What Would Jesus Do????

After a rough week at work, I was elated to pick up dinner at the Curry House (Japanese Curry) on my way home.  I pulled up my car in the garage, ran upstairs and changed into my pajamas as fast as I could to eat my dinner while it was still warm.  After a couple of bites in relative calm, my younger one began belting out this undesirable tune (her new specialty) with a bucket of drool secreted by the end of this 5 star performance (she continued this stunt for the remainder of dinner, almost non-stop) -  Crank up your volume for max effect:

So while this music was playing in the background, the first thought that came to my mind was "What would Jesus do" if he were in this objectionable circumstance?

I got no ass left today!

Captain's log - Stardate 40622 (that date translates to today's date in MS Excel):

After the first few words out of my wife's mouth this morning, I knew my fate was sealed for the day, and I would have my ass handed to me in short order.  We had eaten beef carpaccio (raw, very thinly sliced beef) the night before.  I picked up the food from our favorite restaurant, Anjin, in Costa Mesa.  We were warned that we shouldn't let the carpaccio sit for too long as it would rapidly spoil.  So my wife threw up a few times in the middle of the night and was in no shape to contribute to taking care of our two rascals.  My only regret is that I didn't throw up alongside her; a rare opportunity to take advantage of food poisoning.

The first undesirable moment of the day came when my wife handed me our 10 month old for what I initially believed to be a routine diaper change.  As I opened her diaper, the abhorrent scene almost made me faint.  There was so much mashed poop there that my first thought was to call CDC's Bioterrorism Unit for assistance.  The severity level of this poop case was high enough to fill out a whole Target plastic bag.  What came out of our lil' Johanna was without a doubt weapons-grade material.

Then, as I was eating my breakfast near the poopinator in her Fisher-Price Jumperoo (pictured below), she drooled like a gallon of saliva while she was whining with her arms open to be picked up the whole time.  Don't be fooled by that smile.  That's after I flipped open my cell phone to take a picture of her.  She was just posing.

Now, what I'm dying to know is who was the genius who designed this process of baby conception, development and birth?  'Cause if babies were products manufactured in the private sector, we'd have 100% recalls and exchanges after exchanges after exchanges.  Even Hyundai didn't roll off this many substandard products from their assembly line during their early days.  Can you imagine dealing with a semi-intelligent robot who burps in front of people, pees, poops and throws up all over your house, car and clothes (and other people's too), screams for no apparent reason, wakes you up in the middle of the night just because, and falls back to sleep just as quickly?

Who decided that's how babies should be?  Why couldn't they just sit still for a few years, observe and learn the proper way to behave?  A simple fail safe line of code in my older daughter's brain could hit her brakes as soon as she's about to poke her little sister in the eye.  She would freeze on the spot and reboot with hopefully better execution.  But no, babies come loaded with malwares of the worst kind, so powerful it takes a good 30 years for all of their ill effects to subside, but even then some persist.

And to top it all off, as I was typing the last sentence of this log, my daughter who was sitting on our fabric couch next to me looked up and said "Pappa, I peed" (see video below).  And we still have a half day to go!

Is Happiness Overrated? - Who cares if we exaggerate the joys of parenthood?

According to a March 15^th, 2011 WSJ article titled “Is Happiness Overrated”, there are two kinds of happiness:

1.       Hedonic:   Short term and fleeting, triggered by temporary pleasurable experiences such as one’s favorite sports team performing well, watching a good movie, or eating a delicious meal.

2.       Eudaimonic:  Long lasting and associated with positive physical and psychological health.  Volunteering, going to medical school, and raising children are the types of activities that promote this kind of well being.  Living with a purpose, while not as pleasurable day to day, is better for the physical and mental state.  Wait… raising children gives a sense of fulfillment? 

The article I posted in the blog below, titled “Why we exaggerate the Joys of Parenthood” states unequivocally that people are worse off with children.  Ms. Carol Ryff who is a professor and director of the Institute on Aging at the University of Wisconsin says, “Sometimes things that really matter most are not conducive to short-term happiness."  Perhaps this statement best reconciles the contradicting statements on parenting.  As a parent, one’s short term happiness (Hedonic) declines while long term well being (Eudaimonic) improves.  Nevermind that earlier today while I was trying to unbuckle my 2 year old out of her car seat to have her ride ponies and trains she screamed like a banshee because her favorite shoes were not in sight.  In the long run, I will avoid early death and disease and have my risk of Alzheimer’s cut in half, except my hearing may be slightly impaired; a small sacrifice.

“Symptoms of depression, paranoia and psychopathology have increased among generations of American college students from 1938 to 2007, according to a statistical review published in 2010 in Clinical Psychology Review. Researchers at San Diego State University who conducted the analysis pointed to increasing cultural emphasis in the U.S. on materialism and status, which emphasize hedonic happiness, and decreasing attention to community and meaning in life, as possible explanations.”

However, let’s not forget that while money can't buy you happiness, it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.

Kids make parents delusional?

An article published in Time Magazine on Friday, March 4th, 2011 titled "Why we exaggerate the Joys of Parenthood" focused on the the results of a research paper published in the journal "Psychological Science".  The two authors of the study tested their theory of cognitive dissonance, which when applied to parenting states despite the emotional and financial drain from having kids, parents glorify their lives.... It turns out parents are in the grip of a giant illusion...."people are highly motivated to justify, deny or rationalize to reduce the cognitivie discomfort of holding conflicting ideas.  Cognitive dissonance explains why our feelings can sometimes be paradoxically worse when something good happens or paradoxically better when something bad happens."

As for my personal experience, I have wanted kids for as long as I can remember, and the experience of having two has not changed my mind about the matter.  If I were to do it over, I wouldn't have changed a thing, except, maybe have my kids a few years earlier.  Sure, my frustrations have grown from handling two little creatures with a development deficiency in the frontal lobe, but the older one, now almost three, is growing and learning quickly how to get what she wants in less painful, more subtle and thoughtful ways.  I wouldn't go as far as saying spending a day with my kids is more rewarding than other activities, especially when my older one keeps kicking the ball sideways towards the street rather than to me, which prompts me to sprint to stop her from running into the street after the ball.  I will consider the experience more rewarding as soon as she starts kicking the ball back to me, within one or two steps from where I'm standing, TOPS!

Ghetto Child Psychology - The Journal

The following ad-hoc recommendations are by no means scientific.  They have not emanated from published and peer reviewed studies in prestigious journals such as the “Annual Review of Psychology” or “Behavioral and Brain Science”.  They have evolved purely from my deficient cognitive process; one that is reactive and impulsive to day to day frustrations of parenting.  Some actions have resulted in adverse reactions, and I’ve included them in my “Ghetto Child Psychology” journal as well.  So it’s not all about do “A” and you will marvel at “B” the result.  Some are do “A” and you will forever regret “B” the result.  The purpose of this journal is to curb your child’s undesirable behavior (or yours), or instigate desirable behavior.

Here’s an example of a “gosh darn it, I wish I never would’ve done this to make my life miserable”:

Article 1:  As my two year old was regressing during her potty training, I decided to show her some of the poop she wasn’t supposed to do in her diaper.  We were using a diaper during her mid day nap and night time sleep.  She became so grossed out at the sight of her poop that she began refusing to poop in the toilet.  She was traumatized by the smell.  So it became an ordeal to have her poop in the toilet, constantly begging and cajoling her.  Now we have to use my Axe deodorant (Phoenix flavor) every time she poops, and I have become so traumatized by the association (Axe deodorant = poop) that I’ve stopped using it.

Article 2:  All parents have gone through and continue to experience this undesirable request from a child:  Very often, while we’re driving somewhere as a family, my 2 year old asks my wife in Swedish to play her Swedish CD filled with Swedish children’s songs that are sung by seemingly some of the most unprofessional singers.  We’re talking pitch problems all over the place.  So in the middle of enjoying Enrique Iglesias’ “Tonight”, I have to clench my teeth and let my daughter listen to her music.  Here’s a psychological resolutions to this undesirable situation.  (I figured this out on the fly today):  As I was listening to my song on the radio, my daughter made one of these party pooper requests.  So I kept my music cranking, and proceeded to let her know the stereo was broken, and none of the buttons were working.  I even pressed on some of the benign buttons; the ones that are pressed at inopportune times and result in no change in anything whatsoever (such as the CD eject button when there is no CD).  So I managed to continue to listen to my song, and by the time I changed the station, my daughter had forgotten the stereo is not supposed to work, and I was ready to sell her my bullship story again should the need arise.

The only real nation is humanity - A review of "Mountains Beyond Mountains", by Tracy Kidder

In August of 2000, an 11-12 year old boy named John was brought by his mother to Zanmi Lasante, Dr. Paul Farmer's clinic he founded in 1985 in the city of Cange, Haiti. The boy's age was uncertain as births and deaths of most Haitian peasants are unrecorded. John and his mother were the only surviving immediate family members. The father and 3 siblings had died of various ailments in the last few years. John's mother called life a series of catastrophes. John's neck was swollen, and Dr. Farmer suspected cancer. The diagnosis of his condition required a surgical procedure to take a tissue sample. The operation was carried out by a competent Haitian surgeon who charged several thousand dollars for the 12 hour trip from Mirebalais to Cange. The tissue sample and blood were flown to the Massachusetts General Hospital by Dr. Farmer for diagnosis. It turned out John suffered from nasopharyngeal carcinoma, a rare form of childhood cancer, which if caught early had a 60 to 70 percent cure rate. John's case seemed treatable, but it took 3 weeks to convince Mass General to forgo the $100,000 hospital bill for the treatment. When Serena, one of Partners in Health volunteers reached Zanmi Lasante in Cange to fly John to Mass General in Boston, she was horrified by John's worsening condition. He was skin and bones and had been given a tracheotomy. A feeding tube was fixed in front of his neck, and the swellings had forced his tongue from his mouth. Secretions in his throat clogged his airway and had to be suctioned out with an electrical device. It was no longer possible to transfer him to Boston for treatment on a Commercial flight without killing him. John's only chance now was to be flown via a medevac flight at a cost of twenty thousand dollars. Such were the moral dilemmas Dr. Farmer and his non-profit organization, Partners in Health grapple with on a regular basis. Twenty thousand dollars could go a long way in preventing numerous deaths from common, treatable ailments. John had no chance of survival without the cancer treatment in Boston, and even then, his condition was uncertain as it had deteriorated considerably from a month prior. After overcoming numerous other transportation hurdles, John made it to Mass General, only to find out he had a very short time to live as the cancer had spread everywhere. This tragic story embodies all aspects of treating the poor in one of the most impoverished countries in the world, Haiti; a world among many with a different measure of human life. A world where a one of a kind doctor risks life and limb to bring hope where little of it exists.

Mountains beyond Mountains is the story of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Harvard educated physician, infectious disease specialist and anthropologist from his humble childhood raised in a bus and on a boat, overcoming insurmountable odds to study at some of the most prestigious universities and forgoing the comfortable lifestyle and salary of a world class physician to serve the needy in Haiti and Peru, jousting with behemoth donor organizations of the Gates Foundation, George Soros and U.N.'s WHO (World Health Organization) to fund, improve and make affordable treatments of debilitating ailments such as TB and AIDS. Let Dr. Farmer's efforts serve as inspiration for future donors and physicians who will help rid the developing world of much suffering and preventable deaths.

Help your flu IQ

I call in sick to work 1-2 days a year, and last week was one such lovely occasion.  I contracted, what I believed to be a cold, but upon reading this article, I realized it's the flu.  Flu symtoms can best be remembered by the acronym "FACTS".  If you experience "FACTS", you have it. 

"FACTS" stands for "Fever", "Aches", "Chills", "Tiredness", and "Sudden onset of symptoms".

5 days after exhibiting the symptoms, my horrible state disappeared just as soon as it appeared (perhaps because of the flu shot I took late last year?)

The CDC states each year, 225,000 people are hospitalized and 35,000 die from flu and its complications in the U.S.

A survey conducted by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases shows a surprising double standard:  While 66% of Americans ignore the flu symptoms and put others at risk rather than secluding themselves, 59% stated they get annoyed by people who put others at risk.  A vast majority of people do not practice what they preach.  More public misconceptions about this disease:

• 36% thought they could get the flu from getting the flu vaccine, although that is not possible.
• Most (68%) didn't know that a flu virus from a sneeze or cough can travel 5 or 6 feet.
• 44% thought they would be more likely to catch flu from touching something with the virus, such as a doorknob, although catching it is more likely by being around someone with it when they cough or sneeze.

And when are you not contagious?  When you stop having a fever for at least 24 hours without medication.

The flu virus can survive outside of the body for 2 hours or more.  Some people can be carriers of the virus without exhibiting symptoms.  The incubation period is usually 1-4 days.

And according to the latest studies, zinc supplements seem to help your immune system fight off the disease.

You gotta admire the parent who took the time to snap this precious moment: