Zero and a Half

Can you imagine a cuter 6 month old?

How about an equally cute 6 month old showing off a little leg?

Bingo!

I'm kind of obsessed with him right now, if you didn't notice.

Ellis in Six Pictures

I realize that Ellis is the star of the Blog Show lately. There is a reason for that. Check out this photo shoot that Ben did in the backyard last week: totally encapsulates Ellis' multi-faceted personality in six fabulous photos!

We can't stop cracking up about this one. Wouldn't it look good in 16x20 and hanging on his future presidential office wall?

Baby Food (for babies of all ages!)

To me, the momentous "Rice Cereal" day marks the beginning of the "Big Baby" phase. Can you believe little Sammers is already in that phase? He's 6 months old! I find it hard to believe that my little baby (who was just barely born!) is already a Big Baby. Crazy!

He loved the cereal though, and he really took it like a champ. I think with two older brothers, he has been ready to be a big boy since the day he was born. He has been reaching for food for the past month, and he just downed that cereal like he had been eating it for years.

Ellis, on the other hand . . .

is still eating baby food. Now, if you haven't been around us for a while, you might find it hard to believe that our almost 3-year-old still gets all of his meals from little Gerber jars -- spoon fed by Mom and Dad. Yes, I know, it's INSANE! But this is how Ellis stays alive.

We have actually learned a lot over the past couple of months. Apparently, there is a difference between the child who is a "picky eater," and the child who is what feeding experts call a "resistant eater." If you remove all of a picky eater's favorite not-so-healthy foods from the house and say, "Eat healthy food or starve," they will eat healthy food. If you do the same thing to a resistant eater, they will starve.

Ellis is a resistant eater. I'm not a big fan of labeling kids and giving them all sorts of diagnoses for regular-kid-problems, but I am happy to know that there are other kids like him in the world, and there are also experts who know what to do with kids like him! You mean there are other kids who have a list of less than 10 approved foods (for Ellis: baby food, Greek yogurt, graham crackers, Club crackers, muffins, granola bars, cinnamon toast, Life cereal, and Oatmeal Squares, the end) and will eat ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE? You mean there are other parents who have no idea what to do with these kids and have tried ridiculous things (feeding them baby food in front of the computer screen while watching General Conference) to get them to stay alive? You mean there are "feeding therapists" who can help kids overcome their anxieties about certain types of food and get them to do the impossible? Well, then thank heaven!

As part of our new fall schedule with Henry in school, we'll be seeing the feeding therapist once a week for a regular visit. She has already given us some challenges and things to work on, and I am happy to report progress! Huge hurdle #1: Ellis no longer eats in front of the tube! He sits at the table with everyone else in the family (mostly) and every once in a while he will even put the spoon in his own mouth with his own hand. But most of the time we're still feeding him. Over the past six weeks of working on this, we have gotten to the point where he very rarely has a screaming fit over his meals. Progress!

Huge hurdle #2: he ate a blueberry! This may seem like a very small thing to you, but let me tell you -- it is a HUGE thing to us! Ellis hasn't eaten a new food in over a year (unless you count different varieties of graham crackers or muffins -- or candy); and he hasn't eaten a real piece of fruit (non-pureed) since he was about 14 months. I repeat, HUGE.

Actually, this picture is deceiving because it looks like he ate the blueberry, no problem. After a day of blueberry picking (which he loved), I bribed Henry and Ellis with cupcakes if they would each eat ONE blueberry. This is the picture of Ellis (after much coercion) putting the blueberry in his mouth. He subsequently got nervous, spit it out, and had a 20-minute screaming spell and then went to bed. 15 days later, he announced that he was ready to eat a blueberry. I went out and bought blueberries, and then he once again put it in his mouth, got scared, and spit it out. Then he said, "I think I will eat it in a muffin." So I got a mini Hostess muffin out of the pantry, poked a little divot into it with my finger, and placed the blueberry inside. He popped it in his mouth, chewed it up, and swallowed it, only gagging a few times. And that is the story of Ellis' first blueberry.

Did I mention that the feeding therapist thinks he'll need weekly visits for at least a year? Baby steps, I'm telling you.

MoTab Update

(Ellis, in a dreamy voice before going to bed last night)

"Mom, when I wake up, I'm gonna do my Tabernacle Choir . . .

And then we'll sing a song . . .

And then they'll say the closing prayer . . .

And then, I'll knock 'em over!"

In case you forgot, the Tabernacle Choir people are usually his paint bottles.

They get lined up every day, without fail. Usually multiple times.

Sometimes we have the Baby Food Tabernacle Choir instead. Always, Ellis leads them in a song and has a (very reverent, not at all blasphemous) prayer before knocking them over.

Sometimes it's nice to have Ellis around.

Family Night (Trampoline Style)

The air was too perfect to stay inside tonight -- so we headed out to the backyard to combine two of our current favorite family activities: family home evening and family trampoline time. Henry and Ellis get VERY into both of these activities!

Tonight Ellis conducted (his specialty), and Henry taught an inspired lesson about being happy (he felt Ellis could use the reminder). These two boys just never cease to make me laugh.

The Ramble: How the Bible might help solve the deficit

This is a follow-up to last week's Ramble, with answers to a couple of questions from Brittany and Kathryn. Future editions likely won't be so close together!

First off, there are couple of terms that people mix up occasionally:

Government debt: The total amount of debt outstanding owed by a government.

Federal deficit: The difference between what the government brings in (via taxes) and what it spends in a given year. There is a deficit when spending is less than earnings, and a surplus when earnings are higher than spending.

So, having high deficits for many years leads to having a lot of debt, but the two aren't exactly equivalent. If there have been several years of surplus, the government could run a deficit in a given year and still not have any debt, since it can dip into its savings from previous years to cover the difference. I've often seen the press use these two terms interchangeably, but they aren't technically the same thing.

Okay, so here's the thing. Government debt isn't necessarily bad. In fact, it probably makes sense for the US government in particular to have a fair amount of debt. Why? Well, imagine that someone was willing to lend you $1 million for ten years at 2.5% annual interest. Imagine further that you could use that money to earn 6% annual returns. Would you do it? Of course you would. Each year you'd earn $35,000 on the deal ((6% - 2.5%)*$1,000,000), and at the end of the ten years you could pay back the million dollars and be over $400,000 richer than you started. Now, imagine that at the end of the ten years that same someone was willing to make the same deal. Would you do it again? Absolutely!

The US government is in much the same position. It can borrow money at lower interest rates than anyone else in the world, because it has developed a sterling reputation. It can then use the money for profitable investments, like health care, education, welfare, infrastructure, etc. It's hard to put a percentage return on those kinds of investments, but as long as they are higher than the interest rate that the government has to pay, it should be borrowing that money. And, since there is no foreseeable termination to the existence of the government, it can roll over its debt forever; it doesn't necessarily ever have to get out of debt.

But, too much government debt can start to be a drag on the country, because after a while the government is forced to spend a big portion of its tax revenues on paying interest, and it therefore can't spend that money on useful government functions like education or health care. How much is too much? That's obviously a difficult question without a really precise answer. Typically, economists look at the total amount of debt divided by nominal annual GDP. One study has found that when the debt-to-GDP ratio is above 90% the economy doesn't grow as quickly, but when it is lower than 90% debt has no effect on growth. So I take 90% as the point where we should start to get concerned, but keep in mind that it's just one estimate. Here is a graph of US Debt to GDP since 1966 to the present (click to enlarge):

You can see that we jumped big time in 2008 and that we're right around that 90% number right now. Brittany asked for a history of deficits, and you can see it in this graph. When the line is going down, the government is running surpluses, when it's going up they're running deficits. Actually, to be exactly precise, when the line is going up the government is increasing the deficit at a faster rate than GDP is growing, and vice versa, but the basic idea is the same. So, relative to how fast the economy was growing, Reagan and George H. W. Bush ran some big deficits, Clinton had mostly surpluses, and Dubya ran deficits. Obama so far trumps everyone by a mile in the largest-deficit contest. But the idea that Dubya "created" the deficit via two wars and tax cuts for the rich is false--there have been deficits and surpluses off and on over the history of the US--although he did run deficits for most of his 8 years. You can see from the graph that he really didn't increase the total debt by a huge amount. Reagan and Bush the First did more to raise debt levels than Bush the Second. More on this balancing act in a minute.

Okay, I promise I'm going to get to the point shortly, but first I have to say a quick word on the debt ceiling. The debt limit is simply a number which sets the maximum amount of dollars that the government can borrow. Up until July 31st, the limit was $14.3 trillion. Now I think it is $15.2 trillion. Kathryn asked a question about why we actually had to raise the debt ceiling. She linked to an article that claimed that we really didn't need to raise the debt ceiling, and that instead we could just spend less money instead of borrowing more. The article used a very intuitive example of a credit card, arguing that a family who had a hard time with debt should not increase its credit limit, but should instead adjust spending to fit under its current credit limit. The problem with that analogy is that in the case of the US government we had already spent the money, and failing to raise the debt limit would force us to default on our obligations. Think of it this way: suppose a family has spent all the way up to their credit limit, and they know that a $300 utility bill is coming in two weeks for energy they used last month. They can either: (a) increase their credit limit by $300 in order to pay the bill, (b) not pay the utility bill or (c) not pay the credit card bill. Spending less on the utility bill isn't an option at this point! That's the situation we were in. In April, we knew that a bill was coming on August 2nd that we couldn't pay, due to obligations that Congress had already committed to. Our options were: (a) increase the debt limit, (b) not pay government workers or (c) not pay our debt bills. It was pretty clear that (b) wasn't going to happen for political reasons. Option (c) is a really bad option because it destroys that sterling reputation I mentioned earlier (although a lot of tea partiers were arguing for it) and would very likely send financial markets into a panic, so that really only leaves (a). I wanted to throttle everyone in Congress because it should have taken about 1 hour to figure out that (a) was what had to happen, and instead they argued about it for 4 months, costing us a fair amount of money in the process and ending up with a pretty poor bill in the process. What I wanted out of the debt ceiling confrontation was two-fold: an increase in the debt ceiling coupled with a credible plan to reduce the deficit (and total debt) in coming years. We got the increase in the debt ceiling, but did not get a good deficit reduction plan, and that's why S&P downgraded the US. Adios, sterling reputation!

What the heck does all of this have to do with the Bible, you ask? Well, I'm almost there! There have been some proposals that we pass a "balanced budget" amendment, which would force Congress to have neither a surplus nor a deficit. On the surface this sounds like a good idea, especially given the fact that it doesn't appear that we can trust Congress to be responsible with the budget. Like so many things, though, what at first appears to be a good suggestion turns out to be a terrible idea on further inspection. In particular, a balanced budget proposal would force the government to spend less when tax revenues are lower. And when are tax revenues low? When the economy is doing poorly, which is precisely the time that Keynesian economics tells us that the government should be spending more. Even disregarding Keynes completely, the government is likely to have to spend more during recessions because of unemployment insurance, more pressure on retraining programs, higher amounts of federal student loans, more reliance on Medicaid, etc. A balanced budget amendment would force the government to cut spending on all of these programs at exactly the wrong time.

But, couldn't we force Congress to cut spending at exactly the right time? I think we should take our cue from Joseph in Egypt who saved corn during the seven years of plenty in order to have enough during the seven years of famine. Joseph had the benefit of prophecy, but I think we could do pretty well with a simple rule that said something like, "When nominal GDP growth is higher than 4% congress must have a surplus, and when it is lower it can have a deficit." A Joseph-in-Egypt rule would keep that line in the graph above fluctuating around a certain level, but it wouldn't trend higher or lower overall. Congress would automatically save during good times and spend those savings during bad times. I'm not sure that 4% is the right number, but I'm that there are some smart people who could figure out what the right number is. The point is that a Joseph-in-Egypt rule would get rid of the need for debt ceilings, and would force the government to spend within our means in the long run, while allowing for stimulus in bad times when needed.

The trick is to get Congress to create such a rule, and then to prevent them from changing it when the going gets tough! Any ideas on how to do that?

As always, questions, comments, disagreements, and suggestions are all welcome!

A Swimming Story

Once upon a time, our friends, the Cooks, invited us to go swimming at Dan's parents' house in New Hampshire. Hooray!

Ben, Henry, and Ellis had a blast swimming in the pool.

Baby Sam was not so sure of the situation. The water was a little colder than the bath water he knows and loves . . . but his mom made him stay in the water long enough to get the obligatory "baby float" photo. Too bad he couldn't smile like his brothers . . .

Baby Ellis

and Baby Henry. [Maybe we'll have to try Sam again sometime!]

We got Sam out of the water pretty fast. The boys continued to swim, and the cowardly Mom continued to soak her toes in the pool with the other ladies. Everyone was having a wonderful time.

Then suddenly, our friend Dave decided to climb into a plastic bag!

Matt tied the bag and rolled Dave into the pool!

Are you kidding me? There goes Dave, floating down the pool in his little bag bubble!

And there he is, floating along, providing the entertainment for the day and the funniest spectacle I have seen in quite some time.

Kids, do NOT try this at home! [But isn't it kind of cool?]

The end.

The Ramble: The Great Contraction

Okay, okay. I'm giving in to my throngs of admirers who are constantly asking for my personal thoughts on all things political, economic, or financial. All zero of you. I've decided to start a feature on our blog called The Ramble that will pop up whenever I decide I've got something to say. I tried to let this blog be a safe place where you could just hear about our family, but I just can't help myself. So, now you've all been given fair warning, and you're free to avoid The Ramble guilt-free. I promise it won't hurt my feelings. If you do read, though, I always love to hear comments! Alright, let's get on with it; here's the first edition of The Ramble:

Today, I just wanted to throw out a scatter-shot of thoughts revolving around the current state of the world. As everyone knows, the U.S. economy is pretty much a mess right now. There are a lot of scary stats out there that demonstrate just how bad things are (e.g. take a look at stocks from this past week), but for me I tend to focus on employment because jobs are at the core of every economy. Here's one that I saw the other day that shows that the length of unemployment for the average unemployed worker is currently double the next highest peak ON RECORD. Here's another one (source) that shows that employment is going to take a long, long time to recover, as compared to past recessions:

When I see charts like these, I have to think that this is not a normal recession. "Well, duh," you're thinking, "I don't need a Ph.D. to know that." Okay, so this obviously isn't normal. But a key point is that this isn't just a recession on steroids, either. I tend to agree with Ken Rogoff (a really smart macroeconomist) who is arguing that we should be calling this the "Great Contraction," not the "Great Recession." You really should read his article that I've linked to, but if you're not going to, the gist is that a recession is just a temporary slow-down in employment and production but a contraction happens when whole countries get over-indebted. When I say "whole countries," I mean just that: the people, the businesses, and the government itself. Unraveling all of that debt is a slow process, so it takes much longer for the economy to bounce back than in a typical recession. The last Great Contraction was--you guessed it--the Great Depression. And while we're far from Great-Depression bad, things aren't looking too good either.

Why does this distinction matter? Because understanding what the problem is can lead to much better solutions. You might think you have really bad heartburn, but if you really have gallstones, all of those antacids aren't going to help much. Similarly, if you treat a contraction with recession medicine, you're not going to get the expected results. For this reason, the Fed and the Government have been consistently surprised at how slowly the recovery is developing. They have been expecting their medicine to take instant effect, when in reality they're not treating the right problem. We need to do something to reduce the total amount of debt in the economy much more than we need stimulus or quantitative easing.

Anyway, my real point in all of this is that we should all expect the economy to recover very slowly. There's no way around it, really. Paying back the huge amount of debt that we accumulated over the past 10 years is going to take a while, and until we're out from underneath that overhang we're not going to see strong growth in the economy. And remember, when I say we, I really do mean all of us. Regular consumers have way too much debt, along with many business and the government. The good news is that both businesses and consumers are taking steps in the right direction: saving is way up, and debt is way down since 2007.

The bad news, of course, is that the government appears set on incurring more debt. Now, before I berate Congress and Obama, let me say this very clearly: we all love sticking the blame on the government, and we usually go too far. To be honest, the government (especially the President) doesn't have as much influence over the economy as most people think. In addition, remember that we are the ones that voted them in!

That being said, I'd really like to strangle most of the members of Congress for screwing up the debt ceiling deal so badly. Not raising the debt ceiling would have been both idiotic and catastrophic, making it a "must-pass" bill. Since it was apparent that the bill had to pass, I think that most of the world thought that Congress would be able to use this opportunity to really set a long-term plan that would reduce the deficit in conjunction with raising the debt limit. Instead, what do they do? Wait until the very last minute, and then pass a bill that is so vague and limited that it's unclear whether it will actually have any effect all on the deficit. And over the past couple of weeks we've seen the results: the first downgrade of US debt ever, and stock markets are down nearly 12%. Okay, so some of the market crash is a result of the disaster called Europe as well. But still, it's frustrating that they wasted such a great opportunity, and cost us billions of dollars in the process.

Okay, so here are the takeaways from today's Ramble:

• It's going to take us a while longer yet to really start to recovery economically, so plan accordingly.
• Reducing the deficit needs to happen, and we need a credible plan soon. We have three options: (1) Raise taxes, (2) Cut spending, (3) Have high inflation. I would prefer a mix of all three in moderate amounts, in all honesty. But what matters the most is that it happens, not how it happens.
• We need to vote out the ideologues in Congress who were unwilling to compromise to get a better deal done. By refusing to compromise they may have gained a bit of political ground, but they hurt the entire country in the process. I'm looking at you, Tea Party. Please leave.

What do you think? Are we in for a double-dip recession? Is the U.S. deficit a problem? Is the Tea Party really to blame? Let me know in the comments.

Sam at 5 months

Drooling,

rolling,

curious,

happy.

Griffin Time!

Our trip to the homeland offered loads of good times -- enjoying this beautiful Utah summer and the people we love and just can't get enough of.

Isaac and Brady enjoying S'more night

Henry's ridiculously huge jumbo-marshmallow-s'more

It was quite the task trying to eat it (and entertainment for the rest of us)

Luckily, he ended up with a mustache to match Grandpa Dave's.

Ellis almost rivaled the messiness.

And Milo . . . well, just watch out for Milo.

McCall is expecting Baby #1, so we made sure to give her lots of practice with babies.

I'm so excited to see Brady and McCall as parents. They are going to be the best!

Relaxing and watching the energetic ones play soccer

The pond is high this year with all the spring rain they got in Utah. I don't think I'll ever get over how much I love my parents' backyard and the view.

Isn't it a stunning place?

We decided our boys were long overdue for their first visit to Temple Square. This is where Ben and I were married, at the Salt Lake Temple. We discovered that Temple Square has changed a lot since we were last there, and it is a fabulous place for anyone to visit -- definitely the top tourist attraction in the Salt Lake area. We actually spent only half a day there, but felt like we could have spent another day or two!

Random "Vocal Point" sighting took us back to the good old days at BYU.

And, of course, Ellis loved our tour of the Conference Center. He got to see where the Tabernacle Choir sits, and we talked a lot about where the different general authorities would sit during Conference. I actually think it was a tiny bit of a letdown for Ellis, because as you can see, the regular G.A. seats are missing because they can change the set for an orchestra or theatrical stage or whatever they need for a given event. So the real President Monson spot wasn't there -- and worse -- the podium and "mikerphone" were missing! I guess they keep President Hinckley's famous "walnut tree" podium on an elevator shaft and they lower it underground when not in use. When we were walking into the Conference Center for our tour, Ellis was asking "Who's gonna conduct?" and I unfortunately had to break it to him that we weren't actually going to watch Conference. Still, I think he enjoyed the tour overall (an interesting thing to do, for sure), and then he was thrilled when we got to go to the Church History Museum and look at the portraits of all the Latter-day Prophets.

My dad recently started his really cool new job at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building (he's working on the Family Search project).

We had lunch with Grandpa outside his building (check out my mom and Kati adoring cute baby Max - 2 1/2 months younger than Sam and definitely heavier!)

Touring Grandpa's office and enjoying his view (talk about taking a little break for inspiration!)

Lava Hot Springs - time with my dad's family and the two Ellises.

The boys posing like Grandpa Griffin!

Grandpa (Ellis) and Grandma Griffin - I love these people! We had such a good time visiting with them and many of my aunts, uncles, and cousins at their yearly traditional vacation spot. I have so many fond memories of this place! I wish I had taken more pictures there (especially of Ben jumping off the high dive with Brady!).

Here are my little book-worms in the car on the way to Lava. I have to give them credit for being GREAT little travelers. I think it's so cute to see them sharing a book -- they're reading Ellis' favorite presidents book. Luckily, Henry is interested in everything, so he's happy to enjoy a book with Ellis every once in a while.