Bo

Several months ago Beatrice made a book.  I stapled eight sheets of paper together into a booklet, she colored all the pages and titled it Bo. (Or possible Beau?) 

Bo is the name of the main character, a skunk, and almost every night before bed she reads Bo to Arthur and me.  Of course, the story changes every time, but some consistent elements include families of skunks and/or hedgehogs, a "blueberry tree," lava, and "a rescue dragon."

My favorite part of this video is at 0:25 where Arthur exclaims, "Oh no!"

Before and After #10: Guest Bathroom

 

We have a new bathroom!

 

BEFORE

 

The old room had such a weird, narrow, crowded layout it was almost impossible to photograph.

 

Remember this giant linen cabinet?

 

AFTER 

  

 

We kicked off the guest bathroom renovation project by replacing the entire sewage line that runs underneath the house, connecting the sinks, toilets, and showers in the kitchen and both bathrooms to the city sewage line in the street. It was a big and expensive project but definitely worthwhile.

 

Replacing the line also made it easier to change the plumbing layout of the room. The old layout was hugely inefficient; the new layout feels so much more spacious it's as if the size of the room doubled.

After deciding on a new floor plan, the first step was entirely demolishing the old bathroom, which Dev and Naresh tackled together during one of his (extremely helpful) visits.

 



A glimpse of daylight from beneath the bathroom floor boards

We got rid of everything, from the toilet and shower to the walls and floor.  As you may remember, both bathrooms were originally carpeted. Once we tore out the carpet in this room, we found that the floor underneath was a mixture of linoleum and pressboard, all slightly damp, so decided to tear out the subfloor, too, just to get a fresh start and avoid any issues with mold or mildew down the road.



Then we moved all the water lines so that we could change the location of the toilet, shower, and sink.  We replaced the stall shower with a full (extra-long) bathtub.  This also had the side effect of upgrading the room from a "3/4" to a "full" bathroom, which will come in handy if we ever sell the house someday.

 

 

Dev was in charge of picking out the tub, the toilet, and all the faucets and other plumbing fixtures.  I never realized there was so much variance in something as simple as a toilet, but now I know there is! Plus we wanted to repeat certain angles, lines, shapes, and colors throughout the room so we considered everything very carefully.

I spent months looking online before finding a sink and vanity that had everything I wanted: small, elegant, made out of real wood, with elevated feet.  I love this vanity, especially the caning on the front of the cabinet doors, the bun feet, and of course, the marble.

After the plumbing, Dev went to work rewiring the bathroom for new lights and switches (with help from our friend James), as well as adding a fan and extra insulation.

Then, drywall. Followed by adding beadboard around the bathroom perimeter and new crown and base trim throughout.  And paint, of course: we used "Seattle," the same gray color we used in the guest room.

We hired a professional tile installer to install the small hexagonal marble tiles on the floor and the marble subway tile on the wall behind the tub.

We tore out the absurdly oversized built-in linen cabinet and replaced it with some open chrome shelves above the toilet and a small medicine cabinet.

We also pulled out the old light fixtures and replaced them with a new sconce over the sink and this amazing antique chandelier that Suzan and I found while on a scouting trip to her favorite antique and consignment stores in Dallas.  It's French, about a hundred years old, and absolutely gorgeous and unique.  And the warm purple and gold tones add some color to the cool, subdued white, black, and gray color scheme in the rest of the room.

Then came the fun and easy part: accessories, linens, decorations, and plants.

Photograph hidden in the medicine cabinet

And now it's done*! Thank you so much to Suzan and Naresh for everything!  And if I ever miss the old damp blue carpeting and synthetic beige sink, I can still find them in the master bathroom.

* Well, pretty much done.  An observant viewer will notice there's still no toilet seat.  I'm going to buy one tomorrow morning, but I was too excited about taking photographs to wait.

Summer Camp

Beatrice just finished her last day of summer camp - the same camp she attended last year at the Stough Canyon Nature Center in Wildwood Canyon.  This year's theme was "Now You See Me, Now You Don't" - about animals and their hiding places - but whatever the ostensible theme is, the camp mostly revolves around going on hikes and then petting lizards and snakes. 

Coming back from a hike

Petting a deer skin

Talking about hedgehogs

Beatrice was so excited about camp each day that she couldn't sleep the night before - on Thursday night she got up around 10pm and asked whether it was time to go to camp yet.  I was also pleased to see they pet the same animals as last summer (the iguanas Mr. T and Roamer, and Cutie the snake) plus a new tortoise and an additional snake named Albee.

Showing me a puppet she made at camp

Beatrice is already excited for winter camp this January...

(Almost) No More Diapers

Arthur is officially toilet trained! (though he still wears diapers at night) 

We started him quite a bit earlier than Beatrice, in large part to improve his severe, persistent diaper rash.  Happily, he took to training immediately and the whole process went very smoothly*.  Also, he looks adorable in his new underwear.

*Amusingly, the one thing he absolutely refuses to do is urinate outside on the ground, or anywhere other than a toilet.  I applaud his natural fastidiousness, but it may be a problem when we go camping next month.

Summer Fun Jar

I have grown so fond of our Christmas activity advent calendar that I wanted a summertime equivalent. I know most people can just come up with fun things to do without going to the trouble of compiling an official list, but personally I find that if I don't write the activities down they don't always happen.

So I wrote up a list of fun hot weather activities, cut it up into individual strips, and put the strips into a jar.  Whenever Beatrice does something extra good, she gets to pick an item from the jar for us to do that day.  Sometimes we let Arthur pick one, too, even though he's very rarely extra good.

So far the items are:

Play outside at night with glow sticks
Water balloons
Nature scavenger hunt
Toy car wash
Build a fort
Backyard camping
Bubble painting
Flashlight tag
Send letter and gifts to cousins
Sponge tag
Make jelly bean bracelets
Stuffed animal picnic
Create outdoor race track for toy cars
Outdoor movie
Make smores
Ice excavation (extracting small plastic toys from a block of ice)
Giant slip n' slide
Go to the beach
Play with sparklers
Eat popsicles

As we go, I can also add more or re-add the most popular ones to do a second time.

Drawings by Beatrice

Lately Beatrice has become obsessed with drawing - it's practically all she wants to do, and she will work on one picture for two hours until it's done.  Here are a few from the last few days:



Four goldfish, a jellyfish, and a "giant taco" (upper right)

"A Ladybug"

Self-portrait illustrating her design for this year's Halloween costume, a rosebush

"An Owl at Night"

I've been excited to see what a huge leap she's made lately in her drawing abilities.  Seriously, that looks just like an owl!

Happy Fourth of July!

This year we had our best Fourth of July yet, starting off with a morning boat trip around Long Beach Harbor.  The kids loved it, especially when we saw several sea lions napping in the sun on rocks and buoys.  Arthur was also very interested in spotting sea gulls, even though he was slightly disappointed that they weren't ducks.

 



 

 

Waiting to embark



Sleeping sea lion

 

After the short 45-minute boat ride, we took the kids to lunch, then over to the aquarium.  I had expected it to be packed on a holiday, but in fact there was almost no one there at all, so we got a lot of time to see things up-close, including their new deep-water exhibit of nautilus and giant isopods, two of Dev's favorite sea creatures. 

A nautilus from the new deep-ocean display

Hanging out with sea lions again

Excited about sharks


By the time we'd finished exploring the aquarium, it was time to head back to Amy and Evan's 4th of July party with Miller, Ivy R., Beatrice, Arthur, Finn, Ivy H., David, Donovan, and two new friends, Alice and another baby Ivy.  We started out with the wading pool and barbecue, and then once the sun set the kids made smores and lit sparklers in the backyard.

 

Finn and Donovan with sparklers

Beatrice with her sparkler


As it got closer to the Rose Bowl show, we all relocated to the front yard, where David's dad Mike delighted the kids with a little pre-show of sparklers and Roman candles.  Beatrice was so, so delighted by the fireworks, she told Mike he was "the best grown up ever."

Then we all watched the professional show until it ended a little before 10pm and it was time to go home. (Arthur kept demanding "more fireworks!" even after watching them for about an hour.)

 

 

On the drive home, Beatrice said, "My favorite part of the party was everything," before falling asleep in the car.