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After a long, long absense from the blog I thought I would post a few musings and pictures, most importantly. Catherine has been gone on her annual sailing trip for almost three days now and Li Li and I are having a grand time in spite of the oppressive heat. Of course I think I’m the only one bothered by the heat. Li Li keeps knocking back her Nai (milk) throughout the day, a thought that makes me a touch queasy in this heat. Li Li asks “Where Mama” at least 3 or 4 times an hour – my answer is always the same. “She’s sailing in Canada”. Li Li now smiles when she hears this and is starting to answer the question when I ask it to her. We’ll see how long that lasts.

After she woke up from her nap today we (okay I) decided to go to the dollar theater to enjoy 90 minutes of air-conditioned bliss. While Dr. Suess’ Horton Hears a Who is fine book and a very good TV special, it just doesn’t hold up to the full-length movie treatment. All the requisite sight gags and obligatory inside jokes for the parents are present along with the nice moral fable but it just doesn’t have the spark that makes it a memorable movie. Li Li seemed to enjoy it, although she started to flag towards the end and got a little scared a few times. Of all the movies I would liked to have as our first movie together in an actual theater, this wouldn’t have made the 1st cut much less the final cut. Despite it not being an Oscar caliber film, Li Li got in free because she’s two and I got about 95 minutes of holding my not at all quirmy daughter in my lap in nice quiet air-conditioned theater. All in all it was a very good afternoon.

For those of you who didn’t know I’ve switched jobs and am very happy in my new role with Motorola. I am working with Motorola’s Good Technology group responsible for supporting Verizon Wireless. School is going strong, as much as I wish I could say it was winding down, it’s not. It’s a full-speed sprint until the very end, so no coasting to the finish. Once Labor day rolls around I’ll be finished with school. Given the correlation between my graduations and tough recessions (2 for 2 – 2008 and 1992) this will probably be my last pursuit of a degree. I don’t think the US could handle a third recession.

Now here’s what you all have been waiting for….

Li Li stills naps and Catherine takes advantage of them as well, when she can.

A rare photo where we all look good.

Li Li of course looks cute and I look like well…I’ll let you decide.

I try to put up some more pictures in the next few weeks.

Aunt Christine and Uncle Josh gave LiLi this t-shirt for her birthday and although I had shown it to her father, he did not mention that he had a matching t-shirt until she wore it for the first time this weekend.

LiLi has begun to tell stories. Ok, in all honesty, she says a few words or phrases that have to do with something we have seen or done and I fill in the rest. They are predominately about the zoo and we have to repeat them about 40 times a day.
Her favorite story is how we saw the penguins get fed one morning at the zoo. She say “Auh, Auh”(our sound for a penguin) and then makes a throwing motion and then says Cormorant which is the bird with the penguins who had the fish thrown to him. A few times she throws in the word fish, too.
Then there is the story from florida which consists of “Snap” “birds” “fishies.” The alligator in florida had the birds hanging out around him and then he would move around and the birds would get some fishes and eat them.
“Elephant” and “Shower” tells you about the elephant at the zoo who we saw being washed the other day. It was very hard to get LiLi to leave the elephant enclosure that day.
We also like to review the Jungle book either talking about the fight between Balou and the tiger and then Balou being hurt and Moguli crying and then Balou getting better. She is very earnest while she is telling this story.

LiLi in the rain with her Elmo umbrella

LiLi has quite a fashion sense. She gets to pick out her hat every morning and it almost never matches her outfit. I am not exactly sure why she believes that she need a hat every day but she does. Unfortunately, I do not often have the camera within easy access to catch these outfits. However, let me just say that they usually involve a pink coat and a red hat. One of my favorite outfits recently was her pink and brown raincoat with her red strawberry hat(one of her favorites) and then she carried the red(a totally different color red than the strawberry hat) and yellow umbrella. She looked fabulous.

One of our favorite red hats. I think she likes the jewel and the braid down the back.

Practicing with our new umbrella

Sharing her umbrella with Maggie