The Money Tree

I got the new Pottery Barn Kids catalog today so I was flipping through it while the girls ate their snacks. Joey and Elysha love catalogues and will often study them while on the toilet or while eating their breakfast. As I perused the periodical, Joey was looking over my shoulder and suddenly became very greedy. She pointed to almost every item on a page and said, "I want that and that and that!" I ignored her as I normally do and flipped to the next page. Again, she declared, "I want that and that and that. I want all of it."

Just today as I was having lunch with a friend, we talked about our humble upbringings. My friend said that her mom would buy one Mrs. Field's cookie and she would split it between her four children. I scoffed at my friend, "My parents never bought me a Mrs. Field's cookie!"

So naturally, upon hearing my child ravenously desire all these things that she doesn't need or already has (dolls, jewelry boxes, beds), I felt it necessary to give her a lesson in home economics. Perhaps she is old enough now to understand that Daddy works hard to provide for our family and with the economy in such turmoil, it is necessary for us to tighten our belts. In a split second, I already envision our conversation in my head. I tell her about our monthly obligations with our mortgage, preschool tuitions and tithing. Because she is a math whiz, she calculates, in her head, the budget, understands our shortfalls, and offers ideas on how to revise our spending. She then explains to me that the reason she whines about wanting a pretzel every single time we are at the mall is because she heard on NPR that the quickest way to get out of an economic recession is to increase consumer spending.

Well, here is how the conversation actually went...


Me: Joey, do you know where money comes from?

Joey (without hesitation): TREES!