Hi, welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. Hi.

Thanks, babe. As she said, welcome back. Shall we begin? Let us.

All right, spoiler alert. You will want to go back and listen to episode 188 and episode 189 where we interviewed Abby, part one and two before proceeding with this.

If you want to hear it first from Abby, because I'm going to ask a follow up. So.

The beautiful, beautiful moment that episode 189 ended with Abby was talking about what happened on Christmas morning, the gift that the kids gave to her.

So I wondered if you could share what your side of that was because so you knew about it before it happened and like what it felt like for you in that moment.

Yeah, so the gift to which you're referring is that on Christmas morning, the kids presented Abby with a letter that was from a lawyer and explained to Abby that it was a beautiful letter that explained that the kids were seeking to have Abby officially adopt them.

The kids had written a list of like all the reasons why and it ended by saying we want you to understand that while we will be asking for you to have full parental rights, even be added to our birth certificates, we will not be cleaning the sink.

So just businesses usual yeah, like basically it was like we're asking you to take on a lot of responsibilities, but we just want to be clear that we will be taking on no further responsibilities.

I don't think it was we're asking I think this is to commemorate and to make official the responsibilities that are already existing, which is you take such good care of us and you have this internal obligation to us and we don't clean the sink.

Yeah, but in yesterday's episode you and Abby were talking about it and Abby said thank you or something about it and you said that I think this is actually the kids way of saying thank you and I was thinking about that last night and actually I totally understand why you said that but actually that's not the vibe that it was at all.

There was no vibe from the kids about like this is an offering that Abby has earned and deserved and so she's going to get it.

The kids felt like like your kids would if they began to understand that one of their parents had no legal rights to them.

They're like we have to make this right.

This is this is crazy that this isn't the case. Yeah, it was personal for them that they wanted this like it wasn't like a duty.

A while back Abby and I don't know if you remember this night we were laying in bed and we talked a lot about the situation that a debt parent who's as involved with the children as either of the biological parents some have this feeling of terror Abby had this deep feeling of like I have nothing official with these children.

I'm giving them everything I love them more than anything and they could be taken from me any minute and I remember sitting with her laying with her in bed and her saying sweetly and kindly but like my relationship with them is completely and utterly dependent on you.

Our romantic relationship determines whether I get my children or not like you and there's like a romantic oh of course we're going to like whatever but that's actually not fair.

It puts a whole fucking shit ton of pressure on our marriage and relationship right and also like I thought about it's of course I over thought about it for six months and I thought about it from a million different angles and there's a lot of ways to talk about it.

One of which is and this is like the sixth version but like that's not a good thing for our relationship either.

I don't want to think you're only staying here only with me because you lose the kids if not right you know and it's just so unfair because these kids need you and want you in a way that is equal to how they need and want me and Craig.

And so they wanted and needed a solidification of that just like you did that was the vibe not like she deserves this so we'll give her like her coaching trophy was like a making right of something yeah and so we thought about it a lot.

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