Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 156 | teen pregnancy with ben and katie gonzales

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

In today’s episode, we got to interview Katie and Ben Gonzales, better known as KBandBaby on YouTube, about how they overcame the odds as teen parents. Katie and Ben opened up about how they got pregnant at 19 and how they learned to prioritize their marriage in order to make it to where they are today. They now have a thriving marriage, three beautiful children and have built a social media following around their adorable family and relationship. We hope you enjoy this episode! Check out their YouTube channel below! KBandBaby: https://www.youtube.com/c/KBandBaby Love you guys! Shawn and Andrew  Follow My Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/ShawnJohnson Follow My Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnjohnson Like the Facebook page! ▶ https://www.facebook.com/ShawnJohnson Follow Andrew’s Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/AndrewDEast Andrew’s Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewdeast?lang=en Like the Facebook page! ▶ https://www.facebook.com/AndrewDEast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up, everybody? Welcome back to a couple things with Sean and Andrew. A podcast all about couples. And the things they go through. I'm not going to lie. I was reading through all of our material on Katie and Ben. And I didn't know what to expect. Neither did I.

They're babies. They're like, they're kids. They're 23 and 24 years old. And we say the show is all about couples and the things they go through. Yes. These two young guns have been through a lot. Everything. I don't want to spoil their story because they're,

They're going to share it, but I have to say they are probably the wisest people we have yet to interview, which is wild. They're kids. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, we've learned a lot from a lot of different couples, but I was super impressed with Ben and Katie. They have a YouTube channel called KB and Baby, where they talk about their experience being teen parents.

They have three kids, and they are very young. And they kind of talk about how they got in the situation, how they worked to situation and they'll get into the nuances i don't want to spoil it but if you want to find out more about these two we'll link their information down below uh we're rooting for them to have a show of their own because yes everything also are we friends with them now i hope so they're probably the coolest people we've ever met sean's trying to get them to move to nashville she loves them that much and i will say if you are new to a couple things podcast i'm just going to go out on a limb here and say if there's one episode you should listen to it is this really

I already texted three other friends yesterday, and I was like, you have to listen to this episode because there are so many phenomenal takeaways that could help anybody. Yeah, they have a really unique perspective. I would love to hear your feedback on this, what you learned. If you found it valuable, please let us know. And let's go ahead and roll into this one with Katie and Ben. I want to start off. First of all, thank you for coming to Nashville.

What a treat. Thanks for out of us. I know. I'm really excited. Gosh. We're trying to get you guys to move here. I really am thinking about it now that we've been here. You're fuel in the fire.

I know. We know good vibes when we see them. But I want to start off by asking this because I was watching your, I think it was a how you met video on YouTube. You mentioned something in there that's worth expanding upon. You said you did the incline in Colorado Springs. That was awesome. We could do that together.

Do you do it often? Is this a thing? You know, no, because I've had three babies since we've met. So, you know, it's very intense. It's a very hard. intense thing to do have you guys done it no can you describe it for those who don't know what the incline is there there's so many stats on it but it's like how many steps is it i have no idea it is like crazy amount of steps i think it's like elevation that you climb in such a short amount of steps

is like is it like stairs or is it's stairs and at the beginning it's just like normal stairs and then it gets to stairs that are like two railroad ties high so you're like you're literally it's less a stair and more like a crawling up of essentially And it's one mile And I think it's something Can you look this up Lexi actually? It's crazy They have like a sign

It's insane So I rolled in And the legend has it That Apollo has set the record I know this So for one mile For how fast Yeah

You remember the ice skater Apollo? Uh huh Yes So I'm looking at this I'm like okay He did it in 15 minutes I think is a record

Yeah We're talking one mile I can run a mile On 530 or whatever Apollo is a specimen Still as you know rolled in overly ambitious overly confident and i'm gonna dominate this record no you're not you know you've done it oh yeah bro oh and i got humbled i think it took me 25 minutes and i had to literally

just curl up in a ball for a little bit afterwards yeah that used to be like it's intense oh my gosh 68% incline 2,700 steps oh it's not even a miles 0.88 miles i would die and the elevation being is like insane so you stand up at the top when you're done You're looking down. It's beautiful. You know, you look up there and you can see everything. And there's just really nice trail down. Did you go down the trail or did you go back down the stairs?

Okay. Do people go down the stairs? Oh yeah. There are people that would just go back down. People lap it. Next time you go, exactly. Next time you go, just go really, really in the morning. There would be like some old guy wearing like a weighted vest and he'll just be going up.

And you'll see one and down. If he clips his foot once, he is tumbling. And it's petrifying is what it is. I've seen families with kids on their back, like with those. her backpacks taking their kids up it's insane yeah I haven't done it in a while because she's had a lot of babies I don't know if I'd be able to do it brutal yeah how old are you been 23 23 my gosh you guys got married four years ago is that right are you up on five years I know I'm not supposed to ask okay yeah it's always that awkward like do you ask a girl no yeah 24 okay okay yeah

we got married at 19 and 20 yes wow very young had your first kid At 19. And I was 18. So your babies are almost five. Okay. Five at the end of this month. Three and one. Oh my gosh.

You guys, I have a million questions. Go for it. Ask me. First, I can already tell. I love you guys. Your dynamic is adorable. How long did you guys like date before you got? I found I was pregnant.

Yeah. Two months. Okay. It was very fast. The story is very. intense. The first year of us knowing each other was the hardest year of my life. It was crazy finding out that you were pregnant with somebody that you didn't really know very well. And having to work through that, getting to know each other while I was also pregnant and hormonal

was like a whole different person. Like you met one person and then I was pregnant and it was like a whole another person and then I'm postpartum and we're trying to figure out life. We just got married. meeting each other's families and it's just like such a bizarre situation it was insane i know with us like we had been married we had been together for years and the amount of stress that our first kid put on a relationship was so difficult yes i think walking back what was like the initial thought on both of your sides where it's like you'd only been dating for two months you'd really only known each other for a very short time you're pregnant a baby is introduced that has to like rock your world. Oh yes. It definitely did. It was hard for us to come together at first and because there were so

many outside opinions and views on what we should do, if we should get married, if we should terminate the pregnancy, so many different opinions and views where he and I really didn't come together and make any sort of decisions together at that point, you know? Even us getting married was like something that a lot of our family members were hey is this going to happen you know pushing out on us as well you're saying that wasn't as much your decision as it was like your family or friends it was very influenced by a lot of people around and we're we're very young we're influenceable i was 18 she was 19 we have like these parents that are like we've known our entire lives and they're whispering in our ear when in reality it's like a very adult decision

that her and i needed to make and we definitely made the right decision we're glad that we did We're glad that we made the decision. Don't get me wrong. It's all turned out. It was all God's planned at the end of the day. Everything that happened. But it was a whirlwind of events. So, yeah.

And I think at the beginning for me, because you grew up with more of like a Christian background, more of a solid family. Like mine, both my parents have been divorced twice. Like very, my dad's like Catholic, but like kind of not really. And then my mom just doesn't believe in anything. So it was kind of just,

hard for me initially because like my entire childhood growing up I was like okay like are we going to terminate this or like what it is and like you said like we didn't really come together until I kind had to sit down and be like okay like I don't care what anybody else says like I had to sit down myself and be like what do I want and I was like I don't think in my and it was weird because I kind of came to my own moral decision without using like a certain religion or like not using a certain religion just following somebody else's beliefs and I was like I think that we should just keep doing this and then when I was in I was full in why did you come back conclusion I don't know I just felt like it would be like in the situation that we were in I didn't want to like terminate the

pregnancy considering like it was like our decision to do that like why would like that that didn't make sense in my brain I knew from the moment I found out that was pregnant that this was my baby and I was going to keep her and we can go into more detail about you know what everyone said and how it all played out and how we ended up engaged and married at the end of the day. But when it comes down to that decision, I just knew in my heart that, like, this was my little girl, even though I didn't know she was a girl or boy. And we're lucky to be able to, you know, still be together and have the support that we did have to be able to make it happen. I love how open you guys are and talking about, like, what went through your mind because I remember when Andrew and I first got pregnant,

it was like we weren't trying to get pregnant and we were even married so like things should make more sense right and I remember telling one of my friends like she was the first person I told and I remember her question kind of taking me by surprise like the first thing she said because she asked me she's like do you want to keep the pregnancy and I remember it like taking me by surprise because you feel like you have these morals and values like before you ever get pregnant you're like oh this is what I believe in when someone asks you that question it really makes you kind of start over from the ground and work your way up and be like what do i actually now that it's actually happening to me yeah and i'm put in this situation yeah how do i really feel about it you can make assumptions all day or say what you would do until you're

actually put in that situation yeah and i remember having that same feeling of like you know what this is my baby and no matter what happens like this is what we're going to do and but it does like until you're in that situation, you really have to, like, build everything from the ground up of, like, what do I believe in? I'm curious, though, because you guys' dynamic and your maturity is impressive on so many different levels. I think, yeah, Sean and I didn't have our first kid until we were 25, and... Which you guys aren't even yet, which is wild.

Like, already in life, you're dealing with a thousand difficult things, and then you add marriage to that, and it's like, you know, 2,000 difficult things, and, like, there's all this frustration, and then you had a kid to that, and it's like, you had a kid to that, and it's like 7,000 for you're like difficult things and you have compressed the time period of all those difficult things from a matter of maybe a decade into a year so but when you came to this conclusion yourself was it was it like this mama bear instinct of like this is my baby was it your family was it your religious background what do you like so definitely had to do with my religious background and something that I just knew no matter what anybody said like I was

going to keep this it was difficult to go through and walk through telling the important people in our lives and hearing their opinions and being like wait just like you said your friend asked you that and you were like wait what do I believe that's kind of how I felt a little bit too um my parents were really the ones who solidified this decision for me. My parents, my dad was the last one to know. He and I had a little bit of a falling out before I got pregnant and I didn't want to tell him. Which is very normal for a 19-year-old girl. Oh, yes.

What happened was very normal for any teenager in their relationship with their parents. And I came to him and we hadn't spoken since this falling out. And I came to him and I told him that I was pregnant and my mom had already known and she was We were sitting there on my parents' bed, and he didn't even talk to my mom. He didn't even take any time for them to discuss this. He just told me, he said, if you don't want this baby, if you feel like you can't go through and raise a child right now, I will raise your baby so that you can have a relationship with this child.

But if you can't do it, please don't terminate this pregnancy. Your mom and I will raise this baby. Wow. Wow. You can be a part of her life. And then on the complete opposite side, I think you just talk about how my family reacted. Like I said, we had very different lives.

Like, you came from like a very awesome, like your family's amazing and incredible. And so is my family, but there's just been a little bit of hiccups here and there, especially with my mom and how she reacted. Yeah. That one was the hardest one for me for sure. Yeah.

Because he and I are so new to being together and knowing each other, I didn't even know his mom at all. So the first time I'm meeting his mom, we're like, oh, she's pregnant. Nice to meet you. I'm pregnant with your son's baby. And her opinion was the one that was to terminate, which was very hard to hear. It was very hard to walk through that together. Being newly pregnant, you know, I'm sick.

Sick. I'm laying on the bathroom floor, so nauseous, emotional. I'm trying to work through. do I want to be with this guy for the rest of my life? I'm having his baby and now my parents say that they will take my baby and I want my baby but she's telling me to terminate the pregnancy and it is just and we even told some of your other family members and the first thing they said was so when you guys getting married and we're like you guys I just can't like there's so many different it was so straining and I think once we were like we're keeping this baby my parents

invited him to live with us so that we could live together, work on our relationship before this baby got here, and be together in a home that was stable, that had support. Once we got through the cloud of everyone's opinions and judgment and worried about what people are going to think and the emotions and what are we going to do, once we kind of settled down in my parents' house, that's where our relationship really started to begin at that point. Yeah. We made the choice to work on our relationship together, to grow together, and then ultimately get engaged and get married and keep going.

Question for you, Ben. So I think very different situations, like you're explaining of like your parents, even though you had a following out with your dad, still came to your side and said, we'll support you, however that looks. but to have your parents have a different opinion than your own and to not necessarily come to your side and say we're going to support you we actually want you to like get away from this how did you I mean at 19 years old

how did you find that courage within yourself to say actually mom and dad I'm going to go do my thing because this is what I believe that that is probably the hardest thing for a kid to ever do I remember it was probably it was hands down the hard point in my life just because like you had mentioned and I don't know like it's hard because like growing up I didn't really have the best way to do with my dad and I was thought of my mom is like my security blanket and all this thing so our logic going into telling people that we were pregnant was okay we'll do my mom first we'll get the easiest one out of the way interesting and it was the

hardest one she was the one that was like we need to get an abortion like you're not going to be a good dad you can't be a dad right now like you're not even grown yourself how are you think like it was like a lot for me like just plastering and plastering and plastering and I remember like she would try to separate us and like would take me away and be like you are not going to be a good dad and it was it was really tough for me it was very hard and I think my perception going into like I feel like whenever you are telling somebody important news like you come up with like oh this is how they're going to react in your head so just like being hit like that I always thought that her family since they were a little bit more religious and things like that I feel like I had an outsider's perspective

of oh they're going to react the worst but it turned out to be the opposite and that really opened my eyes coming from an outsider's perspective not really growing up Christian at all to be like wow like how did like I remember having long conversations with your dad and being like how did you do that like how did you have the courage to just be like I don't know you like as long as me and you have seen each other being like come into my house marry my daughter and be the father like that's like how do you do that so i just remember that really opened my eyes to like christianity and made me like follow and really like pursue it and now that's like a lifestyle that we live by but i feel like i kind of had a unique perspective of like kind of entering christianity what's your relationship like now with

your mom it's it's it's it's still a little bit i feel like there's always going to be that little kind but like we see her regularly for holidays and that that's the thing is you like we have to realize that this is four years ago we're actively trying to work on relationships like it's not like we've given up on it like we've tried our but we're trying our best to like still mend things obviously there's still things there because it was a very turbulent point of our lives but obviously we're not going to just like throw to the wolves and like oh we're never going to talk to you again like we have a good relationship with her right now which is also a a really big thing of you to do like hearing you speak of the reactions of parents and you

kind of coming to faith basically through her parents you're now doing the same thing which is really really cool to hear it's a beautiful story in so many different ways like your parents reaction here we have a story of like reconciliation almost through this massive curveball yes i'm curious is it seems like things were rocky with your mom for a little bit but were there any relationships in your life that did like a long term get fractured by all these different things happen Or? I would say more just friendships at the time. Yeah.

Having friends that were teenagers and not being able to relate to their lifestyle and they couldn't relate to my lifestyle anymore. That was the only thing that really fell through. All of my family is still around and it's around my kids. Most of your family is also around too. It was mainly just friend group. Yeah. And teenage relationships that just kind of fell through at that point.

I'll tell you it's not just teenage relationships. That happens at any age when you have kids. It really does. Because we've had friends that were very close to us, that you kind of fall out of that phase of life because you can't relate anymore. Right. It's not like anything happened.

No. It's just I don't live your lifestyle and you don't live mine. And so until I always say that all the friends that I had before, I'm sure we'll be friends again once they have kids. They'll come running to you guys. Yeah. Yeah. And I have had a few that have done that.

But I just can't wait until all. of my friends that I know I still have a place in my heart for when they have kids to just come together and be friends again. The amount of wisdom that you guys have been able to accumulate because you've pushed through all this stuff, it's amazing. It gets me really excited. I want to learn from you guys. It's a beautiful and difficult thing about like having kids young, which I feel like we did,

much less, you know, them to a way greater extent, but it's like you got to go through the fire. Oh, yeah. Yes. But I'm curious, because we have some close friends who are kind of in the situation pregnant with someone they're not yet married to. Walk us through the dynamics of that. You talked about, like, do I even want to stay with this guy? Yes, that was very hard.

Seeing a positive pregnancy test when at the time I was sneaking in and out of his house because I wasn't living with my parents. We had a huge falling out. And I see a positive pregnancy test and I'm thinking to myself, what about college? What about like this is a real baby now that I have with this guy that he, I'm forever tied to him now. And do I want to live my life? The rest of my life with him, I was so confused. But I think we just really came together and made the decision. I'm going to love you.

you're going to love me and we're going to love this baby and we're going to figure it out we're going to do this because at the end of the day this is god's plan i don't know why this is happening to me right now but it will all work out for the greater good and and it has like we have told our story to so many people and reached so many people and now we have a beautiful almost five-year-old that i could not imagine my life without just the idea of What the possibility could have been. Yeah. It's just, it's hard to even think about that some of us went there mentally to not do this at all.

And looking at her. But when you say it's God's plan, like you're not necessarily on that train at this point, right? No, I think that, and it's weird because, like, I feel like in my head, like, even when we, like, my reaction to when she was pregnant, like, I feel like you never think, like, I'm 17 years old. I'm focused about playing video games and playing sports. Like, that's all I'm focused on. And so, like, it's just hard to, like, I feel like it didn't process. Like, oh, it's not going to happen to me. Like, it's, that's totally fine.

And, like, I think that whenever it came into perspective, I was like, clearly something, like, this is, this is your life now. Like, like, step up to the plate, essentially. Great, dude. I really do think that it is harder for a man to stay and say, I'm going to step up. This is my baby. I made this choice. It's harder for a man to do that than it is for the one. woman who is pregnant. And my favorite thing about Ben is he never, he doesn't have any

pride in a sense of like, I'm better or this is embarrassing or whatever. He doesn't have any of that. And he was all dad, all in. He came to my first, he went to every single doctor's appointment. We went to a consignment shop because we had no money. We went to consignment shop and we were buying all of these secondhand things. He worked his butt off, worked over 40 hours a week at Chick-fil-A and bought her crib, went shopping with us. We didn't even know if she was a boy or girl. We were buying all these, like, gray and white things. He was there, and that's hard for, it's harder for them to make that decision.

And he did at barely 18 years old. I remember that with, again, Andrew, and we were 25. There's like this weird shift in a woman's body in mind. It's like, you're immediately mom. Yes. But you guys don't feel that. Yeah. And that's so much harder until you're actually holding a baby in your arms.

But my boy stepped up quicker than I did. I know. I know. I took me up. I freaking, I still don't know if I stepped up to the plate. We got a three-year-old. You have.

Go ahead. I'm curious within your relationship. Yes. So pregnancy aside, baby aside, kind of the parents mentality aside, you guys are two months into a relationship and you're starting to work on each other, like forming a bond. forming hopefully something that will last how long did that take you guys before you fell in love with each other and was like okay I could see myself being with this person forever outside of a baby I feel like mine was kind of immediate like you hear about like the love at first sight things like I knew

of her yeah like when we met like I went out of my way to like really so like I applied a chick-fil-a yeah and when I was signing like when I was feeling on my application I knew of her because I played soccer with her brother and um i was like can i have a pen so i took her pen and then i filled out the application turned it in and then the next i took her pen home with me so then the next day i came back and i was like oh here's your pen back and then long-stre-shore i get hired at chick-fil-a and then um my first day like they have you like cut your belt and i was like oh like i saw her and i was like could you help me cut my belt like i need like i need help i don't know how to do this kind of thing so i just like i had known of her and i was like she's dropped dead gorgeous and then

as we started working together but like as we started working together I feel like it just kind of like transferred over into like real life I was like oh wow like we got along we're like best friends so immediately you knew you wanted to marry me I wouldn't go that far

but I'm just saying like in regards like attraction and like truly like I felt like I had the physical attraction obviously and then once we started working together and became like literal best friends I was like oh this is all right great I think for me it took a little bit longer

for sure Because like you said, when you're pregnant, I matured five years within a day, and he stayed the same. So for a few years of our relationship and even into our marriage, we're extremely rocky. We were on whole different levels of maturity. And I would say that now and within the past year or two, we are the closest that we've ever been. I feel like we are finally on the same level. And the amount of growing immaturity this man has done since we have met is insane. And like I said, I feel like a lot of guys would kind of back down from that and shy away from that.

But no, he faced it head on. He's like, okay, anytime I would come up to him with something that I would like for him to change your work on. Which is a lot. Like, how can I be better? You know, you never shied away from those big conversations. So I would say it took a while for us to really bond together. and be in love with each other even after we were married yeah oh yeah for a while until we really came together and were best friends on top of being in love and being parents and everything like

that i would say within the last two ish years yeah which was a lot like i just had like i just remember just constantly having to like my entire world got flipped upside down like not in a bad way but i feel like my moral compass got more focused on okay you're a dad now like you need to change you can't play video games all night or you can't do this so like I really focused on like working a lot and I feel like that's kind of people's perspective of like oh if you have a kid especially in our situation like we don't have degrees or anything like that so I was like great I'm just gonna work as much as I possibly can to provide for them but then that doesn't even touch on the whole like okay what am I doing like am I when I come home from work am I playing video games I'm 19 years old

like I want to play video games like that was a whole there was just so many different things that I had to change but like looking back on it I'm so glad that it happened because like I feel like now I can like enjoy my life like not being like immature like I find myself looking at people my age and I'm like like it's kind of like cringy I feel like an old man but like I'm the same you know what I mean it's just kind of like you enjoy going to a club I'm going to change diapers yeah like imagine we he turned 19 in June we got married in September so freshly 19 getting married with a four-month-old baby expecting to be the man of the house providing for both of us getting us a place to live it's a lot of pressure and it's a lot of

things to learn and so that's like I said it took a few years for us to not only learn to love each other so I think was the hardest thing is learning how we feel loved learning how each other feels loved was the key to us, like, flourishing, I think, in our marriage. But learning to love each other, being parents, learning, getting to know each other, and learning to be a family outside of everything else that was going on around us. Everyone's opinions. Everyone's everything took a bit. It took a long time.

I don't know about you, but I'm just sitting here in shock because we've interviewed how many couples? Hundreds. Hundreds. Married some 60 years, some high school sweethearts. And you guys have more wisdom than all of them. And I'm not exaggerating. I wasn't sure where this conversation was going, but I freaking love them. Yeah, I am not exaggerating because, like, you guys have learned it firsthand.

The fact that you guys are sitting here and saying we had to learn how to love each other, how to talk to each other, how to do all of this. Some people that sit in these chairs that have been married 60 years are just figuring that out. They're like, oh, 50 years and. to the marriage I figured I needed to figure her out a little bit or him and the fact that you guys are doing that within your first four years is wild it gets me excited because there's so many outside voices as you've alluded to I can only imagine like all the negative inputs all that just it could be negative or positive input and you know perspectives you're getting with with the right

approach like you could either fold under that pressure or use that as a as a tool to like draw your line in the sand and like solidify and that's what you guys have done which is which is so difficult but so impressive we're still figuring out how to do that yeah by the way yeah we're still figuring out we're not like we're not perfect like in marriage is like an act of like work but it's just like and I think another thing that like is kind of being on the bus right now is just the fact that we spent every single moment together essentially especially with like us like I don't go to work anymore like we both work from home and we kind of split like responsibilities at home so like whenever I quit that's when it was like oh great we need to figure this out because I remember when I first quit we were just like what do we do like I'm spending every single waking moment with you yes that was also another learning curve working how learning how to work together so we learned how to do the whole marriage parenting thing when he was working then we had to learn how to do the marriage parenting thing when you were home together and that is how to two different things.

Yes, very much so. Two different things. Because you have no space. No. We've had to go through that one. Oh, yeah. That one's a hard one. It is.

It's great at the end of the day, but learning how to delegate tasks and who does what and who is changing that diaper and taking this person to the bathroom and going outside or whatever, it's a lot at first to figure that out and change all the rules.

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I feel like I've explained it to a friend before who doesn't live that lifestyle where you live together and work together and do everything. But it's almost like when a spouse leaves the house for work, then whoever's left, you have this expectation of like, oh, I have to take care of the kids. But it's like when both of you are in the house, you're both expecting the other to do things. Yep.

And the assumption that's there can burn fires. And it's like less gets done, in my opinion. Less gets done when you're both home because you're, let's just say there's a ton of dishes. Yeah. And I see them. Well, he's also home. He might get them. Exactly.

But if I'm the only one home, I have to do them. Or you like see a diaper that needs change. Like, oh, he'll do it. Right. He's closer to him. And I'm like, oh, yeah. It just causes a lot of arguments. too.

Oh, yeah, for sure. Yes. Yeah. I want to walk down this path, though, of, you mentioned your best friends now, and I'm trying to just, it's hard to answer retrospectively, because is that just luck of the draw? Is that, like, lightning striking? Like, wow, how fortunate that you guys just ended up best friends, or was it because from the get-go, you just said, you bought in.

You're like, all right, we're going to make this work. You know what I'm saying? You were best friends to begin with. When we both, so I was working at Chick-Fleigh, which is, we met at Chick-Fleet, which is cute. Which is adorable. Yeah. So I was working at Chick-Fleigh. Once he started working there, he's a funniest guy, I know.

And the thing that gets me the most, I love a funny guy, you know, somebody that can make me laugh and smile. And so once we started to hang out and work together, we just clicked. We were literally best friends from day one. I will say probably from him was instant attraction in best friends. And for me at first, I was like, you know, we're just friends. With this guy? look at his pecks popping through he's got the biceps just full flex mode it seems like all my okay but and then mine grew into an attraction for him but we were best friends at first

okay yes we hung out all the time i think that the longest time we have spent away from each other in the last six years that we've been together almost five years married maybe a week maybe a week when you went to california maybe but we spend every every day almost every waking second But it's not like it was just like there was also like that work that went into it and I think honestly like this I might be biased because she's my wife but I think I was very blessed in regards to the situation that I was put in she was I don't like she was 19 at the time but like I feel like she was just so mentally mature and thinking of somebody like another girl or let's say like you're in your head space like weren't that mature. I don't know how things would have turned out because I feel like I was very immature and you were. were way more mature than I was. So I was like, oh great, I need to elevate to your level. Does that make sense? I feel like if it was somebody else that was like, we were on the same maturity level and

you were also extremely immature, like I wouldn't have anything to be like, okay, great, like step up. I'd be like, okay, great, I'm doing everything right. And then it turns out that we're just both just super immature running into parenting. But I feel like that was also a thing. I feel like I had a lot of work to do. And obviously you had some. I don't want to make it seem like you're like completely perfect, but like you had way less

work to do than I did and I feel like that was like a goal of mine I was like okay well I don't want to be sitting here playing video games while you're doing all the work like I'm not that's humiliating I'm sure you understand when you're pregnant with the baby your mindset changes but then when you have the baby I went from jumping off of cliffs into the water we went to cliff jumping all that summer to I don't want to step foot out of this house with my baby I don't want to get hurt I don't want her to get hurt. It went from wild and free to, I don't want to go anywhere. I don't want this baby to be hurt at all.

And I'm sure you can relate to that. So as a woman with your hormones and everything, and the anxiety and the postpartum, all of that stuff, it just. I would say it's different being married to a mom where it's like married to like your friend and then you have a baby together. It's like, okay, like she's intense now. Oh, my God. She's pretty good.

All right. Same about me. No more roller coasters. I do feel like before kids, I had more of this mentality of like, oh, yeah, we'll do it. Whatever. Then we had kids. I was like, okay, they need to be in bed by this time. I need you to be like doing this.

Go back the snacks and we need the diaper bag. Exactly. No, no, no, no, no. All of it. Yeah. I totally get it. So you guys get married. You have your first little girl.

What happens in two years where you guys are like, we love this? Let's do it again. Well, I got pregnant when Ella was 10 months old with our second baby. When he was 19. Crazy. I was 20 at the time. He was 19. Was this on purpose?

It was. Yes. Yeah. She was planned. How? Why? I love this. I love this.

I think it's because my older sister and I are 18 months apart. Yeah. Okay. And we did want kids close together. And at the time, we were a lot more financially stable. We had started a YouTube channel that had taken off. And our video actually of me. telling Ben that I was pregnant with Avery was our video that kind of amped everything up.

It went. It had like 2.5 million views on it or something. And I had 20,000 subscribers at the time. So that is a lot of views for a channel with 20,000 subscribers. It's a lot of use, period. It's a lot. So that really, we were like, oh, okay, you know, we can do this. But as far as the decision to have another baby, we were just a lot.

lot more stable at that point and we were like and you you loved parenting oh yeah and i think the biggest thing like you mentioned you kind of briefly mentioned it but in my head was just the gap yeah it's like i just like my brother and i are two and a half years apart like you guys are close together and like our relationship like i'm the closest with my brother and like it's just like i don't know that gap was like we can do it like we're a family now we're going to make it work we've made it work this far we can make it work let's do it and kind of backtracking a little bit with your first daughter remind me her name ella Ella, okay. So with Ella, did parenting come easy? Was that the easiest part of everything going on?

She was a very easy baby. Well, not like with sleeping and all of that, but her personality is very easy to parent. So it was a lot of fun. I was having a lot of fun. I loved it. I loved having a little girl and dressing her up and doing everything with her all day long. so I think that parenting did come pretty easy to me and then for me definitely not I think that that was like and like I said I feel like everything was just like one after the other like complete turn upside down because I like I grew up with one brother like no like my brother's older than me and he didn't have any kids or anything like that so like I just had to learn and I remember and I still do it to this day like I did it before we left I was just like how did you handle that situation like I feel like I said, once again, she's just so much more mature when it comes to, like, parenting because I feel like she had a good house that, like, had a great, set a good example. And I feel like I didn't. So I was like, okay, don't, I know I don't want to do that. And then I see the way she handled situations. And I'm like, okay, how do you handle that situation? Like, how do you do that? Like, I'll very openly just, like, ask you and like, like, what should I do next time or things like that? But it was, it was definitely really hard for me to just, like, adjust to that.

Mm-hmm. Yes. How did you propose? I'm curious. I propose. We went on like the Royal Gorge. You know the Royal Gorge? I don't know. You probably don't.

But it's like, it's like in Canyon City, in Colorado. It's like a really big gorge. And there's like a train that goes through it. So she was pregnant at the time. And I did like this. In my head, it was like a great, awesome elaborate. Like I'm going to do this. It's like beautiful through the gorge.

Like it's like a Valentine's Day dinner kind of thing. And I had like the waitress right. Like, will you marry me on the thing? And I like went down on one knee in the aisle. like as we were going through the gorge and I think it was pretty cool but um also everybody around us was like 65 plus and it was kind of thrown off by how young we were and then also like seeing us get getting engaged and you also having like being pregnant it was big it was in February and I was due in April oh yeah so she was big pregnant and that was the one thing that I remember

about it is first of all I knew that he was going to propose because he was very nervous he doesn't do a really good job at like hiding his emotions So I just, I just knew it. Like, it was around Valentine's Day. We had talked about it and it was funny after we got engaged here. I mean, everybody was kind of looking around and clapping and you should see the picture of us when we got engaged. We actually look like infants.

So I don't blame all the people around us going, how old are you guys? There was one couple that was sitting next to us. How old are you guys? At the time, we were 18 and 19. I think we said 20 or something. Yeah, yeah, we definitely lied. But, yeah. 18 and 19 and that's how we suppose and of course I said yes I'm laughing because we like to watch

the bachelor and bachelor and it's like every time I'm like wow I can't believe they're just engaged and they have to get to know each other it's like you guys you guys put that show to shame yeah and we did you make like you really had the high stakes but okay your your bios say you beat the statistics of teen pregnancy I think you've beaten a lot of different statistics but I think you've what do you mean all of that What are the statistics that you're talking about? Just with us still being together. And I don't know.

I feel like there's just this stigma around being a teen parent and still going on partying or not being together still or not raising your baby as well as a married couple would. I think the statistic I'm talking about is just us still being together and raising our children together in a stable home. Why has it been important to you guys to share this? Because I'm sure it comes with a fair share of pushback. Why do you do it? I love it. I do love it. And I think we first started sharing because a lot of his family was overseas.

A lot of my family lives in Texas And so we started to share online about it And then we really started to share about our story And what really happened And it's been really inspiring for a lot of people And when I hear those stories of You've inspired me to keep going Through this pregnancy or try or whatever the case may be

Those messages are the ones I'm like, I did my job, you know? I am providing hope and a sense of you can do this, some encouragement to people who doubt themselves and doubt themselves in parenting or in marriage or in pregnancy. If I can do that for one person, then that's enough for me. I would also add, Ben, you're inspiring every father in the entire world and being a massive role model, an example for how. dad should step up yeah and i think the biggest thing with just like doing that is another thing is

we don't want to like glorify team pregnancy because there is a statistic there is there that statistic is there for a reason like a lot of them are very turbulent ours was extremely turbulent it's not like we had like a really smooth sailing like no we had to go through that but if you're put into a situation like that i feel like that was like look here's our story here's how we got through it you two are a couple for a reason like all of the outside noise and whispers and all that stuff in 25 years it doesn't matter because at the end of the day you two are the ones that are in the relationship so I feel like it was kind of more of like here's our story here's a situation that we were dealt with god gave us a situation to handle and this is how we handled it not being like you should go

out there and have a baby when you're 18 like no like our story is like this is why you try to prevent that because if you do ever exactly if you're in the situation there is hope there is that's not the end of your story when you find out you're pregnant as a team that's not the end of the story it's the beginning of the story

because I can tell you right now that my life started when I found out that I was pregnant and it's been the best almost five years of my life with my babies so best five years of your life but you guys are babies and you have a long

way to go yes What are your plans? What's your strategy in keeping the success rate going for the next 70-some years of your life? Yes. Well, I think that it's hard to think of that because our kids are so young that right now we're just surviving with three children under the ages of five. But actively working on our marriage staying consistent in the way that we parent. And agreeing on how to raise all of these girls to the best of our ability and taking whatever life throws at us, no matter what it is, no matter what point of our life we have done so much and conquered so much already, there's nothing in the future that would, you know, that we couldn't conquer at this point.

So I try not to think too hard about everything in the future because that's very overwhelming with three children and all the possibilities that life could bring. but we take it one day at a time and we do it together and we'll conquer anything that comes our way in the future. I think that's the biggest thing is just like focusing on us and like like I said we don't want to come off as like we're perfect like we're in a marriage like we have things

that we work through we've worked through them we have things that we're working through actively and it's just like because I don't I just don't want it to seem like we're perfect you know what I mean like it's like it's a active process I'm sure you guys know it's like there's no end to it like no matter what, in 20 years, there's going to be something new arises that we're going to have to get through.

We're going to have to go through the kids high school and all of that stuff that we're not even, like, considering. But at the end of the day, it's important for us to be unified in that and focus on us because I feel like to start, like a good foundation for our kids. It starts with us. They look at us every single day and see what we are doing. And their lives are solely based around us and how we treat each other and like how we parent. What are some of the ways you focus on you to tangibly or intangibly? Like, how do you do that?

My favorite thing is just like we have, we went through the Marvel series. I convinced her to watch all of the Marvel movies. I convinced her and she was very hesitant. I am obsessed with Marvel. They're really good. What do we watch? Iron Man.

We watched them chronologically. So Iron Man. I was like, okay. I'll watch more. And did you wait past the credits? Yes. Yep, I told her, you know? Yes.

Yeah, no, but we've actually talked about it before, but we think that that was where our relationship grew exponentially. Because literally every, maybe not every night. No, it was every night. We had ordering food together. We were so pregnant with our last baby. Yeah. I was so sad and so much pain.

We'd ordered in food. We'd wait for the kids to go to bed. It was so exciting. And then we'd order and food, and we'd pick one. We were watching them in order. And so we knew which one we were going to watch that night. It was so exciting. And we'd talk about it and debrief the whole movie.

And then we had, like, a ranking list and all that, like, we made a little game out of it. But the moral of it is, like, we spent so much time together. Like, those movies are, like, three hours long, and there's, like, 28 of them or whatever it is. And I feel like a lot of parents are like, oh, we can't go on a date night. It's like, okay, great. Then order in some food and enjoy yourselves and enjoy your company. Like, you got to get, like, that's the hand that you're dealt. Like, just make the best of it.

I will say, though, also figuring out the ways that we feel loved the most, we found that out. How'd you do that? Just time? It was time for sure. It was time and figuring out what... I think when we started to communicate, oh, I feel really loved to win. Yeah, mine's acts of service.

So when he clean something up or when he goes and picks me up a coffee, something that could be less than $5 or does something around the house. Fill up my water, get my phone charger, all of that stuff. I'm good to go. Like, I don't need to go on an elaborate date night. hundreds of dollars spent you know that's nice every once in a while but the way that I feel loved is through those little things and so his is more physical touch so that when we would watch movies together you know if we'd cuddle on the couch whatever it is you know that's when we once we found that out

our relationship was just taken to the next level and without even having to talk about hey I don't really feel loved or I feel like I don't really feel in touch with you we already knew what needed to happen for both of us to be reconnected so what spending lots of time together yeah because there's this quality time as well as active service and mine's physical touch and words of affirmation which I feel like is very like kind of clustered together and like like I said like I didn't even know what my love languages was like when we first met so I feel like it was a lot of like inner searching like okay great like I feel like this is that or like we would look at the definition of it or at least me person I feel like what was your question again or what did you ask what was the question like

How did you find out what your love language was? Yeah, I just think it was time. Yeah, it was just time. And I think you have to figure it out yourself first. Because whenever he would bring me home, Starbucks, I would be like, I'd be so excited. It's my favorite thing. Or if he would do the dishes and not even say anything, you know, walk away. He didn't have to tell me, hey, just so you know, I did the dishes.

He would just do it. I love that. I love this man. It's amazing. It's way harder, though, as wild. And backwards as this is, like, it's so much easier for me to be like, Sean, why didn't you do the dishes? It's easier to do that than it is to be like, Sean, I felt so loved when you felt, you know what I'm saying? It's like, dang, if only you communicated the things that you appreciated or you were excited about or you like just, you know, made you feel loved.

Yes. It's so encouraging because then it's just like, it bounces back and forth. It's like, oh, I love that I got that compliment. Yes. So now what can I do again to like? Yeah. Yes. It's definitely hard at first to have that become just part of your nature to do these things around the house and in your marriage. But once it does, it just makes everything better. Or it did for us. But that's like what you just explained was like my fuel. Like I'm words of affirmation. Like great. Talk to me about how amazing. That sounds very entitled. That was worded on. But I'm just saying like, oh, I really love that. I'm like, great. I will do it for the rest of my life. If you're going to compliment me every time I do it. Well, not every time. But just saying like, I don't know. Like at that.

that fueled me because her being like, oh, I liked that. It was like, oh, great, you just fed one of my love languages by just saying that. Well, and we all know within relationships, nothing feels worse than feeling like you came up short for your spouse. So if it's a critique, if it's like a sit down like, oh, I don't feel loved, that's the worst feeling. Yeah. And so if you're constantly starting to hear this from your spouse of like, oh, I feel so loved, it's like you've won the greatest competition. It's the greatest. Yeah.

It is. I'm just thinking about, you know, Sean and I have occasionally fallen into the, like, kids are down. What do you want to do? Well, let's just turn on Netflix. And it's like mindless. And you describing this excitement around watching these Marvel movies. Like, I think there is a way, as long as you're intentional and, like, you're both immersed and excited and you're like, it's something that you're looking forward to. Maybe it sounds like you even, like, you had these movies scheduled to some degree. That, that comes across way different than, like, a. Oh, hey, let's just like turn on something, you know, and it's like you're just stumbling through it. Like, you can make not just normal moments feel really special when you're both like on the same page doing it together. And I remember we would just not, we wouldn't, our rules like we didn't have, you had, you have, we didn't have any phones at all. Yeah. And then like with scheduling it out, we saved end game. We saved the last movie for when, when we were in labor after we had Addy.

Wait, that's amazing. Yeah. Watching the movie? Yes, we. I was in labor. watching it. We waited to watch in game until I was in labor

and we were in the hospital for an extended amount of time and we did. Wait, that's amazing. That would make labor so great. I would. I'd be like, wait. Okay.

Through contraction. That's awesome. Another thing is the Marvel movies was definitely something that he wanted to do that I wasn't very interested in and kind of brushed off and was like, no, I don't want to watch

these movies. Oh, no. Letting your, spouse have some control or letting them have a piece of you that they love or what am I trying to say celebrating their passion yes yes you know feeding into their passions and experiencing that with them what also made him happy and then I was like okay I kind of like it so then at the end of the day it all just came together with that situation but I think it is important to read into the things that your spouse likes and you know spend time doing that with them as well

this is my favorite interview we've ever done i'm not kidding i'm in love with you guys sometimes i'll think about just i like to read so i'll come across some stuff that i try to mull over and you know to know is to love is a quote that has just struck me in marriage where it's like okay i don't understand marvel movies right like i don't care but if i if i ask sean these questions this is hypothetical i do look more if if i like ask her about Marvel movies and I get to know Marvel movies better then I'll like not only get to appreciate maybe I won't fall in love with Marvel movies maybe it's not my style but I'll at least learn to appreciate them and more importantly I'll learn to love you better

to Katie's point it's right and then she'll love you more because you're more interested in what she and it's like don't kill if you're if you're excited about something that would be such a tragedy if I just doused that excitement right who's your group of friends who do you guys hang out with what your community's my friend no we do have a very small group of friends i have one good girlfriend and they have kids as well and what really worked out is we met up with them because i had known her for church from a while ago she had a baby i had two babies at that point she's like hey do you want to hang out he's a big eagle's fan and damar was a big um ram's fan they were playing together so she had watched a little

bit of my videos and knew that he was an eagle's fan And she's like, hey, they're playing each other. Do you want to come over and kind of reconnect? And the nice thing that happened is not only am I best friends with her now, he's best friends. That's wonderful. I go, like, he's my, I would say, like, my only friend apart from, like, family, like, my brother. But, like, we go to the gym five times a week, and he's just, that's way. It's like my one friend.

Right. We honestly keep our circle pretty small. I am a person who gets kind of overwhelmed with a lot of friends to keep up with. I like to focus energy on my family and the closest. people around me i have a lot going on so it's hard for me to continuously try and keep up with so many different relationships but yeah it just worked out that we both have kids we're both best friends with you know a couple and it just worked out perfect and it was definitely like a blessing because we were so like just by ourselves which there's no there's nothing bad in that but it's

also a different relationship like having like a guy that i can go to because in our house it's all like girls. So I'm like, it's just an estrogen castle. And like to be able to like go and like go to the gym and just be able to like talk and just hang out with like another guy. It was just like I'm blessed for it. Also, they also have two girls. Yes, they also have all. So we have

a lot of girls all together when we get together. Wow. Yes. Are they your age? Yes. That was the other thing that was really nice is she's my age. She's a tiny bit older than me. He's a little bit older. But it was nice that they were our age. They were young. They were married and they had kids and they were girls and we were like perfect we are just all best friends we're going to grow up together and that's how it is tell me about um okay so you mentioned you met this friend at church yes i feel like sometimes the christian community can be the the most brutal

for sure how did you build the courage collectively to like show up at church i guess maybe you were married or yeah not yet married with a kid and like confront that vibe we kind of snuck in and out really oh yeah yeah we didn't really know too many people there so we would kind of go in we'd mind her business sit in the back in the bag we had her baby and then we would go there wasn't very many connections that we made at church at that point because we had no idea we were doing there are not very many couples that have babies that are our age which is very hard to relate to someone who not only has older kids but just isn't in our headspace.

We were in a very awkward place where the people our age didn't have kids and the people who did have kids were not our age and could not relate to our situation. Neither person, neither party could relate to our situation.

So we were very lonely for a very long time until we found our friends that are our age and have girls and kids that are our kids age. It was pretty lonely. It was really just us

for a while. It was our families and that was it. Yeah. And I feel like it was also like in that time frame between like the awkward stage of us losing a lot of our friends and then also us finding like demar maria it was like that helped us in our relationship because i feel like we had to lean

back on one another like it's not like i had to like oh i have to go talk to my friend or something like we would talk to one another it's like there's nobody else other than family so like we need to figure this out we need to become best friends because we're in a really unique situation and that's what it is i mean we had an online community for sure yeah with you too Yeah. Amazing. It is. Yeah.

But, you know, these people are pretty far away. And they're not as, you know, close as it seems. There were a lot of girls in my situation, but it's just not the same as having somebody in person to be able to go to and talk to and be vulnerable with about your situation. So it did force us to draw closer to each other because there were no other people outside of us to be able to run to when we had a problem. Mm-hmm. what advice do you give people in your situation don't give up there were a lot of times where i felt like i could have just thrown in the towel and been like this man will never change he'll never grow up and it's a lot easier to do that

to say, hey, okay, I think I'd just be better off if I just took care of this and we moved along. But never give up on each other. As long as both of you are actively working on it, it might take a while to get there, but you'll get there. Like, don't give up. It'll all work out. It'll all get better for a living testimony of that. That's what I would say. It's just don't be easy to give up on your relationship and on.

your family. I think the biggest thing that kills that is like ego is just like whenever you kind of puff up your chest and it's like no like you kind of get defensive versus like stepping back and be like you know what like I see your perspective like I see where I was wrong in that and obviously that takes a lot of like work and time to get to but I feel like that's why actively we're still going and we're like we're kind of thriving right now just because of the fact that like we're both able to like put our egos aside and be a little bit more sensitive and be like you know what like I was wrong and like just kind of swallow your pride a little bit and be like like okay like yeah because at the end of the day we're both learning we're both learning how

to be parents we need to give each other grace keep working on each other keep working on ourselves and as long as you both can recognize that that we don't really know what we're doing we're both learning we're both growing I'll share what my advice to you you share your advice to me just don't give up on it mm-hmm we're gonna have you guys back oh my gosh I'd love to I love to come back. Once you move here, then you'll just, yeah. Right. Yeah.

I love that thought of, I know, we're over an hour, but we're going to let it rip. I love this. I have the closing question. I'm not ready yet. We're not going to close it out. I don't know if you've heard this, but the Hebrew word for Eve means beneficial adversary. And so, like, you think about Adam and Eve. And, like, I just think about beneficial adversary.

It's almost like two Rams, budding. heads but like for the better right it's like there's a lot of friction there you see things differently but because of that difference in perspective you're better team like you're better together and it seems like you guys have just embraced that concept of you can back down you it is so easy to be like oh this is exhausting yeah and it's frustrating and we've had you were talking about golden retrievers like that was one big argument i love dogs i love dogs sean treats dogs like a child so it's like yes i'll get like scolded because i don't even i didn't give them like a dessert absolutely it's like it's like and i'm like wait a minute why are you mad at me anyway so but we'll

have this we had the same argument like 80 times right and at some point you're like i can either just walk away back down or i can look myself in the mirror and be like okay when the 81st conversation comes up about this, this argument. Am I going to change my strategy? Like that's where like the refining process comes where you're like, okay, let's do it different. Let's do it different. We're going to have another go at the plate and let's like try a different take. So you guys seem like you just have embraced that and it's beautiful to see.

Thank you. Yeah. Hypothetic. This is the closing question. And we're going to come back for like round two through 10. This is going to be a serious, guys. you have three little girls they become teenagers

they're in high school they bring home boyfriends what's your in your mind what's the greatest piece of advice you could give them in your shoes back when you

you guys were teenagers this might be one I have to think about for a second That's a big question. It is. Well, you think the reason why I ask is I have these thoughts a lot about, like, mistakes you make as kids and even as adults. And if my kid makes that same, whatever it is, decision, have I done my part as a parent? And you can't be hypocritical, you know, because it's like I wouldn't change anything for the world. But how do you teach your kids to have more women?

wisdom at an earlier stage in life. Like specifically with their boyfriends and stuff? Anything. Oh, goodness. Would be curious that your perspective on that though, too. On boyfriend? Yeah. I honestly, when it comes to boyfriends and stuff,

I feel like I'm giving myself advice because of how I know I would have wanted to be treated in that situation. I think teenagers are going to be teenagers. And responding appropriately as a parent is a huge. thing because I know how I would have loved to be responded to or how situations could have been played out by my parents before everything fell out. So I think as a parent, I'm walking into this teenage relationship with a better grasp on how I will handle it. But as far as then, I think that you go first. I would probably just say, and this is so, you know, like this could

change and it probably is going to get more as we get closer to it. I'm sure that we're going to to be able to like formulate like kind of what we're trying to say but i think for me it's just like kind of how we say earlier it's like don't give up and i feel like a lot of people nowadays kind of just get down in the dumps about like oh man like i can't like afford this or like inflation or whatever it is at the certain time and it's just like just keep pushing like really just keep pushing like life will get better everything ebbs and flows and like just power through and if you need anything like we're here like because like she mentioned we have like first-hand experience of like how our parents reacted and we're like hey we don't want to do that like yeah

you're putting situation nothing that i'm saying right now and reacting to is going to change this but the last thing i want to do is make this relationship really hard and something tragic happen and then me go back and look at it and be like why didn't i just say you know what i'm here for you it where the situation is what it is and like i'm we're here for you if you need i think that just raising them in general from this time up until their teenagers will kind of dictate the way that they handle situations as a teenager, I would love to tell them when they're teenagers to do whatever makes them happy because there are so many different opportunities in life at this day and age

where when I was pregnant, it was like, college, go to college, I'm going to go to college, like, get your degree, get your degree. And there's a lot of people who don't use their degrees and we don't have a degree and we have a lot of different things going for us right now. I'd love to tell them to just fall in your heart, do what makes you happy. life is short and be a good person you know just be a good person at the end of the day make people happy lift people up and do it to love in one of the videos i watched so you talked about your dad was super accepting and your dad maybe didn't seem like that at one point is is

are you just like hey whatever you guys do goes or is it more like this i would not do this Based on my experience, I wouldn't do X, Y, and Z. To your kids, yeah. My dad was very strict. Very, very strict. Never was really accepting to any of the boyfriends that I brought home, which forced me and pushed me towards my boyfriends and that relationship and that validation from men

because I wasn't getting that necessarily from my dad at the time. He was very much just like, no boyfriends, here are the rules, da-da-da-da-da. Which I was like, no, like, I'm going with my husband. boyfriend and I would sneak out and go see them and directly go against the things that he was saying and I think as a parent I want to handle that differently obviously have rules like hello these are teenagers we need to have some structure going on here but also just keeping that relationship open to an extent of I need you to communicate with me what's going on and tell me why you're making these decisions or why do you like this guy and tell me what your relationship is like behind this

dig a little bit deeper instead of completely being no you can't do this and then my side was just so open like I would be out till like 3am and my dad wouldn't even text or call me I'm like you don't like care or like an ounce like are you okay like checking in on me and I feel like that's part of the reason like the love language is what it is like that I have like words of affirmation and like physical touch is because I feel like I didn't get enough of that as a kid like looking back and reflecting so like I'm more on the other side of where it's like okay we need structure

like I don't want my kid to be out there doing dumb stuff going parting or whatever it is and then also in the middle of doing that feeling like you don't care so it's like I feel like once again it's like you're one side I'm the other side and we are going to meet in the middle right and I also feel like these things will change for sure oh yeah I say this now about my four year old and like be happy and make people happy and be a good person you know because that's when I look at her I'm like I want you to do what you love and just be a good person make people happy don't tear people down but when she is 17 I might have something completely different say so who knows.

I remind me of our three-year-old girl. I had this conversation with Andrew the other day. I was like, I feel like she's old enough and she loves opening the front door for people. And I was like, I feel like she's old enough that we had to have the first like kind of stranger danger conversation of like, if you don't know the

person, let's not open it. Yes. And I had this conversation with her. And at the end of it, I was like, okay, so someone comes to the door, what do we do? She goes, I wave at them and then I give them a hug. And I was like, well, well, it's so nice. Very sweet.

He's such a kind little soul. But no. Yeah. My kids, too, they're like, it's so many easier. They know how to unlock and everything. So, nice skill. It's a good skill. Great.

Last question. Sorry. And apologies if this comes off. But do you now view when you got pregnant in 1918? what's the word that you describe that with? Is it like that was mistake or that was, I'll let you fill in the blank. A blessing.

Okay. It truly was. It felt, didn't feel like a blessing at the time. But like I said, when you look at this human being standing in front of you and you imagine your life without them and what your life could have been, like yeah, I could have gone to college.

And yeah, who knows if we would even be together at this point and none of my other kids would have existed. If I made this one decision, if I deemed this as a mistake and made a decision like that. When I look at her, there are so many times when she was a baby and I looked at her, I'm like, how would I've ever thought this about her? It's hard to put yourself in that situation going back to when you're pregnant. And you can't see the baby. All you feel is your emotions. But I would definitely say it was a blessing for sure. Wow.

You guys are great. All right. For those listening who have not watched Ben and Katie's YouTube channel. Every single person go there now. Oh, my goodness. They expand on a lot of these topics. And they have Instagrams as well that will link. Thank you guys for joining us.

Of course. This is awesome. Thank you for having us. And when you move here, we'll do round here. Yes. Excited to continue to grow our relationship. Yes, for sure. Great.

Thank you.