Young Republican

There's hope for this state afterall.

Not sure how or why, but Rachel knows who Dino Rossi is. Every time she sees him on TV, she exclaims "Dino Rossi!" and asks us to turn up the TV. Ironically, most of the time she notices him, his image is appearing in an attack ad by our current lame-duck governor.

We wonder if she likes him because he has the same name as the original purple dinosaur, Fred Flintstone's pet Dino.

We've been teaching Rachel to cover her ears and sing "la la la" when commercials play, though lately every so often she asks us to unmute a commercial, announcing, "It's ok, this commercial is for kids."

*sigh*

Who are you from...?

Rachel has discovered a game we end up playing a lot... she'll come up to us and ask one of two questions...

"Can you guess who I am from ________?"
or
"Who are you from ________?"

The blank will always be filled with the name of a Disney movie. Or now Pixar movies, too, because I don't know a lot of the characters in the Disney movies she watches.

If it's the first question, the answer is always "Belle" or "Aurora" or "Nala." If it's the second question, you can either directly answer "Bullseye," "Gaston," "P.T. Flea." or "Luigi" or you can let her guess.

We play this game a lot.

Success!

FINALLY got a good photo of Ben smiling! He's been laughing out loud for close to a week, too, and not just in his sleep like he'd been doing. He's such a happy boy. He does cry, but there's nearly always a reason for it, and most of the time it's easily solved (diaper change, feeding, putting him in the Baby Bjorn so he'll stop fighting sleep). He is really a joy to have in our lives.

News: Teacher lets Morningside students vote out classmate, 5

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. (TCPALM.COM) — Melissa Barton said she is considering legal action after her son's kindergarten teacher led his classmates to vote him out of class.

After each classmate was allowed to say what they didn't like about Barton's 5-year-old son, Alex, his Morningside Elementary teacher Wendy Portillo said they were going to take a vote, Barton said.

By a 14 to 2 margin, the students voted Alex — who is in the process of being diagnosed with autism — out of the class. More...