That’s what I said when I saw this ‘08 Tahoe Hybrid and all it’s fancy shmancy features.
I said it when I saw the reverse camera and the XM touch screen radio and the GPS and the tire pressure monitor.

Well, read BlogHer or Bust! to find out just how opulent and extravagant a $52,780 car can be.

Image Source: Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me

Post from: Blisstree

Shut UP! ‘08 Tahoe

Laurie Toby Edison of Body Impolitic asked me to guest blog. I submitted Body Image: No Name Calling about how I try to teach Ainsley that the habit of self-deprecation is wrong and carries a real cost to the self-esteem.

Thanks to Laurie for the opportunity. Laurie will be sitting on the BlogHer panel about body image with me in San Francisco in July.

Please stop by and read it while I decompress from my political trip and spend extra time with my kids – they missed me.

There’s another reason to leave the kids every once in a while – you can’t beat the experience of seeing them run towards you with pure joy to see you. Who else is that happy when they see me? You miss that experience you never leave home.

Post from: Blisstree

Body Impolitic

“Tracee, Zack is over at my house. A man brought him to the door and said he almost ran him over with his truck. He says if it happens again he’s going to call the police!”

“AACK! Zack What? How? Outside? I’m on my way!”

Evidently, my two-year-old son knows how to work the latch – and unhook the “security bungee cord” – on the gate.

He knew exactly where he was going too. He knows this little boy down the street that he rarely gets to play with. He was deliberately headed to his house, and when the man found him Zack pointed him to that door and said “Mama” (which is also what he calls Ainsley and she was in that house).

We put a new lock on the gate and told Ainsley, our six year old, no one is to open the gate anymore. Period. And she better not climb the fence either because he’ll just learn to do that.

I went over, retrieved him, gave him a 15 minute time out in the crib and then grounded him from going outside for the rest of the day. I was Mean Mommy. Hopefully he’ll remember how furious Mommy gets when he leaves the house without permission.

Everyone kept telling me, “He didn’t know.” I don’t believe that for a second. I know he knew what he was doing. He really thinks it’s unbelievably unfair that Ainsley gets to go over to that house with her friend. He always tries to follow her over there and throws massive fits when I tell him he has to stay here. I wonder how long he’s been hatching his plan?

The next day, I figured if Zack wanted to be friends with that boy badly enough to run away then I better make a playdate with him.

I’ll be going to get him this morning for an hour and then I’ll drop Zack off to play over there for an hour.

Come back tomorrow to find out how I handled the guy who threatened to call the police.

Image Source: Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me

Post from: Blisstree

Zack Ran Away

Brain washing, outside polygamist cults, is an underrated and legitimate method with some great applications.

Potty training would be one of them.

Call me crazy – I’m sure half of you will, but that would be no different than any other day – I’m trying to potty train my 2-year-old son.

For his second birthday we gave him the Potty Training (Baby Signs) and some big boy underwear. The kit has a “choo choo train” theme. Get it? “potty train.” I was more excited than he was.

I realize common parenting advice says not to push it and to “wait till they’re ready,” but I reject such advice.

The Potty Training (Baby Signs) authors and child psychologists note that the studies that support “wait till they are ready” advice comes primarily from diaper companies like Pampers and Huggies.

The kit comes with a video and a book about going to the potty, teaching the sign language for the words: potty, more, wash. I was a little disappointed there were no fun signs like poo poo, pee pee and wipe. Isn’t wipe important? Why no sign for wipe?

I’m making him watching the video and read the book over and over and over. Also adding other videos like Elmo Goes To The Potty.

One of my major motivators is that diapers are expensive.

Another is that he’s indignant about me getting in his personal business.

Zacky, even Elmo Goes To The Potty.

You don’t want me to change your diapers?

No.

I wouldn’t want anyone changing my diapers either. If you go to the potty I won’t have to change you anymore.

No.

Does your bum hurt from that rash?

Yeah.

If you went on the potty you wouldn’t get rashes anymore.

Potty?

Yeah. You want to go potty?

No.

Do you want a sticker and candy?

Yeah!

OK. If you sit on the potty you can have a sticker and candy!

No.

Want to blow the potty train whistle?

Yeah.

Okay, sit on the potty. All Aboard the Potty Train! All Aboard! Tooot Tooot!

Potty!

Yeah, go on it.

No.

Okay.
No pressure. That’s the thing. I’m giving it a year. The year between 2 and 3 we’re potty training. If it happens quickly all the better. If it takes all year, OK.

But, I stop buying diapers on the 3rd birthday Zack.

Image Source: So Sioux Me

Post from: Blisstree

Brain Washing & Potty Training

My family really shines on Mother’s Day. Especially my husband, who always puts a lot of effort into getting the children involved in doing something creative for me.

I woke to pancakes with whipped cream and strawberries, an 8X11 photo of my children spelling out each letter of “Happy Mother’s Day” in my office and “I Love You” in the kitchen.

I also got a small deep freeze!

Ainsley sang me as song called, My Mom.

I H-E-A-R-T my family.

I hope your Mother’s Day was as good as mine.

Image Source: So Sioux Me

Post from: Blisstree

Mother’s Day Boast

My 2-year-old has taken to expressing indignation at all commercials.

He hands us the remote and demands that we fast forward.

Even my 6-year-old daughter, Ainsley, is confused about how this happened.

It’s LIVE TV Zack. You have to watch the commercials. Geez, she’ll tell him.

I mean, hasn’t everyone on the planet lived with commercials since television was invented?

Everyone except the new people who have never known television without a DVR, I guess.

It’s a unique generational experience. I am grateful for the miraculous invention that has revolutionized television and that I can get for only $5 a month. I experience a little glee every time I hit fast forward.

He’s watching the same program and wondering what idiot invented commercials in the first place and why anyone would put up with it.

Image Source: So Sioux Me, Tracee Sioux

Post from: Blisstree

Generation DVR

I am increasingly uncomfortable and pissed off at the amount of time the media is spending on Barack Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

I go to church every week. I have for several years, after about a decade of never going to church. I was raised in a home where I went to church every week.

I have yet to sit in a church and agree with the religious leader speaking. It just hasn’t happened to me.

For 2-3 years my husband and I sat in a church where we, or at least I, disagreed with nearly everything the pastor said. Nearly everything. We kept going back because his brothers and parents went there and we were in it for that communal bond.

The message was even offensive to me most of the time.

We moved to another church where the message was less offensive, but I still didn’t agree with much of what I heard.

We currently sit in a church where I don’t agree with that much of the message, but find it’s the most progressive, and least offensive, of the three denominations in town that we have to choose from.

I guess I take issue with the fact that people are allowed to judge what I believe based on what comes out of the pastor’s mouth. I can’t control what he’s saying, or what he believes, so I don’t want to be judged or condemned by it.

I read an article about evangelical Rev. John Hagee that John McCain was wooing so he could get the conservative vote. That guy, the article said, attributed Hurricane Katrina to God’s Judgement against an unholy and sinful city. He talks about Nation of Islam and going to go to holy war, as if it’s inevitable and desirable. He condemns Catholics and homosexuals. He preaches that the Qu’ran calls the Nation of Islam to kill Christians and Jews (I don’t believe this.) When I read about the guy and his religious-political beliefs I am reminded of Nazi Germany’s religious political propaganda.

The thought of a Presidential Candidate (McCain) wooing any pastor who desires a Holy War with the Middle East terrifies me in a crap my pants kind of way.

I want the antithesis of that – peace and religious tolerance.

Thank God for the Separation of Church and State. It’s the only thing protecting us from all these crazy extremist pastors and their “rightness” and holy wars and prejudiced and bigoted views of “what God wants.”

Post from: Blisstree

Pastoral Input & Elections

If you talk to people you’ll hear all about how the world is going to hell because parents aren’t watching their children anymore. I can hardly go to church, have lunch or momchat on the playground without hearing this come up.

Irresponsible parents do everything from let their children play with the neighbors to allowing their children to watch commercials on TV.

Don’t parents know commercials are full of sex and mass murderers inhabit next door.

It’s such a load of crap. It’s revisionist history really.

When I was a child my parents might not see me and my brothers for HOURS. We were always at the neighbors’ houses or in their yards. They summoned us by yelling out the door.

We had boundaries, of course. But, we were allowed free reign within those boundaries. Compared to today they were pretty liberal boundaries.

We were allowed to talk to people of different religions, we were allowed to play at our friend’s houses and even in the street. We walked to school and back – alone. We even rode the bus! We went to slumber parties.

(Psst. . . We even went to public school.)

Here’s the kicker – my parents were religious conservatives who had pretty strict standards for pretty much everything. If they erred – it was definitely on the side of caution. I rebelled because there were so many freaking rules I could barely stand my restrictive and confined life.

Of course, that’s before this latest parenting standard where “good parents” know where their children are every second of every single day and control what goes on. Talk about stifling creativity and killing childhood altogether.

There’s hysterical outcry about a woman who let her 4th grade child ride the subway alone in New York City in Newsweek.

I’m reading a memoir about Brooklyn at the turn of the last century. Children as small as 6 were being given a penny and being asked run to the corner store for bread. The same small child walks many city blocks to the city library and goes into the apartments of various shady characters because they are essentially harmless.

Safety is UP, Crime is down – stop being so damned paranoid! We’re turning children and parents into raving neurotics with TMI – too much information!

Swallow these feel-good and little-publicized statistics printed in the Newsweek story:

* Nationwide, stranger abductions are extremely rare; there’s a one-in-a-million chance a child will be taken by a stranger, according to the Justice Department.

In other words children today are significantly safer than they were when I was growing up.

And yet when I’m around a growing proportion of parents being called HoverMoms in the media, and what I call Paranoid Parents – those that remain so close, watching every move of their child with minute scrutiny I am so uncomfortable (for fear the same scrutiny will be applied to me next) it makes me want to . . .want to . . want to . . .invite someone a little more mellow and a little less neurotic over to play.

I’ve been trying this experiment. When a parent talks about supervising their children in an overly cautious way or how no one else is doing so, I ask them if they were allowed to roam the neighborhood as children. Inevitably, their face lights up remembering this shared childhood bliss. Yet, they rob their children of the same treasured experience.

Free Range-Kids is a blog by the mother who let her kid ride the subway alone. She’s “pro-sane parenting” and I can’t really argue with that.

From Free-Range Kids: At Free Range, we believe in safe kids. We believe in helmets, car seats and safety belts. We do NOT believe that every time school age children go outside, they need a security detail. Most of us grew up Free Range and lived to tell the tale.

Childhood bliss with some freedom versus neurotic paranoia? Liberated bliss for me and my kids please.

Image: So Sioux Me (That’s right – no helmets)

Oh and one hint to combat paranoia – turn off the news.

More on why the news is banned in my house.

Post from: Blisstree

Parents Watching Kids?

We went on a marriage retreat with a ropes course this weekend.

One of the challenges was to climb to the top of a telephone pole, stand on a platform at the top and then jump to a trapeze bar parallel to the pole, pretty far away. There’s a rope harness to keep you from falling to the ground.

I went first. I’m doing this. I can do anything. I am safe. I am brave. I’m going to jump. I’m doing this. I carried on an internal dialogue all the way up.

I wasn’t nervous till I got to the very top and it was time to stand up on the platform. You have to look down to place your feet properly. Then it’s pure fear.

I don’t want to do this anymore, I said out loud.

You’re right there, just stand up and jump, my husband, Jeremy shouted.

I stood up and realized how far that trapeze bar was. I was pure adrenaline.

Nothing is going to stop me. I have nothing to lose by failing. If I jump I succeed.

Then I jumped screaming and it was exhilarating.

Every single cell in my body was vibrating on this really alive-in-this-moment, yet surreal, frequency. I couldn’t stop laughing from my core.

Jeremy went up next and realized the bar was farther than it looked. He decided not to aim for the bar and just to jump. He jumped, but his heart wasn’t invested in reaching the trapeze.

That’s OK. It’s illustrative of our different approaches to issues that come up in our marriage.

I get emotionally invested and I’ll find a way to create a success out of it. “If I jump it’s success, as opposed to if I miss the trapeze I fail. Since it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to grab that pole there is nothing to lose by trying.” My motto is, “If I fail I fail, but at least I gave it a shot.”

Conversely, Jeremy felt the same futility in reaching the trapeze therefore, he was OK with simply jumping. He felt he still accomplished what he set out to do by climbing the pole and jumping.

Post from: Blisstree

Stand up and Jump!