Elizabeth and La La

Last weekend cousin Laura (Aunt LaLa to Elizabeth) came to visit and as you might imagine--Elizabeth was thrilled. We managed to tour a lot of Newport Beach and found ourselves at a few of Elizabeth's favorite eateries--and a new one or two.

We took a nice drive down to San Clemente and Elizabeth was such a good girl. We were sorry that Aunt Re couldn't be here--last year when Ann Marie was here, Elizabeth learned her classic "Ann Marie face"--which is her wide eyed open mouth exclamation look.







Here she is at the Cannery-- a nice restaurant in Newport Beach. She is pretty darn good in restaurants (knock on wood). Heck, she should be--she has been eating a good percentage of her meals at them since she was 10 months old. Our first two weeks with her in China we were eating in restaurants for all of her meals.



We visited Avila el Ranchito's down in San Clemente and Elizabeth had just a good a time there as she did at the fancier Cannery restaurant--as you can see here.


Yeah, Elizabeth likes to eat, and she likes the good stuff. Laura was amazed when Elizabeth turned down the french fries and chicken nuggets kids meal and went right for the guacamole and Mexican rice. She's not big on french fries anymore--I guess that was a phase. Her new phase is buttered noodles. She will eat them anytime, day or night--the more butter the better.





Here she is with mama.




Elizabeth makes this face fairly often to express displeasure. I think she gets her point across pretty well.




Here she is with the car keys. She has learned that if you point and click the key at the car you can open it up. She hasn't quite figured out yet that it doesn't work on every car. Although the other day she did actually help me by pressing the key and locking our car while my hands were full.

I think about all the technologies that have come about just since I was a kid and I wonder how that affects how kids see the world. Things like pointing at things and they magically open, and then there is the whole DVR "Tivo" effect--you can fast forward, rewind and pause things at will. The other day on the playground I noticed a kid yelling at another kid, "pause!!!". I think in my day we would have screamed "stop!".


Here is Elizabeth standing outside the house. She looks like such a "big girl" to me now.