Cute little agents of entropy. Right before dinnertime, the girls are playing up in the little attic above their rooms. Jan climbs the fold-down ladder and pokes his head into the attic. He discovers that they’ve pulled out all sorts of blankets, as well as opened up the two foam alphabet floor mat sets we have, and have constructed a sort of enormous nest. Jan dumps the whole lot down the ladder, and has the girls try to sort out all the foam letter shapes so we can put them back in the boxes. He takes advantage of the opportunity to point out to A__: Wasn’t it a lot faster to empty the boxes of letters than it was to pack the letters back into the boxes? This lesson will no doubt give her an edge in physics class on the day they tackle thermodynamics.
Jan needed to go down to the San Francisco Bay area for a meeting, so we decided to make it a family trip. The girls were quite excited to spend time with Uncle Chris. We stayed in a hotel just a few minutes away from Chris’ place in Haight-Ashbury, right next to Golden Gate Park. Saturday morning Chris took us downtown for dim sum, then we took a cable car ride. The car operator gave each of the girls several turns clanging the car’s bell. In the afternoon we went to a playground in Golden Gate Park, and stayed there so long we never made our planned visit to the city’s cool Exploratorium science museum.
Sunday morning we drove down to Palo Alto. We made a quick stop at Stanford University, so the girls could see where mommy went to school, then headed to the home of our friends Omar and Michelle. The girls had a great time playing with Omar and Michelle’s daughter and two sons. The family happens to live across the street from an elementary school, so we spend the rest of the morning at the playground. The girls did well with all the traveling, even with delays at the airport on the way back and such.
We’ve discovered some ants in our house. Far from viewing this as a problem, the girls are quite interested in collecting the ants. Our budding entomologists pick up the ants and put them in ziploc bags. They then add various foodstuffs they think the ants might like, including sugar, Cheerios, chocolate milk powder, and strawberry milk powder. L also experimented with adding water to her mixture. Those ants quickly drowned, but they probably met with a better end than the ones she bathed in hand sanitizer.
Angela told the girls that, when Pixie (the baby) comes, she/he will really enjoy playing Peekaboo with them. L smiled and walked up to Angela, then yelled at Angela’s belly: “Peekaboo!”
While hanging out with the girls today on the shore of Lake Washington, a crow flew right past Angela’s head. She turned as it was passing, and the crow kind of whapped right into the side of her head. Weird.
Today is Bike to Work Day, but since I don’t usually go into the office on Fridays, I decided that A** and I could go for a bike ride around the neighborhood instead. My intended destination was a secret dock on the lake about 5 minutes ride from our house – for an adult traveling alone. I did finally get A** on her bike and we set off. We stopped about every 100 feet. A wanted to pick flowers, collect ladybugs, stop to eat our snack (about two blocks from home), collect more ladybugs, and collect more flowers. We returned home after about an hour. Total distance traveled: about one mile.
“This is Pixie’s heart beating.” We watched a video about fetal development with the girls, and the video described how it’s possible to hear the baby’s heart beating. Liya drew a picture of her unborn sibling—complete with a heart.
What our kitchen used to look like. Since we have hardly anything going on these days–what with the baby coming, the startup company, and all–we figured we’d go ahead and remodel the kitchen. Actually, the remodel was in motion long before the pregnancy, but it’s taken a long time for work on the remodel to actually begin.
What our kitchen looks like during the remodel. We took this photo from the same location as in the previous post.
In preparation for Pixie’s arrival, we bought a bunk bed for Anya and Liya to share. They’ll move into Anya’s room, and Liya’s old room will become Pixie’s nursery.
Today the bunk bed arrived, and the girls couldn’t stop climbing up and down it—even after “lights out”.
Pixie
Angela in hospital. Angela had to go to the hospital and is on bed rest for the foreseeable future. Thankfully, both Angela and the baby are fine.
When Jan got to the hospital, the doctor on call was trying to evaluate whether the baby needed to be delivered immediately—at only 29 weeks into the pregnancy, this would be quite scary. The doctor decided that Angela looked good enough that delivery wouldn’t be necessary today, but Angela needs to stay in the hospital for observation.
Anya’s first loose tooth! Anya announced today that one her teeth is loose, then later in the day announced that another tooth seemed to be loose as well. The two teeth do indeed appear to wiggle a bit. Anya’s theory is that the sudden loosening of the teeth may be related to the fact that she banged into the head of another child this morning. :)
This afternoon Jan introduced the girls to Shoe Golf. This sport was pioneered, insofar as Jan knows, by our friend Jeff Pettiross and his friends back at Choate Rosemary Hall. Shoe golf was an entertaining way to meander back from the dining hall to the dorm.
Rules:
A group of people pick a target object (a “hole”) far away.
Each person loosens one of their shoes.
From the same starting location (“tee”), each person takes a turn kicking their foot such that their shoe goes flying off, ideally in the direction of the hole/target.
Proceed as per regular golf. Prepare to either hop a lot, or get one foot kind of dirty.
We played only one hole in our backyard: we teed off on our deck, targeting a bench at the back of the yard. The girls thought this was fun, although most of Anya’s sandal shots went up over her head and backward, and Liya could only get her flipflop to travel a very short distance. Jan happened to be wearing docksiders, perhaps the ideal shoe for shoe golf, and nailed it in two shots.
Bedrest, Day 5. Angela is still on bedrest at Swedish Hospital. Things are looking calmer, but she will have to be here through the weekend. Thankfully, she has many friends and electronic devices to keep her engaged. And, she gets to go on wheelchair rides! Watch your toes!