Are Holiday Cards Wicked Smart?

I am working diligently on my holiday cards – hoping to get them out before the New Year hits (unlike last year). As more and more arrive in my mailbox, I always wonder – where are all of these people all year?

In the day and age of Twitter, Facebook, Eons, MySpace, Flickr and an abundance of other social networking communications, why do I still receive a random, once-a-year update from relatives that I don’t really know and friends I haven’t seen since high school? Not that I don’t appreciate the cards and love hearing about people’s lives, but … it makes me wonder, what is the point of holiday cards? If you really cared about me, couldn’t you connect with me all year long electronically? Is an email or Twitter “follow” considered more impersonal than a once-a-year card?

The ones that really crack me up are the narcissistic, one-sided holiday letters that arrive with some of the cards. Usually these are of two categories:

1) Completely one-sided, only the “great things” that happened all year like new kids/jobs/houses/cars, etc.

2) TMI – too much information about the less-than-pleasant happenings in life such as gall bladder surgery or Aunt Edna’s bankruptcy.

It seems strange to me in this day and age that – unless you’re 70 or older – people don’t make more of a commitment to stay in touch on a regular basis with family and “friends.” It makes me think that holiday cards from cousins who don’t really know me are one sided ways to show off. If you really wanted to keep in touch or even get to know me a bit better, you could easily do so by connecting with me over email or – even easier – on the aforementioned social networks. It makes me think that the not-so-personal “friends” I have on Facebook (i.e., those who “friend” me even though we’ve never met) might just know me better than the cousins with whom I used to share matching PJs as we grew up together.

Perhaps holiday cards should just be reserved for business – it’s a cordial, intelligent gesture to say “Happy New Year” and “Thanks” to those with whom we conduct not-too-personal parts of our life. But to do so to friends and family – and only that – seems a bit cold and shallow.

What do you think?

Wicked Smart Babies?

The lengths people will go to these days to push their children in education is a questionable debate. Should we be stimulating our 4-month-olds with flash cards, signing up for preschool at age 1 and testing our toddlers? My opinion is to relax a little but then again I’m not a Harvard grad…

In September Boston Magazine’s cover story was on choosing the best pre school. It profiled the best Boston-area schools for parents with 1- and 2-year-olds obsessing over what pre school their kids would get into and – gasp – what horrible fate would befall them if they weren’t accepted into the most promising. I found myself wondering if we were hurting our children by lackadaisically choosing one of the local church-run preschools. We had actually considered a Montessori school but ultimately decided against it for a variety of reasons – the $10,000 per year tuition notwithstanding, we were more concerned about pushing our child too hard too soon – five days of full school a week seems like a lot to us for a 3-year-old.

But still, Boston Magazine’s article made me wonder if we had made the right decision… did I need to get caught up in the craziness and if I didn’t obsess like the parents in the article, would my children suffer? As a product of a state school and someone who found success more in the classes of life than an ivy league school, I started to wonder.

Then, last week Boston Globe Magazine had an article about whether or not you can make your baby smarter. As a mother who has seen friends obsess about this topic since the moment they took a pregnancy test, the topic was of great interest to me. This particular article profiled families who begin educational programs at birth… regular flash card sessions with the Mona Lisa, Aristotle and Erasmus of Rotterdam, for example…families with pre-school age children speaking of cubism and impressionist composers.

Even more disturbing were the profiles of educational programs from entities such as the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential near Chestnut Hill here in the Boston area that runs the Better Baby Institute program. This program emphasizes what the article calls “early intervention.”


I was relieved to learn from many scientific studies highlighted in the article that just because I didn’t have headphones on my stomach during my pregnancies, my children probably wouldn’t suffer behind their classmates with more obsessive mothers. Apparently all those flash cards and weird practices like putting your newborn in a darkened room and pointing a flashlight at his eyes for a minute, 10 times a day (what?!) won’t necessarily make him or her any smarter than my boys, currently running around with buckets on their heads, pretending to be Buzz Lightyear.

Unstructured play has long been touted as one of the best things for children and their development. In this day and age, with all the pressures from technology advancements and worldwide competition, our children will be overworked and stressed out like the rest of us soon enough. Lighten up – teach by example and hard work and let them enjoy being children. The rest will take care of itself.

Women – Not Only Have Babies but Skip College, Too!

I’m sure this is a joke – and it’s old news but showed up on Twitter today – so nonetheless…what the hell is in the drinking water lately? You saw my post yesterday about the crazy homemaking college courses and Southern Baptist bullshit that women should “bow graciously to their husband’s leadership.” Now this?! It’s a joke, right? If this girl is real …. with those writing “talents” I don’t think she needs to worry about college. 

Anyone ever figure the mystery out?

http://www.poopinashoe.com/viewthread.php?threadid=6420&p=2#p52909

http://www.pnwriders.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-22736.html

What Makes a Wicked Smart Woman

A lot of things – send me what you think a Wicked Smart Woman is made of and I will put them on my blog!

1. Hates to say “no,” – but will
2. Works because she wants to; not because she “has” to
3. Takes care of herself first – it makes for a better caretaker for others
4. Looks at the price tag…and buys it anyway
5. Eats dessert
6. Marries for love despite the divorce rate
7. Isn’t afraid to be single
8. Knows a lot of great wines for less than $10.00 a bottle
9. Knows a good financial planner who’s not her spouse
10. Brings home the bacon, fries it up in a pan and never lets you forget she’s a (working) woman

Women Should Just Have Babies… Unless They’re Wicked Smart

Last weekend I opened the Boston Globe and read an article that referenced some new classes at Southwestern Baptist Technological Seminary. Specifically classes titled “Biblical Model of the Home and Family,” and “Wife of the Equipping Minister” that are open only to women and reinforce that “God expects wives to submit graciously to their husbands’ leadership.” In these courses the ladies get to learn about the “glorious inequalities of life,” as they are taught to give up their own dreams to have children and be nice tidy wives to the “more important species” – man. Hey girls get this! You can learn how to properly set the table, sew buttons and sustain lively dinner-time conversation! Wow, awesome!Ladies, just an FYI – the Bible, while a nice if-it’s-what-you-want-to-believe guide to life, does not have to be a) taken so literally and b) was written by … wait for it… men. (Note: inspired by God does not change that fact).