El Fuente

Last Thursday (yes I'm a week behind) we went for our first splashpad outing of the summer. That means we went to Uptown mall and played in the fountain. We went with our friend 'Jane', her mommy and little brother. Which sounds like a lot of chaos but was actually quite fun. We had lunch at California Pizza Kitchen first since it's right next door, which turned out to be a terrific idea. It was a little weird since most of the customers were business people out for business lunches, but turns out CPK is pretty kid friendly. They had all the usual color crayons, etc. as well as kid cups and were surprisingly chill about some energetic little people in their adult atmosphere. The kids tore through a cheese pizza between the two of them, leaving Jane's mom and I the opportunity to share something more adventurous. And despite my feelings about deviation from traditional pizza toppings I highly recommend their Santa Fe chicken. (Comes with guacamole, which probably explains my endorsement.) All this to say, that Jane's mom and I hatched a plan (On a high from a successful and pleasant lunch with children). We want to start a blog/website that rates restaurants for child-friendliness on a variety of aspects. (Atmosphere, equipment, menu, etc.) Mostly we want to have an excuse to eat out a lot. :) But seriously, anyone know if this is already done somewhere? You would think it was, wouldn't you?

The kids were seriously funny running around the fountain. Jane never did get really brave about running through the water despite getting quite wet from all the mist. Joaquin was having a lot of fun running around the water but once he inadvertantly drenched himself it was a free-for-all. In fact I had only brought fresh underwear and a t-shirt so we had to purchase new shorts (an entire new outfit was called for). We went into Gymboree to use their dressing area to change (under the theory they were least likely to kick out dripping children) and thus came home with new green shorts and two boxer-briefs. Sigh. After a cookie at the Nestle store (honestly Uptown Mall sucks you in!) we said good-bye and headed home. I had the camera in my bag the whole time and forgot to take pictures, but I did take this picture later that afternoon. Joaquin took awhile to calm down and go to sleep, but once he did, it was impossible to wake him. I left his door open for twenty minutes before my prowling around and unloading the dishwasher finally convinced him to open his eyes. A morning in the sun will do that to you.