On Saturday, Adrian and I were lounging around the house when we got into a mini-argument fueled by classic sibling rivalry and vanity.

“Let’s ask mom who she think is her best looking child.” I suggested.

“She’s going to say me, you know she is,” Adrian retorted.

“No. She won’t even answer the question. She’ll stay out of this one,” I reasoned.

We interrupted her Christmas decorating so that she could serve as a referee.

“Mom, who is your best looking child?” I asked.

Without taking a moment to think it over, she responded, “Adrian.”

Adrian smirked.

“Hey!” I exclaimed feeling a bit betrayed that she chose the baby of the family over the future PhD.

I turned to my supposedly handsome little brother, “whatever, you may be the best looking, but you’re also the youngest and research shows that if you’re born later in the family, you’ll have a lower IQ.”

Adrian looked a me confused and annoyed that I had used my nerdiness to come out on top.

I guess doing the assigned reading for class that week had paid off. While reading the education chapter of David Halpern’s Social Capital, I came across the following passage

Partly this result [educational attainment is higher for children from two parent households] is expained by the fact that having two parents around, as opposed to one, implies more child-parent contact. Further support for this simple structural interpretation lies in the finding that having more brothers and sisters, or being later born in a family, is associated with marginally lower IQ and worse educational achievement (Zajonc & Markus, 1975 [more on their research]). Essentially, having more kids in the household ‘dilutes’ or reduces the time that later-born children are able to spend with their parents (pp. 145-146).

I had never considered the link between family size or birth order and achievement, so the passage stuck out.

Needless to say, I won the argument with a little science, even if the link between intelligence and birth order has been disputed in longitudinal studies.

Older siblings, you can thank me now. Your younger brother/sister may be better looking, thinner, funnier, more athletic and what not, but you can say “psychologists have shown that I’m smarter ’cause I’m the first (or second) born!”

When ever I come back from holiday weekends, everyone asks, “how was your [insert holiday here]?” Rather than give the rundown on everything I did during the always too short break, I just say fine and add something like, “but I got sick…”.

In case any of you are wondering, here’s the rundown of my four day weekend.

Thursday
No matter how I feel about the origins of Thanksgiving (or as lots of my friends like to call it, Thankstaking), I don’t think I’ll ever pass up the opportunity to hang out with my family and eat good food. Come to think of it, we d that fairly often, but it never comes on a Thursday. This year wasn’t much different from every other Thanksgiving I can remember. We gathered at my Madrina Chilo’s house in East LA for dinner. The adults did their thing, we picked out names for the Christmas gift exchange, and the “kids” played some game of my choice. I always choose the games, and this year it was Trivial Pursuit Disney Edition. I’m still mad I didn’t win.

Friday
For some strange reason, I actually woke up at 6 something in the morning to go shopping with my mom, Lori and Adrian. We hit up one of the department stores for clothes and shoes we convinced ourselves that we need. Prior to Friday, I’d never shopped on “black Friday” and thus expected the whole experience to be much worse. I suppose it would have been worse if I was going later in the day, had to wait in line on my own, or was shopping at one of the big electronics stores.

Later that day, I headed out to Ontario for what was originally supposed to be a movie date with me and my 11-year old cousin Valerie. I try to make our movie date an annual thing so that I can keep up to date on the latest kids films. For some reason, when my siblings found out about our date to see Happy Feet, they all joined in. Lori’s boyfriend, Mikey, came along too. Valerie’s older sister, Vanny, and her boyfriend also tagged along.

I liked the movie, but was annoyed through most of it because there were a bunch of loud kids and crying babies.

Saturday
I stayed in most of the day on Saturday and tried to catch up on schoolwork. I’ll probably air out some of my thoughts about my study on Latino college students majoring in the sciences in a future post. I’m told that one of the goals of good research is to be able to describe it in lay terms for an audience outside your discipline.

Sunday
I got up early once again to go to Mass with my family. Did I mention that it’s quite weird for all six of us to be together in one place these days? I can’t even remember the last time Danny, Lori, Adrian and I all joined my parents and grandparents at the 8 a.m. Spanish-language Mass.

After Mass, we went out for breakfast with the grandparents. Depending on which sibling you ask, the breakfast incentive may have been the motivating factor in going to mass at 8 am.

The rest of Sunday was rather uneventful and boring. I stayed in most of the day because I’m getting sick. Not fun.

So there. That was my long weekend. Exciting!

Birthday parties these days aren’t too much different than the ones I used to go to as a kid. Now parents go all out with jumpers, petting zoos with pony rides (well, my cousin Juan and his wife Millie are probably exceptions). However, you can’t go wrong with classics like the piñata.

The beating. Here you have Martin (my cousin Martin’s son) trying his best to hit the piñata. Lined up behind him are his cousins, Reese and Sarah. In a wider frame, you’d notice the parents and adults keeping a close watch so that no over eager kid runs in for fallen candy while the other kid is still swinging. Up on the roof behind Martin, my cousin Victor holds one end of the rope while another cousin’s boyfriend holds the other end.

I didn’t get any photos of Reese who came right after Martin. Reese hit the piñata pretty hard and knocked off one of the horse’s legs. It came flying at me as a I tried to take a picture and grazed my finger. Reese finished off the piñata, one of the adults shook out the rest of the candy, and the kids rushed in.

The melee. The whole point of beating the crap out of the piñata is to get some candy. I like candy. So do the kids, as you can see. The cool thing about this melee is that the kids missed a lot of candy and I picked up a few Twix bars, some M&M’s and Skittles. I shared of course.

The negotiations. Once everything is cleaned up, the kids need to show off their goodies to someone. Here Alejandro (the birthday boy) and his big sister, Sarah, show their candy to their grandma. I remember doing this with my mom too, and hating it when she’d take some candy as if it was her fee for taking me to the birthday party.

The lineup, I. Millie, mother of the birthday boy, tried her best to get all the kids together in an orderly fashion for a group picture. As you can see, some weren’t into the idea. I like this photo because Martin, Reese, Sarah and Melissa (my cousins’ kids) are standing next to each other. It reminds me of the times when I used to be running around at birthday parties with their dads, Robert, Juan and Martin.

The lineup, II. Reese really liked that horse’s leg. Martin and Reese are barefoot because they were going in and out of the jumper/bouncy castle. Soon after this, everyone got their pictures and Millie passed out their goodie boxes.

The lineup, III. Can you guess which kid had too much sugar already?