Time Outs & Crocodiles

I think I just found my favorite blogger of the day -- Melody Townsel at the Daily Kos. Leah and I mentioned her blog on the radio show last night. Basically, the author's seven year old daughter said that Ann Coulter should go in to time out for the way she treated Elizabeth Edwards.

Now I could write about the newsiness or political aspect of the story, but what it really does for me is that it reminds me of how children are mirrors to ourselves. They absorb and repeat what they hear. Mostly from parents, at least at the stage where my daughter and I are -- toddlerhood. She's two and says the most interesting things. Sprinkles of Spanish from our trip to Guatemala and watching Dora the Explorer. Quirky sayings from her father and I. And somewhere along the way, she picked up a thing for crocodiles. Some days they are funny, and some days, like today, my green flip flops on the floor resemble the creatures a little too much. She ran in to the kitchen saying "Mommy, help, two crocodiles! I'm scared." I had to hold her while I removed the dangerous flip flops from the room. One day she may come running in to tell me to turn the TV off, she's scared of some crazy news pundit on the tube.

In the meantime, check out what Melody has to say on the Daily Kos and stop by Mother Talkers.com while you're at it. Mothers all around us are making insightful and intelligent observations about the world.

What about you? Who else needs a time out? Or what has your kid said lately that sounded just like...well, just like you?

(And is newsiness a Stephen Colbert word, or did I actually just make that up on my own?)

To Support or Not to Support? That is the Question.

In the car on the way to a work-gig, my business partner Kate and I got into a productive discussion about whether or not to support Hillary. It's a bigger question than any of us would like to admit. Where we agreed, was that all of our lives we'd been waiting for a woman to run. And here she is and she's pretty darn qualified. But would we support Hillary if she were a man? As far as I can tell, that's sort of an unfair question. Women don't get to be were Hillary is by being like women, that's for sure. But you can't unlearn all the lessons in life that being a woman teaches you and that's a good thing for women who climb the ranks of men. I like Obama's idealism because at heart that's what I am, but I recognize the need now, perhaps more than ever, for a realist in office. Will we overcome the myriad of obstacles set before us by trading one kind of idealism for another? I'm not sure.
So, all this is to say that I'm going to get my Hillary Clinton for president bumper sticker and go the distance with her. She may not win, but that wouldn't be as surprising as if she did. What I believe is that if she won, she'd do very good things. She'd support universal preschool, she'd support a woman's right to health care, and she'd pull together the smartest minds to figure out a way to get out of this crisis in the mid-east. I think we need a woman in the White House. Right now a woman is running and I think I would regret it if I didn't support her.