I offer you, dear readers, some sage advice for free.
Say you happen to be a 30ish man who is a little soft in the middle. You don't really work out, because who has time with two kids? Forget that before the kids you didn't really work out either. So you're a bit out of shape, but you still can run (a little) and get on a bike. Besides the small beer gut and lack of physical activity, you're pretty healthy.
Say you have recently lost a few pounds and are feeling confident about your physical abilities. You then go on a family bike ride for 20 or so miles with a Burley in tow with a toddler. Afterwards you feel a little tired and sore, but pretty good.
The next day, you should not expand on your previous success by pulling the Burley with the toddler inside and a tag-a-long bike fourteen miles with 20 mile per hour wind on your side, pick up kindergartener from school, and ride with her "contribution" on the peddled tag-a-long the fourteen miles back with 20 mile per wind on your other side.
If you do that, despite my advice, you will find the entire journey will take over 3 hours (although it will seem like 6). Every slight incline will be met with horror as you try to drag the 100 pounds of girls and equipment latched to the back of your bike against gravity. Pain will emanate in every part of your legs, from the tips of your toes to your waist, and then spreading up your back. You'll fear to sit down, lest your body recalls for your pleasure every single bump you hit on the trail. Stairs will be a near impossibility for a number of hours. You will be incapable of helping out your sick wife with all the household tasks.
If you still don't take my advice, please, please, please, at least eat something before you go on this overly ambitious bike ride. When I say eat something, I mean more than a cracker and a dab of low-fat cottage cheese. And find some ways to repair your body upon return. I recommend laying on the floor and trying to stretch your muscles as your toddler crawls all over you. Eat a light meal and do so slowly so you don't throw up. Take two pills of ibuprofen (Advil) and drink a cool beer when your stomach is ready. Make sure you live next door to some neighbors with an outdoor hot tube they don't mind you using. Soak your body for as long as possible in the hot water. Try not to curse yourself too much about how stupid you were to try something you should have known better you were no where near able to do. Embarrass yourself by telling everyone you know about your bad judgment so that you'll remember not to overexert yourself like this ever again.
Hope you liked the advice. Now put it to use!
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Monday, September 22, 2008
Thursday, September 4, 2008
I'm a stay at home dad
Another at-home dad sent this my way.
Let's just say I identify with with much of the song, only I don't watch Oprah or the Price is Right. I watch the People's Court.
Let's just say I identify with with much of the song, only I don't watch Oprah or the Price is Right. I watch the People's Court.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
How many kids? Part 2
I recently posted an argument asking people to not be too judgmental when it comes to people's choice whether or not to have a large number of kids. The issue of whether pregnancies are planned or not, or whether children can be afforded are red herrings that distract from the main issue.
The question is what is a reasonable size for a family today?
I'm not going to assert what the ideal population of the world is. I'm not going to tell you whether we are past, at, or near the ideal population in the world. What I can assert, which I think is difficult to argue, is that continuous population growth is unsustainable.
The question is what is a reasonable size for a family today?
I'm not going to assert what the ideal population of the world is. I'm not going to tell you whether we are past, at, or near the ideal population in the world. What I can assert, which I think is difficult to argue, is that continuous population growth is unsustainable.
Year
Graph courtesy of Wikipedia
Graph courtesy of Wikipedia
We have limited resources and limited space. We can't continue the global status quo.
But, you may say, the birthrate is low in our country. The growth of population in the United States can be attributed to immigration. The real problem is in places like sub-Saharan Africa, where poverty and the birth rate abound. That's where you need to be concerned with family size.
And I would agree in large part. From a policy perspective, rampant population growth is a problem in developing countries and that is why the work of the UNFPA is vital in these areas. We know that rampant population growth can be curtailed with access to family planning services and information, with economic development, and with the educational/social/economic advancement of women.
While this is all true, it's not a reason to ignore global population growth in a wealthy country such as ours. From an environmental perspective, each body in this country consumes many times more energy and resources than just about any other place in the world--and that's regardless of that person's personal choices. Just by being here (in North America) you are contributing to the problem in a disproportionate way.
Each person born is going to take some share of the Earth's resources. In a world of finite resources, every person born is going to take a share that could be taken by someone else. Each additional person makes the pie slices a little thinner.
What do we do? We have less kids. And that means everybody. We're all in this together. It's unfair for one family to get what is morally unavailable to another. We're all on the same Earth and need to work in concert with each other.
The gifted science fiction writer, Ursula Le Guin, described a multi-generational colonizing space ship in the novella Paradises Lost. (It is a story that bears some resemblance to the future humans in the Wall-E movie.) Of course this confined spaceship of 4000 people has to have a carefully maintained population. Each person is restricted to having one child, with the possibility be allowed a second child if there is an open slot.
But, you may say, the birthrate is low in our country. The growth of population in the United States can be attributed to immigration. The real problem is in places like sub-Saharan Africa, where poverty and the birth rate abound. That's where you need to be concerned with family size.
And I would agree in large part. From a policy perspective, rampant population growth is a problem in developing countries and that is why the work of the UNFPA is vital in these areas. We know that rampant population growth can be curtailed with access to family planning services and information, with economic development, and with the educational/social/economic advancement of women.
While this is all true, it's not a reason to ignore global population growth in a wealthy country such as ours. From an environmental perspective, each body in this country consumes many times more energy and resources than just about any other place in the world--and that's regardless of that person's personal choices. Just by being here (in North America) you are contributing to the problem in a disproportionate way.
Each person born is going to take some share of the Earth's resources. In a world of finite resources, every person born is going to take a share that could be taken by someone else. Each additional person makes the pie slices a little thinner.
What do we do? We have less kids. And that means everybody. We're all in this together. It's unfair for one family to get what is morally unavailable to another. We're all on the same Earth and need to work in concert with each other.
The gifted science fiction writer, Ursula Le Guin, described a multi-generational colonizing space ship in the novella Paradises Lost. (It is a story that bears some resemblance to the future humans in the Wall-E movie.) Of course this confined spaceship of 4000 people has to have a carefully maintained population. Each person is restricted to having one child, with the possibility be allowed a second child if there is an open slot.
"Everyone who wants to can gave a child. One child, two at most. A woman has her motherchild. A man has his fatherchild."
And also,
"Everybody can have a child. Some can't or won't or don't have children and some children die young, and so most of those who want two children can have two children."
The ship can be seen to represent the finite Earth. Now, I would not advocate that, like this science fiction society, we need "anthrogeneticists" with the authority to give us permission when and with whom to have children and how many. But wouldn't it be better to create a culture where the small family is a near universal norm--to an even greater degree than may currently be the case?
I'm told there are joys of having big families with multiple siblings. I bet that's true. But I bet there were also joys of shooting massive numbers of American bison in the Great Plains in the 1870s. We just can't afford to let people do that anymore.
If you are a parent of say five children reading this, you might be feeling a bit defensive. "I'm not selfish. I'm not causing the problem. There are bigger problems than whether I have a few more children than the median American." Again, I agree. I'm not trying to thumb my nose at you. I certainly have no moral high ground. While I only have two children, there are lots of ways I am consuming my grossly disproportionate share of the Earth's resources.
It would be unfair to judge people today for having too many children when there is no societal consensus on the subject. As Americans, we really haven't addressed the issue of overpopulation as it pertains to our own birthrate and the personal choices involved. I'm just saying that we do need to have that conversation and perhaps going forward we need to say goodbye to families with more than three kids (excluding adoptions of course).
So I'm not telling you that you're out of line if you have five kids. Yet. But I'm hearby putting you on notice. Going forward, once you get to the 2 or 3 kids mark, it's time to have the tubes tied or cut.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Seven years? No itching yet...
Today the missus and I mark our 7th wedding anniversary. It's been quite a ride since we said our vows on a humid August day near the banks of the Potomac.
In the intervening time, we've moved from Washington, DC to Minneapolis, Minnesota. We've had career changes. Upgraded cars. Bought a house. She went to law school and became a lawyer. I briefly ran a nonprofit. And the big change, we squeezed out two darling kids--the oldest now mere weeks from starting kindergarten.
Recent marriage surveys have looked at the "seven year itch," that moment in the marriage where things supposedly get stale and eyes begin to wander. Supposedly, it is more like the "sometime between 1 to 8 year s itch". A major factor identified in marriage failures during this time is the stress associated with having young children. (News alert! Having children is demanding and stressful!)
Last winter while grocery shopping with my one year old, I had the "pleasure" of having a random retired priest quiz me on my family situation so that he could give some unsolicited advice and make nonsensical marriage jokes. His view was that the five year mark was the real hill and it was smoother sailing after that.
Despite his expert views (not) rooted in personal experience and the media portrayal of all the social science research, I know that relationships are always work. Sure, there are ups and downs and periods of adjustment. But you're never going to maintain a healthy relationship by sitting on your ass and paying it no mind.
So, seven years ago today we were married. It was to be a beautiful outside ceremony on the banks of the Potomac, just outside of Washington, DC. We woke up that Saturday to a perfect day. Kid cousins went swimming mid-day at the nearby mini-water park. We took pictures before the ceremony. The sun was shining and it was about 80 degrees.
Then the dark clouds rolled in. Within 15 minutes, the wind began slapping trees around. The sky was dark. Instead of 4:00 PM, it looked like it was 9:00 PM. It didn't look good. We were not going to be married outside.
Fortunately, we had a Plan B: Get married at the reception site, which was conveniently located 100 feet away. As the last pictures were snapped, the rain came and we ran to the building.
This is what it looked like that evening in nearby DC. Several metro stations were flooded. A couple people were unable to come to the wedding due to flooded cars.
Picture borrowed from weatherbook.com
In the intervening time, we've moved from Washington, DC to Minneapolis, Minnesota. We've had career changes. Upgraded cars. Bought a house. She went to law school and became a lawyer. I briefly ran a nonprofit. And the big change, we squeezed out two darling kids--the oldest now mere weeks from starting kindergarten.
Recent marriage surveys have looked at the "seven year itch," that moment in the marriage where things supposedly get stale and eyes begin to wander. Supposedly, it is more like the "sometime between 1 to 8 year s itch". A major factor identified in marriage failures during this time is the stress associated with having young children. (News alert! Having children is demanding and stressful!)
Last winter while grocery shopping with my one year old, I had the "pleasure" of having a random retired priest quiz me on my family situation so that he could give some unsolicited advice and make nonsensical marriage jokes. His view was that the five year mark was the real hill and it was smoother sailing after that.
Despite his expert views (not) rooted in personal experience and the media portrayal of all the social science research, I know that relationships are always work. Sure, there are ups and downs and periods of adjustment. But you're never going to maintain a healthy relationship by sitting on your ass and paying it no mind.
***
So, seven years ago today we were married. It was to be a beautiful outside ceremony on the banks of the Potomac, just outside of Washington, DC. We woke up that Saturday to a perfect day. Kid cousins went swimming mid-day at the nearby mini-water park. We took pictures before the ceremony. The sun was shining and it was about 80 degrees.
Then the dark clouds rolled in. Within 15 minutes, the wind began slapping trees around. The sky was dark. Instead of 4:00 PM, it looked like it was 9:00 PM. It didn't look good. We were not going to be married outside.
Fortunately, we had a Plan B: Get married at the reception site, which was conveniently located 100 feet away. As the last pictures were snapped, the rain came and we ran to the building.
This is what it looked like that evening in nearby DC. Several metro stations were flooded. A couple people were unable to come to the wedding due to flooded cars.
Picture borrowed from weatherbook.comAccording to some superstition, rain on your wedding day is good luck and not, as Alanis Morissette sings, ironic. One couple suggested that we should "buy lottery tickets NOW" under this logic. The downpour continued until about 10:00 PM, but we got married anyways.
On our one month anniversary, we found ourselves fleeing the center of DC on September 11th and returning that evening to our Capitol Hill apartment feeling we were now living in a military state. On our one year anniversary we were making an offer to buy a house in Longfellow neighborhood of friendly Minneapolis. On our second anniversary, the missus was 35 weeks pregnant.
And here we are now. Two kids. In the same house. I can only speak for myself, but no itching yet. We'll look at our wedding pictures this evening and remark how young we look. (We were 22 and 23 for chrissakes!) In many ways, in the seven years we've become an old married couple. We feel like we veterans who know it all. (We also thought we knew at all at the tender age of 23.)
At the same time, it feels like the wedding was just yesterday. It seems just a short time ago that we were getting our rings on a lunch break and the jewelry salesman was telling us in his North African accent about the "low comfort fit" of the ring in question. Whatever that means.
Now seven years wiser is there anything I would do differently? For one, I wouldn't have taken the ceremony so seriously. It's not that we didn't have a healthy perspective at the time. We had a relatively informal event. Family and friends stayed in cabins on site. We got married by a Unitarian minister. Our rehearsal dinner was an outside picnic featuring food from a Lebanese deli. (My grandmother in law had humus for the first time!) Our flower centerpieces were constructed by a couple of aunts who were given $120 and sent to the farmer's market. We served a vegan, lemon poppyseed cake that looked nothing like the traditional wedding cake. We were comfortable doing our own thing and not getting hung up on tradition or an unattainable ideal.
But we took the wedding ceremony so seriously. We weren't bothered by the rain too much. It was the words and the symbolism of the ceremony we put our stock in. In the weeks and months before the wedding, we debated extensively whether to have this reading or that reading and what every aspect said about us and our relationship. Really, who is going to remember whether we had a reading from Desmond Tutu or the Dalai Lama? (I barely recall.) I believe the whole ceremony was 40 minutes. If planning one the wedding today, I'd be focused on a ceremony ten minutes tops.
What matters most of all was not the detailed symbolism of every aspect of the ceremony, but the fact that we were committing ourselves to each other and were able to include so many people important to us. Indeed, our commitment to each other wasn't even made at the wedding, but when we got engaged ten months earlier at Lincoln Park on our way back from Blockbuster Video. Or maybe the commitment was made before the official engagement, when we first discussed the possibilities of marriage and children. Or maybe it was when we decided to move to DC together sans jobs two weeks after we graduated from college.
If you would have asked me just two years before August 11, 2001 where I'd be at my current age of 30, married seven years with two kids wouldn't have been my first, second, or even third prediction. I had pictured myself moving around the country, traveling abroad, and going to graduate school throughout my 20s. I'd save my 30s for settling down and having a family, preferably after I was on tenure track at some decent university. Instead, at 30, I've been happily married for seven years and enjoying being an at home dad for two wonderful girls. I wouldn't have it any other way.
On our one month anniversary, we found ourselves fleeing the center of DC on September 11th and returning that evening to our Capitol Hill apartment feeling we were now living in a military state. On our one year anniversary we were making an offer to buy a house in Longfellow neighborhood of friendly Minneapolis. On our second anniversary, the missus was 35 weeks pregnant.
And here we are now. Two kids. In the same house. I can only speak for myself, but no itching yet. We'll look at our wedding pictures this evening and remark how young we look. (We were 22 and 23 for chrissakes!) In many ways, in the seven years we've become an old married couple. We feel like we veterans who know it all. (We also thought we knew at all at the tender age of 23.)
At the same time, it feels like the wedding was just yesterday. It seems just a short time ago that we were getting our rings on a lunch break and the jewelry salesman was telling us in his North African accent about the "low comfort fit" of the ring in question. Whatever that means.
***
Now seven years wiser is there anything I would do differently? For one, I wouldn't have taken the ceremony so seriously. It's not that we didn't have a healthy perspective at the time. We had a relatively informal event. Family and friends stayed in cabins on site. We got married by a Unitarian minister. Our rehearsal dinner was an outside picnic featuring food from a Lebanese deli. (My grandmother in law had humus for the first time!) Our flower centerpieces were constructed by a couple of aunts who were given $120 and sent to the farmer's market. We served a vegan, lemon poppyseed cake that looked nothing like the traditional wedding cake. We were comfortable doing our own thing and not getting hung up on tradition or an unattainable ideal.
But we took the wedding ceremony so seriously. We weren't bothered by the rain too much. It was the words and the symbolism of the ceremony we put our stock in. In the weeks and months before the wedding, we debated extensively whether to have this reading or that reading and what every aspect said about us and our relationship. Really, who is going to remember whether we had a reading from Desmond Tutu or the Dalai Lama? (I barely recall.) I believe the whole ceremony was 40 minutes. If planning one the wedding today, I'd be focused on a ceremony ten minutes tops.
What matters most of all was not the detailed symbolism of every aspect of the ceremony, but the fact that we were committing ourselves to each other and were able to include so many people important to us. Indeed, our commitment to each other wasn't even made at the wedding, but when we got engaged ten months earlier at Lincoln Park on our way back from Blockbuster Video. Or maybe the commitment was made before the official engagement, when we first discussed the possibilities of marriage and children. Or maybe it was when we decided to move to DC together sans jobs two weeks after we graduated from college.
If you would have asked me just two years before August 11, 2001 where I'd be at my current age of 30, married seven years with two kids wouldn't have been my first, second, or even third prediction. I had pictured myself moving around the country, traveling abroad, and going to graduate school throughout my 20s. I'd save my 30s for settling down and having a family, preferably after I was on tenure track at some decent university. Instead, at 30, I've been happily married for seven years and enjoying being an at home dad for two wonderful girls. I wouldn't have it any other way.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Keepin' track of your family
About a year ago I signed up for a free account at Geni.com. Geni is an easy way for just about anyone to construct a family tree. You can quickly type in names and relationships and it creates a visual family tree representation.
Originally, I wanted to use this as a tool to explain to my daughter how various family members are related to each other. (I remember as a kid being confused about who the heck all the relatives were.) As I added more distant relations, it has become a helpful tool for myself.
You can invite other family members to join too and enable them to add people and information to your shared family tree. If you don't know where or when your great aunt was born, perhaps your mom can type that in, and it will remain on your tree for posterity.
If you're really into genealogy or keeping detailed information, the service lets you put in all sorts of info on each person besides birth/death/children/spouse. You can put all sorts of biographical info, such as where they went to school, where they worked, religion, hobbies, quotes, etc. You name it. It also allows you to upload pictures.
Other features I haven't used include laying out people from your tree on a Google map or sending yourself automatic family birthday reminders.
The best part of all this, it's all free. This is not one of those sites like Classmates.com, that aggressively seeks to entice you to sign up for their paid subscription the moment someone somewhere views your profile so that you can find out who.
Here's an example of what my tree looks like. On my account, more information on each person shows, but I've set some higher privacy protections for the general blog readership. Go ahead and click and drag on the below image to navigate around the tree.
Originally, I wanted to use this as a tool to explain to my daughter how various family members are related to each other. (I remember as a kid being confused about who the heck all the relatives were.) As I added more distant relations, it has become a helpful tool for myself.
You can invite other family members to join too and enable them to add people and information to your shared family tree. If you don't know where or when your great aunt was born, perhaps your mom can type that in, and it will remain on your tree for posterity.
If you're really into genealogy or keeping detailed information, the service lets you put in all sorts of info on each person besides birth/death/children/spouse. You can put all sorts of biographical info, such as where they went to school, where they worked, religion, hobbies, quotes, etc. You name it. It also allows you to upload pictures.
Other features I haven't used include laying out people from your tree on a Google map or sending yourself automatic family birthday reminders.
The best part of all this, it's all free. This is not one of those sites like Classmates.com, that aggressively seeks to entice you to sign up for their paid subscription the moment someone somewhere views your profile so that you can find out who.
Here's an example of what my tree looks like. On my account, more information on each person shows, but I've set some higher privacy protections for the general blog readership. Go ahead and click and drag on the below image to navigate around the tree.
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