Entries by Daboo

I just read The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir and it is hilarious and a little sad. I was really worried it would bash Mormons too much but it was too honest for that. No hate here, no prejudice, just honest reality. I liked it a lot. As someone who has actually thought about my faith and grappled with its major questions and problems, but have still chosen to be Mormon, I can really relate to her. But at one point of the book a guy the author dated asks her about cloning. It really throws her and she doesn't have a good answer, except that it's not possible to clone a real thinking person. I can see why she thought this but she is wrong. I wrote a response to her: what I would like to tell her in person. It is below the fold. Continue reading "Cloning and Mormonism"

Just letting everyone know that the girls went back to their birth mother yesterday at 8:00 am. It's kind of sad knowing that we'll never see them again, but I think that we gave them a good experience and I do think their BM deserved to get them back and I'm glad I helped out with that. We'll be taking a year off foster care so the boys have some much-needed stability. Overall it was a great experience for all of us and I'm glad we did it, but I am pretty exhausted and looking forward to a bit of a slower pace.

This is a conversation I overheard this morning at breakfast. E is 9 years old. S just turned 7.

E: When I am a teenager I’m going to have a Faceboog.
S: A face bug?
E: Yeah. You can talk to you friends on a Face Bug.
S: You mean like . . .
E (impatiently): Like you can use a Face Bug to talk to your friends in internets!
S: Uh . . . You mean like a taste bug?
E: Yeah. Taste bugs live on your tongue -
S: -But-
E: -and they tell you how food tastes.
S: Do they come out of your tongue ever?
E: DUH! Yes, when they come out of your tongue they -
S: -they’re on your face?
E: - they go onto your face and then they’re Face Bugs. And then they go in internets and -
S: they crawl into inter nets?
E: Hello, yes, I’m telling you! They crawl into internets and then they talk to your friends.
S: Oh! That’s . . . weird. I mean cool.
E: Yeah. (tosses her hair) And when I’m a teenager I’m going to have one. Because they’re cool.
S: (looks mystified and impressed) me too!

Well I am reporting on the children. Yesterday I gave all three of them (you can't exclude a four-year-old without serious consequences) a mini Hershey bar, and explained that if they still had it tomorrow morning they could trade it for a bigger one, but they had to keep it with them all day. I did this to present more temptation during the long school day.

E, age 9, instantly declared she was saving hers. This created an avalanche effect of mimicry. I'm not sure how the boys would have reacted without her to emulate. Not so much conclusive. She handed her mini bar back this morning matter-of-factly and is now hoarding the bigger version. I don't think she's going to eat that anytime soon either.

Preston, age 4, kept his with him all day and often lovingly took it out and looked at it, but it degenerated over the course of the day from a perfectly respectable mini candy bar to a completely liquid form, sloshing around inside its skin of wrapper, and then a tiny, crumpled, hardened wad of chocolate and wrapper that probably was only appealing to the dogs. He presented it to me this morning with almost relief.

Skyler, now 7 (!) was extremely excited (in fact he met me outside the bathroom door this morning) to have not eaten his candy; it was, however, cracked in half, which he was worried would ruin the deal. I would feel more positive about this response except again, he is a copycat, and he got the idea from E.

Maybe the study went perfectly fine and I'm just too much of a pessimist to believe any of my children have self-control. Because the alternative is believing they all do.

Just kidding, I wouldn't eat my children. They're too stringy.

I came across a fascinating article today that talks about Epigenetics: the study of the chemicals that cause your genes to turn on and off. The idea is that although changing your DNA is impossible, changing the behavior of your genes is simple. So much so, in fact, that we all do it. And more crucially, once we've changed the behavior of our genes, the behavior of our children's genes also change. So, for example, if you overeat for a year in your childhood, your children and THEIR children will have altered DNA, practically speaking. In fact, you will have shortened their lives by up to 32 years. (This study was done on children from an area of Sweden called Overkalix.)

Another example: what if you smoke? A lot? What if you started before you hit puberty? Turns out you not only put yourself at risk for cancer, etc -- you also put your children and grandchildren at risk for various health problems, and a significantly shortened lifespan.

When Pembrey, Bygren and Golding looked at the sons of those 166 early smokers, it turned out that the boys had significantly higher body mass indexes than other boys by age 9. That means the sons of men who smoke in prepuberty will be at higher risk for obesity and other health problems well into adulthood. It's very likely these boys will also have shorter life spans, just as the children of the Overkalix overeaters did. "The coherence between the ALSPAC and Overkalix results in terms of the exposure-sensitive periods and sex specificity supports the hypothesis that there is a general mechanism for transmitting information about the ancestral environment down the male line," Pembrey, Bygren, Golding and their colleagues concluded in the European Journal of Human Genetics paper. In other words, you can change your epigenetics even when you make a dumb decision at 10 years old. If you start smoking then, you may have made not only a medical mistake but a catastrophic genetic mistake.

Is anyone else horrified by the implication that we can ruin the lives of the generations to come by our stress levels, bad health, etc?

It seems a simple challenge: take a four-year-old, give him a marshmallow, and leave the room. Will he scarf that marshmallow right away? What if you tell him that if it's still there when you get back in 15 minutes, he'll get a second marshmallow? Will he resist temptation?

The answer depends on the four-year-old, and surprisingly much depends on whether he has that sort of self-control or not. If he does succeed in resisting the marshmallow, he's much more likely to succeed in school and then in life as he grows to adulthood. If he stuffs it in his mouth as soon as you leave the room, he's much more likely to be impulsive, have behavioral problems, and fail at school as he matures.

Read the article for the full, very interesting, report on this unique test of will, especially if you are or plan on ever being responsible for the success of a child. Delaying gratification is a skill nobody really talks about, but one which can determine whether your child grows to be a failure or a success.

I tried this test on Preston, who (as we all know) has his share of behavioral problems, severe enough that the State classifies him as "special needs." With great ceremony and solemnity I presented him with a marshmallow. I placed it on the shelf in his room right at eye level and within reach. I explained that it was his, and he could eat it--BUT--if it was still on that shelf when I came back, I would give him a second marshmallow also, and he could eat both.

Then I left for 15 minutes. I waited with mild anxiety. Would he fail? Was he eating it RIGHT NOW? When I went back into the room he was sitting on his bed, hands clasped together between his knees, staring straight in front of him into space. This is his "time out" pose, oddly enough. And there was the marshmallow, sitting right where I'd left it, a foot away from him. When I came in, he leapt to his feet with a grin on his face, completely pleased with himself. And he scarfed those two marshmallows at the same time, stuffing them into his face with total satisfaction.

After reading the article I think I'll try it on my older kids, too--it's important information to know, whether your kid has impulse control or not. For one thing, you can teach them tricks to help them control their impulses if you know that they failed the test. I am going to buy mini candy bars, and big candy bars. I'll tell Skyler and E (6 and 9) that they can have the little one now, and it's theirs--BUT--if they bring it to me tomorrow morning uneaten, they get the bigger version of the candy bar also. We'll see how they do. Care to place bets?

This morning it is snowing, already four inches or so on the ground, and my two school-age children have been outside romping through the drifts in the front yard for 15 minutes, waiting for their walking buddies to show up. (This means that my previously pristine, smooth front lawn is now a riot of paths and bumps, and the trees have deliberately had all their snow shaken down upon young heads. What will the neighbors think? Gasp!)

I sent them to school by themselves when it became clear that the walking buddies weren't going to show, and not thirty seconds later the very thing I had feared occurred - a neighbor mom in an enormous SUV saw them, pulled over, and offered them a ride.

I am outraged.

First of all, it's five blocks to school. Six if you go the long way. It's not hard for elementary school age kids to walk five blocks - in fact, they burn more than that amount of energy just zipping around getting ready in the morning (colliding, panicking, playing, hysterically laughing, and in the case of Preston RIGHT NOW, cuddling three light sabres and tucking them into bed.)

Secondly, KIDS LIKE SNOW. I know this comes as a surprise to those of us who don't remember childhood. But I can guarantee that my kids, upon looking out the window this morning, did NOT think to themselves, "dammit, now I will be forced to frolic my way to school while pelting my siblings and friends with snowballs and sliding on the sidewalk in my snow boots." They LIKE walking those five blocks in a magically transformed, white-purple world (which has miraculously become wholly edible overnight.)

And thirdly, and most outrageously, does that SUV mom actually think my kids are SAFER in an SUV which will go join a queue of a hundred other cars and SUVs, sliding on the slush with kids dodging before and behind as they unload? My kids are much, much safer walking to school than driving. Period. But most especially, they are safer in crappy weather like this. What to a driver is a harrowing death journey is to a child an enchanted wonderland. And yes, I am aware that my children probably won't be injured because of that sheltered, heated, crowded SUV, but that doesn't change the fact that they would have been better off outside of it.

When did Suburbia become like this? When my grandmother raised her children, she sought out a suburban neighborhood. The kids roamed in packs, playing night games and raiding fruit trees. Now, my children play outside alone unless a neighbor invites them in to watch TV or play video games. And in this lovely, soft snowfall, all the children in my neighborhood can only watch through tinted windows as they join the endless queue to drop them off immediately in front of the school doors. Heaven forbid they have to walk down the school sidewalk. They might have to do something inconvenient, like enjoy themselves.

When I was 18 and in college in Arizona, Sarah and I went to the Renaissance fair. It was cool for a couple of reasons: It was in a little faux town built just for that purpose out in the desert, there were lots of hot guys brandishing pretty weapons (NOT A METAPHOR), and the performers were awesome. My favorite performers were this group of cute juggling guys. They were so funny that I couldn't breathe through most of their act, I was laughing so hard. I sat through their show twice. They were talented too - they balanced on giant balls juggling flaming clubs (ALSO NOT A METAPHOR).

I was curious today and looked them up, and it turns out that not only are they still performing but they are getting gigs outside of Renaissance fairs. (Not that there's anything wrong with performing at Renaissance fairs. I would be caterwauling ballads there RIGHT NOW if they'd have me.) They're still totally cute and one of the guys, Matt, reminds me of Joey if he had dedicated his life to entertaining others and juggling rather than plotting the destruction of others and writing code. Their website is www.thelondonbroilshow.com

"Mom," says Preston, "When I grow up I want to be a smuster."
"A mister?"
"NO! A Smuster!"
I pause for a moment before saying solemnly, "I do not understand what you mean." This is the only response that will prompt the child to rephrase, rather than to just repeat what he’s said more slowly and loudly, as [...]

This is the beginning of a new series on Winged Wolves. I’ll be posting letters (and pictures if I get any) of my sister while she’s serving her mission. She was originally supposed to just speak English in the Mormon Battalion Visitor’s Center, but since the start of her service, she’s been tracting [...]

Last autumn, we went to the Utah State Fair and saw the beekeepers exhibit (Utah Beekeepers Association? Something like that.) I have always liked bees. They’re so industrious and single-minded. The way they go about their business with singularity of purpose makes me kind of root for them. Go bee! Go be [...]

Monday is “clean the bathrooms” day. It is also laundry day. Anyone who has lived with a boy of any age knows that cleaning the bathrooms can be terrifying, and cleaning the bathroom of two little boys with poor concentration and aiming skills can be nightmarish. Over the course of the past year, [...]

Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures from our trip to the Snake River for the Annual Department of Water Resources River Rafting Trip, because I forgot to bring the camera. We left home on Thursday the 23rd and had a safe drive all the way to Alpine Junction, Wyoming where our campground was located.
View [...]

The adoption is official! Yay!

The next morning Linda woke to her father's ranting shouts from the front yard. She hurried down the white spiral staircase to the front door, which was standing wide open. A steaming coffee mug was sitting next to the newspaper on the front step, where her father had abandoned it. He was in the driveway, circling the yellow porsche, screaming.

Linda opened her mouth to ask what he was doing, when she saw: all four of the tires were slashed, the car sunk low down on them as if exhausted. She took a few steps and then stopped, her eyes following the deep gouges in the car's body, made by something strong and heavy. “A crowbar!” screamed her father, pointing to the offending object, which was lying on the grass a few feet away from the car.

Aghast, she crept closer. The headlights were smashed, the upholstery ripped to shreds. Unconsciously, Linda began mouthing a prayer. She walked down the steps and circled the car, then stopped as she came in sight of the garage. There, in violently red spray paint, were scrawled the words, “I LOVE YOU.” Continue reading "James (Part 3 of 3)"