Birth Announcements and the Economics of Children

Official Birth Announcement

You might be getting a postcard in the mail soon, as an official announcement of Mateo Rodman Campbell VSP’s birth. If you don’t, I’m sorry, and we don’t mean any office to you what so ever. We have a lot of friends and family and it is hard to get the announcement out to everybody. I’m pretty proud of the work I did in creating the announcement. It took me a couple of tries and a lot of time thinking and deciding exactly what to do. My mom said that we’d better be careful, so somebody might call CPS on us (the card has little Mateo inside the oven, see below). Don’t worry he was completely safe the whole time and was even laying on a blanket. Minnie was pretty freaked out though. Below is the front of the postcard announcement. Make sure to also check out the Mateo’s Birth Announcement Postcard Back Version 2 and the version that I didn’t use, Mateo’s Birth Announcement Postcard Front Version 1.

This graphic is a postcard that I created in Adobe Photoshop to announce the birth of my son, Mateo Rodman Campbell V.S.P.. You can read my blog post about the birth, Are You Ready or Not? Proud Father . This postcard, is the second version of two. I like it a lot better then the first version. I spent a long time looking through google images of baby announcements for some inspiration. I was struck by so many really creative ideas people had. I still didn’t know what I wanted to do. After a little while, I was struck with a little bit of inspiration of my own. I didn’t see anything like this, but I’m sure I’m not the first to think of putting my baby in the oven. Minnie was super worried (don’t worry, the oven wasn’t on… but she was still freaking out. We did a photo shoot with little Mateo in various pots and pans on the oven too, maybe I’ll load them on Facebook at some point, but I haven’t yet. It’s pretty simple design. I took a photo and placed it on the right hand side. I blurred out a section behind the text “Baked to Perfection.” The various other portions are texts of different sizes and directions in a type of word cloud.

It was a pretty fun process to go through and make it. Make sure to leave some comments and let me know what you think. Also, if you don’t receive one in the next week or so, and feel really left out make sure to let us know and we will send you one (please note that we haven’t even mailed them yet).

The CEO Gene

It always seems like I live a life of great serendipity. The other day, I’m still going through the old Freakonomics podcasts. The two next ones were all about children / parenthood. The first one I listened to, was especially fitting as I am still tinkering around with the idea of starting my own business. It was tilted The Church of Scionology or listen to the Podcast and hear great voice over repeating “Scion.” over and over. I always love learning new words, and with my new addition to the family, really like this word.

sci·on /ˈsīən/ Noun

A young shoot or twig of a plant, esp. one cut for grafting or rooting.

A descendant of a notable family.

They discuss a number of really interesting topics, and it is helpful that the two main companies they look into are related to beer (yes, Steven Dubner knows how to keep my attention). They get into discussion about the frequency in which companies that pass on their family buisness to a family member continue to succeed and that there really doesn’t appear to be a “CEO Gene.” I guess I must agree, for my little Mateo, with the Buffet Rule (both the one in the media recently and discussed on the podcast). I want my son to do what ever makes him happy and that he wants to do. That he would find his passion and follow after that. The other podcast that I listened to was The Economist’s Guide to Parenting. Another great story that you should take time to listen to.