Monday, October 02, 2006

Announcements

We finally sent off Owen's birth announcements today. Elaine is convinced that we're late sending these out, but as far as I'm concerned we're doing great to get these out at six weeks. Any etiquette rule that requires sleep deprived new parents to put together a mass mailing in the first month is absurd. It took us a month just to get around to picking out the pictures, let alone design, print, and address these puppies.

On the back of the announcements, we included the web address for the blog, so I suspect we might have a few new readers. For all of you visiting for the first time, I'd like to welcome you to our blog and tell you a little about the site. (And for all of you die hard readers out there wondering where your announcements are, hold your horses, we just mailed them today.) The main reason we started this blog was to share pictures and stories (mostly about Owen) with our family and friends, without having to send out a mass email every time we snap a picture of Owen that is too cute to keep to ourselves. Whenever you feel the urge to see the newest pictures of Owen, or read our latest anecdote about our experience as new parents, just pay a visit to our blog.

So what all is on this site? In the sidebar on the right you can find out exactly how old Owen is, see our latest pictures, or click on the "more recent pictures" link to view all the pictures of Owen in my Flickr photostream. If you scroll a bit further down, you can jump to posts from any month in the Archives, or enter your email address at the bottom of the sidebar to receive a message whenever this blog is updated. In the main body of the page, you'll find all our latest musings on parenthood, and at th bottom of each post is a comments link where you can share your thoughts, suggestions, and well wishes with us. If you want to read some of the highlights to get a feel for the blog without wading through the archives, you can check out the ever popular "Reactions" post to see my mom's shock & awe at finding out she was going to be a grandmother, read the epic story of Owen's birth in the "Owen Grady Fawcett" post, or go back to where it all began with the "+ or -" post.

I should also probably say a little something about the name of the blog. The short answer is that when two economists start a blog, it's bound to have some sort of geeky econ name. The longer answer is that when we began the blog, we weren't telling people that Elaine was pregnant yet, so we couldn't pick a name that was obviously baby related like "Econ Baby!", "babyblogonomics", or "start-up dad". So why exactly "marginal benefit"? As economists, we're trained to think about decisions at the margins. For instance, when we're trying to put Owen down to sleep in the middle of the night, sometimes it helps if one of us sits by him and rests a hand on his chest. If you sit there long enough, he'll eventually fall asleep, but if leave too soon, even if he looks like he's asleep, he'll wake up and start fussing all over again. So in the middle of the night we're faced with problem of equating the marginal benefit of keeping a hand on Owen for another minute to increase the probability he'll actually fall asleep, and the marginal cost of not crawling back in bed as soon as possible. As for the name of the blog, it's really refering to a decision on a bit grander scale. Having Owen was probably the biggest decison of our lives, some of our posts dwell on the lack of sleep and mountains of diapers associated with parenthood (marginal costs), and other posts focus the little joys of parenthood or Owen's sheer adorability (marginal benefits). Years from now when we look back on all of this, hopefully we'll laugh at all of the marginal costs and cherish all of the marginal benefits.

Finally, since in this post I've been addressing readers and thinking of the future, I'd like to close with a note for all of you future readers that may be out there. If the year is 2024, this blog is still available online, and you happen to be Owen's prom date, please stop reading now, I'm sure we've embarrassed our son enough already ;-)

4 comments:

Nabeel said...

Ahh! I always thought the title was referring to the actually good caused by keeping a blog. You learn something new every day.

Allen A. Fawcett said...

The title really is open to interpretation, and I've certainly considered the marginal benefit of keeping the blog. It's a photo album and baby book all rolled into one, and everyone can visit as long as their marginal benefit is greater than their marginal cost. As far as writing the blog, I suspect the posts will eventually taper off as Owen gets older and the marginal costs of posting increase ;-)

MeesheMama said...

I love the announcement, especially the feet picture! Congrats.

David Zimmerman said...

Cute pictures in the announcement, and for the record, I got a similar announcement the same day regarding a baby born in May. So you're A-OK. Oh, happy day!

Sorry; I happen to like things that rhyme.