Moxie: Planning ahead

Highly Recommended

Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi: The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke
Reading this book explained a whole lot of things about why so many families I know are struggling financially, even though we don't spend extravagantly. Simultaneously enlightening and nauseating.
Elizabeth Warren: All Your Worth : The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan
If other personal finance books have frustrated you because they assume you have money to invest and you don't even have enough money to buy a large coffee, this is the personal finance book for you. Reading this book showed me that it's not that I waste money on stupid things--it's that our basic expenses are too high to begin with. Reading this book is the end of financial guilt and the beginning of getting out of the hole.
Adele Faber: Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too
Lots of great ideas to think about and put into practice about not assigning your kids roles and how to approach fights. Also goes over some of the stuff from the How to Talk So Kids Will Listen book about making kids feel understood. Because, really, that's all anyone wants--to be understood. And kids are people, too.
Anne Lamott: Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
Just perfect. A beautiful, funny, sad, accurate account of what the first days, weeks, and months with a baby are like. This is exactly what your journal would be, if you could write as well as she does.
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc: Random Family : Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx
LeBlanc's writing and pacing makes you want to keep reading despite the tragic story. Think you have an informed opinion about welfare reform and how to strengthen families in this country? Not until you've read this book.
John Taylor Gatto: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
This is the red pill. Don't read it if you want to stay comfortable with the American school system. Gatto goes into why government-owned schools were created and the things they actually teach us.
Ellis Avery: The Smoke Week: September 11-21, 2001
If you have any curiosity about what it was like for New Yorkers during the World Trade Center attacks, this is the book to read. A brilliant, crystalline, spot-on memoir of the week or so after the attacks, this book is an ode to New Yorkers. Realistic, clean, and completely un-maudlin, it's just the story of what it was like for us. This is what should go into a time capsule to represent September 2001.

Planning ahead

We interrupt the ongoing discussion of my full-body breakdown to relay the following Cute Kid Story:

Me: What do you think you're going to want to be for Halloween?
El Chico: A race car driver.
Me: Not Bob the Builder? Last year you said you wanted to be Bob this year.
El C: No. I want to be a race car driver, and drive a pretend race car instead of my bike.
Me: Oooh, maybe we can use cardboard to make your bike look like a race car, so you can ride your bike, but it'll look like you're driving a race car.
El C: Yes! I want to turn my bike into a red race car!
Me: What do you think El Pequeño should be for Halloween?
El C: A baby kangaroo.

OK then.

August 23, 2006 | Permalink

Comments

oooh, a race car!

El P should have been a baby kangaroo last year when he was small enough to be in a front carry in a sling :-)

Posted by: Kate | August 23, 2006 at 08:38 AM

I love conversations with 4-year olds -- they are so sincere, and they are seldom at a loss for an answer!! Baby kangaroo huh? why not!!!!

Posted by: Kathy B. | August 23, 2006 at 05:27 PM

He has obviously been giving this some thought! I think with P. we are still at the "I have to be a princess all the time" stage. We'll see what she thinks the baby should be at its first Halloween! I suppose in her defense, she's only been a princess once so far, so she has a few more coming to her before we get totally bored of the idea.

Posted by: Elise | August 23, 2006 at 09:33 PM

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