Come Out, Moon!

I was driving Beatrice home from preschool this afternoon when she looked out the window and said*, "Hello, sunshine! . . . The sun is out in the day and the moon is out at night," repeating a lesson I taught her a few weeks ago.

Then she added, "Mommy? Where is the moon?"

I told her, "The moon is always up in the sky, but you can only see it at night."

"The moon is sleeping in the day. The moon is having nap time. The moon is sleeping in his bed. The moon wants his blanket."

Then she shouted, "Come out, moon! I want to give you a blanket!"

*I know, this blog is quickly becoming Beatrice Quote of the Day, but I can't help but be delighted by the things she comes up with. And by typing them here, I make sure I have a record of them someday.

Beatrice's First Work of Fiction

I'm late to post this, but early this month Beatrice made up her first (very) short story. I was trying to get her to fall asleep so I told her to lie down, close her eyes, and then tell me a story (but she had to keep her eyes closed the entire time she was talking). After some squirming she finally relaxed, closed her eyes, and said,

"There was a little brown bird. He flew to the doughnut store. He bought doughnuts and coffee."

The End.

In general she has developed quite the imagination, from pretending to fly an airplane to the farmer's market (to buy "carrots, hummus, raisins, snap peas, sparkling water, [and] wine") to burping, swaddling, rocking, and nursing an empty juice box or package of English mufins. When I came to get her from her nap today she held out her stuffed Babar and told me definitively, "I want to put the elephant's jacket in the washing machine. He is going to a party."

A New Favorite Soup

I used our last four pounds of this year's garden tomatoes* to make Roasted Tomato Soup with Broiled Cheddar (from Smitten Kitchen, my favorite cooking blog) and it was incredibly good, perfect for late summer/early fall. I made it almost exactly as directed except I doubled the amount of garlic. Highly recommended!

*We didn't grow plum or Roma tomatoes this year so I used Early Girl tomatoes instead; it turned out just great, though probably with a slightly different texture than you would have gotten with plum tomatoes.

Arthur, Month Four

Whenever I describe Arthur on this blog or elsewhere, the word I use most often is "charming." Yes, I may be a bit biased, but he really is a charming baby - extremely social, interactive, and cheerful, and with a lot of personality for someone only four months old. Moreover, it seems like he's trying to be charming on purpose - as soon as you look his way, he pulls out all the stops, smiling and laughing and wiggling. He loves being around people and craves attention, especially from females. He also "talks" constantly, babbling and gurgling for long stretches of time.

He's also traffic-stoppingly cute! I was sitting on my front porch with Arthur when one of our neighbors actually pulled over, stopped his car, and got out to see the baby. (To be fair, that probably says more about our neighbor's eccentricity than our son's cuteness.)

Arthur can now roll over in both directions (tummy-to-back and the reverse) and uses this ability to move himself across the floor, tumbling side-over-side until he gets where he wants to be. Every day he works on crawling - I'm sure he's still many months away, but he's giving it his all. Like his sister at the same age, Arthur never stops moving - as I type this, he is flipping back and forth over and over on the living room rug.

He's very interested in toys of all kinds, including mobiles, the Whoozit, and Sophie the Giraffe, and yesterday he rolled/scooted himself all the way across the living room floor to look at a toy catalogue.
Playing "hide and seek":

The big events in Arthur's life this month were Mommy and Me and the baby gym.


Now that Beatrice is in school two days a week I have two mornings to spend just me and Arthur, which means I can take him to the same Mommy and Me and "baby gym" recreation center that Beatrice used to enjoy. Or we can just relax and watch the fountain at the Americana, as B and I used to do.

Arthur spent most of his first "Mommy and Me" session rolling over and over again, occasionally stopping to stare at Penelope, the baby next to him:





In typical newborn style, Arthur's sleep patterns remain unpredictable - he may sleep through the night one night, then be up four times the next night - but in general he gets up just once, at 4am, and goes right back to sleep after some milk, so I have it pretty good. Unfortunately he's not much of a day sleeper, though I can occasionally coax him into a brief nap - but pretty much as long as the sun is up, so is he. At least he makes good company.

Meanwhile, Beatrice is doing great with Arthur. She insists on sharing everything she gets with her brother, whether he wants it or not: today I gave her a new puzzle and she immediately took out a piece and said, "This one is for Arthur!"

"Playing" with Beatrice, who is decorating him with stickers:

She also respects his opinion: The other day Beatrice requested a certain dress to wear, then declared, "I have to go show Arthur!" She ran up to him in his seat and said, "Look at my dress, Arthur!" and then added, "Arthur, I like your shirt."

Shackleton and Arthur both begging for pancakes - next month we start solid food!

Adventures in Gardening

I'm not planning on starting my big fancy vegetable garden until after we re-landscape the front and back yards next year but I still couldn't let the summer go by without planting anything, so I grew some tomatoes and basil in the ground plus some strawberries in a hanging basket and herbs in pots.

The experiment was mostly successful and I also learned some lessons for next year (for example, next year I will stake the tomatoes right when I plant them, not wait until they are already too tall to manage).

Eating things I've grown myself has delighted me since I first grew my own pumpkins in junior high, so you can imagine how excited I was to get those first tomatoes. But even more exciting has been seeing how enthusiastic Beatrice is about taking care of the plants. Every afternoon she asks to water them, to eat any ripe strawberries that appeared overnight, and to "harvest" the tomatoes. I have told her she can only pick the red, ripe tomatoes, not the green ones, so now she runs up and down the row shouting, "Only red! Only red!"

Five pounds of tomatoes waiting to be made into sauce

But perhaps Beatrice's favorite plant was the pumpkin she first planted at Toddler Treks using the classic seed-in-a-styrofoam-cup approach.

The other night Beatrice was in her pajamas listening to a story, ready for bed, when she suddenly sat straight up and said, "Water the pumpkin!" She was so concerned that she'd forgotten that I let her get out of bed and go water it before she went to sleep.

Unfortunately the pumpkin was under-fertilized and it never produced any fruit. But Beatrice loved this plant so much and she wished so hard and waited so long that finally after four months a pumpkin magically appeared! From the grocery store, where I bought it and left it in the pot for her to find.

She was absolutely thrilled and spent the rest of the day carrying the pumpkin around, talking about it, kissing it, and telling it "I love you!" Of course she also pretended to breastfeed the pumpkin, burped it, wrapped it in a blanket, and later offered it some snack crackers, so she may have something left to learn about the botanical sciences.


Oh well, next year we'll get pumpkins going for real . . .


The tomato plants grew as tall as I am

Beatrice the Brave

Last week at Children's Fairyland in Oakland Beatrice rode a two-story Ferris wheel all by herself and loved it! (The ride was "No Adults Allowed.")

Beatrice embarks alone on the Ferris wheel

And this week she went on her first solo pony ride at Griffith Park - the ponies are trained to walk around the track on their own without any trainers walking alongside them. Beatrice loved it, too, and kept shouting, "Walk, pony, walk!"

Maybe it's just because I was such a coward when I was a kid, but I am so proud of how brave my daughter is!

Goodbye, Summer!

It may still be in the 80s every day, but this is the time of year when we say goodbye to summer. The school year has started, swimming lessons are over, all the city's outdoor concert series and movie series and splash pads are winding down, and now we're getting ready for fall.



This summer was an eventful one, starting with Arthur's arrival on May 19. We welcomed house guests with visits from Marilyn, Richard, Gillian, Suzan, Naresh, Mina, James, Maureen, Rosemary, Louis, Monty, Travis, Sam, Lilli, Stacey, Rick, Adam, and Danny. We went backyard camping, took a road trip, grew tomatoes, played in the sprinklers, hosted barbecues, visited the beach, and worked on the new house. Beatrice and Dev took a special father/daughter weekend trip to Dallas and my parents spent the weekend and then we wound up the season with Beatrice's first days at preschool.

Beatrice swimming with Naresh in Dallas

But the best part of the summer for me was going out into our backyard in the early evening when the weather had cooled off to a perfect 70-something degrees and sitting with a drink and a magazine watching Beatrice play.



Fall is my favorite season, so we have plenty to look forward to, including (of course!) Halloween!

Technical Difficulties

Incidentally, you may all have noticed some major formatting problems with this site lately, especially with alignment and spacing. I'm working on figuring out what is causing the problem and fixing it, and while I'm at it I'd like to freshen up the design - stay tuned!

A Visit From The Cousins

Rosemary and Louis came to visit! With Mina, James, and Maureen, of course. Beatrice hadn't seen her cousins since January and of course they had never met Arthur, so all four of them enjoyed getting to know each other better. In particular, Beatrice and Rosemary had an absolutely wonderful time. Beatrice was so flattered by the attentions of an almost-four-year-old that she was more than willing to follow all of Rosemary's directions for how to play grocery shopping and airplane.

The girls drinking sparkling water out of doll cups



Playing "airplane" : Rosemary decided they were flying to Australia

The girls cracked each other up with private jokes - the hit of the weekend was "Too many corn!" Which may not seem that funny to an adult, but each time one of the girls said it it sent them both into hysterics. Too many corn!

The girls shared a bedroom and every night was a slumber party - we would hear them up after nine o' clock talking, laughing, and singing.

Maureen, Mina, Rosemary, and Beatrice making a peach cobbler

Louis spent some time joining in the girls' games, but he also enjoyed playing in the sandbox and feeding the dogs.

Meanwhile Arthur was fascinated by Louis and completely adored his aunts and uncle. He charmed everyone with his constant smiling, cooing, and babbling.

Arthur checks out Louis

We mostly played in the backyard where all three older kids could enjoy the playhouse, but we did also take a trip to Ventura Beach.



We were so sorry to see everyone go, but we're looking forward to seeing them again at Christmas.



There are a ton more (downloadable) photos on Flickr.

The cousins on a pony ride in Ventura Harbor



Rosemary and Beatrice's dinner table conversion



Rosemary and B discuss corn and Pasadena

Ventura on Dwellable