Upcoming Events

This is me reading at the first installment of the wonderful Pigeon Coop Arts Salon, a night of live music and readings put on by John Dylan Keith and Sarah Masslon.  Here's an audio recording of me reading "Address to the Greenville Senior Women’s Club 35th Annual Pedigreed Dog Show by the Mystery Writer H.L. Lemontre" - thanks to Molly Thompson for this!  Come to the next one, it will be absolutely wonderful.  

February 10 is the next Hot Dish - this time we're doing a Sunday brunch.  Come for the waffles and the morning drinking, stay for readings - and music! - by Amelia Gray, Wendy Molyneux, Joshua Shenk, LaMuff, J. Ryan Stradal, and also, slightly, me.

Also on February 9 I'll be doing Sketch Cram at Upright Citizen's Brigade.  Basically, I show up at UCB on Saturday morning, me and the other writers write up a brand-new sketch show from 10am-7pm, and then it's rehearsed and performed by the actors that night.  If you're up and around at midnight on Saturday, come see it!

Boo: A Story of Loss and Betrayal

Boo

Not Boo

As I've mentioned here several times before, Arthur adores his stuffed rabbit, Boo.  My mother gave us Boo when Arthur was an infant and he takes it with him every place he goes.  A few months ago I had the presence of mind to buy a second rabbit and put it away in the closet in case the first Boo got lost.  Some parents recommend that you let your child play equally with both beloved toys or blankets so that they will be evenly worn but I never did that.  Perhaps I should have.

Yesterday Arthur left Boo at baby gym.  At nap time, he asked for Boo and I went and got the second rabbit from the back of the closet where it had been hiding, still in its original packaging.  I handed Arthur the rabbit and watched the rapid progression of his emotions: first the usual elation and relief at being handed Boo, then mounting suspicion, then slowly dawning comprehension and finally total outrage and disgust.

"Not Boo! Not Boo!" he shouted, holding the offending rabbit at arm's length.

As the afternoon wore on he tried valiantly to pretend that everything was okay with the new Boo, but by bedtime he was exhausted with all the self-deception and just lay in his bed weeping and asking for Boo.

Today I picked up the original Boo from the lost and found and he and Arthur were reunited.  Arthur was so overcome with emotion that he immediately fell asleep.  Meanwhile, he and the second rabbit have forged a tentative peace, though he continues to call it That Boo.

An amusing side note: Beatrice didn't seem to find anything amiss with the rabbit switch.  She noted that Boo was different than he used to be (she mentioned that he wasn't permanently damp, like the old Boo was) but as I've mentioned before, Beatrice doesn't question things.  If Boo is now a different, cleaner, drier rabbit, she's ready to accept that.

Science

Dev, yesterday: Beatrice, do you want to go to the science museum today?
Beatrice: Miss Aiysha already taught me science.
Summer: What is science?
Beatrice: Science is when you rub a balloon and then your hair sticks to it. That's science.

Winter Crafts

 

With Christmas behind us, we've shifted gears towards non-holiday-specific winter crafts.  My parents came to visit us right after Christmas and my mother helped Beatrice and me make these snow globes.

Snow globes lining the mantle

They are so easy to make: first we hot-glued a dozen little plastic animals (from the "North American Woodlands" Toob collection, featuring wolves, bears, elk, and otters, among other things) inside the lids of twelve glass canning jars.  Then we filled the jars with water, a drop of glycerin, and about a tablespoon of white glitter. 

(The glycerin makes the glitter fall more slowly, more like snow drifting.  One website I read recommended boiling the water first to make it clearer and we did that at first, but then I got impatient and switched to regular tap water, which seemed to work just as well.)

 

 
Then we just screwed on the lids and that's it! I was worried the glue seal wouldn't hold up to the water or the vigorous shaking, but so far, so good.  If you wanted to store them more easily, you could also dump out the water and refill them again next year.

We also gathered some pine cones when we went sledding and decorated them with gold glitter to make a centerpiece.

 
Beatrice and Arthur also enjoyed making snowmen with cotton balls, even if Arthur spent most of the time accidentally gluing the cotton balls to his fingers. Beatrice worked for more than an hour meticulously covering every inch of the card stock form with cotton.

 

 

Beatrice's finished snowman 

Now we're switching gears again and doing Valentine's crafts, starting with making cards for Beatrice's class this year.

New Chicken Coop

 

Thanks to James and Dev the chickens have a new home!

As you know, we got our first chicken, Lenore, in October.  But chickens are social animals and we didn't want her to be alone so we added two more chickens to the mix, Lilli and Luanne (all of Dev's chickens have names starting with the letter L; in college, his chickens were Lindsay, Lolita, Loretta, and Lulu).

Lilli, Luanne, and Lenore

The three chickens get along splendidly, though as the oldest and biggest chicken, Lenore is still the boss.  Lilli is smart and ambitious and definitely chicken #2. Luanne is sweet and friendly but a bit less clever than the other two.

And look what a beautiful coop we have to welcome the new chickens home to! During the Spindler Christmas visit last month, James gave me the best Christmas present of the year, designing and building this gorgeous A-frame chicken coop.  After James left, Dev added the finishing touches and a few bonus features.

Upstairs is the chickens' sleeping area - there is a perch (like most birds, chickens prefer to sleep on a perch) and a nesting box for egg laying.  Inside the nesting box we also placed a fake plastic egg - believe it or not, this is a common trick for teaching a hen where to lay her eggs every morning.

Dev also added a pair of gas shocks on both sides to help ease open the (very heavy) side walls.

 

 Fake egg.

Downstairs there is a fenced run for walking around during the day.  Usually we let the chickens free range all over the yard, both for their own enjoyment and to keep down the insect population, but it's nice to have the option to cage them temporarily in bad weather or if we're out of town.  We want to add a hanging water dish to keep their water supply clean.

The fenced area includes a fold-down gate on one side, and on the other, a pair of heavy duty wheels that make it easier to move the entire coop if needed.

 

 

Dev built a ramp to connect the two levels and it's great fun to watch the inevitable traffic jam when the chickens go to bed at night and one chicken suddenly decides to stop at the top of the ramp.  But eventually everyone figures it out and goes to bed.

 
Chickens sleeping on their perch at night.

  
(The coop will be permanently placed beside the raised vegetable garden beds along the back wall, but we were doing some construction projects in that part of the yard this weekend so we temporarily parked the coop in the middle of the lawn.)

Sand and snow

Last Saturday we took a trip up to Wrightwood to take the kids on their first sledding trip.  The kids were much more amenable to the snow than they were on their last trip - partly because they were dressed more warmly, but mostly because the fun of sledding distracted them from how cold they were.

 

Arthur is wearing his sister's sweater and raincoat and my mittens.

Then on Sunday we drove up to Oxnard for a friend's baby shower and stopped to visit the beach.  Arthur loved the waves and the sand pipers, and Beatrice and Arthur spent the whole trip playing together (Dev and I sat far enough away from them that we could still watch them but they felt like they were playing on their own).

 

 

A one-hour drive to snowy mountains, another one-hour drive to sandy beaches: because California is wonderful.

 

Those two little specks on the horizon are Beatrice and Arthur playing.

Arthur talks

Arthur gives us a piece of his mind.

By now Arthur can communicate pretty much all of his needs and desires and in increasingly complex sentences.

He is forever pointing at things in his world and saying, "What's that called?"  Yesterday he asked Amy Robb, "Amy, what is that baby called?" about Ivy.

 Eating coffee cake at Starbucks.

He also likes making jokes, his favorite of which is to put an object on his head and declare it a "hat," then laugh uproariously.

Of course, he still has a baby's uncertain pronunciation, and I am the only one who can understand everything he says - and Beatrice, who sometimes understands him better than I do.  He has a number of his own words, including Bebe (his name for Beatrice), er (water), shi (for fish), ami (open or elephant*), and didyou (dinosaur).

Here is Arthur identifying the parts of his body:

And here are Beatrice and Arthur singing a song they wrote together called "Oh, Ducky!"  Arthur wrote the tune and the line, "Oh, Ducky!" and Beatrice added the line, "Do you have a radio?"  At the end of this video Arthur says, "Hey Mommy, look at Bebe!"

"Oh, Ducky! Oh, Ducky! Do you have a radio?"

*Strangely, Beatrice also used the word ami for both "open" and "elephant."

Dogs: A Mystery Revealed!

For Christmas this year I got Dev a DNA test for the dogs to determine their breed mixture after so many years of speculating.

The results?

Shackleton is an Australian Cattle Dog mixed with an Australian Shepherd and one other dog of uncertain breed (the test suggested Great Pyrenees but without a high enough degree of certainty to deem it official).  We assumed all along that Shack was an Australian Cattle Dog but the Shepherd part was a surprise.

Cromwell is a Chihuahua mixed with a Pekinese and other dogs of uncertain breed, maybe Tibetan terriers.  Again, we had always assumed he was part Chihuahua but the Pekinese was a surprise.

Dev highlighted some choice quotes from Cromwell's breed analysis:"The Pekingese were dogs of nobility and, for centuries, only members of the Chinese Imperial Palace could own them.  In fact, Chinese custom demanded that commoners bow in the presence of the Pekingese. Custom also specified that the dog be sacrificed at the time of his master’s death to protect him in the afterlife," and "Stubborn tendencies may be lessened by using reward-based training involving small treats and favorite toys."  There is also mention of "defensive barking."