Lulu in LA

We took a family trip to Los Angeles this past weekend and Lulu did really well, considering all the time she spent in the car.  We left on Friday afternoon and drove to Bakersfield and spent the night.  We got up, had some breakfast and then drove the rest of the way in to Los Angeles.



The first place we went was Modernica and then explored the shops up and down the street...

I absolutely LOVE this photo.

Afterward, we went to lunch at Berlin Currywurst, but Lulu was NOT happy about eating sausage since The Great Weisswurst Incident of May 2011 (her last meal before getting horribly, horribly sick with dysentery/cholera for about a week--we haven't been able to get her to try sausage since).



Needless to say, Daddy ate her sausage while she ate her bread and french fries.

Afterward, on our way back to the car, we passed a children's shoe store and bought her three pairs of shoes. The only shoes she had were the tennis shoes that MauMau and Oompapa bought her at Christmas (the rest had fallen apart). So, she was excited by the new shoes!

The next day, we went to LACMA. She loved Metropolis II--a gigantic matchbox car/electric train exhibit:

and then drove around Mulholland Drive and the Hollywood Hills.

San Fernando Valley in the background
taken from overlook on Mulholland Drive

Afterward, we drove down Topanga Canyon into Malibu and along the Pacific Coast Highway to Venice Beach for dinner.

enjoying her margherita pizza and diluted orange juice

Ice Cream!!

After dinner, Lulu and Daddy walked on to the beach to see the ocean. Mama stayed behind because the wind was > 50 mph and the sand was whipping around like crazy!



The next day, we drove along Highway 101 up to Santa Barbara on our way home. We stopped and let Lulu stretch her legs and run around a bit in SB:

what happens when you try to pet seagulls....

In the interest of full disclosure (and my own failing memory, so I will remember this when I read it in the future), there were parts of this weekend that made me want to pull my hair out. Taking a toddler out of her routine, subjecting her to repeated meals in restaurants, and pulling her in and out of the car over three days is NOT something to undertake lightly.

There was quite a bit of "tag-team parenting" this weekend when Walter and I would trade off once we had reached our limit. For example, we used up Lulu's patience at LACMA with the Women in Surrealism exhibit first before we decided that I would take her outside and let Walter walk through the Mid-Century Modern exhibit and then he would relieve me and let me walk through it. So it wasn't ideal, but we made it work. And I'm glad we found some art that she really enjoyed, too.

I don't know how much of this trip she'll remember years from now, but I hope the cumulative effect of these experiences will make her a curious lover of art and someone who appreciates that American institution, The Roadtrip.

Update.

Yesterday, I took Lulu to her first eye doctor's appointment.

I had to interrupt her Japanese lesson at Merryhill, but I did get to hear a neat song with hand movements and everything:

Apparently "neko" is Japanese for "cat."  Who knew?

From there, we hopped in the car and drove to the eye doctor's office. I've been talking with her about it all week long, how she will need to sit in a chair and identify animals on a screen so we can see how well her eyes work. She was pretty excited by the whole process and not a big scared. It helps that our next door neighbor is an optometrist, so she saw someone she already knew for her first time. Plus, his wife, Lulu's "Auntie Kate" is his office manager, so she took Lulu for a tour of the WHOLE office and read to her while I filled out paperwork.



And it also helped that they had a plate of *cookies* in the waiting room. Everything's better with cookies, right?

So, when it was her turn, we went in and managed to get a couple of decent close-up pictures of her eye which required sitting in a chair with her chin in the chin rest and her forehead all the way against the thingie so the camera angle was correct. That was NOT easy! But, she did a great job for someone's who's three. Then, we went in to see Uncle David, the eye doctor. He had her sit in a chair and try to identify a series of animals in different sizes while I held up a thingie to block her vision in one eye at a time. Amazing what someone will do for the promise of a cookie afterwards....

And what did we discover? Lulu has intermittent, near, concomitant esotropia.

In other words she is incredibly far-sighted, especially in her left eye. Babies are born far-sighted and then as their eyes develop and they gain better control of their muscles, the far-sightedness disappears, but apparently, for Lulu that wasn't the case. So, when she has to focus on something close-up, her left eye's far-sightedness overcompensates and causes her eye to turn in toward her nose. Her vision in her left eye is between 20/80 and 20/100 (or something like that?).

So, how do we solve this problem? She needs to wear a patch over her right eye to force her left eye to become stronger for at least an hour a day. David did say that we would probably have to work up to that, but I'm hopeful that we will start to see results. I'm glad that she doesn't need glasses or surgery.

Apparently, we will be doing LOTS of Pirate-pretend play in our house for a while. The other strategy I've come up with is making her wear the patch when she wants to watch her beloved "Super-readers" on my PBS iPhone app or Micky Maus Wunderhaus. This is what we did this morning:

The highlights of the experience (for Lulu) were getting to see Auntie Kate in her office

LOTS of stickers!!!!!

And having a cookie at Panera afterwards.



YUM!

Here's looking at you. Or not.

In the past couple of weeks or so, Walter and I have noticed that Lulu's left eye doesn't seem to be focusing in the same way as her right. At first, I thought I was imagining things, but then Walter said that he noticed it, too, that I wasn't crazy. But, it is definitely intermittent and something we're more likely to notice at the end of a long day when she's tired.

So, in the interest of documentation, I was able to capture a few photos tonight, including one that I think illustrates what I'm talking about:





And here's the money shot:



So, we have her first appointment with an eye doctor this week, who luckily happens to be our next door neighbor, Uncle David. Her appt on Thurs is at 4:30pm, so I'm hopeful that he will be able to see the same thing that we've been seeing because she'll be tired from a long day at school. I'm not sure what the treatment will entail--whether we will have "pirate child" for a while or if I'll endure the special hell that is a parent whose young child "wears" glasses. But, I am hopeful that we caught it early and that it's imminently treatable.

Lacroix, Sweetie.

When she's in her role-reversal games, Lulu as "Mommy" calls me "Sweetie."  As in, "Sweetie, Mommy's here to pick you up from school!"

And God help me, every time she says it--every time--this is what flashes through my head:



If you're in need of an AbFab flashback, here's a song that won't leave your head all day:



A little Stoli-Boli, anyone?

Picnic

At bedtime earlier this week, Lulu asked me for a picnic and I replied that perhaps we could have one this weekend?

But after a terrible morning, complete with a teary meltdown that resulted in cow-like drool from said crying, I thought perhaps a little surprise might be just the thing!

So, we moved the coffee table and had a picnic in our living room for dinner! We made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches which I insisted on wrapping in foil, even though we were just taking them into the next room. And I emptied out our orange shopping basket so it could become our picnic basket instead. So, we prepared sandwiches, orange segments, and bell pepper strips to go with our hummus and crackers. Walter and I enjoyed a bottle of apple cider while Lulu had orange juice.



Lulu and I emptied the picnic basket while Daddy picked out appropriate picnicking music. And then we had a good time eating dinner together in an unexpected place.



And then for the piece d'la resistance, I brought out the malted milkball ice cream I bought earlier that afternoon and we each had a small bowl with a slice of FarbeKüchen:



I think we managed to turn that morning frown upside down!







Happy picnicking, Lulu!