Happy New Year Decorating the tree....and Happy Hanukkah!

Happy New Year. It's 2011. Still hard to believe.



And belated Happy Hanukkah and Merry Merry Christmas.


Hanukkah came really early this year...I think it caught us by surprise. This is the first year that Elizabeth really understood the holidays and she welcomed them with gusto.

While we may not be big into organized religions I can tell you this--Elizabeth and I DO believe in Santa Claus! Marty does not offer his opinion and remains silent on this score--same way he won't tell anyone his political leanings. But I can't resist the allure of Santa. And as my dear friend's mom, (you know who you are) told me, "you can't deny her the joys of Santa Claus!" No siree--we can't do that.

She loves the idea of Santa but interestingly she has NO desire to meet him in person. She sat on Santa's lap once when she was a year old but after that..."no way, Jose." I can't say I half blame her. Some of them do look at tad scary. Did you see the one at the mall this year? Yikes.

And presents? Bring them on. She whipped through all of her presents on about 10 minutes--but what a joyful 10 minutes that was.

















Elizabeth is in love with the idea of a Christmas tree--Every morning she just "had" to redecorate the tree and as you might imagine the tree was a little "bottom" heavy--but so cute to watch her take ownership of it. Of course she pretty much takes ownership of everything around here. I can't remember the last time I got to watch a TV show of my own while she is around.

Holiday with Friends

Here are some photos taken at the Families with Children From China annual holiday party. As you can see, the girls got hold of some lollipops and were thoroughly enjoying them. Kaila, Maria and Elizabeth manage to always make their own fun.

It was sort of an interesting experience in terms of Elizabeth's earbuds. When we walked into the party there was a lot of loud music. Elizabeth ran out of the room holding her ears, saying it was "too loud". I even lowered the db's by 10 and she still thought it was too loud. It must have had something to do with the bass. It was a DJ so we asked him to lower the music. That wasn't enough for Elizabeth so she pulled her earbuds out and spent the entire four hours of the party without them on. She really couldn't hear a thing anyone was saying--but happily it didn't seem to affect her and she had a ball all evening. I don't think her friends had any idea.

I am going to schedule an appt. with her ear doctor to ask about different strategies for dealing with situations like that.

In the meantime I am just so happy she had such a great time at the party.












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Playing around....

Just a few photos of Elizabeth playing around and donning her plastic yellow sunglasses.

It never rains in California, but...

For those of you on the East Coast and other parts cold in this world, I will preface these pictures taken last Sunday with the news that it is currently about 58 degrees (this is the temperature at which water freezes in California) and we have a forecast of rain for the next seven straight days. Whatever we will do?

Thanks Dr. R......

On Monday we made our quarterly trip up to L.A. to see Elizabeth's eye doctor. It was just about two years ago that she had eye surgery for her strabisumus (crossed eye). It is a bittersweet trip nowadays since the surgeon, whom I loved, Dr. Rosenbaum--passed away earlier this year.

But we definitely thought of him when his protege Dr. Velez said, "Elizabeth's eyes look great. They are straight and her vision is 20/25. We no longer have to patch her eye and it looks likely that she will not need to wear her glasses much longer. Unbelievable.

We follow up in three months and we will see how she is doing with the lower prescription. In terms of her vision right now she doesn't need glasses at all, but we are keeping the glasses for now to help keep the eye straight and strengthen the muscle. If all goes well, ""adios, glasses".

Then again, as my brother said--"don't be surprised if she doesn't want to ditch the glasses". Well, yeah--she loves her glasses. She has also gotten used to the "transition" lenses which turn into sunglasses when she is outside in the sun. She won't go out without them. I think we might have to get her sunny glasses without a prescription to keep her happy.

Let's hope so.

And thank you Dr. Rosenbaum--we're thinking of you.

Here is a pic of Elizabeth at Jules Stein Eye Institute--she has a blast there playing in the little playhouses they have.