Objectivist Round Up

This week's Objectivist Round Up has been published and is eagerly awaiting your eyeballs and your mind.  Head over to Reepicheep's Coracle and give it your full attention.  Come on, you know it deserves it.

Prepositions

We were driving along the freeway on our way to our friends' house and Sam must have seen a road sign because she said:

Tee-oh.  That spells "to," right mommy?

Me:  Yes.

Sam:  What does "to" mean?

Me [fumbling]:  "To" is like when you say, "we can go TO the store and you can point TO the dog, and you can talk TO somebody."  It's an action towards something.

Adam:  It's a preposition.

And because I talk way too much, I continued:

Right now we are going TO our friends' house.  When we arrive there we will be AT their house.  Right now we are ON the freeway.

And Sam said:

And right now we are IN the car.

Pretty smart, that kid.

Family Movie Night

While I'm on the subject of family culture, I've been meaning to write about our latest chosen tradition:  Family Movie Night.  (Spoilers alert - I won't give too much away, but scan the movie titles below if you're concerned.)

Adam and I have been eagerly awaiting the time when Sam would be old enough to enjoy movies with us, and now is that time!  Most Saturday nights, we watch a movie together.  It has to be something that we all are likely to enjoy, so no Barbie movies, even though I think they're great movies for kids.

For our first movie, we watched the original Dumbo.  We didn't have anything on hand so we picked a dollar movie from the pay-per-view menu.  Adam and I thought we'd enjoy it, but we didn't.  I'm not really sure if Sam did either, but she did watch the whole thing.  It was all pretty senseless, and the scene where Dumbo got drunk was positively weird.  The good part, though, is that I finally learned where my favorite song from one of Sammy's baby CDs came from.

Next, we watched Enchanted.  We all enjoyed that one.  I thought it was a little bit like Galaxy Quest (but not as great), in that it poked fun at a movie genre without being completely cynical.  It took the fundamental values of the genre seriously (well, mostly) while laughing at inconsquentials like talking animals and old-fashioned costumes.  Seeing Susan Sarandon as an evil queen was a bonus, and we watched the fart scene about five times over for Sam's benefit.  But besides potty humor, I know that the film impacted Sam because she spent many days role-playing with her dolls having a "true love's kiss."  Sweet!

Next up was The Little Mermaid.  I'd heard such good things about this one, but I was disappointed.  Ariel was definitely an admirable heroine, but the story itself didn't do much for me.  It wasn't bad, it just didn't live up to my expectations.

Finally, this weekend we watched Finding Nemo, one of mine and Adam's most beloved movies from any genre.  My favorite part is when Dory and Marlin are inside the whale and she says (paraphrasing), "Come on! Everything is going to be all right!"  And he says, "But how do you know that?  How do you know that something bad isn't going to happen?"  And she pauses and then says, "I don't!"  And then they act.  The theme of this movie is motivation by love, not by fear.  And the theme is not something tacked on to some meaningless eye-candy for (what some adults believe to be) mindless children.  The whole movie is integrated around this theme, and it's a grand adventure, funny, sweet, charming, and beautiful to look at.  If you haven't seen it, you must.

Some of these movies had some scary parts, but Sam didn't seem to be bothered by them.  She was definitely sad for Nemo's mom when she died, and she talked about the queen turning into the dragon in Enchanted for many days in that scared-curious way that kids seem to have.  I'm sure much of the content of the movies was over Sam's head, but she probably understands a lot more than she can express.

I plan to make reviews of the movies we watch on Family Movie Night a regular part of The Little Things, so, until next time,

just keep swimming.

Family

I just noticed something.  Adam and I have had our cat, Jinx, for ten years now. We got him shortly after we moved in together in Chicago.  As with all pet owners, I'm sure, we have all kinds of unique and silly ways of interacting with him.  We hold him like a baby and he chews on his tail, we sing him a dinnertime song every night (to the Bonanza theme song, "din-dindin-din-din, din-dindin-din-din, DIN DIN!...), and we say "ROLLY-POLLY!" in a really annoying voice whenever he rolls around on his back.

Today I heard Sammy say ROLLY-POLLY and it just struck me that there is now a third person in our house who interacts with this cat in the exact same way.  She is a Mossoff.  It's not her genes that make her so.  It's the fact that she has lived in this house with us for four years.  She is a part of the Mossoff culture.  That's what makes her family.

I'm highly focused on this issue of heredity versus environment because it looks like we're going to try to get pregnant using an egg donor in the next few months. I've also spoken to friends who know something about adoption, either as the parent or the child, about how it feels to have a family whose members do not all share genes.  The more I think about it, the less it seems to matter.  Part of that might be me just trying to see the positive in the situation.  I know that it seemed to matter to me greatly when we had Sam, that she was a mixture of Adam and me.  But in reality, the "mixture" that I see every day has so much more to do with the choices we all make and the experiences we have together, than it does with her hair or her eye color, or even her temperament.

A fourth voice in the house saying ROLLY POLLY would be a Good Thing.

We've Been Booed!

I'm not a big fan of the chain letter, but this one is fun.  We got BOOed last night!  We got a plate of candies and fun Halloween goodies along with a cute poem chain letter.

We have 24 hours to come up with treats for two of our neighbors.  This is the kind of thing Adam loves to participate in, so he's going to buy some stuff and Sam and I might decorate a couple of our mini-pumpkins this afternoon.  I doubt that we'll match the beautiful presentation that we received (I wish I had taken a photo before we dived into the candy), but it will be fun trying.

I'm 100% in favor of extending Halloween out a bit, just like Christmas, and this is such a benevolent way to do it.  If you haven't seen this trend in your neighborhood yet and want to start it, consider this a virtual BOO!

A Little Thing

Last year, when I'd ask Sammy what work she did at school that day, she'd say things like, POLISHING, METAL INSETS, CLEANING THE CHAIR.

This year, when I ask the same question, she says things like, PHONOGRAMS, SCIENCE EXPERIMENT, READING.

Atlas Shrugged Video Contest

ARI is sponsoring a new contest:  the Atlas Shrugged Video Contest!

You have until December 8 to make a 3 minute video on "how Ayn Rand’s epic story relates to current issues in society or in your own life."

Awesome!  I can't wait to see the winners.