Make Your Own Teepee!

This week I made a teepee for Beatrice and Arthur.




Several of Beatrice's friends have tents or forts of some kind in their rooms and Beatrice always loves playing in them. Ours cost only $26 to build, plus an IKEA sheepskin and some pillows we already had.


I think this will be a great place for Beatrice and Arthur to curl up and read and nap even when they're a little older - and it collapses when you need to store it, too.

I also added an interior pockets for flashlights, books, or snacks. (This flashlight, a gift from Suzan, is one of Beatrice's prize possessions.)

Putting the teepee together was a little tricky. In fact, we had to resort to a lot of trial and error as well as some junior high geometry to arrange the frame and scale all the pattern dimensions. And I even learned how to sew French seams! I wrote up all the final instructions mostly for my own use, in case I ever want to make another one, but they might also be useful to other teepee-builders so I'll post them here as a separate entry.

Our thanks to cows

I may be a bit biased, but I think Beatrice says some pretty cute things. I had to share two quotes from the past week.

1. On Thursday night we were driving home late from our usual Descanso concert in the park. Beatrice was sitting in the backseat with her stuffed robot (a beautiful handmade gift from Katy Spindler) on her lap. She held the robot's head up to the window and asked, "Do you see the moon, robot? Do you see the houses?"

2. Yesterday we were at Baja Fresh, a Mexican fast food restaurant. Beatrice was eating tortilla chips and drinking milk out of a container with a cartoon cow on it. "Thank you, cow, for making milk," she said to the picture, then added, "Thank you, cow, for making chips."

New Dresser

Several years ago Dev and I bought a desk on Craigslist for his garage. We went to pick it up at the home of a young girl in Pasadena who was selling all her stuff and moving to Colorado to get married. While we were there, I noticed this great old trunk. She said she'd bought it at an estate sale and that supposedly it had once belonged to Zane Grey. I gave her my email address and asked her to contact me if she ever wanted to sell it. A few months later, she did - and I wound up with this gorgeous, huge, impractical steamer trunk which is almost four feet long and weighs 90 pounds.






For the next several years it lived in the garage while I kept promising Dev that someday I would do something with it. Well, I finally did! Today during Beatrice's nap time I transformed it into a dresser for the guest room (while Arthur and Shackleton lay together on the floor watching me work).

First I cleaned off about 80 years of grime. Then I removed all the very stained and faded fabric and replaced it with new Michael Miller fabric I ordered online (of course this required removing the many little tacks and screws holding things in place).



I lined the drawers with some great paper from The Paper Source.

And then I added a few things guests might need, like a set of house keys, a notepad, and a stack of cards with our contact info on them.

Now I'm really looking forward to renovating the guest room . . .

Arthur, Month Two

Thank you, Arthur! For sleeping through the night almost every night since you first managed it at only four weeks old. I couldn't be luckier!

Of course he has to eat a LOT during the day to tide him over during his long nights of sleep, but I'm not complaining.

Arthur is super strong - not only rolling over every day but also holding his own head up for long stretches of time and even scooting himself a few inches across the floor.

He's a clever one, too - he's already figured out how to use his foot to move the mobile suspended over his baby seat, an arrangement of stars, moons, and planets that he loves to look at. He can focus on objects, bat at them, and at seven weeks he started smiling, though his smiles are so sudden and unpredictable that they are hard to capture on film.

This month he continued to tag along on his sister's outings, including a children's Korean music concert at the Hollywood Bowl, and he met our friends Sam, Lilli, Monty, and Travis. But mostly, of course, he ate, storing up energy for new feats ahead.




Working on crawling (while dressed as a surfer):




Hanging out after his bath:

Tanking up:


Keep up the intensity, Kumar!

Summer Visitors

This morning we bid farewell to the last in a long line of visitors, starting with Naresh and Suzan, then Gillian, my parents, and our friends Sam, Lilli, Travis, Monty, and Richard - with more to come! as we expect visits from more friends and family before summer ends. I am so, so grateful we have a guest room to welcome all these friends (even if it still has a popcorn ceiling and a mysterious hole in the floor . . . )

Beatrice is finally at the age where she can remember and repeat names, understand relationships ("Amy is Miller's mommy"), and recall people later when she sees them in photographs. It's really fun to watch her begin to make sense of all the people in her life and talk about them even after they've gone.

Thank you, Mom!

Now that I have finally recovered several weeks worth of photos, I wanted to post a delayed thank you to my mother, who came down for two weeks in June to help me with Arthur and Beatrice now that Dev is back to work from paternity leave.

We packed a ton of activities into her visit, including the baby gym, one of Descanso's Thursday evening concerts in the park, a session of Toddler Treks with Acorn Bear, Alejandro Wasserman's first birthday party, Kidspace, Paintbox Kids, a swimming lesson, and a trip to the zoo!

Swimming at the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center

Planting a pumpkin seed at Toddler Treks

For the third year in a row, the Descanso Gardens Thursday night concerts are my favorite part of summer. Check out Arthur at his first concert compared with Beatrice at hers at the same age.

Beatrice painted "doggies" at Paintbox Kids and we took our usual Sunday morning trip to the farmer's market.

Beatrice and Dev at the farmer's market

Beatrice visits the guinea pigs ("pee-gos") at the farmer's market

And as always Mom also helped a ton with housework, errands, and projects, most notably helping me cut out the pattern for my (foolishly) ambitious Halloween costume. (It may sound ridiculous to start sewing a Halloween costume in June, but not once you see how elaborate this pattern is.)

Beatrice adored both my parents (my dad joined us for the last few days of my mom's trip) - in fact, she declared, "I love Grandpa, I love Arthur" - her first time ever using the word "love."

Of course, she was heartbroken to see them go - she kept asking, "Grandma potty? Grandpa outside? Grandma Starbucks?" guessing where they might be. In fact, my parents' departure triggered renewed sadness for Nani and Nana and she started asking where they were, too. Now she talks about all four grandparents all the time.