition, from a person who’s traveling a very non traditional path. Yeah, so our choice to be married for 13 plus years and not have children yet may not be traditional for everyone, but kind of is what it is right? I just thought that was amazing. Interesting viewpoint of what people look at as traditional versus non traditional what people should be doing.
Mikko 17:06
For sure. I don’t understand about people, though I don’t understand how people interject their view of what is quote unquote, normal, and the lifeline of a marriage. You know, some people have kids at age 13. I know people, some people have kids at you know, 20 right before marriage, and then they get married because of set pregnancy. And then there’s follow the quote, unquote, traditional where, you know, they wait till they get married, a year or two later, maybe nine months later, if it’s perfect timing, you know, you have a baby, you start your family and then you live happily ever after. But you know what life isn’t like that. And that’s, it’s kind of funny because my wife and I had that conversation today because her friends, a lot of women, even family members to even till now, knowing that we’ve been going through infertility for like the last five years, still have that question of when you guys gonna have kids You know, when you have a baby, and it’s like, well, maybe for us at this juncture of our marriage, and at this juncture of our infertility treatments and thousands and 10s of thousands of dollars later, maybe it’s not in the cards for us. And at some point, we have to reel back on that idea of possibly having children now we haven’t given up hope we have a couple of eggs, Frozen ready to go, you know, we have not, we do have a couple of healthy embryos that we’re like, kind of working with. But at the end of the day, if, if that thing doesn’t happen, if it doesn’t stick again, there’s a lot of, you know, Conan is a bad time to have implantations and pregnancies and whatever. It should just be okay. You know what I mean? It should just be okay, from a guy’s point of view, just from my phone. I know my wife would differ if she were to talk to you guys. But from my point of view, it should be okay. If a child’s not there because this is what cards we’ve been given. And I don’t think we can force Feed, you know, a child into the conversation where we’ve exhausted all possibilities. And you know, there’s like a glimmer of hope. But again, it’s just a glimmer of hope. And people can just be like, well, you need to that whole conversation that whole verbiage of need to or have to or traditionally, okay?
Calvin 19:21
Yeah, yeah. No, it’s true. You know, you don’t know what other people are dealing with. So, um,
Steve 19:29
so we always had, I always had a smartass answer during that 10 year time period, whenever anyone asked us that question. And I’d say anything from I do anything from like, wave my finger under their nose and say, Look, we just fucked to like, you could smell it, smell it to be like, Hey, you know, the accident, you know? Let’s just not talk about it. And then like, you know, that like, if they First no one should like ask you like about that accident. So to. Right, right, you have like, that just for me opened up the license to fuck with him big time. Hmm
Calvin 20:13
I wish I had it done something like that. But it was more just I can just kind of brush it off and like, what’s the big deal? You know? And I honestly I think then it becomes part of you is like, Well, I’m not going to advocate just to stretch out up. There’s more to life than that. And I love kids and I always have and always will, you know, and I’m certainly not against having kids. But I don’t feel like my life is in any way shape or form unfulfilled because we don’t have them. You know. And there were a lot of people in my family who act like that, that like there’s no point in living or happy or being married or doing anything if you don’t have a child and it’s kind of like Well, I don’t know if I necessarily subscribe to that mindset. There was some you said earlier, Steve about traveling and stuff. We again didn’t consciously do it. But by the time we got to a point in our careers where We could really afford to do the things we wanted to do and travel was was later on, we were probably already married for seven years, by the time that really happened, and we started doing these things. And initially, it’s like, you know, I want to be able to do this all the time. I mean, we plan two week trips, and days out, and just go, you know, all we had to do was just, you know, I mean, we beat the dogs with somebody. And that was it. That’s all we have to worry about. And it was with family. So we felt comfortable with that. And you know, we’re out of here, but I will say another thing that you did mention, you know, I would say, the more recent vacations I have come more than mindset like this would be nice to pay, expose, and kind of enjoy the trip through them and see them experienced these things. And we talked about it on the last boat about travel and how that impacted us at younger ages. And I started to kind of get that feeling way, you know, this would be a really enjoyable experience just watching that child kind of grow and develop and see in all these different things, you know?
Steve 22:11
Absolutely. And we talked about that all the time. Taking Olivia back to places where we’ve been so she can experience it. It’s something I’m most looking forward to. Yeah, that’s awesome. Sue, as soon as she gets around like eight, we’ll end up taking her somewhere. But before that, it’s, you know, I’m not going any farther than Mexico. like Disneyland. I would you guys. Disney. Mikko would have you guys had that conversation yet.
Mikko 22:36
You and your wife? Would we take our child to Disneyland if we had a child? Is that the question?
Steve 22:42
Yeah. And just remembering that you’re on the West Coast anyway. It’s not as big of a deal. Because like,
Mikko 22:47
just fly in there and stuff right? My wife would love that idea to dress a child up in either a Mickey or Cinderella or Prince Charming or whatever the fuck Disney characters are out there. All day long. I mean, you talk about we have season passes, and I hate Disneyland. Really, really. I, I live in California. I’ve lived here before I met my wife and I’ve been to Disneyland twice before I met my wife. As soon as I met my wife, we got married a year later, she was like, Disney passes, we got to get them as if it was like part of the whole marriage proposal thing. To have these. This is part of the plan. So, you know, we go three, four times a month whenever we can. And if we had children, I’m 100% sure that Disneyland would be like our weekly type of destination
Calvin 23:43
easily so once again, you made a compromise. You hate Disney. She loves it. So y’all did Disney passes. Right? It’s
Mikko 23:49
a compromise. I hate Disneyland. She loves Disneyland. We get passes
Calvin 23:52
right to compromise. And again for the listeners just educate you fellas out there. how long you’ve been married?
Mikko 23:58
Five years. Five years.
Calvin 24:00
And I always say once you cross the five years of warranties up that’s it. No, no no. No returns no store credit. Nothing.
Mikko 24:08
No and I think in California another five more years you get that whole alimony what they get 50% of everything. What does that call?
HALF! Mr. Fuck you, man.
Yeah. You stuck. love my wife. Don’t get it twisted.
Calvin 24:34
Yeah, that’s it bad. So listen, you know, fellas learn to compromise. If you want to be in this game. For the long term, right? You want to have a long career in marriage, learn to compromise. That means Shut the fuck up and do what your wife wants you to do. That’s right. That’s it. That’s how it works. So Steve, I am curious more about the adoption process and specifically something you meant earlier like some of these classes you took I remember we were having these conversations at time. And it’s something that when you told me I spoke to my wife about it, we were just saying, you know, there’s so many people who have kids that don’t take any classes, but fucking need them. You know, we look at people that are just doing jack shit with their kids. And just to give an example, to my friends that we were hanging out this past week with their child again, he’s too and they were like, Listen, we can come over at five, but we’ve got to leave by like, seven 715 because we put him down at 730 Yeah, and it was like, a relief. Like, wow, kids would have bedtime because I know so many kids that are either in my family or friends of the family and stuff like that these kids have no bedtime whatsoever. All night, no bedtime whatsoever. I’m told when kids are younger you you don’t fuck with a sleep schedule. There is no such thing as a schedule for some of these kids man they up at all hours a night and it was refreshing to see I was like, Oh, that’s nice. Because these people these are many people like this. would need a class to take like somebody else needs some education. And people like you who you and Maria, who have gone through the adoption process having to take these classes, whereas like, you know what, maybe this should be meant for everyone. It’d be amazing, be absolutely amazing. If everybody could have that kind of a class or access to that class, I don’t know what is out there available for people. I’m sure there’s about 1000 blogs out there. But again, we got an owner’s manual as close as you can get. It’s just amazing. And, you know, I can tell that it’s made a lot of stressful situations a lot easier, like the kid goes outward again. Traditionally,
Steve 26:42
a classic situation of a kid freaking out is in a restaurant, a restaurant or an airplane. And we would go to restaurants all the time with our kid, we would go at five o’clock, right when the dinner opened up, and I tell them ahead of time, I’m like, Look, kid just woke up from a nap. She’s good to go if she’s an asshole and taken her out and it’s just Do nice, that was always a thing. Because I think just being able to have those coping mechanisms and being able to anticipate what’s coming, allowed her and I to have held a lot more fun. So,
Mikko 27:10
see, I’ve always been curious about the whole adoption thing because you know, Kat and I have actually, like, discussed the possibility of your adoption. And one thing that always kind of like, lingers in the back of my mind is, how do I know that this kid’s stock didn’t come from crazy parents?
Steve 27:34
You know, okay, yeah, you’re bringing what you like,
Mikko 27:37
how do you? There’s no like multiple choice things that you can pick, like, I don’t want this one. I don’t want this one. That would be cool. Here’s this one. Okay,
Steve 27:45
here’s, here’s what they let you do. You’ve got this giant list of schizophrenia, it’s mental illnesses, drug addictions, alcohol addiction, if these things are known, and it’s more often than not like nice 95% is known about the mom, maybe 5% of the time they know something about the dad, it’ll say something to the effect of doesn’t have it in the family has it on the mother’s side has it on the father’s side? Are you okay with that? And you’ve got to be able to know, check things, but you know, one of the things they do is they educate you on these things. I mean, just any kind of ailment, anything you can check off, you know, did the mother habit did the father habit? Is it in the immediate family, and, you know, you can be as Exclusive OR as open on like, all subjects as you possibly can. And what they always told us was that, you know, no matter how selective you are, in the end, it will result in a family. And there’s always a story of the family who waited like four and a half years or, you know, another story where the couple was very open to, you know, a lot of possibilities and they got a kitten, you know, two months our process It was an open adoption. So we met the mom a couple times, that was just an emotional wrecking ball. That was nuts. That was a model of wine night for sure. And then we would meet her a couple times. And what you do first is you make a book of you and your partner. And so you make this book of putting your best foot forward, trying to cover a wide variety of subjects, because you never know what’s going to click with the birth mother in the birth mother picture book. And in our case, the agency we worked with, was called the cradle up in Evanston, Illinois. It’s one of the oldest ones in the country. And so what they did was they had an Amazon Kindle, with profiles on it, and the mom would just scroll through the profiles, pick one and then she’d want to see the book, which is like the extended story. And whenever they asked for your book, that’s when it’s, you know, down to you and someone else and in our case, the baby could be born any time you know, you could be dealing with A kid who’s not born yet up to a kid who’s already been born, like it was in our case. And yeah, that’s how they do it. And you do get some information about the mom saying, hey, you’ve been picked by someone, here’s their profile. And you can start looking at them and say, Yeah, I want to see what’s going on here. Huh?
Calvin 30:20
Were you at liberty to talk about the mother or any of the situation and why she put Olivia for adoption?
Steve 30:26
No, I’m not. That was a thing that we had said that we’re not going to really discuss except with Olivia. And if Olivia wants to talk about it, then great. She can talk about it. But will absolutely help her look her up if and when she wants to? I’m sure she’ll want to.
Calvin 30:41
I would I would think so. I mean, again, you brought up you know, lifetime and things like that and movies. But I would think that if I was in that position, I think just out of curiosity, you would want to know, absolutely. You would want to know who the person was what the situation was. I would. Yeah, I think that’s just a natural instinct for anyone. I would think for most people, and that would be a traditional thing to do.
Steve 31:04
Absolutely. And you know, what I can say about the mother, she’s a great person, absolute great person. And here’s the situation with the birth mother real quick. The reason why I say she’ll never, you know, reach out is oftentimes the degree of shame that they feel is significant. And I am talking to imagine, it’s significant, and then they themselves have to go through the loss of the child. So there’s a width, and then you have this unknowing feeling, and then they have to get over it. So that’s a lot for them to get over.
Calvin 31:38
I could imagine I can only imagine how tough that would be.
Steve 31:41
It’s got to be wild. And yeah, as we’re face to face with this young woman, she’s crying, work frying, and all I can think of is I just want you to be comfortable. Again, it’s an emotional wrecking ball but yeah, I gotta say it was incredibly worth it. The kids Rock Star. She’s fantastic. And, you know, candidly, I don’t really think about her as my adopted daughter. She’s just my kid. Right? Right. She’s great. She’s my kid, when she’s a little pain in the ass, which isn’t long. When she does something or says something really stupid, that’s my kid like the other night. I’m like, standing up off the couch and she’s sitting next to me. And my wife’s on the other couch, which is facing us. I get up and my daughter says, I’m gonna smack that butt. And she smashed my wife’s eyes go like dish plates. Like, did you hear what she just said? Like the inflection she used? I knew that she got it from me saying that. That’s what you sound like.
Calvin 32:54
Telling you I’ll tell you i think i think i’m on point here. She’s gonna be on SNL. Awesome. I’ll tell you what, man I would be fantastic.
that’s hysterical. I love it. Cool well now it’s time after that nice heartwarming tale for us to tell you what you need to get off our loan about so we’re gonna switch gears on your ass real quick all right that’s how we do we go we go from hot to cold
Mikko 33:25
the stork coming but it didn’t present itself. I was gonna ask Steve at what point do you give the baby did the stork you know? I don’t know if people know that story. My wife didn’t know about the stork but really, oh really? And kind of went way over her head. You
Steve 33:46
You throw a rock in the sky on a starry night and it turns into a diamond that diamond turns into a baby that the stork brings down and it’s magic.
Mikko 33:53
Oh, she didn’t even know that first part. What the fuck? Yeah,
Calvin 33:56
yeah, let’s say it kind of.
Steve 33:57
Then Then the the stork puts The baby on the flame pickled the flying pickle travels around the world 3000 times really fast. stops for Mr. Hero gets a hamburger and then goes and see this the parents everybody knows this. I’m on some weird shit. Stop right there.
Okay, so you’re telling your kids to say all kinds of weird shit. Like when my kid doesn’t want to eat? We’ve taught her to say my tastebuds aren’t developed enough yet. How do you come back from that? back and she’s an adventurous eater. She’s not a pain in the ass. It’s a ton of fun. I got to say, it’s just fun.
Calvin 34:46
That’s awesome. That’s great. I love it. Love it, love it. But now we officially ready for everybody’s favorite segment. Get off my lawn. Who wants to go first? Steve’s feeling all misty and stuff about this kid right now. So we’re feeling good.
Mikko 35:08
We still see Yeah, he’s on that baby baby. Hi, kid. Hi. Yeah, I selfies in public. We all take them. We all like to do it. You know, I’ll take an occasional selfie here and there. But God damn there’s some people that take like 50 6070 selfies all in a span of like 20 seconds and you know I’m courteous. I’ll let you take your selfie, especially with this a nice background or a nice little thing you’re trying to capture behind you. But take one, take two. Well the fuck out the way. Let me go through like don’t sit there and take 20 or 30 and then ask me to take like another five for you. It’s not the Lord Jay Z. It’s starting something already. How do you feel about Yeah,
Calvin 35:56
no, that kind of ties in with mine. Mine is about respecting people’s time. I will get into where we do yours. But it’s like, yeah, like you said, Take one or two. If you see people waiting to pass by take a couple of photos, let people rock, let them go through, and then go and you can take pictures all day if you want, but that should shouldn’t stop my day. Right, right. Yeah, that’s crazy. I know. But yeah, so I kind of lead into it, but mine is respecting people’s time. And yes, I feel had a few examples, but then I had one that like popped up literally, right before this recording. So I’m gonna go with that one. But people in workplaces will send you an email, right? Like so like, if you get a corporate memo. And then somebody responds to that memo with a question that was in the fucking email. It’s like, read the ship, right. And people who are at you know, corporate level and above, they don’t have the time to sit down and answer your stupid ask question that you could find. Right, right. This week, I did fantasy football draft, you know that I do through my Instagram pages. Right and People have had months of notice about this when you activate the league, get an email. When I changed the rules this season you get an email. When I set the drastic you get an email, not to mention all the fucking publicity I did about it on Instagram and then on the day of three hours before the draft people dropping up at delete. Now I got a scramble to find people. The fuck is wrong with show, man, you had plenty of time for this. And that’s not even the one I wanted to bring to the table. So yesterday, I get a DM from a prospect that I was trying to work with maybe like two months ago, right? So two months ago, I reached out to them on Instagram, trying to work with them on social media angle, do some ads, whatever. They requested my information. I got the email emailed me they said okay, it looks great. But you know what, all right now? Well, no problem. Maybe some down the road. Moving on, right? So yesterday, they DM me One of their posts, and the post says something along the lines of go to blah, blah blah.com. Here’s our product. This is what we do to send out an ad or whatever. So I’m like, okay, so maybe now you’re ready. And I was like, yeah, this is a great product. I’ve actually been using something very similar recently, as we’ve been out and about, would love to see how we can work together. Oh, no, no, wait, we’re fine for now. So what the fuck are you sending me this for? Show saying
Steve 38:28
what was like, why did they send it?
Calvin 38:30
You know what I don’t know. And usually I look, I went back. And I was like, okay, not a problem. But was there something specific I was supposed to get from your post? And they were like, No, no, we clear. Thank you. And I was like, wow, usually, usually nine times out of 10. I would sit down just like this is weird and just move on and just kind of shake my head. I was like, You know what? No, because if I don’t get some sort of clarity on this is going to annoy me and then the fact that this person just put me through this question. To make me more annoyed I said no, I’m not letting them off the hook. This time. I’m gonna put you in uncomfortable. So I said, I’m sorry, but I’m very confused here. Why did you send me that post? Please clarify. And they saw it because you know, in this room you could see when somebody sees your message. This is over 25 years ago, I’m still waiting on a response. So I’m alright with that. Because at least now I know I’ve made you uncomfortable just like you made me because I don’t know what the fuck that was. That’s very stupid. like sending the guy some nudes. And then he goes, Yeah, baby. Let’s link up they’ll know why would you think that? Shit that’s why it’s wrong with these people. Anyway, all right, I’m done.
Steve 39:44
Something the marketing person needs to get their house in order. They don’t know what people are discussing.
Mikko 39:50
Seriously. Ridiculous. Get your shit together dog.
Calvin 39:57
Steve, you got anything to get off your lawn this week, or you just want to Be on your on your baby. Hi.
Steve 40:01
Oh, hi right now um you know what? It’s been a great week actually no I’m
Mikko 40:12
Don’t make me say that white line again.
Unknown Speaker 40:15
Telling You make me do it
Calvin 40:19
this dude man always gotta caulk something and just feeling good afterwards. I don’t know. It’s amazing. It really is amazing.
Mikko 40:28
Amazing when you lay down all that pipe all weekend, how good.
Calvin 40:31
Exactly, exactly. And again, none none stressing him out everything is good to get that book. I get that book. Right now for our personal favorite segment. Yes, Chris Rock quote of the week.
Steve 40:49
Yes.
Calvin 40:51
Let’s go hit it fellas.
Steve 40:54
I don’t remember the quote exactly, but it was something to the effect of since my daughter was born. I’ve only got one one job to do. Keep her off the pole. And it cannot be more true. What happened to a daughter’s Like, seriously? My life got infinitely simpler. I got my wife got my job. All I’ve got to do is keep that kid off the pole by being a good guy. That’s it. Yes. If I’m a good husband, it’s a good role model, etc. It just all falls in line. Love it. So yeah, I love it. Keep your daughter off the pole.
Mikko 41:32
Awesome. I guess mine is just to go along with the whole parenting theme. It’s tell your mama tell your mama tell your mama. Nobody ever tells daddy shit.
by knocking out this rent
Calvin 41:54
It’s so easy to read with all his light!
Mikko 41:57
I sure do love all these hot water.
Calvin 42:03
Fantastic point. So the one I had this week because I was up in Vermont, and you know they’re known for certain condiments. So I’m a paraphrase the very famous one. Some people eat pancakes with jelly or syrup. I prefer syrup.
Mikko 42:26
Oh no.
Hey Jimmy, you got to do what you got to do. No.
Calvin 42:47
choice between the electric chair. or tossing a salad I’d be like so where you plug it It
Mikko 42:55
Shouldn’t I be wet?
Calvin 43:02
love it love it great episode as always guys good talk today often covered some you know some good adult topics Yeah, yes. wanted to give the audience something different from things you’ll normally hear from from men but you know you got to be a certain age to be comfortable talking about stuff so appreciate you guys talking about these things. It’s good to bring up. Yeah, yep yep so as always, this is Calvin you can find me on Instagram at revparblems, revpartravels or revpargrowth, or just go to my website revparblems.com get it all in one place. Check out the all new revpar shop for all your revpar merchandise.
Mikko 43:37
And this is Mikko eats Mikko underscore eats on Instagram. And if you want, you can also follow one of my personal accounts Mikko the Filipino,
Steve 43:48
and this is Steve and you can hear me here every Sunday with these guys.
Calvin 43:52
Love it, love it. So thank you for joining us for another episode of midlife crisis podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode. Please leave us a review on iTunes and tell a friend. It’s not good to laugh by yourself. You look crazy. In between episodes you can keep up with us on IG at midlife crisis podcast, show notes for this and all episodes are available on our website midlifecrisis.com, where you can also sign up for the mailing list. And that’s where you can drop us a note to let us know what topics you’d like to hear us discuss. Thanks for tuning in, and we’ll catch you on the next one.
Mikko 44:25
Let’s go
Calvin 0:02
Hello and welcome to the midlife crisis podcast. I’m your host Calvin, also known as Revparblems on Instagram. I’m excited to do this talk show with my best friends from high school and college. Steve and Mikko, what can you expect on this podcast? Well, I like to call it a talk show for Men of a Certain Age. We’re not quite old. But we’re the kind of guys that have to make sure we don’t mix our alcohol on a night out, you know? we’ll chat about current events, trending topics, and things that we just need to get on our soapbox about. Knowing us, we’ll be laughing the whole time. And ladies, don’t worry if you ever wanted to know what your husband or boyfriend talks about in the man cave. Stick around. Now, keep in mind, we’re old enough to remember when Parental Advisory stickers went on CDs. We don’t know what CDs are. You’re too young for this podcast. Speaking of which, make sure you have your headphones in. It’s NSFW as these kids say. We’ll be bringing that flavor to your weekly on your way to work while you’re shaving. Or just sitting around wondering why your back hurts but let’s get this show on the road. Hello and welcome to midlife crisis podcast. I’m your host Calvin here as always with my boy Steve and Mikko, bringing that flavor to your ear on a weekly basis. On today’s episode we’ll be discussing baby making. We’ll be going into details so make sure you grab yourself a notepad if you don’t have one handy, of course bring you a Chris Rock quote of the week and as always get off my lawn But first, how was your week fellas?
Steve 1:25
The week dragged it was a good week. But you know, I think because of the anticipation of the three day weekend coming up for Labor Day it just dragged
Calvin 1:35
Huh, I hear that can definitely happen when you got a holiday on the horizon. Yes, yes. It seems to take forever. How about you Mikko?
Mikko 1:43
You know what? I agree with you guys. The last six, seven days have been kind of grueling, just waiting for the weekend to come. But you know, today was kind of cool. Went out enjoy some sun. Even though here in California. There’s a fire going on here in LA, did hear about that. We still managed to go out grab some New Orleans, French Vietnamese fusion shrimp that’s boiled in that red sauce that you peel and eat. So we do that earlier. So Oh, that sounds good. That made up for the rest of the week.
Calvin 2:17
Nice. And that sounds good. You know, that reminds me of when I was on Long Beach Mikko and you took us to that spot with the seafood. Yeah, the ship comes out. It’s like a homemade like one of those home pans like you would use in your house. Oh, then big long pan of crawfish and shrimp and potatoes and corn and it says all boiled together. Oh my god. sound bad dude. My fingers smelled like Cajun spices for like three days after it. It was so worth it.
was so worth it.
always worth that show. Yeah, that was good. That was good. But yeah, for me this week was pretty cool. We wrapped up our little mini vacation up in Vermont. We were up there working But it’s just a nice change of pace get into the out of the city for a while, but highlight was some friends of mine came over for happy hour. So a colleague of mine that I’ve worked with for years now, she has a two year old then like the cutest kid I’ve ever seen, and always like liking her stuff on Instagram. And it was kind of like meeting a little celebrity. I was like, I’ve seen this kid only online for two years. So it was nice to just kind of be amongst people again and have a happy hour and socialize it started almost felt like you know, yeah, normal life. It was pretty cool. We sat out on the porch weather was perfect, had a few beers. So it was nice, and hopefully life starts to get normal again like that. But, you know, that brings us to this week’s topic of talking about kids. And this is something we wanted to bring to the table because not often that you hear from the male point of view of having children. So Steve has a child and Mikko and I are just practicing right now. Practice makes perfect, baby Exactly kid gonna come out quoting Shakespeare on a walk in. And I thought, when did you guys realize you wanted to have kids? So we,
Steve 4:11
we’d always talked about what we would do when we want to have kids. For context, my wife and I’ve been together 18 years been married 16. And from the get we said, look for the first 10 years, we’re not gonna even talk about kids. We’re just gonna have fun. And so we did. And we were in the middle of our last semester teaching abroad, and the subject came up and I’m like, No, I’m not even thinking about kids right now. And so then kind of paused it for a while and then maybe 2016 you know, we had a good meal together, and we thought it’d be a lot of fun to have a little person to share this with. Nice,
Calvin 4:47
nice. That’s interesting that you guys had that 10 year timeframe. Ours, my wife and I have married 13 years now together for post 16 and we never put any kind of timeframe on a budget. We don’t have kids. But it just kind of happened like that. I feel we got married pretty young. I was 26 when we got married, and she was 22 going on 23 Yeah. And we just felt that went back shit now, right to have a kid, we didn’t have any kind of a career or anything like that. So we just felt like, Listen, we’re young. And it wasn’t even a conversation. I just think it naturally was like, once we kind of get on our feet and get to a position where we can afford to have a child, then we’ll start seriously thinking about doing that. But I think the mistake we made was we got our first dog when we were just dating for like a month. And most people were really shocked by that because we had no idea if we were going to stay together. I mean, we known each other for a month though. We had no business getting a dog, but luckily it all worked out. And we got married. And after we got married, my wife just kind of had this thing and she’s like, you know, I want to get a puppy. I want to get a puppy and I’m like, well, like jello, like, nerf is like, ooh, three now. He was already done with his puppy phase. He knew where to go to the bathroom. He was perfectly housetrain. And he was like, till I’m like, you really want to go through all this again, like you remember what that was, like, come home and their shit all over the house and like, you want to start that over and she just had this things like, I want to get a puppy, puppy. I’m like, Okay, fine. So we compromised and we got a puppy. Yeah, yeah, I know what I’m talking about. compromise. Exactly. Yeah, compromise. I didn’t want one. She wanted one. So we we compromise it. We got one. That’s right. And I think that was the closest thing to any sort of a clock ticking for either one of us, you know where it’s like okay, we want to have a good I think that was it. And we got a second dog and we poured all of our love and nurturing and I think all of that was taken care of by these dogs we had for now snarf died, he was almost 15 and shot was 10. So we poured a whole lot of that into them. And by the We got to a place in our careers where we probably feel comfortable having a kid we just gotten so used to not having kids to just having this life where you could come home, you could just sit on the couch, then have dinner and relax, not have to think about anything else. And I brought up the whole dog part of it because I think the emotional part of it was kind of taken care of by them. So it became more of a logical thing more of like, logically should we have a child and I don’t think having a kid really is a logical decision most of the time just some you feel like and something that’s missing like when she wanted that puppy and it was like Okay, let’s just do it. So it’s kind of interesting sci fi that you and your wife really kind of had a mapped out plan towards because most people it doesn’t really seem to work out that way.
Steve 7:48
Yeah, you know, we we were both just finding our careers and getting our foothold and we want to have fun and so we wanted to travel and I don’t care what you say it’s a pain in the ass to Trouble with kids. Now that being said, That being said, My daughter, who is now four fucking rules, she’s a great kid. She has her moments just like every other kid. But my first fight with her was to Mexico. And nobody knew that she was even a kid on the plane. She just cried. She’s just a good kid. And good. And, you know, my wife and I are pretty laid back, people. And so, you know, we’re not stressing the kid out. So, full disclosure, my wife and I adopted. And so when we talk about where were you when you felt this way, or that was our thing for us. It fit our personalities in a lot of ways because you don’t know who you were getting matched up with. And we know we’re pretty adventurous. So we were leaving it up to a boy or girl just like if you did it naturally. And, you know, it was an incredible way to bring someone into the family. We actually got as close to like a everyone You’d never get an instruction manual with kids and close to possible for having a manual. I mean, we learned all kinds of shit from like a child psychologist, you know, we got four hours with a child psychologist on how to Yeah, well react to toddlers when they start losing their shit. And it was fantastic. And no, that’s, that’s great for everybody out there. If you’ve got a kid who’s about to lose their mind, you just give them shorter compressions. Just little shorter squeezes. It’s one of the reasons why a hug feels so good because you makes you feel compressed like you’re back in the womb. And again, that’s coming from a child psychologist. I didn’t just
Calvin 9:35
make that right. I’ve got to interject real quick story because that’s the you actually told me that last time we hung out. So when when we were married last year for my birthday, came out to New York and your wife were having lunch and I think you mentioned this, and I was like, that’s pretty interesting, right? So no joke like a month after that. My wife and I were having an argument and he’s like getting animated. I did that to her, grabbed her by her shoulder. And I was like, because I was still more than like, silly playful part of it, but she was like, upset and I just did that. She’s like, what? And she just starts laughing and I’m like, yeah,
Steve 10:15
that’s fantastic. I’m telling you. It is Jedi Mind level shit over a kid or an adult as Calvin just proved out. My wife and I’ve done it to us. My one cousin, he’s big shit. You know, he’s got shoulders like a linebacker. I did it to him one time while he was all pissy it’s an amazing Jedi Mind level thing.
Calvin 10:34
Because I think I have is like, wait, what the fuck you doing? Like, you just get distracted?
Steve 10:38
Exactly. And so you do the shoulder compressions. You do like three or four of them or five, and then you redirect them real quick, whether it’s in the door or a kid. But so yeah, we got a ton of time with this guy. We learned all kinds of shit like that. And we had to take classes based on what we were comfortable with. As far as adopting like, are we comfortable adopting a black kid or You know, an Asian kid or whatever. And we were so we had to take classes on how to do hair and take care of skin and all that stuff. That’s awesome.
Mikko 11:09
Yeah, that’s crazy.
Calvin 11:11
Yeah, that’s really cool.
Steve 11:12
It is. It was fantastic. And everyone always gets me with the question of like, because they’ve seen too many lifetime movies about like, is the mother going to come back? And she claimed the kid. And look, I said, the lifetime comment. It’s a fair comment, because a lot of people don’t know what the answer is. No, I’m sure she’ll have questions about it one day. And look, if she wants to meet her. We have a way of communicating. And we’d start there, but I’d fully support it. The kids have a flat rate kid, man, holy shit.
Calvin 11:41
No, she looks great. She really does. There’s a ton of fun. I have this thing where I like to kind of predict what my friends kids are going to be when they grew up just by looking at them. So, for example, we have these other colleagues, right? They’re older kid. He’s a very serious kid. He’s definitely if you’re the He’s kind of people who believe in reincarnation and stuff like ad like this kid has definitely been on this planet before. Like he came in knowing exactly what he’s doing. He’s like a 45 year old man and a four year olds body. He dresses with like polo shirts and khakis, and he’s very serious. He’s always been even as like button, I think, is kind of exactly what he seems like. I’ve seen him. I think last time I saw him, he was around two. And I mean, this kid would just sit quietly, just play, but he always was fascinated with kitchen. And I’m like I told his parents, I said, he’s gonna be a chef. And it’s not just a chef, but he’s gonna be like, a chef that has restaurants all over the world, like this kid is serious. And about a year and a half later, they were telling us how they got him like a kitchen set like a play oven. And every night, he would go in there and he’d played Lucas pizza and he’d make pizza for everybody in the family. I’m like I’m telling you. This is going to be a world renowned chef. So I see Olivia as a star. stand up comedian. She looks like she’s hysterical. She is. And she has a lot of personality. I’ve never met this kid, but I’ve only seen pictures but she looks like she has that kind of a personality like Kristen Wiig type of person.
Steve 13:13
Okay, I thank you very much for the compliment. I think she’s funny as hell. Love it.
Calvin 13:17
Love it. So I definitely want to come back to more about that process. Yeah, later in the show, but Mikko will let you get in there. And like when did you and your wife start thinking?
Mikko 13:27
You know what, for us? Maybe about a year before we got married, I think is when we really started having baby fever I guess. Hmm. I know that my wife, I think she was getting ready to turn 3536 and you know, you read those books. And it was Cosmo magazines that tell you that by the age of 35. A woman’s eggs are like cut in half and you got to have your babies now so she kind of subscribe to that. Thought so we really started getting into like baby making mode at that. point but you know, the wedding had happened. And then a year after the wedding, you know, was when we really started getting serious about going through a UI, which is it’s not in vitro fertilization, it’s the less invasive procedure, whereas, you know, her eggs, my sperm, and then they put it in, I guess, a turkey basis, the best way to describe it and they inject that inner and then we wait a couple of days for like test and then you wait a couple of weeks to see if there’s like some sort of pregnancy test and hormone levels. And but that was about five, six years ago is when we really started that process.
Calvin 14:33
Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. And how long were you guys dating before you got married?
Mikko 14:39
Man, we started. We didn’t date for that long to be honest with you. We just dated maybe a year before I proposed. And then we got married like two years later. Yeah. But a three year timeframe, I guess.
Calvin 14:55
Okay. Nice. Nice. So yeah, as I mentioned earlier, my wife and I are together close to 16 years. And we have 13 year anniversary this past April. And it’s very surprising for a lot of people that we’ve been together this long and don’t have any kids. And as I mentioned earlier, just not something that was really on our radar. But typically, when you first get married, the thing people want to ask you is, when you want to have kids, it’s kind of like that’s the only reason to marry somebody. Right? Yeah, right and, right. But anyway, so about a year or so after we were married. We’re at my mom’s house for the holidays, and we’re all hanging out in the kitchen. And my cousin says something along the lines of Hey, when you want to make a grandchild for my aunt, and we brush it aside, and that kind of with a shrug and I probably said something like, hey, maybe maybe not. We’ll see what happens. And now mind you, this cousin of mine was how much should we say? exploring her sexuality at the time. Okay, so what I mean by that is for Thanksgiving, who put to bed girls. By Christmas, they were two different girls. So I’m like, Hey, don’t don’t hate the player hate the game, right? It’s all good. Now, fast forward to today, this cousin of mine has transitioned from female to male, and is married to a woman. Now, this, wow, this information is only important to the story because of what she said next. After we said a maybe maybe not her response was, well, traditionally, people get married and then have children. Now, I didn’t say this out loud. But what I thought was, well, traditionally, the gender you’re assigned at birth is the gender you live your life with and die with. But here we go. Right. I just share that story because I find it funny to hear when people refer to the word tradition, from a person who’s traveling a very non traditional path. Yeah, so our choice to be married for 13 plus years and not have children yet may not be traditional for everyone, but kind of is what it is right? I just thought that was amazing. Interesting viewpoint of what people look at as traditional versus non traditional what people should be doing.
Mikko 17:06
For sure. I don’t understand about people, though I don’t understand how people interject their view of what is quote unquote, normal, and the lifeline of a marriage. You know, some people have kids at age 13. I know people, some people have kids at you know, 20 right before marriage, and then they get married because of set pregnancy. And then there’s follow the quote, unquote, traditional where, you know, they wait till they get married, a year or two later, maybe nine months later, if it’s perfect timing, you know, you have a baby, you start your family and then you live happily ever after. But you know what life isn’t like that. And that’s, it’s kind of funny because my wife and I had that conversation today because her friends, a lot of women, even family members to even till now, knowing that we’ve been going through infertility for like the last five years, still have that question of when you guys gonna have kids You know, when you have a baby, and it’s like, well, maybe for us at this juncture of our marriage, and at this juncture of our infertility treatments and thousands and 10s of thousands of dollars later, maybe it’s not in the cards for us. And at some point, we have to reel back on that idea of possibly having children now we haven’t given up hope we have a couple of eggs, Frozen ready to go, you know, we have not, we do have a couple of healthy embryos that we’re like, kind of working with. But at the end of the day, if, if that thing doesn’t happen, if it doesn’t stick again, there’s a lot of, you know, Conan is a bad time to have implantations and pregnancies and whatever. It should just be okay. You know what I mean? It should just be okay, from a guy’s point of view, just from my phone. I know my wife would differ if she were to talk to you guys. But from my point of view, it should be okay. If a child’s not there because this is what cards we’ve been given. And I don’t think we can force Feed, you know, a child into the conversation where we’ve exhausted all possibilities. And you know, there’s like a glimmer of hope. But again, it’s just a glimmer of hope. And people can just be like, well, you need to that whole conversation that whole verbiage of need to or have to or traditionally, okay?
Calvin 19:21
Yeah, yeah. No, it’s true. You know, you don’t know what other people are dealing with. So, um,
Steve 19:29
so we always had, I always had a smartass answer during that 10 year time period, whenever anyone asked us that question. And I’d say anything from I do anything from like, wave my finger under their nose and say, Look, we just fucked to like, you could smell it, smell it to be like, Hey, you know, the accident, you know? Let’s just not talk about it. And then like, you know, that like, if they First no one should like ask you like about that accident. So to. Right, right, you have like, that just for me opened up the license to fuck with him big time. Hmm
Calvin 20:13
I wish I had it done something like that. But it was more just I can just kind of brush it off and like, what’s the big deal? You know? And I honestly I think then it becomes part of you is like, Well, I’m not going to advocate just to stretch out up. There’s more to life than that. And I love kids and I always have and always will, you know, and I’m certainly not against having kids. But I don’t feel like my life is in any way shape or form unfulfilled because we don’t have them. You know. And there were a lot of people in my family who act like that, that like there’s no point in living or happy or being married or doing anything if you don’t have a child and it’s kind of like Well, I don’t know if I necessarily subscribe to that mindset. There was some you said earlier, Steve about traveling and stuff. We again didn’t consciously do it. But by the time we got to a point in our careers where We could really afford to do the things we wanted to do and travel was was later on, we were probably already married for seven years, by the time that really happened, and we started doing these things. And initially, it’s like, you know, I want to be able to do this all the time. I mean, we plan two week trips, and days out, and just go, you know, all we had to do was just, you know, I mean, we beat the dogs with somebody. And that was it. That’s all we have to worry about. And it was with family. So we felt comfortable with that. And you know, we’re out of here, but I will say another thing that you did mention, you know, I would say, the more recent vacations I have come more than mindset like this would be nice to pay, expose, and kind of enjoy the trip through them and see them experienced these things. And we talked about it on the last boat about travel and how that impacted us at younger ages. And I started to kind of get that feeling way, you know, this would be a really enjoyable experience just watching that child kind of grow and develop and see in all these different things, you know?
Steve 22:11
Absolutely. And we talked about that all the time. Taking Olivia back to places where we’ve been so she can experience it. It’s something I’m most looking forward to. Yeah, that’s awesome. Sue, as soon as she gets around like eight, we’ll end up taking her somewhere. But before that, it’s, you know, I’m not going any farther than Mexico. like Disneyland. I would you guys. Disney. Mikko would have you guys had that conversation yet.
Mikko 22:36
You and your wife? Would we take our child to Disneyland if we had a child? Is that the question?
Steve 22:42
Yeah. And just remembering that you’re on the West Coast anyway. It’s not as big of a deal. Because like,
Mikko 22:47
just fly in there and stuff right? My wife would love that idea to dress a child up in either a Mickey or Cinderella or Prince Charming or whatever the fuck Disney characters are out there. All day long. I mean, you talk about we have season passes, and I hate Disneyland. Really, really. I, I live in California. I’ve lived here before I met my wife and I’ve been to Disneyland twice before I met my wife. As soon as I met my wife, we got married a year later, she was like, Disney passes, we got to get them as if it was like part of the whole marriage proposal thing. To have these. This is part of the plan. So, you know, we go three, four times a month whenever we can. And if we had children, I’m 100% sure that Disneyland would be like our weekly type of destination
Calvin 23:43
easily so once again, you made a compromise. You hate Disney. She loves it. So y’all did Disney passes. Right? It’s
Mikko 23:49
a compromise. I hate Disneyland. She loves Disneyland. We get passes
Calvin 23:52
right to compromise. And again for the listeners just educate you fellas out there. how long you’ve been married?
Mikko 23:58
Five years. Five years.
Calvin 24:00
And I always say once you cross the five years of warranties up that’s it. No, no no. No returns no store credit. Nothing.
Mikko 24:08
No and I think in California another five more years you get that whole alimony what they get 50% of everything. What does that call?
HALF! Mr. Fuck you, man.
Yeah. You stuck. love my wife. Don’t get it twisted.
Calvin 24:34
Yeah, that’s it bad. So listen, you know, fellas learn to compromise. If you want to be in this game. For the long term, right? You want to have a long career in marriage, learn to compromise. That means Shut the fuck up and do what your wife wants you to do. That’s right. That’s it. That’s how it works. So Steve, I am curious more about the adoption process and specifically something you meant earlier like some of these classes you took I remember we were having these conversations at time. And it’s something that when you told me I spoke to my wife about it, we were just saying, you know, there’s so many people who have kids that don’t take any classes, but fucking need them. You know, we look at people that are just doing jack shit with their kids. And just to give an example, to my friends that we were hanging out this past week with their child again, he’s too and they were like, Listen, we can come over at five, but we’ve got to leave by like, seven 715 because we put him down at 730 Yeah, and it was like, a relief. Like, wow, kids would have bedtime because I know so many kids that are either in my family or friends of the family and stuff like that these kids have no bedtime whatsoever. All night, no bedtime whatsoever. I’m told when kids are younger you you don’t fuck with a sleep schedule. There is no such thing as a schedule for some of these kids man they up at all hours a night and it was refreshing to see I was like, Oh, that’s nice. Because these people these are many people like this. would need a class to take like somebody else needs some education. And people like you who you and Maria, who have gone through the adoption process having to take these classes, whereas like, you know what, maybe this should be meant for everyone. It’d be amazing, be absolutely amazing. If everybody could have that kind of a class or access to that class, I don’t know what is out there available for people. I’m sure there’s about 1000 blogs out there. But again, we got an owner’s manual as close as you can get. It’s just amazing. And, you know, I can tell that it’s made a lot of stressful situations a lot easier, like the kid goes outward again. Traditionally,
Steve 26:42
a classic situation of a kid freaking out is in a restaurant, a restaurant or an airplane. And we would go to restaurants all the time with our kid, we would go at five o’clock, right when the dinner opened up, and I tell them ahead of time, I’m like, Look, kid just woke up from a nap. She’s good to go if she’s an asshole and taken her out and it’s just Do nice, that was always a thing. Because I think just being able to have those coping mechanisms and being able to anticipate what’s coming, allowed her and I to have held a lot more fun. So,
Mikko 27:10
see, I’ve always been curious about the whole adoption thing because you know, Kat and I have actually, like, discussed the possibility of your adoption. And one thing that always kind of like, lingers in the back of my mind is, how do I know that this kid’s stock didn’t come from crazy parents?
Steve 27:34
You know, okay, yeah, you’re bringing what you like,
Mikko 27:37
how do you? There’s no like multiple choice things that you can pick, like, I don’t want this one. I don’t want this one. That would be cool. Here’s this one. Okay,
Steve 27:45
here’s, here’s what they let you do. You’ve got this giant list of schizophrenia, it’s mental illnesses, drug addictions, alcohol addiction, if these things are known, and it’s more often than not like nice 95% is known about the mom, maybe 5% of the time they know something about the dad, it’ll say something to the effect of doesn’t have it in the family has it on the mother’s side has it on the father’s side? Are you okay with that? And you’ve got to be able to know, check things, but you know, one of the things they do is they educate you on these things. I mean, just any kind of ailment, anything you can check off, you know, did the mother habit did the father habit? Is it in the immediate family, and, you know, you can be as Exclusive OR as open on like, all subjects as you possibly can. And what they always told us was that, you know, no matter how selective you are, in the end, it will result in a family. And there’s always a story of the family who waited like four and a half years or, you know, another story where the couple was very open to, you know, a lot of possibilities and they got a kitten, you know, two months our process It was an open adoption. So we met the mom a couple times, that was just an emotional wrecking ball. That was nuts. That was a model of wine night for sure. And then we would meet her a couple times. And what you do first is you make a book of you and your partner. And so you make this book of putting your best foot forward, trying to cover a wide variety of subjects, because you never know what’s going to click with the birth mother in the birth mother picture book. And in our case, the agency we worked with, was called the cradle up in Evanston, Illinois. It’s one of the oldest ones in the country. And so what they did was they had an Amazon Kindle, with profiles on it, and the mom would just scroll through the profiles, pick one and then she’d want to see the book, which is like the extended story. And whenever they asked for your book, that’s when it’s, you know, down to you and someone else and in our case, the baby could be born any time you know, you could be dealing with A kid who’s not born yet up to a kid who’s already been born, like it was in our case. And yeah, that’s how they do it. And you do get some information about the mom saying, hey, you’ve been picked by someone, here’s their profile. And you can start looking at them and say, Yeah, I want to see what’s going on here. Huh?
Calvin 30:20
Were you at liberty to talk about the mother or any of the situation and why she put Olivia for adoption?
Steve 30:26
No, I’m not. That was a thing that we had said that we’re not going to really discuss except with Olivia. And if Olivia wants to talk about it, then great. She can talk about it. But will absolutely help her look her up if and when she wants to? I’m sure she’ll want to.
Calvin 30:41
I would I would think so. I mean, again, you brought up you know, lifetime and things like that and movies. But I would think that if I was in that position, I think just out of curiosity, you would want to know, absolutely. You would want to know who the person was what the situation was. I would. Yeah, I think that’s just a natural instinct for anyone. I would think for most people, and that would be a traditional thing to do.
Steve 31:04
Absolutely. And you know, what I can say about the mother, she’s a great person, absolute great person. And here’s the situation with the birth mother real quick. The reason why I say she’ll never, you know, reach out is oftentimes the degree of shame that they feel is significant. And I am talking to imagine, it’s significant, and then they themselves have to go through the loss of the child. So there’s a width, and then you have this unknowing feeling, and then they have to get over it. So that’s a lot for them to get over.
Calvin 31:38
I could imagine I can only imagine how tough that would be.
Steve 31:41
It’s got to be wild. And yeah, as we’re face to face with this young woman, she’s crying, work frying, and all I can think of is I just want you to be comfortable. Again, it’s an emotional wrecking ball but yeah, I gotta say it was incredibly worth it. The kids Rock Star. She’s fantastic. And, you know, candidly, I don’t really think about her as my adopted daughter. She’s just my kid. Right? Right. She’s great. She’s my kid, when she’s a little pain in the ass, which isn’t long. When she does something or says something really stupid, that’s my kid like the other night. I’m like, standing up off the couch and she’s sitting next to me. And my wife’s on the other couch, which is facing us. I get up and my daughter says, I’m gonna smack that butt. And she smashed my wife’s eyes go like dish plates. Like, did you hear what she just said? Like the inflection she used? I knew that she got it from me saying that. That’s what you sound like.
Calvin 32:54
Telling you I’ll tell you i think i think i’m on point here. She’s gonna be on SNL. Awesome. I’ll tell you what, man I would be fantastic.
that’s hysterical. I love it. Cool well now it’s time after that nice heartwarming tale for us to tell you what you need to get off our loan about so we’re gonna switch gears on your ass real quick all right that’s how we do we go we go from hot to cold
Mikko 33:25
the stork coming but it didn’t present itself. I was gonna ask Steve at what point do you give the baby did the stork you know? I don’t know if people know that story. My wife didn’t know about the stork but really, oh really? And kind of went way over her head. You
Steve 33:46
You throw a rock in the sky on a starry night and it turns into a diamond that diamond turns into a baby that the stork brings down and it’s magic.
Mikko 33:53
Oh, she didn’t even know that first part. What the fuck? Yeah,
Calvin 33:56
yeah, let’s say it kind of.
Steve 33:57
Then Then the the stork puts The baby on the flame pickled the flying pickle travels around the world 3000 times really fast. stops for Mr. Hero gets a hamburger and then goes and see this the parents everybody knows this. I’m on some weird shit. Stop right there.
Okay, so you’re telling your kids to say all kinds of weird shit. Like when my kid doesn’t want to eat? We’ve taught her to say my tastebuds aren’t developed enough yet. How do you come back from that? back and she’s an adventurous eater. She’s not a pain in the ass. It’s a ton of fun. I got to say, it’s just fun.
Calvin 34:46
That’s awesome. That’s great. I love it. Love it, love it. But now we officially ready for everybody’s favorite segment. Get off my lawn. Who wants to go first? Steve’s feeling all misty and stuff about this kid right now. So we’re feeling good.
Mikko 35:08
We still see Yeah, he’s on that baby baby. Hi, kid. Hi. Yeah, I selfies in public. We all take them. We all like to do it. You know, I’ll take an occasional selfie here and there. But God damn there’s some people that take like 50 6070 selfies all in a span of like 20 seconds and you know I’m courteous. I’ll let you take your selfie, especially with this a nice background or a nice little thing you’re trying to capture behind you. But take one, take two. Well the fuck out the way. Let me go through like don’t sit there and take 20 or 30 and then ask me to take like another five for you. It’s not the Lord Jay Z. It’s starting something already. How do you feel about Yeah,
Calvin 35:56
no, that kind of ties in with mine. Mine is about respecting people’s time. I will get into where we do yours. But it’s like, yeah, like you said, Take one or two. If you see people waiting to pass by take a couple of photos, let people rock, let them go through, and then go and you can take pictures all day if you want, but that should shouldn’t stop my day. Right, right. Yeah, that’s crazy. I know. But yeah, so I kind of lead into it, but mine is respecting people’s time. And yes, I feel had a few examples, but then I had one that like popped up literally, right before this recording. So I’m gonna go with that one. But people in workplaces will send you an email, right? Like so like, if you get a corporate memo. And then somebody responds to that memo with a question that was in the fucking email. It’s like, read the ship, right. And people who are at you know, corporate level and above, they don’t have the time to sit down and answer your stupid ask question that you could find. Right, right. This week, I did fantasy football draft, you know that I do through my Instagram pages. Right and People have had months of notice about this when you activate the league, get an email. When I changed the rules this season you get an email. When I set the drastic you get an email, not to mention all the fucking publicity I did about it on Instagram and then on the day of three hours before the draft people dropping up at delete. Now I got a scramble to find people. The fuck is wrong with show, man, you had plenty of time for this. And that’s not even the one I wanted to bring to the table. So yesterday, I get a DM from a prospect that I was trying to work with maybe like two months ago, right? So two months ago, I reached out to them on Instagram, trying to work with them on social media angle, do some ads, whatever. They requested my information. I got the email emailed me they said okay, it looks great. But you know what, all right now? Well, no problem. Maybe some down the road. Moving on, right? So yesterday, they DM me One of their posts, and the post says something along the lines of go to blah, blah blah.com. Here’s our product. This is what we do to send out an ad or whatever. So I’m like, okay, so maybe now you’re ready. And I was like, yeah, this is a great product. I’ve actually been using something very similar recently, as we’ve been out and about, would love to see how we can work together. Oh, no, no, wait, we’re fine for now. So what the fuck are you sending me this for? Show saying
Steve 38:28
what was like, why did they send it?
Calvin 38:30
You know what I don’t know. And usually I look, I went back. And I was like, okay, not a problem. But was there something specific I was supposed to get from your post? And they were like, No, no, we clear. Thank you. And I was like, wow, usually, usually nine times out of 10. I would sit down just like this is weird and just move on and just kind of shake my head. I was like, You know what? No, because if I don’t get some sort of clarity on this is going to annoy me and then the fact that this person just put me through this question. To make me more annoyed I said no, I’m not letting them off the hook. This time. I’m gonna put you in uncomfortable. So I said, I’m sorry, but I’m very confused here. Why did you send me that post? Please clarify. And they saw it because you know, in this room you could see when somebody sees your message. This is over 25 years ago, I’m still waiting on a response. So I’m alright with that. Because at least now I know I’ve made you uncomfortable just like you made me because I don’t know what the fuck that was. That’s very stupid. like sending the guy some nudes. And then he goes, Yeah, baby. Let’s link up they’ll know why would you think that? Shit that’s why it’s wrong with these people. Anyway, all right, I’m done.
Steve 39:44
Something the marketing person needs to get their house in order. They don’t know what people are discussing.
Mikko 39:50
Seriously. Ridiculous. Get your shit together dog.
Calvin 39:57
Steve, you got anything to get off your lawn this week, or you just want to Be on your on your baby. Hi.
Steve 40:01
Oh, hi right now um you know what? It’s been a great week actually no I’m
Mikko 40:12
Don’t make me say that white line again.
Unknown Speaker 40:15
Telling You make me do it
Calvin 40:19
this dude man always gotta caulk something and just feeling good afterwards. I don’t know. It’s amazing. It really is amazing.
Mikko 40:28
Amazing when you lay down all that pipe all weekend, how good.
Calvin 40:31
Exactly, exactly. And again, none none stressing him out everything is good to get that book. I get that book. Right now for our personal favorite segment. Yes, Chris Rock quote of the week.
Steve 40:49
Yes.
Calvin 40:51
Let’s go hit it fellas.
Steve 40:54
I don’t remember the quote exactly, but it was something to the effect of since my daughter was born. I’ve only got one one job to do. Keep her off the pole. And it cannot be more true. What happened to a daughter’s Like, seriously? My life got infinitely simpler. I got my wife got my job. All I’ve got to do is keep that kid off the pole by being a good guy. That’s it. Yes. If I’m a good husband, it’s a good role model, etc. It just all falls in line. Love it. So yeah, I love it. Keep your daughter off the pole.
Mikko 41:32
Awesome. I guess mine is just to go along with the whole parenting theme. It’s tell your mama tell your mama tell your mama. Nobody ever tells daddy shit.
by knocking out this rent
Calvin 41:54
It’s so easy to read with all his light!
Mikko 41:57
I sure do love all these hot water.
Calvin 42:03
Fantastic point. So the one I had this week because I was up in Vermont, and you know they’re known for certain condiments. So I’m a paraphrase the very famous one. Some people eat pancakes with jelly or syrup. I prefer syrup.
Mikko 42:26
Oh no.
Hey Jimmy, you got to do what you got to do. No.
Calvin 42:47
choice between the electric chair. or tossing a salad I’d be like so where you plug it It
Mikko 42:55
Shouldn’t I be wet?
Calvin 43:02
love it love it great episode as always guys good talk today often covered some you know some good adult topics Yeah, yes. wanted to give the audience something different from things you’ll normally hear from from men but you know you got to be a certain age to be comfortable talking about stuff so appreciate you guys talking about these things. It’s good to bring up. Yeah, yep yep so as always, this is Calvin you can find me on Instagram at revparblems, revpartravels or revpargrowth, or just go to my website revparblems.com get it all in one place. Check out the all new revpar shop for all your revpar merchandise.
Mikko 43:37
And this is Mikko eats Mikko underscore eats on Instagram. And if you want, you can also follow one of my personal accounts Mikko the Filipino,
Steve 43:48
and this is Steve and you can hear me here every Sunday with these guys.
Calvin 43:52
Love it, love it. So thank you for joining us for another episode of midlife crisis podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode. Please leave us a review on iTunes and tell a friend. It’s not good to laugh by yourself. You look crazy. In between episodes you can keep up with us on IG at midlife crisis podcast, show notes for this and all episodes are available on our website midlifecrisis.com, where you can also sign up for the mailing list. And that’s where you can drop us a note to let us know what topics you’d like to hear us discuss. Thanks for tuning in, and we’ll catch you on the next one.
Mikko 44:25
Let’s go
