I'm a Photo Swiper

I confess. I'm a photo swiper! Here's a photo that I shamelessly pirated from another mom's website. Whoever shot this is much better with a camera than I. This is a much better angle than the ones I took, and the background is depicted better. Plus, I think you can see all the kids better, too.

Meanwhile, its 6:30 a.m., and T is still sleeping. That's good, as this is gynastics day. Hopefully we won't suffer the debacle of last week. After, we're headed over to my parents, where I'm having some new windows installed. Then this afternoon and evening, we're off to Aunt Dot's house. She's stuck at home all day long on both sat and sun, from 9 - 6 p.m., monitoring training calls for her work. She's stuck and will need her weekly Taylor fix, so we're going to her.

Meanwhile, we just go a few pics in from T's maonan sissy Sara. Sara is busy in ballet and dance class and Laura sent me some cute pics of that. I often speak about how alike they are. I'm also finding that Laura and I are much alike, too! In addition to general philosophies, we both are apparently passionate in our love for Target shopping. I spotted right away little Sara's cute leo. T has the same one!! I'll try and con her into wearing it today to gynastics, and post pics later. Ginger Rogers and Paula Abdul better watch out! Miss Sara's in the house!!!

Impromptu Borders Poll

Close readers of this site remember how excited I was with my Hillary deck of playing cards. Well, look what I found tonight in Borders!! I'm equally excited. You may note the 2 red hearts cards....my boyfriends.... Jon Stewart and George Clooney! Similar to the other pack, the dueces are reserved for a select group of hated republicans...like Limbaugh, etc. Too funny. Unfortunately, the decks were manufactured before the Veeps were selected. They could have had some added fun with that!

Anyway, It seems that every time you turn around these days, the pundits are blabbing on and on about "the latest poll". One station has Obama ahead, and another (I like to think less reliable) network has The Joker ahead. Hard to know who to believe. Myself, I was heartened to see that in the playing card display in Borders tonight, Obama was sold out. I got the last pack.

There were 3 packs left of the Joker.

Sign of the times? I like to think so!

p.s. if you look closely at the 2nd Joker in this pack, you'll see McC, who I dubbed the Joker a few weeks ago based on a vile joke of his. Hmmm, clearly the maker of these cards agrees with me!

We're Helping Haiti to Smile

At T's school, there has been a box set up all week, with flyers posted asking one to donate clothes, food, really anything ...to help out the poor country of Haiti, which has been so ravaged recently by various storms and hurricanes. As is usual, I'm usually too busy to really think about it as I go about my daily hassle. That's a shame.

Tonight on the news, they made an announcement about how Miami-Dade county and the City were taking up a collection to be flown out on Friday. They really need more food. I believe that the daycare's box is part of that collection, as the center has some affiliation with the county. Anyway, tonight on the news they showed footage from Haiti. Its deplorable. Its unimaginable. It showed how the army had to protect people, often children, from being mobbed after being handed a ration of food. Grown men and women so desparate and hungry for food, that they would rob a child of his share. Heartbreaking.

So, I got up off my overly-fed rearend that was sitting nice and safe in my newly hurricane-shuttered house, and decided to take a peek to see if I have anything to donate. What a load I found!! Lots of stuff that I've had for a while, will be expiring at the end of the year, that I know I will NEVER eat before then. A box of pancake mix, 2 huge jars of annoying hurricane peanutbutter, some pasta dishes, couscous and rice, veggies, even pedialyte. Its amazing. We will never, ever miss any of this stuff, and people in Haiti are literally willing to kill for it.

Once again the concept of Haiti is a little above T, but she's very excited to be giving these gifts.

"Mama, I give this to Haiti and she's gonna smile".

Yes, baby, she certainly will.

Breaking Blog News! Vacation Update

Ooops, sorry I was unclear. We leave at the end of the month, and come back on Wednesday, Oct. 1.

We are very excited that Aunt Ceci and Baisler might be able to meet us for one day in disney. To that end, I'm publishing our tentative schedule (barring tantrums, sickness and other general calamities) while we're there:

Sunday: Epcot - 4:50 p.m. Princess Dinner

Monday: MGM - 11:30 Sci Fi Theatre Lunch
5:30 Wolfgang Puck Restaurant at Downtown Disney

Tuesday: Magic Kingdom: 11:30 Tony's Town Square Lunch (the Italian Restaurant near the entrance)
4:45 Epcot Japan Dinner

Wednesday: Drive home

So Ceci, which day? Mon or Tues? Let me know in the comments and I'll enlarge our reservations!

Hello China, it's me Taylor, Are you Listening?

This is the only picture that depicts T's special drawing that she made during the FCC dinner "for my China". You can see it tied to the balloon string. Not sure exactly what it is, other than a bunch of circle-type shapes, but I'm sure its something important in T's mind.

I'm starting to think the concept of china is a little to big for T to understand. Its funny, but sometimes I wonder if she thinks that China is a real, live person, vs. a country. Since the big balloon release, she's been constantly say, "My balloon will get to China First" "Its winning" "My China will like my balloon" "I drew a picture for my China", etc. Hmmm.

Below, if I ever get it working, I'll post the video of the big "balloon release". If I do say so myself, it really is cute...

Beach Blanket Bingo!

After the big balloon release, T had a ball playing on the beach. This is T's first trip to the beach. I confess to being a wuss and being too afraid to take her by myself. I've always thought we'd start out in the gulf, and work our way up to the Atlantic. However, after seeing how much fun she had tonight, I suspect a visit to the beach is in our near future.

You'll see in the bottom photo, after playing in the surf for a while, T made a beeline for the boys playing soccar. Smart Girl! Unfortunately, with my bum foot, I couldn't keep up with here. Luckily Uncle Jack had some leftover energy and was able to chase her down before she ruined their game.

The Balloon Release

Here's the whole gang of kids, posing for the group shot. As you can see, some were making very funny faces for the camera.
T experienced the beach for the first time ever, and LOVED IT! She had a ball playing in the sand.
Finally, everybody one the count of 3, released their balloons with their messages attached. T slightly screwed up, and let hers go too soon. T then proceeded to announce to anyone who would listen that her balloon was "winning". Where does she get this stuff?
Here go all the balloons, on their way to china.

Mid Autumn Moon Festival Dinner

This evening we had our big dinner at Miss Yip's Chinese Restaurant on Lincoln Road mall in Miami Beach...South Beach, to be exact. Here's T hamming it up with Lori, who is one of the officers in the FCC group. They had loot bags for all the kids and we ate a delicious authentic chinese meal. Our friends Aunt Jodi and Uncle Jack, along with Jodi's brother Mickey were able to join us for the festivities.

T dug into her rice, and actually managed better than mom to get some food into her mouth using chopsticks.
After dinner, we strolled down the outdoor mall to the beach. We all had white balloons, signifying the moon, and we attached little notes to them. I told T that when we let them go, the note would go to China, and she was so excited about that thought. She drew a special picture for china, and I attached a note, saying "I love you, Taylor". I got a short video the letting go of the balloons ceremony, that I'll post shortly. Those videos take a while to upload, though.
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Before going out onto the beach, we all posed for a picture. Here's T with Lori's 2 children. Aren't they the cutest? I laugh about little Ethan and his shirt. I got this shot right before Lori went to work fastening it back up. To me, he looks quite Miami Vice sporting a "chinese guayabera". I think any minute he's going to check out one of the little girls and say, "You look marvelous!" Yep, he's one cool cat!

Weekend Update

T had her last swim class on Friday night. To graduate, she's thrown in the pool in full "winter" clothing. Last night it was "summer" clothing. The point is that if there is a pool accident, its likely that a child will be fully clothed when falling in. Therefore to graduate, they are put in situations that simulate the accident, and have to get out of it. T was thrown in head first, she was dunked under by surprise, a wet cloth was thrown over her as she floated, and other controlled "obstacles" were employed. Needless to say, T did NOT like this and let everybody know. However, she passed with flying colors.

On Saturday, it was once again gymnastics day. T literally woke up a the crack of dawn, around 6:00 a.m. and insisted on getting into her leotard. She was so excited the whole morning that she couldn't stand it and hardly ate a thing. We got there, and she TOTALLY balked. Didn't want anything to do with it. Things started turning toward an all out tantrum as I tried to coax her to join the class.

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Turns out, she had gotten up so early that it was now "nap time". I should have realized that she can't go to bed at 11:00 p.m. or later by the time she finally fell asleep, get up at 6:00 a.m., and do gymnastics at 10:00. Stupid me. She came home, and went right to sleep, poor thing. You can see, she's still in her leotard. Oh well. Lesson learned for the future.

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Tomorrow (Sunday) we have a FCC dinner at a Chinese restaurant located at Lincoln Road on South Beach. Its in celebration of the Chinese Autumn Moon Festival, a national holiday. Dot and our friends Jodie and Jack will be joining us at the celebration. T will be tricked out in her finest chinese "silks" that we bought in China. Stay tuned for pics from that event. Should be fun!

My Blog Rating

My bloggy friend over at Stress is the New Black rated her blog and posted about it. She was slightly annoyed that she got a squeaky-clean G rating. I TOTALLY understand her thinking. One likes to think that your life has enough excitement and edginess in it, that one would at least score a PG rating. Yes, I know my life is diametrically different than the life I lead for 6 years at the University of Florida, during undergrad and Law school, but that's as it should be. I'm 43 for God's sake, not 21. However, like Lori, I went to the site hoping for a racier rating.

Well, I got an R rating and was thrilled!!! Um, that is, until I read WHY I scored the R rating. According to the site, I received that rating b/c I used the following words, the following number of times:

pain (4x); shitty (3x); damn (1x)

That's it? That's all you have to do to get an R rating? Gee, I know that somewhere on my blog is the word "Fuck", but apparently that doesn't rate in the scoring. Now, when I was 16 and getting in trouble for saying that word, I would have agreed. My argument was that: why was one word singled out over others? Fuck is the same as Intercourse after all, the only difference is that one is of anglo-saxon origin and one of latin derivation. Kind of like dick vs. penis. One acceptable, and one not, yet both refer to the same thing. My parents never bought that argument, but apparently this annoying blog-test does.

So, I'm now going to post this post, go back and rate my blog again, and see if whether or not I'm now up to an X rating, given the four words I've just been discussing. I'll report back.

UPDATE: I'm still at an "R" rating. Now the reasons are as follows: Pain (5x); shitty (4x); damn (2x); and dick (1x). Again, "fuck" did not register. Interesting.

So theoretically, I guess I could post all day and night about having upside-down-monkey-sex with every Tom, Dick (oops) and Harry, and I'd score the same as my current celibate-toddler-mom life. That's just wrong!

UPDATE #2: Still an R rating, but now the F-word is registering. However, upside-down-monkey-sex does not register. Of course since the last update, I confess that its occured to me that perhaps the reason that I'm leading a celibate-toddler-mom life, is b/c I'm at home on a Friday night busy screwing around with rating my blog vs. being out and about attempting to "get busy" doing other things, but I choose not to dwell on that. I just don't have the energy!