Reading by Kindle light?

I’m in the home stretch of reading Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief to the kids (which is great by the way, especially if you like the Harry Potter series). Even though we’ve graduated to books with no pictures, they love sitting over me and watching the pages turn as we weave through the story. The Lightning Thief is a real page turner filled with demigods, monsters, Zeus and his dysfunctional family.

My husband got me the Amazon Kindle for Christmas. It’s fantastic! I’ve been complaining about lugging books and magazines on the ferry everyday but resisted buying it because the price seemed far too exorbitant. After you spend 5 minutes with this easy-to-use wonder you will quickly forget about the damage done to your bank account. Books, magazines, newspapers, blogs and the classics for $.99!

So, here’s my conundrum. As we come to the end of The Lightning Thief, do I buy the sequel on the Kindle? It’s certainly the more eco-friendly option and I’m sure the kids can get used to the interface (after all, they mastered the Wii in a day and I still can’t figure out how to turn the thing off). It seems strange, almost wrong to read to the kids from the Kindle. Call me a purist, but my instinct is to keep buying and reading them real books. Anyone else have a perspective?

The Tao of Paul

I suppose it’s a good problem if the only thing taxing your mind is what to get your kids for Christmas. I seem to always suffer from selective memory, forgetting all of the hard earned mistakes that I’ve made in the past like buying a train set for Maxwell when he was 2 only to find out he was much more interested in the bubble wrap sheet from the box of See’s Candies or buying Natalie a Play-Doh set only to have every color of the rainbow irrevocably stained into the carpet and the rest dried up and thrown away by the middle of January or the starter laptop that Aidan destroyed last year by ripping out all of the keys.

Paul and I instituted the $15 dollar rule this year. We’ll see how it goes. It was much easier than I imagined to get them some cool stuff under the price point we set. As usual, Paul is completely nonplussed. “If they don’t like what we got them, too freaking bad,” he said. I’m sure I’m fretting for nothing. Must remember to invoke the Tao of Paul.

Barbara Bush Promotes Precious

There was a time that I NEVER thought I would utter the words Barbara Bush is cool. My fascination with her began in 1993 when she gave the commencement address at my graduation from Pepperdine. Far from an old biddy in a polyester skirt suit, she was warm, effusive, self-deprecating and dare I say it again, COOL! She even hi-fived a couple of our basketball players (Doug Kristy amongst them!) on their way off the stage.

I just read an article that she wrote for Newsweek where she endorses the movie Precious. Yes, that’s Precious, the movie produced by Oprah and Tyler Perry about a 300 lb black teenage girl who is abused by her mother and impregnated by her father and finds redemption in learning how to read and write. Barbara Bush heads up her own literacy foundation which has given more than 700 grants for literacy programs nationwide. While her commitment to literacy is certainly admirable, the idea that she would be so open to a story like Precious completely blows my mind.

Now, for all of you who thought I could never pay tribute to a member of the GOP, let alone dedicate a blog post to them, I go on record saying that Barbara Bush is one cool lady.

It Starts with a Closet

Dream closet producer, thy name is Paul Baillie! I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this previously, but my husband Paul is as handy as they come. He can build furniture, lay tile, hang crown molding & base trim, build built-in bookcases, lay a hard wood floor and make a toy box from scrap wood and wainscoting. He can basically build a house from the ground up. We bought a tiny little house in June with virtually no closet space and he built me a walk in closet, complete with custom shelving in less than a week. I’m not trying to brag but he is the bees knees.

I’ve always been fascinated and in awe of people that actually make things. As everything goes digital and virtual it’s becoming so rare to meet people that actually make things for a living, or even a hobby. Paul’s family has more than a-half dozen women that can knit like Michael Jordan used to play basketball, with great skill that looks completely effortless. I recently took up knitting and can tell you that doing what they do is not easy. My mother is an amazing gardener. She grows sugar cane, bananas, guavas, Japanese eggplant, sweet potatoes and the sweetest apples in Southern California. This is all the more impressive when you consider that she lives in San Diego which is basically a desert.

I suppose it’s why I got so obsessed with Project Runway (although this season was a yawnfest). In some ways, fashion is the last bastion of accessible artwork. While fashionistas may pay thousands for a great look that they saw on the runway, within a few months you can get a similar look from a midline brand at a department store and even Forever 21 (just to be clear, I never shop at Forever 21 because it makes me feel like a pathetic 38-year old hanging on to her ever evaporating youth). Other forms of art are not such an easy itch to scratch. Broadway show tickets $100+ per pop, purchasing an original painting in a gallery can cost thousands and don’t even get me started on ballet or opera tickets.

I wonder how the collective experience of being around Paul, his fierce knitting aunties, my miracle grower mom and their average baking mother will affect the kids as they get older. Paul cringes when he meets a guy that can’t hang a shelf or figure out how to unclog their toilet. He’s assured me that his boys will know how to swing a hammer, change the oil in their cars and find a stud in a wall. I dearly hope that my daughters find pleasure in some form of creativity. I dream about taking them to Italy to take classes with the Murano glass blowers in Venice.

Am I a Helicopter Parent?

Nancy Gibbs recently wrote a cover story for Time Magazine called The Case Against Parenting: Why Mom and Dad need to cut the strings (November 30, 2009) that posits the theory that the new breed of “Helicopter Parents” is hurting our kids.  She cites the work of Lenore Skenazy who penned Free Range Kids: Giving our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts With Worry who was quoted in the article saying, “10 is the new 2.  We’re infantilizing our kids into incompetence.” Do I hover?  Yes, I suppose I do.  Do I check their Halloween candy, stand beneath them while they’re on the jungle gym, quiz them with flashcards and cut up their food for nearly every meal?  Yes, yes, yes, and shamefully, yes.  The piece made me ponder the degree of my hovering.

A few weeks ago I got in an argument with my husband because he admitted that on some days, when he has all four kids in the van driving home from school, he’ll pull up in front of our local grocery store, hand my 8-year old son a fiver and ask him to buy a gallon of milk.  I was horrified.  You have no visual on him!  He’s only 8!  What if some demented person in the dairy aisle grabbed him and snuck him out the back in a delivery truck?  He did not dignify my comments with a response but gave me the “you’re a freak” look and went about his business.  The story in Time argues that coddling our children stunts their survival skills.  I hate it when Paul is right.

Should I apologize for hovering?  Do I need to pull back?  Would my kids be better off with me being more hands off?  These are not easy questions to answer.  We live in a society with 24-7 media blaring stories of missing kids that end up in landfills, parents killing their kids and stuffing them into the trunks of their cars, peanut allergies and swine flu. I want to be hands-on. Is that so wrong?

Skenazy also notes in the article that people like Dear Abby recently endorsed the idea “…that each morning before their kids leave the house, parents take a picture of them.  That way, if they are kidnapped, the police will have a fresh photo showing what clothes they were wearing.” OK, now that’s just crazy! So it seems that while I have to admit to being a helicopter parent, I’m clearly not on the “wing-nut” end of the spectrum.