Kay & Shi Show #26: Two is Company

Kay:

Hey there, welcome to the Kay & Shi Show. This week we’re talking about our kids.

Shi:

We got a whole boatload of them. Actually, our gaggle just grew by one. Little Tommy was just born. Bravo and congratulations, Kay!

Kay:

Thank you so much. Well, we do have quite the gaggle. If you include our parents, between all of us now we have a party of 11, but just between Shila and I, we’re a party of nine.

Shi:

Which is a big gaggle indeed and three of those offspring belonged to Chad and I, and we thought that maybe this week we could talk about what we’ve learned in the lessons and the stories from each of our kids. We were recently talking with Joseph McClendon III, many of you know he’s our business partner at the Neuroencoding Institute. And when we asked him, who are you learning from right now, he really took a moment to pause and reflect, and then he said, my biggest teacher is my son. He’s got a 16-year-old son right now and that was so profound that we’ve really been reflecting on what are the lessons from our kids. So, starting off very first with our oldest because Kay and I certainly like to imagine that our kids are together. Our oldest are my twins, Wesley and Emerie, who will turn 12 in September this year.

Kay:

Such a trip that they’re turning 12 and hitting this age of pre-teen, which is such an interesting transition, but the first additions to our family, which really had some of the greatest impacts, I think on us all.

Shi:

Yeah, my fertility journey–Chad and I’s–was tough. We tried to get pregnant in the traditional way, had some issues with polycystic ovaries, and ended up going to a fertility clinic and figured out the right formula for us and ultimately had three eggs come down, and two of them became the twins and we were so excited to get them. In fact, when I was 11, I wrote in a diary I want to have and will have twins someday. So, it felt like it was really coming to fruition at age 25. Here I was, pregnant with twins, and after four years of marriage, we were excited and ready to grow the family, double the family, in fact.

Kay:

Oh, my goodness. Well, it was so fun for all of us. I was 17 at the time that Shila was pregnant and turned 18 right before the twins were born and it was such an impactful moment in my life personally because it was the first time as the baby of the family that I ever had kids that I had just a little bit of responsibility for.

Shi:

You had a lot of responsibility. You helped a lot. I like to say early on, especially in our twins’ first six years, we had a wonderful woman named Robyn as our nanny. Robyn was a friend of mine from Middle School and High School, got her Child Education degree and had always worked in nannying and childcare. And so, she came along and really helped us be able to grow businesses while she came along. But we still needed a lot of help, and she was able to kind of teach you how to mechanically care for toddlers and babies to tie all of us in our family, and it was an amazing addition. But having her get to teach you and seeing you with my kids was something I know was really healing for me and I loved seeing that side of you.

Kay:

Well, it was fulfilling for me as well and helped me to understand just how much goes into having kids and caring for kids and how much they need along the way in order to be shaped into like, you know, functioning humans.

Shi:

And functioning humans they are at this point. So, Wesley and Emerie are in Middle School right now. They are definitely, as Kay said, coming into those pre-teen years. We’ve seen some mood swings, some hormones, some acne, some body odor, and some really fun new personality dimensions just last year. Wesley a year ago, in the springtime, got obsessed with figuring out the Rubik’s cube, and by July, he had solved it and now he’s a cuber, so he can cube in less than one minute. But it’s so fun and so we have lots of Rubik’s cubes around. But he loves to–when he gets interested in something–really understand it. He loves comics, he loves being creative, he loves solving Rubik’s cubes.

Kay:

Well, Wes is such a gem and an addition to our family, and Emerie is the flip side of that where I think Wes is very focused on this intellectual and internal experience, Emmy has this kind of external expression.

Shi:

Very gregarious for sure. Gregarious, and she says she wants to be in theater and in acting and so leaning in that direction. So yes, definitely very expressive. She’s very mini-me. She’s one of us, for sure. She’s motivated…

Kay:

A little leader.

Shi:

…and likes to get good grades. She likes to achieve. She’s definitely a leader and we just adore having her and she’s been such a big helper. But I think my big lesson out of the twins as I reflect on them as teachers in my life is really the benefits of peer life companionship. But I mean peers in that P-E-E-R, that peer to peer sense that seeing the two of them develop and get to grow together has created such an amazing, I think, security and confidence for them. I can see how more socialized and well-adjusted kids who come from families that at least have others that are close in age really matters.

Kay:

Well, having that village around having solid relationships is so important to the development of a young child and really the development of any human being period. Having solid relationships in your life is so important. I think as I reflect back on the twins, what my biggest lesson has been really is that village and the importance, but understanding that there was this point where I had a part to play in the village and when the village grew and seeing how much it took to make it happen that we could come together in a way that could support one another and be this beautiful expression of a family that was more dimensional than I had anticipated growing up.

Shi:

Yeah. I’m so glad that that dimension got to be brought forward. But enough about the twins next up on the Kay & Shi Show you’re going to get to meet my youngest, Miss Annadelle coming up next.

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