Advice from Martha Stewart: You can do anything you choose.

Hi Mathbaby,

I saw a beautiful Article on LinkedIn by Martha Stewart.  I find a lot to admire in her.
Here is the link (link) but I expect that in the several years it takes you to be able to read, retain, or appreciate this blog, it might not be on the internet.

Here is the text of the article:

The best advice I've ever received was from my father when I was 12 years old and willing to listen. He told me that with my personal characteristics, I could, if I set my mind to it, do anything I chose. This advice instilled in me a great sense of confidence, and despite the fact that sometimes I was a little nervous, I stepped out and did what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it. I think it really often is up to the parents to help build confidence in their children. It is a very necessary part of growing up.

When I look back on the years when I was exploring career choices and discovering my true entrepreneurial spirit, my choices seem rather eclectic. I was barely in my teens when I began taking a bus from my hometown in Nutley, New Jersey, to New York City, where I worked as a model. This work was fun and lucrative. It demanded a certain optimism and a drive that not everyone possesses. Still, by the time I married and finished my college studies in history and architectural history, I was tired of modeling. I wanted to build a career, and I longed to do something more intellectually stimulating.

Armed mainly with my father’s encouragement that I could do anything I put my mind to, I considered my options. I had no capital to start my own business. I did, however, have a great desire to work hard and learn. So I went to Wall Street and joined a small brokerage house where I learned to be a stockbroker. It was an outstanding education in business and often was very exciting, but I never developed a passion for it. I loved houses and landscaping and decorating, so I thought real estate might be a good career for me — but I left the business without ever hosting an open house or buying a single property! However, even my brief time in real estate held an important lesson — I learned that the true work of any job may be much different than what you imagine.

Even before I found my entrepreneurial spirit, one thing I did know was that I enjoyed cooking and focusing on the home. I began baking pies and selling them at a local market. I opened a small gourmet food market called the Marketbasket where I sold my own foodstuffs as well as those I commissioned from local women. Then I took a bigger step: I started a catering business. From the first event, I knew immediately that I had found an enterprise that combined several of my talents, my interests, and some of my business experience.

Catering paved the way for me to find my true passion. If you want to begin the journey to discover your entrepreneurial passion, you must first analyze your own interests, strengths, weaknesses, and desires; and then you must consider carefully how hard you want to work. I have always found it extremely difficult to differentiate between what others might consider my life and my business. For me they are inextricably intertwined. That is because I have the same passion for both. Simply stated, my life is my work and my work is my life. As a result, I consider myself one of the lucky ones because I am excited every day: I love waking up; I love getting to work; I love focusing on a new initiative. There are many, many people who have inspired, taught, influenced, and supported me during the years that I have been visualizing, creating, building, and managing my own entrepreneurial venture — but I’ll never forget the favor my father did me when he instilled in me the tenacity I needed to build a career based on what I love most.

Martha Stewart

February 26, 2013

Seven months of stereo

Happy February Mathbaby,

Your sister is now 7 months old.  Your birthdays are 3 days apart.  Right now you are in art class.

Wow.  This was started a month ago and all I got was once sentence.  *sigh*


We got to go to the Arizona Renaissance fair this year.

Here is a video of you and your sister around the Mother goose stuff.











Here are some photos of the events.
You are riding a Butterfly.  It is a human-powered carnival ride, thing.

Here you are with your friend the Ocelot.  Dr. Dufenschmirtz was raised by Ocelots, but not one as knightly and noble as this.









Here you are setting up for the Pirate themed high-jump-thing.

















And here you are waaaay up in the air.













Here is your face post face painting ($5).













And here you are at the end of the day.  One very tired Warrior Princess.
















Your dad didn't bring sunblock.  Your 7 month old baby sister needed something so we got her something.




















This is how she looks in it.













She is looking at the camera.  I like how her eyes look in this picture.

I love both my mathbabies, even if I am unable to blog as often as I should.  

Nearly 3 months later

Your sister is bigger than when she was born.

Still pretty tiny.  Lots of folks say she looks exactly like you did at that age.  The nurse tried to shape her (highly elliptical) head immediately after birth (there are finger-dents on the back showing it) - your sister spent an extended time in the birth canal because of the umbilical cord being doubly wrapped around her neck.  

We went to "Out of Africa" and you fed a Tiger.

You started Kindergarten yesterday.  Four years old, but totally ready for it.  joys of homeschooling.

Stereo mathbabies (July 2012)

You have a new baby sister.  She is 4 weeks old today (when this is posted) but the picture below shows her at 4 minutes old.

Her birth apgar was 5 - the umbilical was wrapped twice around her neck.  The nurses had to extract the amniotic fluid from her lungs.  Within about 5 minutes they were able to get the Apgar score up to 9 - that is a good thing.  

You are so nice.  You are a good big sister.  You help mommy with feeding her, holding her, and help with changing her diaper.

Some folks say "mathbaby 2.0" but that isn't correct.  It is backward.  You are mathbaby 2.0.  You are more advanced than her and you will be bigger, stronger, and faster until you are both adults.  You are what she aspires to - if things are done right.

I was thinking of saying "now I have girls in stereo" but it isn't quite correct either.  It is like now I have the wonderful gift of two girls: the new one is a tweeter and you are (currently) a mid-range.

You have a number of (beautiful) dances:

• the star
• the sea
• the mermaid
• the night
• the moon

I so (so) very much need to deconstruct them and understand them.  I love you and I want to cherish the things that are valuable to you - your bests.

You are not a baby anymore.  You are a big girl.  You are 4 and you run and jump and talk and think.  You are growing up and it happens faster and faster and faster.

May 2012

Time flies, kiddo.  It is nearly your birthday month again.  This is a public-ish blog so I really (really really really) don't want to put enough information for the millions of evil identity thieves out there to try and rob you of your future.  A friend of mine had her identity stolen as a baby and before she was 12 years old had $70,000 in credit-card debt without being legally able to to get a credit-card.  Horrible system we have here - I don't want you to be harmed by it.

For the aniversary of your math-mommy and math-daddy we went "up north" to Flagstaff.  We got to see a dormant volcano called "Sunset crater" and some very old Native American ruins.  Native Americans don't like being called Indians because this isn't India.  Native Indians think it is funny to refer to them as "dot" Indians and Native Americans as "feather" Indians, but I digress.  Both you, kiddo, and I (mathdad) were very toast for the actual trip.  I'm nocturnal (and worked on take home-open everything three week long final exam in PhD level stats course - Optimal Design of Experiments) and so I was tired, and you woke up about 4 hours early so you were ready for a nap right after we started driving to see stuff, but you never got your nap.  Your gracious math-mommy put up with our understandable tired, she knows we saw neat stuff and enjoyed the trip.

I love what I learned about optimization from the Ancient farmers.  There was a learning tool at Wupatki national monument that talked about how to grow good corn.  It surprised me to learn that taking the highest yield corn was dangerous because those high-yields variants are less hardy and if you do that then when the dry years come you will starve. 

We saw a TON of lizards.  We hiked on a lava flow.  You were afraid because you knew that volcano's were hot, but it is rocks that have been cool for a thousand years.  There is a hot spot that goes along under the flagstaff area, kinda like the Hawaii hot-spot.  It puts up cones every so often.  It is thought that the San Francisco peaks were actually a single cone that went mount St. Helens in a big way a long time ago. 

You have a Ballet recital this next weekend (Sunday, I think) and I will try to get pictures of you in it.

I have been watching you, thinking about your actions.  I think you go through cycles of wanting to be around me (the typical daddy-hunger that every kid has) and times when you give up because I work so much in school and work.  I am so sad when you give up.  It is a few months of one then a few of the other.  When you are in the give-up phase you seem to have more "negative" behaviors. 

Your new baby sister is going to be born soon.  I will be dividing my time between helping with you, and trying to help mommy.  I think the balance is going to be skewed more to mommy spending majority of her resources on the newborn and me making up for it as best I can by spending more resources on you to cover your loss of her time and attention.  I really hope we can show you the value of helping with the new baby.  She can be a great friend for your whole life if you build the bridges early.  In my family there is a lot of disconnect between the siblings and I really wish that wasn't the case.  I wish we had better bridges.  Although that is something that I no longer have substantiative input for myself it is likely that you can do better and can have a chance at stronger and more healthy connections with your sibiling/s.

One thing that I have had a growing beef toward is the Chinese attitude toward their daughters.  If we adopt/foster then I think we should consider helping there.  Those little girls are treated poorly and I want them to have good childhoods.  The interesting question is how to help them retain their cultural identity - how to have them know their parents and people - unlike my whitebread, ignorant, wanna-be-Scottish self.

Oh, kiddo.  I gotta remember to do the 23 and me thing.  I have a hypothesis about whether my biological father (and his 4 brothers) were all "genetic throwbacks" having substantial difference in form/appearance from their father or were um ... something else less unlikely.  I have some advanced genetics: Smart, no wisdom teeth (not even buds), and very extreme hearing range (in terms of frequency) and it might be good for you to have some sort of track of what strengths and weaknesses contribute to your genetics.  I am slightly worried that someone might try to patent it or use it against you or your kids but my thought is that if it is my DNA and not yours then it can limit in some way the exposure you could have.

Hopes for my next post include:

• pictures from this spring.
• pictures from your ballet.
• maybe a sonogram from your sib
• As your sister it is disingenuine to call her mathbaby 2.0 because she is parallel, not advanced.  We will have to come up with some fun and relevant nomenclature there.
• maybe some of the fun quotes from you - you have great one-liners.

I also need to see about getting some blog-management tools so that I can have better interfacing and also better documentation.  It would be a sad waste if my intended letters to you through this were erased by google long before you could read them.

I think I need to try to send (snail-mail) to your cousins who are somewhat incommunicado in the boonies of the desert southwest: I-guy and Bean. 

I love you kiddo.  The thing that keeps me working hard during long nights and the serious social isolation that is my new norm is that I am working to give you and our math-family a good life and a good future.  I work hard - and that shows you that I love you.  I love you and your math-mommy very much.  Goodnight mathbaby.  Sleep well.

Google made things look different.  I'm wondering if I have to import/export my blog so it does not get nuked.

Jan 2012

We had Christmas.  Your Grandma Mimi sent you too many presents.  We gave 1-2 a day for about a week after Christmas.  You loved it.

You are becoming more insistent that we get you a pegasus unicorn for a pet.  We should work on that.  Maybe stage with gerbils or something ... so you can practice care for the pet.

You have a new baby sister on the way.  God willing she should be being born in min-June.  We will see how that goes.

Got a letter from your cousin I-guy.  Need to write to him and let him know that he is admired and valued as a person.  I know he gets that from his mommy, but sometimes a distant figure can have a more heard voice than a near person - even if they have the same message.

I'm trying to wrap up school this semester.  Here is hoping/praying/working hard&smart - all that can be done is being done.  I want to be around for you and that means I have to spend time in your life with you - not always elsewhere working on school/work/other stuff.

You did a great thing today, at three years, weirding out the sonogram technician telling him about how implantation in the Fallopian tubes would be a bad thing, and saying that the baby was a girl because there was no penis.  You know more about what goes on in there than pregnant 18 year olds that they have had as patients - the tech said so.  I love your curiosity and your amazing verbal articulativity.