Here are a few photos taken last week just after I had Elizabeth's bangs trimmed. On the way back to the car Elizabeth spied a nice little patch of grass across from Fashion Island and it seemed the perfect opportunity to let her burn off some energy. As it turned out I had the camera with me and managed to get a few lovely photos of Miss Elizabeth. And I was also lucky enough to have a kindly stranger offer to take a photo of us together that day. As with so many things in life...nice things happen when you least expect it.












This is Elizabeth saying "I Love You" in sign language. She picked that sign up rather quickly and uses many times to her advantage you can be sure!

A few photos

I think you can get a good sense of how tall Elizabeth has gotten from this photo. Here she is with dada (whom she still insists on calling "mama") watching her favorite Wiggles show. Oh and her pediatrician reiterated that it wasn't good for kids to watch TV. Opps. We do limit it pretty much to interactive stuff but ocassionally she does enjoy a little Sesame Street too. I still think it isn't so bad. The doctor said instead of TV take her to the Zoo. Oh yes, at 7 a.m. I am going to jump in the car and drive to San Diego Zoo!!! Besides with our high energy darling Elizabeth around--the house resembles a zoo half the time!



Yep, Elizabeth is still trying to climb over the gate. But interestingly she always closes the gate behind her when she comes in the room. I think she now thinks the gate was her idea.





Still trying really hard to get her to pose nicely for a photo but I am thinking I am going to have to get her to a professional photographer if I want a really good photo of her.



Here she is making the sign for "please" --which she tends to do a lot since she asks for just about everything she sees--as I might have mentioned she is still of the firm belief that everything that exists in the world is hers--well, isn't it?

Elizabeth Helps Unpack the Groceries

Here she is helping to unpack some groceries. One of these days I am going to try to do a more professional and polished video but for now I just pick up the camera when I can.

You will also notice she has an extremely runny nose which she seems to have picked up from her first few days at her little preschool which she started for a few hours this week--that is a whole other story--more on that later!

Elizabeth brings me my shoes

Here is a little rather jumpy video that displays Elizabeth's penchant for getting everyone their shoes. She loves doing this since it usually means she gets to go out--which she also loves.

You will also see a little mention of Bodhi trying to escape--which he is more prone to do now since Elizabeth tends to bother him just a bit. In terms of how they are getting along--it is still a tenuous state of "peaceful coexistence"--as long as Elizabeth keeps her tendency to scream and pounce on him in check.

A Sunny Day on Lido

Last weekend we headed down to Lido Island in Newport to let Elizabeth play in the sand and to get a bite to eat. Too bad for Elizabeth that we left too late in the day for her to get her fair amount of time in at the playground. She really didn't want to leave when we dragged her away...

Take a look in the left hand corner of this photo and you will see Marty on the bench. I joked with him that this is his version of playing with Elizabeth at the park!!! Truth is that he and Elizabeth are pretty tight playground buddies and while Marty does take advantage of shade and a seat when he can, he does his fair amount of chasing her all around the playground.













Elizabeth was fascinated with using her hands to pour the sand into the drain and spent a fair amount of time engaged in this activity. She was none too happy when we took her away from her self appointed job of sand removal. One of these days those skills might come in useful around the yard.

Looking Back

Here are some photos from our trip to China. It was just about seven months ago that Marty and I left to bring Elizabeth home. I don't know if we really knew just how dramatically our lives would change once we returned home. Actually we didn't know.

There are so many days I marvel at the odds and the absolute miracle that had to transpire for all of the forces to converge and for us to be brought together with Elizabeth.

Here we are just moments after seeing Elizabeth in person for the first time...



This is us just before she showed up....(sorry for the random order of these photos...it is too darn hard on this blogger program to go back and reorder the photos)




And here we are with the 17 other families with their new babies...sometimes I think back on that experience and of traveling around China on a bus with 17 babies who just met their parents--probably one of the most intense of my life experiences.





This was the view outside of the room at our second hotel. We really did get our money's worth out of those hotels--aside from our required outings and official business--we barely ventured outside owing to the really bad air and our deire to avoid a lot of the chaos that seems to define Guangzhou. I sometimes feel bad that we didn't see more of the city but then I remember how crazy it was getting around (not to mention the smells--oy vey!) and the stress involved in traveling around was way more than we were up to at that point. Our goal for the trip was to get there and to get home with Elizabeth, hopefully all in one piece.



Here we our at one of our required outings--a visit to the medical center at Shamian Island where we had to go through the basic beauracratic medical exams--another surreal experience. This is also where we realized we were staying in the wrong part of town. Shamian Island was where most of those who adopt in Guangzhou stay. It has lots of amenities we could have used. Our facilitator didn't want us to stay there for reasons that were strictly his own.



Here is Marty standing outside the hotel next to ours...just a day before we met Elizabeth. Ah, he looked so fancy free then.



This is just part of the medicine cabinet I traveled to China with. I had another section of cold and flu medicine that was just as large. Believe it or not last week I discovered a small bag that I had not yet unpacked that had some of these things in it. Guess I have been a little busy, eh?



And here are our suitcases still unpacked on the first day we got to China. Little did we know that this was the last time our lives would look so organized for quite a while.

Elizabeth and Kayla

These photos are from a few weeks ago when Elizabeth had a playdate with her buddy Kayla who traveled home from China with her. They had a great time. In fact Elizabeth saw Kayla again yesterday and even though Kayla is 8 months older than Elizabeth they seemed to get a kick out of one another-especially when Kayla tickled ELizabeth's feet!