Water Baby

Last week our next door neighbor Jane invited Elizabeth to her pool for a swim. Do you think she had a good time?

Little Miss Elizabeth

Here you see Elizabeth trying out for a role on "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous". I love the last photo of her on the phone--she loves telephones.

And she is figuring out that for the price of a $20.00 lunch you can hang out in the hotels and resorts that the movie stars do. I think you also learn this growing up in N.Y.C. When we were teenagers, my cousin and I used to scape money together and have dinner at the 21 Club! Hey, even a cat can look at a king!

Holly and Elizabeth

So it was about two weeks ago that Holly came down from LA to visit us and I am just now getting the photos posted. No surprise there.

As you can gather from the photos, Elizabeth was thrilled with the visit. And she was even more joyous when we managed to talk Holly into getting Bruce's okay to stay overnight with us. You should have seen Elizabeth's face when she woke in the morning to find Holly there!

You might know that Holly was my college roommate--and that was well over 20 years ago! How can that be possible? Can that be possible? Yes, I know--it is possible. Yikes.

And amazingly Holly and I can always pick up almost where we left off 20 years ago...and it seems Elizbeth feels the same way--she was ready to boot me out of the premises once Holly showed up--needless to say it was great to see her and we hope to see lots more of her--and the rest of the family--Zach and Becky and Bruce!

Elizabeth had a great Holly Day!

There's More to the Story...

I have long realized that my posts are just a peek into the Elizabeth's world and that a number of important facts are often left out--mostly owing to lack of time. I often walk around writing her blog in my head but getting the time to put fingers to keyboard is often scarce. In fact as you can see the date on this post is August 9th (which is the day I started it and now it is 6 days later).

Usually I get the most salient points of the day or the most amusing pictures up--but the "rest of the story" is usually left out.

So, let's see...how can I summarize this so as to fill you in and not bore you to tears? Well, here goes-

1. Sleep...well, we have made some progress. After 2 months of serious sleep issues and sleep deprivation on all of our parts, Elizabeth is sleeping in her own toddler bed for the entire night (knock on a lot of wood please). She is also going to sleep at nap time. She does, however wake at least once and maybe two or three times a night and we have to go and tell her to go back to sleep--which she usually does. She has a funny way of doing it and says in her own cute way that she will go back to bed for 5 minutes and then go downstairs. Once she is in her bed she is asleep for at least a few hours until her next call. Say prayers she keeps up a good sleep routine.





2. Elizabeth has been attending preschool at the JCC from 9:00 to 12:45 on Mon., Wed., and Fri. since June 20th--and she loves it so far. (knock on wood). She lucked out and landed in a class with ALL girls--there are 8 of them and they all get along wonderfully. It is adorable to watch. And it has me thinking that I may want to send her to an "All Girls" school when she gets older. Here are a couple of photos from her class-more to come:







3. She is a BIG girl. She seems to have gotten a couple of inches taller in the last couple of months and she is in the 95th percentile for height and the 90th percentile for age. We predict she will be quite tall.








4. She is pretty much (knock on wood) potty trained...at least during the day. She caught on really quick and we just had to work on some fine tuning. We are not 100% there but our diaper bills are now gone. I thought it would never happen and the whole idea of potty training seemed more daunting to me than preparing a doctoral thesis. But that is the way I feel about a lot of basic child rearing issues.

5. She is progressing great in almost every area but she seems to be a little slow in putting words together. She has a lot of single words but her expressive and receptive language skills are not where they should be so she has just qualified for speech therapy through the county. She will hopefully start next week and the therapist thinks she will catch up fast,. I hope she starts talking more soon as she often gets a little frustrated when she can't quite get her point across--besides that I would love to know what she is REALLY thinking. (Remind me that I said that).
Everyone asks me why is it that her speech is delayed and the best answer all my research has come up with is, "who knows?". There is conflicting literature about speech delays in internationally adopted children with some studies claiming that longer the time in an institutional setting and with a foreign language the greater the problem and then there are many studies that contradict that quite strongly.

I also gather that a lot of children born to English speaking parents have speech delays and that the reasons are often hard to pin down. In some cases it can be oral motor delays which have to do with difficulty forming words. And the experts seem to shrug their shoulders when you ask what causes this--but the therapist did say that she will have a better idea after a few weeks of therapy.

I have lots more to say and lots more photos to share but I better post this before another week goes by...

Water Baby

Elizabeth has a few favorite words and they are "ice pop" and "water". She loves ice pops and as you can see from the photos she loves playing with water, in water and around water.

Project Playhouse

On Saturday Elizabeth and I went off in search of some activity that would get her some much needed exercise. We decided to head to the Irvine Spectrum and check out Project Playhouse. We were happy when Patty and Maria (a.k.a.) Mei Mei, decided to join us. Saturday was the only day of the event that you could tour inside the children's playhouses that were being auctioned for charity so we figured it was a great day to go.


Now I have to qualify this when I say, "children's playhouses". These are the playhouses for kids with their own stock portfolios. In prior years some of these houses went for as much as $50,000. Yes, I did say 50 grand. It all does go to a good cause, however--HomeAid which provides shelter for people in need. You can check out the website and see some of the houses we saw that will be auctioned off in a few weeks. And if you have 50 grand burning a hole in your pocket, you may even want to place a bid. Let us know if you do and we will send Elizabeth over to play.

Here is the link:

http://www.projectplayhouse.org/home.php

Elizabeth and Maria




The girls had fun touring the open houses...




Here are Maria and Elizabeth checking out the digs. Maria seems to be wondering whether the granite is the right color for the flooring.




This was our favorite house..or shall I say, "my favorite house"...it was a beach cottage and I can tell you it is a tad bigger than some of my New York apartments.




She does seem right at home, doesn't she?




And what kid couldn't use a flat screen tv in her pad?




Check out the nice den in her house...




Enjoying a nice meal for herself in her new kitchen.