Tanner's Threadless T-shirt

Hey everyone, we'll resume our regular posting on here soon, but in the meantime, you should all check out and vote for my brother-in-law's T-shirt design on Threadless. If he gets enough votes then Threadless will actually make it in to a shirt, resulting in him getting money which he will then pass on to me...or something like that. Click on the picture to check it out:

Aaaargh!

This buccaneer has developed a little bit of over extra confidence lately. We sure love him and don't want to burst his bubble (I'm sure it will be burst soon enough), so we go on agreeing with him that he is the smartest, kindest, best-looking, most artistic child in the entire universe!

Last week Henry and I had an argument over cookie-making. He thought we had enough frosting for our batch of cookies, and I didn't. He looked at me and said, "Mom, I know I'm right, because you're a girl, and when girls get pregnant, their brains don't work as well. I'm a boy, so that will never happen to me."
Of course! I've been wondering all along why Henry is so much smarter than me. He's a boy, for crying out loud! Everything makes so much sense now.

In all honesty, I do have to admit that he's a pretty smart kid. Out of curiosity, Ben had him take a 3rd grade reading comprehension test the other night, which he whizzed through and nearly aced. He only missed two questions, one which asked "What was the author's purpose in writing this passage?" (a non-fiction article about owls). Very sincerely, Henry answered that the author's purpose was to "entertain" rather than "inform." I had to laugh when I realized that he really does read these types of articles for pure entertainment, and he had stopped several times during the assessment to tell me interesting tidbits about owls. Afterward, in trying to explain the error to Henry, I pointed out that in addition to being entertained, it seemed like he also learned a lot from the article. "No," he asserted, "I didn't learn ANYTHING from reading that! I already knew ALL of it!" Hmmm. Probably due to the fact that he's not pregnant, I guess.

In case you were wondering, not only does Henry already know pretty much EVERYTHING, but he also is pretty much the most knowledgeable and talented artist in the world. Somehow he got it in his head that I can also hold my own in the art world, but Ben is seriously lacking in his art skills. This is a point of great concern to Henry, and he is constantly brainstorming new ways he can teach Ben to be a better artist. When we tried out a new stencil set Henry got for Christmas, he remarked, "This is pretty easy! I bet even DAD could do this one!" And then he finally convinced Ben to take a formal art lesson from him.

Here is the page where Henry "taught" Ben to draw.

Here is Ben's unsuccessful effort to measure up.

Perhaps someday soon we will have a little discussion about what a know-it-all is and why nobody likes them. Perhaps someday I will defend the equality of women's brain capacity. Until then, I'm going to just go on being amused by this kid.

Purple Ear

This is what happens when you let your 5 & unders stay up until the REAL midnight on New Year's Eve. Henry was having so much fun twirling around in the snow as we returned from our party that he didn't notice a metal pole in front of our house. Smack! Oops. Ellis also fell down the stairs at about 11:00pm. Apparently our boys start to get a little tipsy from lack of sleep. Next year we will exercise self-restraint and put our children to bed at a safe and reasonable hour. Maybe.

Post-dated Legislation

I've just finished up another semester of school (huzzah!), and now that I've got a bit more free time I wanted to post a few thoughts that have been on my mind recently. Be forewarned: this is a post about politics and economics. I don't really have another forum to share this stuff in (maybe I should create one?), but there's this odd part of me that likes to throw this stuff out there, and so it ends up on here. And, I think this stuff is kind of important. So, if you read this post, I'd love to hear your comments. If you don't read it, I don't blame you! Here goes:

I don't like politics. I really don't. I rarely read or watch the news because I get so sick of it. What bothers me about it all is that it seems like politicians are always pandering to voters whose focus is always on the short-term gain, often at the cost of long-term losses. For example, congress recently extended both the Bush tax cuts and unemployment benefits. Short-term gain: help for unemployed and economic stimulus. Long-term loss: Higher interest payments, and more debt to pay off later. I'm not saying that either of these things were necessarily bad ideas (we really don't know if they were good or bad, to be honest), but they are definitely measures that are focused at helping people out NOW, and dealing with the consequences LATER. And doing that too often can be a really bad thing.

You see, congress is made up of real people. Even worse, they are (in theory, at least) doing the wishes of voters, who are also real people. And real people are not very good at doing what is best for themselves TODAY. In fact, we're notoriously bad at doing anything unpleasant if it can be put off at all. We often want our future selves to do things that our present selves aren't willing to do. I really want my future self not to be fat, for example, but my present self really likes brownies a lot. So, I tell myself that tomorrow I'll stop eating brownies. In behavioral economics they call this kind of behavior "hyperbolic discounting," and you see it all the time.

In many ways, it seems like congress has this same hyperbolic discounting problem. We know that we need to balance the budget at some point, but this year isn't looking like the right year to do it. Maybe next year. We know that social security really needs an overhaul, but this year has been tough. Maybe next year. Our education system appears to be falling further behind other developed countries, but we just don't have the money to tackle that right now. Maybe next year. Anything that can be put off often is, until the system is in such bad shape that we're forced to do something about it.

It's understandable, really. Tackling all of these issues would require unpalatable changes: increasing taxes, raising the retirement age, budget cuts, additional red tape, firing teachers, etc. etc. etc. Voters hate that kind of stuff. Politicians hate that kind of stuff. All of us, collectively, can see that we need to do something about these issues, and yet somehow we keep putting things off because change is hard. We are all hyperbolic discounters, to some degree at least.

What is to be done? Perhaps there are lessons to be learned from what we know about what individuals can do to overcome hyperbolic discounting. Let's take the example of an individual who knows he needs to save for retirement but has a hard time setting money aside. One program that has been proven to work incredibly well is called the "Save More Tomorrow" program (you can learn more about this program in Thaler and Sunstein's book Nudge). In the Save More Tomorrow program, individuals commit that at each of their next 4 or 5 pay raises they'll increase the percentage of their income that gets put in to their 401(k). In this way, the individual doesn't have to see his (nominal) paycheck reduced at all, but he'll automatically start saving more for retirement. The key here is that the individual is committing his future self to doing what his present self isn't willing to do.

It seems to me that congress could do something along those same lines. That is, they could enact legislation that goes in to effect sometime in the future. For example, they could vote to raise taxes in 5 years, rather than right now. Voters that are hyperbolic discounters will applaud this action, recognizing that we need to raise taxes and balance the budget, even though they aren't willing to pay more in taxes today. For lack of a better term, I'll call this "post-dated" legislation.

Post-dated legislation would force congress to take a long-term view. They would have to do what they think is right for the country in the long-term, rather than pander to what their hyperbolic-discounting voter base wants them to do this year in order to get re-elected. Of course, we can have serious disagreements about what is best for the country in the long run, but at least we are arguing about what really matters when we do that.

A side-benefit is that post-dated legislation gives everyone plenty of time to prepare for the changes to occur. If I know that taxes are going up in five years, that should be plenty of time for me to prepare for that change so that it's not a huge problem for me. Now, whether I do that or not might be a different story, but it at least gives everyone a better chance to adjust to changes more gradually.

A major issue with post-dated legislation is that it would have to be completely binding in order to be effective. If there was any kind of a loophole, then when the time came to actually raise taxes, for example, it seems likely that congress would just use that loophole to avoid the issue. In other words, there needs to be a strong commitment device. However, legislation that is completely binding is by definition completely un-flexible. Post-dated legislation would do a very poor job of handling emergencies or special circumstances. For example, we could commit to reduce the defense budget by 20% in ten years, but what if we end up in a major war ten years from now? Post-dated legislation that is completely binding would force the budget to be reduced by 20% regardless of whether we're in a war or not, but if it's not fully binding one worries that congress will wriggle out of it somehow when that's not the optimal thing to do.

One way around this would be to make the legislation contingent on the state of the world. For example, we'll raise taxes by 5% in 5 years if the unemployment rate is below 7%, but it if is above 7% we won't raise taxes. Conditioning post-dated legislation in this way would allow it to be both flexible to specific circumstances, but completely binding (as long as you don't condition on something that congress can change). It might be very difficult to find conditions for all types of legislation, but for many of them I think it could be done.

So, there you have it: My proposal to change the world. I realize that there are lots of flaws in it, and it wouldn't work for everything, but I think the basic idea would be an improvement on our current situation. What do you think? Could some version of this idea ever work?

Christmas Eve

Nativity, read by Henry, accompanied by Ben, and "acted out" by Ellis

Testimony time (naturally, Ellis' favorite!)

Family picture, with one stubborn boy doing his own thing :)

Ready for bed!

This picture reminds me of Ellis' quote of the week. One night he just started saying, "boys, Boys, BOYS, BOYS!, BOYS!!!" and then when he had all of our attention, he finished with "Let's love each other!" I have no idea where this quote came from (Me? I don't think so. President Monson? Not that I can remember). But it has come in handy to repeat the quote whenever the boys start fighting. "Boys, boys boys! Let's love each other!" They really do love each other, and they are starting to play together and enjoy each other a lot more, which is SO much fun.

Santa's Workshop

Fridays are the highlight of Ellis' week. After dropping Henry off at Joy School Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, we finally get to drop Ellis off at a fun place on Fridays! We've just been doing a little drop-off playgroup with two other boys, which Ellis has decided to call "Ellis' Joy School." The three little boys are so cute -- they play, have snacks, do activities, and my favorite -- group potty training time where they all watch Jake and his mad potty skills and then the other two get to try standing at the toilet. Good times!

The first time we had Ellis' Joy School at our house, I was talking with Ellis about it the night before. His face just lit up, and I could tell that this second child -- the hand-me-down boy who always gets to watch Henry do all the fun stuff -- was SO excited. He got a big grin on his face, shrugged his shoulders, and said, "I am so . . . pwoud!" Who wouldn't be proud of having such a special place to go every week?

So these adorable pics are of the last playgroup we had at our house. We had a few Christmassy activities, the best one being "Santa's Workshop." The boys got to be little elves in the workshop, helping Santa test out the toys. They each diligently did their testing job, until the bell rang and they passed their toys around to be tested by another elf. I just thought they looked so irresistible in their little red hats!

Jake

Ellis

Dominic

Conference Obsession Continues

Well, it's been about six weeks since my first post about Ellis' interest in General Conference. I remember putting up the post promptly because I was pretty sure the phase would pass in less than a week, and then he would go back to watching Diego or Thomas or "Buzz and Woody Show." I never would have guessed that six weeks later, his obsession with Conference, prophets, and all things holy would be going in full force. Well, here we are, end of December, and our home is just swirling with the excitement and thrill of the general authorities. Let me elaborate.

Shortly after my previous Conference post, we discovered General Conference Highlights on YouTube. In roughly 15 minutes, it shows just a little excerpt from each member of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve from the last Conference. This was a great discovery for Ellis, because it would hold his attention, and we didn't have to switch to a different apostle after a minute or two. Here he is in the early stages of watching this clip for his lunch and dinner entertainment:

After watching this for a week or so, Ellis had all of the "Elders" and "Presents" names memorized, and then he got so that he could identify them by voice before their faces even popped up on the video clip. Soon he started memorizing parts of some of his favorite talks, and then he would get really excited when they would say his favorite parts. "Present Monson said, 'Young Men!!!!'"

One night Ellis was helping Ben with the dishes, and as he was standing by the sink, contemplatively looking at the soap bubbles, he quietly whispered, "My joy is full." What, Ellis? What did you just say? He confirmed by saying it louder, "My joy is FULL!" We laughed so hard that he realized it was funny, and "My joy is full" has become the standard way of expressing happiness in our household for the last month.

So some little kids are obsessed with balls or trucks or dinosaurs. Others love a certain TV show or book. I think it's pretty normal for two-year-olds to be obsessed with something -- to act out favorite characters, insist on the same movie over and over, or get excited about the same things repeatedly. I remember when Henry was two years old and SO obsessed with cars and really anything with wheels. He never wanted to do anything else. He would blow us away when he recognized things like "giant excavator" and "articulated dump truck." So I feel like Ellis' behavior must be fairly typical for a 2-year-old. It's just so CRAZY that he has chosen to be obsessed with men aged 70+ who stand and give sermons in a microphone. Don't get me wrong -- I truly love President Monson and the apostles, and I believe their words to be true and revelatory and life-changing. But I've never heard of a toddler who would choose them for his super-heroes. Please tell me if you see this as reason to worry for any reason. Meanwhile, I'm getting a kick out of this boy:

Isn't he irresistible? This is him in his "Present Oofdorf" outfit. He LOVES wearing a tie to church and looking like an apostle.

Ellis loves to play pretend . . . and recently his favorite thing to pretend is that he is "Present Monson." Tonight he INSISTED that we call him "Present Monson," and if we forgot, he reminded us -- every time! He would do almost anything we asked him if we called him President Monson. Ben was "Present Oofdorf," and Henry was -- of course -- "Henry B. Eyring." [Tonight, this made for a very interesting game of "Star Killers" (Henry's choice). We had President Monson playing the imaginary piano while President Uchtdorf sent missiles toward the stars that were trying to attack our spaceship; meanwhile, Captain Henry B. Eyring led the way and sent out forcefields to block off the aliens].

I think part of the reason for Ellis' obsession has to do with his passion for microphones. Pretty much anything (a broken wheel from a toy car, a drumstick, a jingle bell, a cabinet child-lock) can become a microphone, with a little imagination. Ellis is constantly walking around the house, talking into his microphone, just like his heroes. He bears his testimony; he gives talks; he asks people to raise their hands; he says "Amen" and insists that everyone else say it too. He also blesses the Sacrament, which we've been trying to stop him from doing because it seems a bit irreverent, but we really have a hard time stopping him. He is constantly turning the time over to each of us to talk into the microphone. If we don't start our remarks with "Brothers and Sisters," he corrects us. If we don't end with "Amen," we get reprimanded. And if we call him Ellis when he clearly stated that he is "Present Monson," that is the end of it!

This picture shows Ellis with the "Conference Train" that we had out in October when we watched General Conference. We kept it up on the wall for a couple of months because Ellis loved it so much, and he was always asking us to identify the faces on the train. One day he discovered that he could reach the pictures of the "guys," and he took off the picture of Sister Rosemary Wixom (Gen. Primary President). He ran around the house cackling, saying, "I got Wixom!!!" in a gravely voice. He laughed and got quite a kick out of this. It was serendipitous that he chose "Wixom," because I happened to meet her two days later at a Primary training and got to relay to her the story about her biggest 2-year-old fan. She was pretty touched! Here's the cell phone pic I got to prove to Ellis how cool I am. I met Wixom!!!

The most recent development is that this week Ellis discovered the picture of the Latter-day prophets in our Gospel Art Kit. He naturally wanted to know all of their names, and that resulted in me singing the "Latter-day Prophets" song about 50 times a day. He was immediately struck by these guys and soon started asking (just about every 30 seconds for 5 hours) to watch Howard W. Hunter on the computer. Thank Heaven for YouTube. We found testimonies of President Hunter as well as Heber J. Grant, Brigham Young, and the rest of them. We found a video someone made about the Latter-day Prophets Song. We found that silly video someone made to the tune of that Beverly Hillbillies song identifying the current 12 apostles. All of these have been hits this week!

This morning I captured Ellis singing the Latter-day Prophets song all by himself. I think this is adorable. You really should watch this one, keeping in mind that Ellis' L's all sound like N's, and he drops a lot of S's.

Isn't he just the most precious boy ever? I know that his "righteous" streak may not last forever, so I'm just soaking this up while I can. Then someday I can remind him of the times that he

* asked for his "Pwofets" as soon as he woke up so he could carry their pictures around the house all day.

* volunteered to say the prayer EVERY single time we had a family prayer or blessing on the food.

* sometimes said prayers in the middle of conversations, totally unprompted, for no particular reason.

* watched the entire Christmas devotional from start to finish 5 times in the same week.

* chose "Latter-day Prophets" for both his bedtime story AND bedtime song.

* said, " . . . and I nuv Jesus!" completely out of the blue several times a week.

What can I say? I nuv this boy!!!

Henry's Freeze Party!

Henry came up for the idea for his birthday party 100% on his own this year. One day we were driving in the car, and he said, "For my birthday, I want to have a FREEZE party, and everything will have something to do with cold and frozen stuff." At first Ben and I were scoffing at the idea, but as the details came out, and as we brainstormed some extra ideas together, we started to think that it might actually work. Jiggler ice cubes? Frozen dinners? Games centered around snow and "arctic animals" (Henry's phrase)? It worked for me!

Especially when we found the idea for these snowball cake pops. Irresistible!

Paper snowball fight

Cute kids lined up to catch marshmallow snowballs in their mouths

The winter gloves/candy bar/dice game

Freeze dancing - probably the highlight for most of the kids

Cake pop time!

The true creative genius behind the party, the five-year-old himself, HENRY!

Ava approves of the red velvet inside her cake pop.

Ellis is still thinking about it (but he did go for thirds, so eventually he approved).

What's a freeze party without ice cream? I'm starting to realize that pretty much everything about this party revolved around sugar . . .

All lined up in their snowflake and snowman glasses, ready to watch a blue version of the penguin clay-mation movie Ben found on Netflix at the last minute when Ice Age didn't work out (the kids actually LOVED Pingu though).

My two handsome guys demonstrating their penguin crafts the morning after the party.

With 12 kids of all ages for 3 1/2 hours (we combined the party with our regular babysitting night), Ben and I were pretty exhausted by the end of this party, but it was fun to see Henry's wildest dreams come true. He's a pretty special guy.

Five Years

Can you believe my sweet Henry is five already? I jogged past the elementary school a few weeks ago and just cried when I saw moms dropping off their little ones. Luckily we still have 9 months before we have to face kindergarten, but still -- just knowing he's old enough to leave me and start his own "real" life is killing me.

His birthday fell on Thanksgiving weekend, so he was lucky enough to celebrate with cousins. I didn't take any other pictures of the holiday weekend, but it was so wonderful to be with family. We spent a whole week on vacation because Ben had the flexibility this year. The result: two long driving days to VA, but very light traffic and no swine flu this year. We can't complain!

Henry's Fossilized Marshmallow

By Grandma's request, I'm finally doing another Henry post. While his younger brother is making us laugh, Henry is confounding us on a regular basis. Every day he increases my understanding of how all those boys in elementary school already knew EVERYTHING about science, animals, volcanoes, dinosaurs, etc. before we ever learned about them in school. Boys like Henry CRAVE nonfiction books and can't wait to learn more and more about all that crazy stuff.

We recently got a great book from the library called One Million Things: Planet Earth. Henry would look at this for hours and hours at a time and run back and forth to wherever I was, reporting his latest find. "Mom, did you know that there are palm trees on the western coast of Scotland?"

During the six weeks we had this book from the library, Henry was also lucky enough to find this "fossilized marshmallow" in our backyard.

What a discovery! Who knew our backyard was such a treasure trove?

The next awesome book we found from the library was Animals: a Visual Encyclopedia. If you want to catch a glimpse of Henry's excitement about this book, watch this clip:

Henry Reads about Animals from Ben and Jenn on Vimeo.

This kid knows more than I do about . . . pretty much everything.

We had to renew this book after our six-week stint, because Henry wasn't ready to let go of it. It's too exciting! "Mom, did you know that only one kind of tortoise is endangered, but NONE of the turtles are endangered? BUT some of their numbers are declining . . ."

We brought this book with us on our Thanksgiving road trip, and Henry spent over 2 1/2 hours reading it. Literally. He started at 7:45 and finished the book around 10:30. And then he turned back to the beginning and started reading it again. This kid, I tell you, may not actually be my child. Okay, so when you look at his face, you can't deny that he's mine. But his brain must be directly from B.E.N.

Iverson Day!

We celebrated our 7th anniversary on Sunday. Ben and I had a nice date on Saturday night . . . but we are starting to feel like there is now even more to celebrate as we commemorate our wedding day. We wanted to celebrate the day the Iverson Family was born! Hence, Iverson Day -- our new family holiday. The festivities included watching the "Mommy Daddy Show" (our wedding video), as well as:

a candlelight dinner with sparkling grape juice

cute boys in fancy clothes

Strict adherence to one of our favorite family rules: Rule #28: There's always a beater for everyone!

Did you know that one of our favorite newlywed memories is the night we had frosting and graham crackers for dinner?

Did you also know that one of our other family rules is: Rule #3: You can eat as much cookie dough as you want. ? Go on and judge me or worry about my children and the worms that will grow in their stomachs. I still think it's a good rule.

That's not to say that I remind the boys about the rule on a regular basis . . .

Raking and Leaf Jumping