When she's eating, Lura will often ask for the "whole thing"--an entire chicken breast or pork chop, or even a whole serving bowl. Not that she'll eat it all, of course; we think it's just part of the toddler's "I'll do it myself" ethos. Around the beginning of March, she began to want the "whole thing" with apples and nectarines; she sometimes needs help with the first bite, but she can take it from there (and unlike a lot of kids, she seems to prefer the skins of fruits and the crusts of bread). Now if we could only get her to apply that principle to, say, green beans...
There are riding toys, paint, a sandpit, and other diversions in the courtyard outside the South Bay Adult School classroom where Lura and Cheryl go once a week. Lura, Ivy, and Gracie are getting a push in "bumper to bumper" traffic from Gracie's mom Carolina.
Here are Ivy, Parker, Lura, and Gracie at the cookstove in the RV at another favorite play location, "Under the Sea." We're not sure what to make of Parker's expression in this photo, but it probably has to do with being surrounded by girls...
March 4th was Cheryl's birthday, and she and Lura started out by going to the "Whale of a Day" celebration at Point Vincente, a popular local whale-watching location. Lura had fun with a lot of the things to do there, but having spotted the face-painting booth early on, she kept asking Cheryl for "whale on face," and later in the day they went back and got her one. Then she asked for "whale on hand," and she got one of those too. She was also excited by the octopus stamp placed on her left hand at the entrance (kind of pale and hard to see here), and by the plastic spider that Dylan won at a game and then gave to her. A whale of a day for her, indeed!
Mark's dad had given him some cash and told him to use it to take Cheryl to a nice restaurant for her birthday, so that evening we took him up on the offer (thanks, Dad!). Restaurant Christine, at the foot of the Palos Verdes peninsula, is a fine restaurant that we've gone to once or twice since we started dating, and we were happy to have the opportunity to go there once again.
Of course, Lura probably wouldn't have cared much for the food there (no kids' menu!), so we left her with Dylan and his parents for the evening. When we came back to pick her up (not too late, just after 9 p.m.) we found the kids snuggling on the couch with a video, milk, and Dylan's father Mark. It was a nice evening for Lura, too, then!
The next day, Lura's friend Gracie was baptized during the church service. Afterward Cheryl helped take family and group photos with everybody else's cameras, while Mark tended Lura. He introduced her to "PDA Playground," a program for his Palm handheld that he had picked up as a freebie; it provides various kid-friendly games (puzzles, painting and drawing, "scratch-off" pictures) with an interface that locks down the rest of your data to protect it. Now she often asks for "Daddy's Palm," and sometimes we'll play with it as part of her bedtime stories.
Here she is in a local park on March 8th, running around with a fallen branch she found.
Every so often when we go to one of our favorite Hawaiian, Japanese, or Chinese restaurants (here it's The Local Place, a short-order offshoot of King's Hawaiian), Lura will have another go with the chopsticks. She keeps getting closer and closer, and more importantly, she keeps trying!
For some reason, during her bath on March 16th, Lura derived much glee from sticking her bath crayons on all her fingers. She attempted to draw multiple parallel lines this way, but they kept falling off.
The next day, St. Patrick's Day, we went to Danni, Mark, and Dylan's house for a dinner of corned beef and cabbage. Here Lura and Dylan are hangin' with some cold milk after the meal; Dylan was generous enough to share his little couch with Lura.
As Lura gets more and more capable, and more and more interested in doing things herself, we have begun to enlist her to help with various tasks around the house, like helping Cheryl transfer clothes from the washer to the dryer. Here she is putting together a "pretzel spider" for lunch (two Ritz crackers joined with peanut butter, with pretzel sticks stuck into the peanut butter for legs and raisins glued on with peanut butter for eyes). It tastes better when she has had the satisfaction of making it herself!
Here are Lura and Mommy just six days before baby brother's arrival (March 18th). We have tried to break it to her that Cheryl won't be able to pick her up for some weeks afterward, and may have to skip out on classes for a similar period; Mark has pretty much taken over bath duties, to get her ready for Cheryl's absence when she's in the hospital. But in spite of it all, Lura has been looking forward to greeting her baby brother, as have we!
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