One month out.

Thanksgiving marked our one month anniversary in Brooklyn, and so why not look back at our last social event in California, when Mary, Julie and Sarah had a little goodbye-BBQ in the backyard for us.




I think the first time I went to Mary's house for a swim and some poolside burgers, her nephew, Gabriel, at mere weeks old, was the entertainment for the afternoon. Last month, Gabriel was there with his family, and he's all the more entertaining now that he's 11, with the precocious vocabulary of a Miriam-Webster employee.




Luckily, Lila got one last play session in with her friends Sarah and Finn. Mary and Julie have cordoned off the porch above the pool and created a baby-safe play area, with one of the most enviable views in Los Angeles. Mary and Julie were a big part of the incentive to move to out West, and looking at these pictures it's easy to remember what we liked about living there.




I do wonder what Lila will be able to hold in her mind of her first home. I was born in Los Angeles myself, and my parents moved to the East Coast when I was exactly two-and-a-half. All I can remember now is the view of the mountains from the backyard, the pet turtle, and a shag rug that tickled my feet. What is stored in permanent memory in her little tumbling snowball of a developing brain? Our crumbling apartment with its sweet and cozy backyard? The stairs she liked to climb at the nearby high school? Our favorite Mexican restaurant? The cupcake place down the street that Oprah made famous and forever swarmed by flying her jet in to pick up a dozen?




Or maybe it will be the day that she, Finn and Sarah smeared shaving cream everywhere, whooped and hollered, and swam with noodles.