At last! A bunk bed

 

Anyone who's been around Beatrice in the past year has heard her talk about "when I get a bunk bed."  Almost every day since she turned three, she's been reminding herself and everyone else that she was going to get a bunk bed when she turned four*.  She even visited her bed-to-be every time we went to IKEA.

So this weekend we got her a bunk bed, a little in advance of her fourth birthday.

"I can see my whole room from here!"

For almost as long as she's wanted a bunk bed, Beatrice has also wanted "cloud bedding" to go with it.  This was something of her own invention; Beatrice assured me that a bed with "cloud bedding" would be "the most beautiful bed in the world."

So I found Beatrice some cloud sheets (which was surprisingly difficult to do) and paired them with a lot of pale blue and white accents.

Then I bought Arthur some pale green and brown "woodland" bedding so that the upper bunk represents the sky and the lower bunk, the forest floor.

During this little mini-renovation we also deep-cleaned the room, retouched the paint from where dirty fingers had touched it over the past two years, added new hardware to the built-in cabinets, hung new art, and created a little work station in the place where the crib had been.  (Thank you to Amy who watched our kids while we set up their new room!)

We also installed the awesome modern art "kelp" sculpture we got from Mina.

Now it really seems less like a baby's nursery and more like a "big kids" room.

* B thinks everyone gets a bunk bed once they turned four.  At one point she asked me how old my friend Amelia was.  "She's thirty," I said. "Oh, so she has a bunk bed?" Beatrice replied.

Spring in the Garden

Every day when I go outside now there's some new development in the garden.  This is why I love gardening with mainly deciduous plants, to watch all these seasonal changes.

We have fruit on all the fruit trees, bushes, and vines:

Plum tree blossoms

Little apricots

Pomegranate-to-be

Leaves returned to the Chinese Pistache and London Plane trees:

London Plane tree in the winter

New leaves

The grape vines returned with not only new leaves, but their first clusters of fruit:

Bare grapevines in winter

New spring leaves

Next up, summer vegetables.

 

 

 

The Quotable Toddler

Welcome to Arthur's first installment of funny quotes.  Not quite B material, but he's getting there.

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While watching a passing train: "Hi, choo choo train! Hi, Thomas!"

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S: Arthur, can you please just wait?
A: (earnestly) I can't wait.

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S: Arthur, why did you just break that [toy] turtle?
A: For fun.
S: And now what happened?
A: I'm sad.

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Suddenly bringing both of his hands in front of his face: "I have two hands! That makes me happy!"

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S: Arthur, please say your sorry for [something, I forget what].
A: I'm sorry, Bebe. I'm sorry, Daddy.  I'm sorry, Mommy.  I'm sorry, me.

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And, one of his longest, most complete sentences to date: "Mommy, help me, I dropped a crayon in my pants."

Tons More Beatrice Quotes



"I wish it was always everybody's birthday."

I don't know why I still bother writing these down, since she says dozens of funny things every day, but here's a sample for her grandparents and other people that don't talk to her as often as I do.  The majority of these quotes are from this afternoon.

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Last winter, watching "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer," Beatrice Kumar chastised the Abominable Snowman: "Abominable Snowman, you are a bad listener!"

Also, I heard Arthur crying and went into his room to see what was wrong.

S: Did you do something to Arthur?
B: I abominabled him.

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While doing a craft: "I'm practicing moderation!" about her glue use.

I also asked her to play quietly while I was writing.  So she started to work on a craft while singing, "I'm playing independently!" over and over again at the top of her lungs.

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"When I'm reading Arthur a book so correctly, that is when I feel the most special to myself."
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"I'd like to live in the number 3."

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As the credits rolled for The Croods: "I wish I could live in the movie screen."

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While brushing her teeth: "I'm serious about brushing all the chewing surfaces!"

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"I have a little urine on my underpants.  But really anything could happen, we don't know how it got there."

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B: What are you going to eat for lunch?
S: I don't know, whatever's around.
B: I can peel you an orange.
S: No thanks, I don't really want an orange.
B: But you said you wanted to eat whatever's round. An orange is round.

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Watching Dev play Super Mario Brothers, when his character, Mario, fell into a crevasse and "died": "Now I don't have a father!"

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After Arthur poured some juice onto her lap: "I think Arthur will have to go to jail."

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"Barking is how dogs pray."

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"I wish I could be three forever and never turn ages."

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S: Can you share that [toy] giraffe with Arthur?
B: No, it's not good for him, Arthur is allergic to giraffe feces.

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But this is probably my favorite one of all.  Beatrice just now asked me if she could take her toy giraffe and sit in my bed and watch one of her favorite TV shows, Ni Hao Kai Lan.  I told her that no, she had already watched too much TV this week, she could go do something else instead.

"But the giraffe is sick and the only medicine that will make him feel better is watching TV. He's injured, and it's really important to him, and also he's never ever seen TV before."

The story was so cute and absurd that I agreed she could watch one episode of the show.  I set up the laptop and turned it on.  She tucked the giraffe into bed in front of the screen, then left my room and closed the door behind her.

"Don't you want to watch Ni Hao Kai Lan?"

"No, I told you, it's not for me, it's for the giraffe."

Beatrice explains the Easter story as she learned it at school chapel.

"An Angry Man"

Beatrice's new drawing, "An Angry Man"

 

Updated: Dev wanted me to add how much this looks like the "Rage Faces" meme going around the internet on places like Reddit.  See this one, for example.

Caterpillars and Butterflies

This spring Beatrice and I raised 12 caterpillars and watched them turn into butterflies.

The caterpillars arrive:

 

Beatrice talks to the caterpillars.

About two weeks later, the caterpillars are all grown up and ready to transform:

  

 

The caterpillars hang upside and form a chrysalis.

About a week later, the butterflies emerge. 

Feeding the butterflies:

 Releasing the butterflies into the wild:

As the last butterfly flew away, B said, "I'm really going to miss that little guy."

Grunion Run!

Tonight we took the kids to see their first grunion run!  Of course, this means we had to drag our kids out of bed at 10:30 at night and load them into the car for the drive up to Cabrillo Beach to meet the fish a little before midnight. 

Beatrice: "We go to the beach instead of sleeping in our beds."

There we joined about a dozen other grunion-watchers and some volunteers from the adjacent aquarium.

The whole beach glistens silver under the moonlight, and you can watch all the little individual fish make their nests, mate, and return back to the sea.

We also saw several lucky sea lions eating as many grunion as they could catch.  Even a few seabirds were in on the action.

Then a quick stop by a local taco truck before we put the kids back to bed a little after one.

Late night taco truck

The children, awake and eating chicken nuggets at 1am

What a fun night!