Lain likes bananas. Only so much, though. She enjoys so much of a banana, then she really enjoys giving the rest to the dog and watching us scramble to prevent that from happening.

She likes apples. Only so much, though. She enjoys the first ten bites, and then she enjoys getting another apple.

The end result of all of this being I end up eating a lot more fruit than I used to.

She likes eggs sometimes. Other times, she does not want eggs and is offended at the very notion that I would try to put them in her mouth.

The end result of that being that I eat a fair amount of eggs, too. Smoke’em if you got’em, I guess.

James Joyner and Allison Slater Tate write about parenting as a Generation X’er, mostly in the context of being the last generation raised in the pre-Internet era:

It struck me recently, after one of my quiet carpool rides, that my generation of parents – we of the soon-to-be or recently 40 year old Gen X variety, the former latchkey children of the Cold War and an MTV that actually played videos, former Atari-owners who were raised by the the Cosby Show and John Hughes, graduated high school with the kids from 90210, then lumbered through our 20s with Rachel, Ross, Chandler, Monica, Phoebe, and Joey and flip phones – is perhaps the last to straddle a life experience both with and without the Internet and all its social media marvels. After all, I didn’t even learn to use e-mail until I was 19 and a sophomore in college in 1993, and only for a slightly cringe-worthy reason: a cute boy at another college asked me to e-mail him.

My generation, it seems, had the last of the truly low-tech childhoods, and now we are among the first of the truly high-tech parents.

My formative years were truly right on the cusp of the Internet age, falling just before it. I didn’t have reliable, worthwhile Internet access until I got to Southern Tech. I did have BBSes, of course, which mattered a great deal at the time as I got to experience some of the social aspect of the Internet.

What I didn’t get to experience, though, was everything else. Some of which will actually be kind of hard to convey to Lain and future siblings. Much of the awesomeness of the Internet involves relatively small shifts between things that were already occurring. Before there was online shopping, there was mail order. And Lain will shop.

The truly big thing that the Internet brought is having a world of fact at our fingertips. It’s possible, and true, to talk about how the Internet has allowed us to live in fact-starved cocoons where the reality of politics, science, and religion is more or less choose-your-own-adventure, but scratch just below that surface and ponder how amazing it is to want to know something and be able to pretty immediately look it up the vast majority of the time. Remember what life was like before that? It was like this:

Argument About Capital Of Australia Occurs 10 Feet From Encyclopedia

ORD, NE— Brothers Jeff and Adam Clink spent 20 minutes fiercely debating the capital of Australia while standing 10 feet from the family’s World Book encyclopedia Monday. “You’re high,” Jeff, 18, told Adam. “It’s Sydney.” Adam, who said he is “99.99 percent sure” that Melbourne is the capital, conceded that one city might be the capital of the Australian continent and the other the capital of the nation.

It’s not that you couldn’t get the answers to such things. It’s that you rarely did, if it wasn’t particularly important. One of my favorite phrases is “There’s no reason not to know when you’re holding a smartphone” and I will frequently look up points of uncertainty in the middle of group conversations. Or if someone says something that sounds not quite right, I can look it up and correct later.

And Lain will, of course, take that almost entirely for granted. And it’ll be hard to explain how it used to be that if someone was bullspitting around, you more or less had to either shrug it off or debate it to a lack of conclusion. Like the capital of Australia was a choose-your-own-adventure political disagreement.

Of course, some of the changes are a bit disconcerting. I’d more or less figured out how we were going to handle kids and TV time. I figured this out before it became apparent that ultimately they’d be watching TV on their phones. Now I’m back to square one, without a clue as to what to do. It used to be a simple matter of not allowing them to have a TV in their bedroom, or a video game console in their bedroom or in the house. Now? Well, it’s hard to make it so that they have a world of information at their fingertips and not the ability to watch their favorite TV show.

And at some point, they won’t even need a device because it’ll be in their contact lens. But that’s a problem Lain will have to deal with if she has children.

In the old days, like the 1990s, if you wanted to raise money for an individual you had to either go person-to-person, or get a sympathetic reporter to do a story on you. I was a real Ebenezer Scrooge about those stories in my reporter days. I mean, if some family’s home got burned out, I was all over it. But stuff like college tuition or kids wanting to play soccer in Israel? Forget it. Like, one time we got a call from a “family friend” wanting us to do a story so people would give money to this girl who got into Harvard, but couldn’t afford to go there. No way, I told the editor. You think I didn’t get into places I couldn’t afford to go? I had to LIVE AT HOME during college! F**k her!

And even if you did do a story, there was no guarantee anyone would shell out. It was unpredictable. My story about that poor burned-out family attracted zilch. But someone did a story about a kid who supposedly saved his little brother from choking on a French fry (all entirely according to the family, who called in requesting the story), and some local business paid for them all to go to Disneyland.

Now sob stories are everywhere on news sites and blogs with little or no investigation — but always with links to a funding site. You get some presentable, charming kid like Griffin Furlong, who has a pretty blond girlfriend and a GoFundMe titled “Homeless Valedictorian: College Fund” (he hasn’t actually been homeless since he was 8 or 9, and he actually lives with his aunt and uncle or maybe grandmother, the details differ among stories), who managed to attract interest from feel-good outlets such as HuffPo and People and Diply. So far, he’s collected nearly $110,000 with no strings attached. As a reward for saying he’s poor, he now gets to be rich.

I guess you can’t blame people for trying after seeing that. I’ve been on Facebook for six years, and until recently, I’d only been asked for money once: for funeral expenses. A former classmate died of cancer, leaving three young children. I kicked in, using a Paypal account another alumna set up. That was three years ago.

Within the past several weeks, the requests have multiplied. And they’re getting — in my opinion — progressively less worthy. They’re not made personally. They come from crowdfunding sites such as GoFundMe.com, one of the main offenders.

The ones I gave to: 1) 3-D printer for science class at my kid’s school. 2) Classmate’s son’s Eagle Scout project, something about school supplies for poor kids. See, these are the causes I think of as classic fundraiser material.

One I ignored: Former classmate’s kid wanted to go to Africa for the summer to help some wild animal foundation. That’s nice, but don’t we all? I guess the charity part comes in with the non-profit foundation, so really it’s like a modern version of missionary work, only without the restrictions on sex and drinking.

One I’m on the fence about: Friend of a friend wants help with legal fees for a family law case. It involved a relative getting temporary custody of a mom’s kid, then moving away and leaving no forwarding address despite the court order. It’s believable because I’ve seen it happen. It’s stretching my usual views of the purpose of fundraising, but I sympathize. Then again, I don’t know the people.

This one made me feel a little uneasy: Single mom seeking donations so that she can bring her father from Cuba to meet his grandson. I mean, I feel bad she never got to meet her dad in person. But passing the hat to acquaintances to fund a trip? I couldn’t do it.

And here’s the one that really got me: Wine bar operator raising funds to expand the restaurant in her wine bar. Her justification seems to be that her business will be good for the community, and she promises to help promote worthy local causes, so therefore her endeavor is worthy of charity. If you donate a certain amount, she’ll provide you with free life coaching geared toward building your dreams. Her coaching philosophy appears based upon The Law of Attraction, you know, where if you visualize money, the power of your thoughts attracts money to you. If that’s true, I don’t see why she’d need crowdfunding.

The Internet connection has been absolutely rotten lately. So much so that despite the fact that we’re paying $70 a month for Internet, we’ve been hobbling along by periodically hotspotting my phone and connecting through that.

I’m running through my checklist of things to do before contacting Comcast about the problem. I figured it was one of three things: My router, the cable modem, or something on their end. The most obvious thing to do is replace the router. I’ve gone through three routers or so in the last six years, which is pretty crazy. They gradually lose signal strength until I just can’t use them anymore reliably. But the current one’s predecessor would at least give me an idea of where the problem lies. If only I knew where it was. A lot of my computer stuff is still in boxes. Most of it open as I do my giant sorting of stuff and throwing away stuff I don’t need anymore (not to self, scratch “previous router” off that list).

While in the area, I decided that I wanted to clear the way to the utility room. The big obstacle being the paper shredder which the baby loves to knock over. So I took that and put it on some box, and preceded to look for the router.

An hour later, I found out which box it was in. Want to take a guess?

The OrdTimers are debating the recent trend of more and more retailers being open on Thanksgiving.

The thing is that I went to the local supermarket today and picked up our Thanksgiving Feast. A chicken, some turkey, potato salad, bread, mayo, pimento spread, and on and on. Before long we’re probably going to do it the old fashioned way by making our own, but we’re not quite there yet. And while I am sorry for those who have to work and don’t want to, it’s a real convenience being able to roll up there on Turkey Day and get everything. And, while I am there, baby oatmeal.

This is slightly different than what is being complained about, which is the shifting of Black Friday to Thanksgiving Day itself.

Unlike many in my cohort who either like shopping or hate Black Friday, I have no problem Black Friday but wouldn’t be caught dead at one of those sales. The prospect of going on one of those sprees makes the hair on my arm stand up. I don’t like shopping on good days, unless it’s for one of a few narrow areas of interest. And yet, I think Black Friday is fine for those who enjoy the experience. For those who take pride in the Good Deal. People who actually enjoy the chaos of it all. That’s not me, but it’s some people.

I remember when the Playstation 2 came out, my friends and I formed a party and went from one retailer to another trying to find a place that had it. We had no luck, but it was fun as all getout. I wanted one of those things, but I mostly enjoyed being on a mission with friends.

As y’all know, I’m an Android guy and not an iPhone guy. A lot of Android guys make fun of Applytes and their tendency to form camp out lines so that they can be the first to have a new iPhone or Apple product. I admit that I roll my eyes at them, but I kind of thing I am wrong to do so. For them, I’d imagine that it’s like the Playstation 2. You’re an enthusiast waiting in line with a bunch of other enthusiasts. I can imagine worse things.

But the movement onto Thanksgiving Day I see as more problematic. Mostly because, unlike Black Friday which would be a day without meaning save for the day that comes before it and that a lot of people get the day off, Thanksgiving Day is already its own thing and this is trampling on it. I honestly don’t even think that any specific retailer wants to trample on it. It’s a collective action problem. If Retailer A is closed on Thanksgiving and Retailer B is not, then Retailer B gets the sales. If both are closed, then everybody waits for Friday and no damage is done. In fact, Black Friday might even be better because people won’t cut their shopping trips short in order to get back home with their families. The only way this calculus is wrong is if everybody who does such things goes shopping both days and so they shop more and spend more. In which case, Retailer A could maybe wait until Friday anyway.

But I’m glad the local supermarket was open. For situations like Murali’s, I think it’s good to have some restaurants open as well. But not every place needs to be open, and when employees are overwhelmingly against the idea, it’s not a bad idea to consider that.

When Lain was born, our parents chipped in and bought us a pretty nice crib from Graco. During the process of moving from House #1 to House #2, the screws to said crib got misplaced. Since we weren’t going to stay in House #2 for very long, we didn’t really sweat it. Our first house here in Queenland, on the other hand, we will be in for at least a year and perhaps longer. Plus, baby turned 1 a few days ago and we’re going to need to start moving her over to her own bedroom instead of the playpen/nap-pen by our bed.

The screws hadn’t turned up, so I contacted Graco. Graco, in turn, said that even though it carried their brand name, they didn’t actually make the crib and instead it was made by a company called LaJobi. LaJobi couldn’t help me until I tracked down some information from the crib. That took a while because the crib was still in a mountain of boxes. When I finally did, they told me to call them.

Here is how I think the conversation went: I told them that I would like to purchase a screw set for the crib. They said “Let’s check and see if we have that in stock” which they did. They took my credit card information for the $35 the screws would cost.

I hadn’t asked how long it would take it to arrive, so I decided to give them the 6-8 weeks I consider to be the maximum. That came and went, and it still hadn’t arrived. I called them back to find out that this is how they thought the conversation went: I told them that I would like to purchase a screw set for the crib. They said “Let’s check and see if we have that in stock” which they did not as it was on back order. They may or may not have taken my credit card information, but they delete credit card information after 24 hours. I went back and looked and sure enough, the $35 had never been charged.

Basically, they said that the interaction was put into their system as a backorder. did I misunderstand them? It’s possible, though I am sure they took my credit card information and I certainly left the conversation thinking that my screws would be on their way. Anyway, they said that the screws were still on back order. However, they would open a new crib box with a set of screws and send that to me, since I had been waiting so long.

I was really impressed that they would do that, since that would mean that they couldn’t sell the crib from which they got the screws until they got more screws in. I almost felt bad since apparently this particular set of screws is such a hot commodity. And since it was our own fault for losing the screws in the first place. I was very appreciative, gave them my credit card number, and then waited the 7-10 business days it would take for them to get the screws to me.

Then, nothing. And I check my records, and once again we were never charged.

Now, as I say, it’s my own darn fault for not keeping track of the screws during the move. Neither Graco nor LaJobi have any obligation to offer replacement parts. But it’s been three months since they first (I am pretty sure) said that I would be getting the screws. If they can’t replace the parts, I wish they would have just said so and we could have made plans accordingly, instead of planning for the arrival of the screws.

In the end, it worked out. Over last weekend, when I was waiting to call LaJobi back and giving them a piece of my mind, the screws magically turned up. It’s possible that had LaJobi been straight with me, I would have purchased a new crib by now. It’s also possible that I would have gone on a blitz and located them. I can’t even boycott LaJobi going forward since we didn’t intentionally buy their product in the first place. We own a lot of Graco products and I had previously looked at their brand favorably. While they weren’t the ones that gave us the runaround, though, they contracted with the ones who did and that makes me less likely to buy their products in the future.

On the other hand, I will say these two things for LaJobi: First, the crib is pretty awesome. Good work on that. Second, the LaJobi people were very polite and pleasant and had they not been telling me things that were not true, I am big into customer service and the customer service would have had me buying LaJobi in the future.

Back when I was in high school, I used to carry a massively heavy bookbag. I can’t remember how much it weighed, but it had the books for all of my classes in it. I never used my locker. It was a pain, but no less a pain than having to make trips to my locker in our sprawling high school.

It wasn’t until I saw myself on campus news that I saw the problem. I looked terrible carrying it. I loved the utility of it, but I was wading through the hallway hunched over in a way that accentuated my weight (which, by that point, wasn’t all that bad, but made all the worse by my posture). I bought a reasonably-sized bookbag the following week. I immediately started getting compliments. Only some actually pointed to the bag. With a couple of girls (and this was important), it was “You look different, Will.”

I bring that up as a reference point. I’m big on big bags, by nature. Even if it’s forty pounds and I can’t carry it upright. I overpack on trips. It’s a character flaw trait.

Shortly before Lain was born, I purchased a new dufflebag to replace the one I had recently purchased where the shoulder strap had snapped (because, ta-da, I was putting too much in it). Anyhow, I had purchased the wrong size of bag. It wasn’t nearly big enough. Then Lain was born and I looked at it and saw “Hey, this is the perfect diaper bag. It has pockets for everything and I can fit sooooo much inside it. Diapers. Clancy’s breastfeeding stuff. Bum cream. A changing pad. With room to spare!

Clancy and I have been playing tug-of-war ever since. She keeps taking what little we need and putting it in a smaller bag. Then, when I am taking Lain somewhere, I move it all to the bigger bag. I think her bag is too small and not nearly comprehensive enough. She thinks my bag is cumbersome and overkill whenever something smaller would do.

But seriously, why go smaller when you can have something bigger? It’s not even affecting my posture!

Amanda Marcotte says thus:

I think Goodman actually happened on a couple that’s a great illustration of another, more real phenomenon, which is the impact marriage has on women’s voting patterns. We know that married women are far more conservative voters than unmarried women, and we also know that single men are more conservative generally than single women. One part of this, therefore, might be that in the battle over whose values are going to “win” in a relationship, men tend to dominate and that women are adopting their husbands’ political views alongside taking their husbands’ names. The woman Goodman profiles openly admits that her husband’s views have persuaded her over to the dark side. Since women her age aren’t liberals who married libertarians, I question using her as an example of anything typical to young voters today, much less young female voters who we can still say confidently will turn out in greater numbers at the polls than young men their age.

I was actually thinking about the bolded part the other day. It’s commonly known that married women – and mothers in marriages – tend to be more conservative than single women. It’s hard, however, to tease out why. Some of it would be self-selection, conservative women being more likely to marry and all. There is also the conservatism that more generally occurs with marriage and family, the change of worldview and all that. There are people like my sister-in-law who start attending church when they have kids and religiosity coincides with conservatism.

But I think that there is also what Marcotte herself is observing. It’s something I have noticed in my peers. More have shifted to the left, but those who have shifted to the right are Julianne (who is single) and women who have married more conservative men. My ex-roommate’s wife went from apolitical to his liberalish political preferences almost immediately. I can only think of one case, really, where there as a husband interest piqued or whose politics shifted due to that of his wife.

The real way to test it, though, is to look at what happens when a liberal man marries a conservative woman. Who typically “wins” when there is a winner? If it’s the man, then you’ve really made your case since that accounts for most variables.

In the Himmelreich-Truman household, it’s been… interesting. We were both right of center when we met (indeed, we met through a mutual friend who is a Republican activist), though not necessarily for the same reasons. I am a bit wonky and she is more of an intuitive voter. Over time, we’ve both moved at least somewhat to the left, though there again moving for somewhat different reasons (excluding the gay marriage factor, which we both adamantly support and which is becoming much more of a forefront issue). It may not be a coincidence that we are both looking at the real possibility of not voting for the GOP nominee for the first time in over a decade (well, ever for her – I voted for Clinton).

I could have told them this for free:

A sample of 477 commercials featuring domestic chores that aired in a week of primetime television programming on all of the broadcast networks was analyzed. Among the key findings: Male characters’ performance of chores was often humorously inept as measured by negative responses from others, lack of success, and unsatisfactory outcomes.

It makes a good point that the result of these ads, other than to elicit a laugh and poke fun at men, is to reinforce stereotypes. I’ve mentioned this before in the past, but there are reasons that women should be wary of this sort of thing as well as men. Men do not like doing things we are not good at. The notion that we will fail, that our wives will roll their eyes at us, and so on, discourages us from trying.

Of course, it works out for me. I score major points with Clancy for my willingness to try to do the household chores. And I told her early on – and she completely understood – that while pointing out how I might do better is welcome, being critical in any sort of harsh way is a good way to get me to give up and stop doing it. And Clancy is great about this. I think that sometimes women forget this.

Mamapundit raises objection to a proposed Florida law grading parents as well as the kids. She comments thusly:

Parental involvement in children’s education is important, yes. However, the expectations of parents (read: mothers) in this regard have become increasingly burdensome in recent decades. When I was a third grader, my parents helped me with big projects, and they occasionally attended a school function. Today, however, “good” parents are expected to make involvement with their children’s school and classroom a kind of second job. I see many moms who volunteer at school several days per week. When they aren’t actually AT the school, they are selling candy bars and wrapping paper to raise money for the school. These moms know more about the minutiae of their kids’ classwork than the kids themselves, and they expect to spend hours each night sitting next to their children as they complete their homework. Prep for a school project – like the annual science fair – is a major family undertaking requiring intensive maternal involvement at every turn, as well as expensive and fancy supplies.

Sometimes it really does feel like we live in two countries. As often as I hear complaints about this, I also hear complaints from others (including educators) about how school is viewed as daycare and it’s the lack of parental involvement that is to blame for our education system’s failures. While some of that is passing the buck (educators have an incentive for parents to be blamed) and some of it is smug superiority (parents have an incentive to feel superior to other parents and none of them are going to think that they are the problem, it still rings true. Perhaps by sheer repetition.

Granju, though, is making the other argument. Never has more been expected of parents. And you hear these complaints, too. So-called “helicopter parents.” Ironically, these complaints also come from educators, though more of the upper level variety. Perhaps some of this is coming from parents that are resentful about being “judged” by having a job and therefore not being willing to work for the school district 40 hours a week, there is an element of truth to it.

These two ideas are not mutually exclusive. It’s more than possible to have one set of parents that won’t let go and another set of parents that simply doesn’t have time to care. It does make it, however, difficult to really approach from any sort of policy or public meme perspective. Talk about how parents should be more involved, and it’s those that are already involved that are most likely to listen. Talk about how parents need to be more laid back, and those same parents are not going to want to sacrifice any perceived edge that their involvement gives their kids while others may (to the extent that they’re listening) take it as a pat on the back for doing something right (if only by default and circumstance).

What this gets me thinking about, though, is the degree to which, if this continues, it will further create a disparity (along economic lines) among the youth. Maybe not, if the helicoptering actually doesn’t do any good. In the Sigmoid view of the world, though, it’s that sort of hyperinvolvement that gets kids to do the right things to get into the right college and avoid the abject failure that occurs with regard to anybody that doesn’t go to an Ivy League (or perhaps Public Ivy) institution. As with most things, while dramatically overstated and false in scope, it’s hard to deny there being some truth there. You may not have to go to an Ivy League of Public Ivy, but it sure is helpful to have a degree of direction and if you go to a commoner university to get into the honors college or have a realistic game plan to get into a good field upon graduation.

I am an example of how having on-guard parents can make a real difference. Academically, I was headed absolutely nowhere until my parents put their foot down and my father watched over me to make sure that I was going what I needed to be doing. Had I been raised by another set of parents that didn’t do that, it’s likely I would have ended up a college dropout and in a much worse situation than I ended up in. Mom would later put the foot down when I started making noise about going to trade school instead of college. Well, she wouldn’t have stopped me, but she urged me strongly not to and had the moral authority for me to listen. On the other hand, in an alternative Sigmoidian view, my experience is irrelevant because the entirety of my failure or success is due to my genes.

Anyhow, all of this is the long way around saying that if competition between upper class (and upper middle class) parents has never been greater and more and more is expected of the parents, while it becomes increasingly common among working class families and below to let the school districts (inadequately) raise their children, this portends bad things for the future of equality. I know that this is hardly an original thought, but considering all of the objective factors that make it harder for people from poor families to get ahead, the consideration of the additional layers added by hyperparents who believe that their livelihood exists in the success of their parents and that State College is death, is pretty depressing.

On the other hand, Granju’s kids attend Episcopal schools, which are both private and Episcopalian. It’s not hard to imagine that her experiences are not universal. I went to a very strong public high school, which followed a moderately strong middle school, which followed a pretty strong elementary school. Past grade school, the expectation of parental involvement was pretty slight.