Better parents make better kids

I've been reading The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman, who I consider to be part of a dying species: responsible, intelligent journalists. As part of his perspective on the modern world, Friedman offers some thoughts on parenting that made me want to do a better job with my kids.

"Put simply, we need a new generation of parents ready to administer tough love: There comes a time when you've got to put away the Game Boys, turn off the television set, put away the iPod, and get your kids down to work.

"The sense of entitlement, the sense that because we once dominated global commerce and geopolitics -- and Olympic basketball -- we always will, the sense that delayed gratification is a punishment worse than a spanking, the sense that our kids have to be swaddled in cotton wool so that nothing bad or disappointing or stressful ever happens to them at school is, quite simply, a growing cancer on American society. And if we don't start to reverse it, our kids are going to be in for a huge and socially disruptive shock from the flat world. While a different approach by politicians is necessary, it is not sufficient.

"David Baltimore, the Nobel Prize-winning president of Caltech, knows what it takes to get your child ready to compete against the cream of the global crop. He told me that he is struck by the fact that almost all the students who make it to Caltech, one of the best scientific universities in the world, come from public schools, not from private schools that sometimes nurture a sense that just because you are there, you are special and entitled. "I look at the kids who come to Caltech, and they grew up in families that encouraged them to work hard and to put off a little bit of gratification for the future and to understand that they need to hone their skills to play an important role in the world," Baltimore said. "I give parents enormous credit for this, because these kids are all coming from public schools that people are calling failures. Public education is producing these remarkable students -- so it can be done. Their parents have nurtured them to make sure that they realize their potential. I think we need a revolution in this country when it comes to parenting around education."

First Blood

That title was meant to trick all of the female readers into thinking this post is a story about vampires and werewolves. Specifically, over-emotional, sappy, love-confessing, tormented-because-they-want-to-eat-their-girlfriend vampires and werewolves.

This post is really about our adventures on New Year's Eve. We wanted to finish 2007 with a bang, so we met our friends John, Toria, Big Asher, and Ivy at the Railroad park in Scottsdale. We had lots of fun playing on the playground, riding the miniature train, and mostly visiting with our friends, who will be sorely missed by the United States while they gallivant in Dubai.


We think Ivy is supercute.



Everything was dandy, until Bennett had a run-in with an old stagecoach that I'm pretty sure was at this park when I was little. Pre-dating the modern era of children's safety measures, there were some exposed, sharp metal objects fixed at positioned at just the same height as a two-year-old's head. The result:

Seeing the bloodstream down the neck was a little surprising, but not overwhelming enough to forget about documenting the adventure on the internet. Bennett's composed parents calmly drove fifteen minutes back to Mesa, checked to make sure he didn't need stitches (Thanks Uncle Gary) and embarked on a do-it-yourself patch job that I really think is at least as good as what we would have got at the Emergency Room. And cheaper. And less time-consuming.

With Grandma's help, we cleaned the wound with iodine, shaved the surrounding area, held the skin together, and applied bandages. This is the cleaned cut; below is the final product.

One advantage to being slow to post is that nature has now run its course, and we can proudly announce that Bennett's head is completely healed. Now all that's left is a minor, but still tough-looking scar, and a boy that will be a little more cautious (and supervised) on playgrounds.

Name that (obscure) bone

I found out recently that what I thought was a sprained wrist from church basketball was really a fracture. This is a game called "Name that obscure bone," which is coincidentally the same bone that is broken inside a cast on my right arm.

They should call it "Crosshairs"

Our trip to Target
by Kelly

Five years of marriage have taught me a lot of things. Among other things, I have learned that holiday decorations are a legitimate source of happiness, otherwise normal people can be consumed by books about vampires, Oprah Winfrey has all the answers, and nine or more innings of baseball are not as enthralling to everyone as they are to me. This is the story of how I learned about the retail chain Target, and the clear and present danger it represents to me personally.
So today we went to Target. Five years of marriage, all within five minutes of at least one Target, and I still fall for the same trick every time: Kim writes a list, I assume the purpose of the trip is to obtain the items on the list. But there is one wife and a board room of giggling executives who know full well that the list is irrevelant the moment it crosses the threshold of those automatic doors. Here we are greeted by a welcoming array of colorful displays, large air-brushed, happy people engaged in various versions of domestic bliss. We see lots of red, enforcing the concept of "home," as if this is really where we belong and the days or even weeks we spent outside of this haven have been nothing short of wasted.

The fun begins as we stumble upon several aisles of extremely cheap items, where $1 signs on packaged plastic toys or home decorations serve the vital role of a "warm-up" for our shopping experience. Buying things is more similar to using drugs than we would like to believe, and if they can get us to "try it once" and establish a little habit of deciding to spend, then they have us.

But today we keep our initial momentum through the entryway, avoid eye contact with the blissful illustrations, and plow right by the one-dollar section at the front of the store. We have a list, which I make the mistake of asking about within the first thirty seconds of the experience.

"What is on our list? Maybe we can split up and get it done faster."

"I was sort of hoping we could be together."

"Of course. Together."

So we head to the children's clothing, where we look for toddler underwear, the first item on our list. Bennett promptly chooses Shrek over Pirates of the Caribbean, after comprehending that the Lighting McQueen pairs are not his size. Next to the undies are pajamas, and Asher has recently grown out of several pairs, and it is this moment that I realize I am stuck.

The problem I have at Target is that I consider myself a "rational decision-maker." For each potential purchase, I obtain information like cost, quality, expected usage and lifetime, available substitutes, etc. With this information, I am able to calculate the net benefit of such a purchase to my family, and weigh it against the retail price. When I enter the twilight zone that is Target, this type of rational thinking dies a bloody death. In the first place, everything at Target could be justified (in most cases with apparently good reasoning) as a "need" by a specific demographic. Unfortunately for me, I am married to a member of this demographic, and I repeatedly consent to go shopping with her. Secondly, the prices at Target are almost always surprisingly low, meaning I would almost always expect to pay more for a given item than I see written on the price tag. So when push comes to shove, we end up buying everything we pick up because a) we need it (even though it wasn't on our list), and b) it costs such a small amount it is impossible to resist.

Target is a veritable Venus Fly Trap. Here are some statistics from today's excursion to prove my points. We started with a list of eight items. One was not in stock; a second I decided was too expensive and we resisted purchasing. With the remaining six items on the list, we made 33 individual purchases. While 24 of these fell into the categories of list items (we were buying baby food and potty treats and things like that), eight were not conceived of before entering the store (one item could not be deciphered from the receipt). So it sounds like we did pretty well, right? This is the interesting part: the total cost of the trip was $103.69 before tax. So the average purchase of this trip was $3.14 (coincidentally equal to the geometric ratio "Pi"). This low average cost helped us throughout the trip to feel like we were not spending very much money. As we bask in our dillusional savings, the cart fills up and we're out $103.69 plus tax.

The most interesting part of the analysis is the average price of "list items" ($2.13) versus "non-list items" ($6.14). Kim will point out that this comparison is unfair because it includes all the baby food and candy bars, but I think the trend would probably hold for most Target trips, though maybe not as pronounced.

In conclusion, I have decided that Target has officially put an end to rational decision-making by blurring the lines with low-cost, useful items that people don't tend to think of before meandering through the aisles. In a way, I am proud of them for this accomplishment, which has most certainly made some people very rich. On the other hand, I have decided not to enter those automatic doors again, at least not on a family outing. But after a post like this, you probably won't hear anyone complain.

Algebra Quiz: Can you calculate the price of the undeciphered item?

Happy New Year

This is what we would have sent out to all our friends and family as a Christmas card if we had organizational skills. We hope 2008 is spectacular for everyone who reads this sentence.

Love,
The Smiths

Ode to Weather

Oh beautiful drops of water falling from the sky,
Swirly designs spinning over maps of San Francisco,
How green and yellow and colorful you are.
Any yet foreboding, ominously symbolizing torrents of water filling up basements and flooding freeways.
Some would belittle you,
Some would insist that your omnipresence and corresponding radar and satellite imagery are something to be scoffed at,
That they pale in comparison to the cuter things in life,
Like puppies, kitchen decor, and babies.

But I respect you.

(This is a joke response to Danielle's comment on the last post.)

Crazy Weather

This is a radar photo of the Bay Area, 11:15 am today, courtesy of weather.com.