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Puppy Quips 3

Posted in Miscellaneous with tags on February 17, 2012 by jrvitalis

Puppy (falling asleep on Christmas Eve): I feel a smile spreading across my face.

 

Puppy: Rich is when you can go to Disney World without worrying about how much it costs.

 

Puppy: I’m sweating like a ring-tailed lemur!

 

Me: Give me a kiss.

Puppy: Where are you going?

Me: To bed, I’m not feeling good.

Puppy (as she hops from one foot to the other): Can I go to the bathroom first? Otherwise, I’ll give you a quick kiss and hug and not enjoy it.

 

Me: You are such a good kid.

Puppy: I know. Modest, too.

 

The girls were watching a movie set in the 1940’s when I overheard this conversation:

Kitten: Is this movie in the olden days like Laura and Mary (from Little House on the Prairie)?

Puppy: No, this movie is set in the middle ages.

 

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My Core Competency

Posted in Management with tags , , on February 10, 2012 by jrvitalis

Puppy lost a tooth recently. Yes, another one. That fact in and of itself isn’t surprising, but the fact that I managed to botch the whole Tooth Fairy thing yet again is. I mean how hard can it be? Kid loses tooth, kid puts tooth under pillow, Mom or Dad takes tooth and leaves a reward in return. Simple, right?

Not in my house. Here, complications always arise. Once, Puppy’s tooth fell out during the night and she swallowed it. Another time, Mom forgot to play Tooth Fairy. With Puppy’s last tooth, Mom remembered, but didn’t have any cash or change to put under the pillow. And now this.

Putting her tooth in a bowl to keep it safe while we ate breakfast seemed like a great idea. Except after breakfast I rushed to clear the table so we could get out the door.

It wasn’t until we got home later that day and Puppy asked to see her tooth that I realized what I’d done. I spent the next thirty minutes with my hand down the garbage disposal, hoping against hope that I could find and salvage the tooth. No such luck.

Fortunately, Puppy is fairly pragmatic. While I searched for the tooth, she drafted the following letter to the tooth fairy (In the interests of full disclosure I should note that I’ve taken the liberty of cleaning up the spelling):

 

Dear Tooth Fairy,

I know I promised that you would always get my teeth ever since I swallowed my tooth. But my mom accidentally misplaced my tooth so I am sorry I broke my promise. Could you still visit me please?

From,

Puppy

p.s. My mom put it down the garbage disposal so it is not my fault

 

Fortunately, Puppy is now sound asleep and I’ve not only successfully removed the letter from under her pillow, but also deposited a handsome reward in its place, accompanied by the following response:

 

Dear Puppy,

Thank you for the update on your tooth. Of course I’ll still visit you! After all, it wouldn’t be fair if I held you responsible for your mother’s mistakes. Just promise me I’ll get your next tooth, okay?

Keep Smiling,

The Tooth Fairy

 

Playing the role of the Tooth Fairy is obviously not one of my core competencies, but fortunately writing is. Good thing, too, because with only seven teeth down, I’ve obviously got my work cut out for me.

 

 

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Obtaining Buy-in for the Big Move

Posted in Management with tags , , , on February 3, 2012 by jrvitalis

My husband will be getting his Ph.D. this spring and our family will be facing an out-of-state move. In business school, it was always emphasized that obtaining buy-in from employees was a critical factor in implementing any major changes. With this in mind, I’ve encouraged the children to be as involved in the relocation process as possible. As my husband interviews, we look up his location on the map, talk about what it would be like to live in each place, and sometimes even look at real estate online together.

 

So when Puppy announced a couple of months ago that she only had one request about whatever house we ended up living in, I was eager to hear her thoughts. (A blue bedroom? A bunk bed? A play house in the back yard?)

 

But no.

 

With a serious look on her face she said, “I just really, really want to make sure we buy a house with no electricity.”

 

This shouldn’t have come as a surprise since the girl is obsessed with Little House on the Prairie and spends every free minute pretending she is Laura living in the “olden days,” but it definitely caught me off guard.

 

I started explaining all the reasons why it wouldn’t be practical to buy a house with no electricity, but her mind was made up. Obviously I couldn’t agree to her demand, so we ended up comprimising: we’d occassionally turn the electricity off.

 

I thought that was the end of the feedback I’d receive about the move, but last week Kitten made a request of her own. Again, I was eager to hear her thoughts. I expected she’d ask for a purple and pink bedroom (her favorite colors), a loft bed, or even a kitten. Instead, her request stunned me.

 

“Mom,” she said. “When we move I really, really think we should buy a house with a big swimming pool in the living room. And it should turn into a wave pool. And on the other side of it, we should have a hot tub.”

 

Too stunned to argue, all I could think at the time was that obtaining buy-in for this move just might be harder than I expected.

 

 

 

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Framing

Posted in Management with tags , , , on January 27, 2012 by jrvitalis


Just after her fourth birthday, we discovered Puppy was virtually blind in one eye. We hauled her in to a specialist where she was diagnosed with amblyopia. Basically, her eyeballs are shaped dramatically differently, so right after birth, her brain shut off the connection to one of her eyes. In an effort to turn the connection back on, she had to wear a patch over her good eye ten hours a day for eleven months. The good news was that this worked, and her “bad” eye now has nearly perfect corrected vision. The bad news is that “corrected vision” means she has to wear glasses every waking moment of every day for the rest of her life (so her brain doesn’t shut her eye back off).

 

Obviously this wasn’t news we were happy to hear, but my husband and I knew that our reaction would frame how Puppy viewed having to wear glasses. So we made the whole thing very exciting. We took her to the eye glasses store, let her try on as many pairs as she wanted, and encouraged her to pick out a very cool, funky pair.

 

Our plan worked. Puppy received and continues to receive regular compliments about her glasses, and when I told her about contacts recently, she couldn’t imagine why in the world anybody would not want to wear glasses.

 

Unfortunately, our plan worked a little too well. A few weeks ago Kitten told me that she was seeing white dots in her eyes. With a knot in my stomach, I hauled her to the eye doctor. It wasn’t until she announced at the eye exam that she hoped she’d need glasses like her sister and best friend Otter that I realized the whole thing was likely just a ploy to get glasses (which proved to be the case when she was given a perfect bill of eye health).

 

Then yesterday, Otter’s big brother got glasses. When I told the girls at the breakfast table this morning, Puppy jumped up and started dancing. “Yeay!” she yelled. “Now Squirrel, Otter and me all get to wear glasses!”

 

I looked over at Kitten, who was sitting quietly in her chair. Her head was down, and her little chin was quivering.

 

“Are you okay, Kitten?” I asked.

 

She looked up at me, a single tear dripping down her cheek. “It’s not fair,” she said. “How come everybody in the entire world except me gets to wear glasses?”

 

On the outside, I played the sympathetic mother, but on the inside I was howling. How many parents have to deal with a child who is devastated that they don’t “get” to wear glasses?

 

So this afternoon, you’ll find me in the sunglasses section at Target, where I’ll be buying a pair of kiddie sunglasses so I can pop the frame out and give Kitten a pair of glasses of her very own.

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Busted!

Posted in Ethics with tags , , on January 20, 2012 by jrvitalis

Ethics are a frequent topic of discussion at our house. I often encourage the girls to try to make good decisions not because they are afraid of getting in trouble if they don’t, but because it’s the right thing to do. And as a parent, I try to set a good example by doing things like going back into the grocery store when I discover an item I didn’t pay for in my cart. Apparently, my efforts are paying off, because I recently had a major lapse in judgment, and Puppy was more than happy to point out the error of my ways.

We were at an outlet mall after a long day. The outlet mall was divided into two halves by a road. We needed to get from one side to the other, and since we were all tired and hungry, we decided to drive rather than walk our tired crew across. Crawling in the car, I told Kitten she only had to buckle the top of her five point harness. As he started the car, my husband pointed out the police car behind us.

“I guess we’d better buckle all the way,” I sighed.

There was a long silence in the car, then Puppy piped up.

“Let me get this straight,” she said. “You don’t care at all about our safety, only about getting a ticket?”

I was busted. And truthfully, quite embarrassed that I’d set such a poor example for my kids. In the future, I’ll take extra care to make sure I do the right thing. Not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because I’ll know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’m being watched.

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Product Flops

Posted in Marketing with tags , on January 13, 2012 by jrvitalis

It’s obviously worst-case-scenario for any company to invest heavily in a new product or service, only to have it flop. Yet the scenario is not uncommon. Here are a few notables:

*Cosmopolitan yogurt (Yes, Cosmopolitan as in the fashion magazine)

*Colgate kitchen entrees

*Bic underwear

And then there is the plethora of celebrity endorsements (Tiger Woods) and cancelled television shows that never live up to expectations. The truth of the matter is, no one really knows for sure what is going to work, and what isn’t. The same holds true of parenting techniques, and what works with one child often doesn’t work with another.

For example, my family was having dinner with Squirrel, Otter and their parents. The kids were outside eating while the adults enjoyed a quiet dinner inside. Suddenly, Otter banged in the house and demanded a glass of water from her mother.

In our house, when our children forget their manners, I often use humor to remind them. I decided to do the same with Otter.

“Otter,” I said, “don’t you mean please may I have a glass of water my mother whom I love and adore?”

She looked at me like I had three heads.

“Quick,” I grinned, “say ‘please my mother whom I love and adore’ before your mom drinks all your water!”

After a few more rounds, she realized that playing along was the only way she was going to get her cup filled, and she acquiesced.

“Please, mother my door,” she mumbled.

I started to explain that it was “mother whom I love and adore”, but by that time she’d given up on the water and disappeared back outside.

Thank goodness I hadn’t invested any time or money in that one––my efforts were definitely a flop!

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Cooking Companions

Posted in Miscellaneous with tags , , on December 23, 2011 by jrvitalis

 

During business school, one of my favorite activities was to spend the day wandering Manhattan with my husband. Not aimlessly, but with a list of items we’d need to prepare our dinner that night. After returning to our apartment many miles later, we’d open a bottle of wine and leisurely prepare a scrumptious meal together.

 

My, how times have changed.

 

Today Kitten was my cooking companion. Our recipe? Chicken. This was only my second time preparing a whole bird, and suffice it to say that it went much, much better than the first time I attempted the feat. Nevertheless, gone are the days where I leisurely sipped wine while cooking. Instead, the dinner preperations went something like this:

 

Kitten (Sitting on the counter with a disturbed look on her face as I skinned the chicken): You mean it’s dead? Like really dead?

 

Me: Well, yes, you can see that it’s really dead.

 

Kitten: Really, really dead?

 

Me (Pulling the skin off a leg): Yep, really, really dead.

 

She then bombarded me with a multitude of questions, including how the chicken died, what they did with the feathers, and whether chickens really count as birds since they don’t fly.

 

All in all, I thought the discussion went pretty well and frankly I was pleased to have the distraction, as sticking my hands in the netherregions of a rather large poultry isn’t exactly my idea of a terrific afternoon.

 

Finally, plunking the bird in the crock pot, I asked Kitten if she’d like to see what the inside of the bird looked like once everything was pulled out.

 

I lifted the bird up and she tentatively peered over the side of the pot.

 

“For heavens to Betsy,” she exclaimed. “That is disguisting!”

 

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Maybe a glass of wine isn’t such a bad idea after all.

 

(I realize I haven’t exactly made a great sales pitch, but for those of you who can stomach the preparation and want a delicious chicken recipe, follow this link. My only recommendation is that you substitute sweet potatoes for regular potatoes. Enjoy!)

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Beauty and the Beast

Posted in Accounting with tags , , on December 16, 2011 by jrvitalis


We recently bought tickets to take the girls to Beauty and the Beast. The night before the performance, we decided to watch the movie so that the storyline would be fresh in all of our heads. I had no idea that the experience would be loaded with learning opportunities for the girls, who were bouncing off the walls and giddy with excitement.

 

Not long after the movie started, I couldn’t resist asking Puppy what she thought of Gaston.

 

With her eyes glued to the screen, Puppy was quick to denounce his priorities. “All he cares about is beauty. He’s not a very nice guy.” She thought for a second. “And Belle is smart. She cares about books and learning.”

 

That’s when my husband jumped in. “That’s what you call a misalignment of goals.”

 

He started to explain, but it was clear Puppy had already moved on. And while I liked my husband’s take on Belle and Gaston’s relationship, I was pleased Puppy had made a connection, on her own terms, about their values.

 

Later, I got each of us a bowl of ice cream. Before I could pour chocolate sauce on my husband’s bowl, he jumped up and pulled out the caramel sauce. When I set Puppy’s chocolate sundae in front of her, she looked over at her dad’s and exclaimed, “Hey, no fair! If I had known there was caramel sauce, I would have asked for that.”

 

Again, my husband piped up. “That’s what is known as information asymmetry.”

 

This time, Puppy demanded an explanation. As I sat listening to them banter, I realized we still had more than half the movie, not to mention the entire play, ahead of us.

 

Who knew Disney could be so educational?

 

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Puppy Quips

Posted in Miscellaneous with tags , on December 2, 2011 by jrvitalis

 

Me (Pointing at Puppy’s backpack as we walk out the door to the airport): What’s that?

Puppy: Oh, that’s just my back-up plan for Kitten if she starts melting down on the airplane.

 

Puppy (referring to my homemade split pea soup): Mom, no offense, I’m not being mean, but this kind of looks like baby throw-up.

 

Puppy: I’m not inclined to wear sunscreen today.

Me: What do you mean, you’re not “inclined”?

Pupppy: Sunscreen is not my favorite lotion, you know.

 

Puppy: I wouldn’t wear tennis shoes just for the sake of wearing them. I would only wear them if it were appropriate, like we were going for a walk.

 

Puppy: Let’s get up tomorrow before the rooster croaks.

 

Puppy: It’s vertices day. (Veteran’s day)

 

Puppy: I can’t fall asleep. I can still smell Kitten’s morning breath on my pillow.

 

Puppy, after tasting a Butterfinger candy bar for the first time: “Hey, that didn’t taste like butt at all!”

 

Puppy (looking at our delivery of Girl Scout cookies): Mom, can you do me a favor? I know Dad likes Thin Mints an awful lot, so can we hide one box before he gets home to make sure there is some left for me?

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Less is More

Posted in Management with tags , , , on November 25, 2011 by jrvitalis


For those of us in the United States, yesterday was a day of Thanksgiving; a time to count the blessings in our lives and enjoy our families. Unfortunately, with Christmas just around the corner, we are also being bombarded with images of what we “could” have.

We live in a culture that conditions us to want more, more, more. More money, more prestige, more choices. Paradoxically, research by Sheena Iyengar, a Columbia Business School professor and author of The Art of Choosing, indicates that offering too many choices actually leads to lower levels of satisfaction.

Sounds counterintuitive, doesn’t it? But think about it. How many times have you been overwhelmed by making some simple decision, and then afterward kicked yourself in the pants for having made the wrong choice? But with so many options, how could you possibly have picked the right one?

This lesson hit home recently during a birthday party Puppy attended at Chuck E. Cheese. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the venue, Chuck E. Cheese is a children’s destination that allows kids to play games in exchange for tickets, which they can later trade in for prizes. Having earned something like 110 tickets, Puppy had a wide selection of toys to choose from.

She stood at the counter agonizing. First it was a sucker and a bracelet. Then a top and a sucker. No, maybe a notebook and a pen. On and on it went. She was one of the first children at the counter, and was still standing at the counter after every single party attendee had traded in their tickets and made their selections.

Finally, I gave her a two minute warning. Puppy managed to make her final selection (a sucker and a green plastic lizard) before I had to put my foot down, and she seemed thrilled with her choices.

But it wasn’t five minutes into the ride home before I heard Puppy mumble, “I should have chosen the orange lizard.”

That’s when it hit me; the whole process was so overwhelming, it would have been virtually impossible for her to have left feeling like she’d made a good choice. Maybe less really is more.

(As an aside, Dr. Iyengar happens to be blind, making her research on choices all the more compelling. There is a fascinating New York Times article about her and her work at this link.)

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