Sam, Tess, and Rue Hawkins came down from Manhattan Beach for a weekend. We fed them yummy pizza upon arrival Friday night. Saturday morning, the Hawkins girls initiated a roly poly hunt. Ever and Wren were really interested in catching roly polies but were scared to touch them. The girls got plastic bags to put their critters in, and initially my girls would only touch the bugs through extra bags on their hands. Eventually, however, they dropped their makeshift gloves and started going after them barehanded. The rolies provided hours of backyard fun. Nathan Cikanek joined in the festivities, too.
Wren, Tess, and Rue:
Sometimes my kids get anti-social and opt for, say, reading, over playing with visiting friends. Jim indulged them.
Wrenzy showed off the fruits of her labors.
They ended up catching probably hundreds of the things. Somebody dropped a bag inside the house, and that was not OK with me. In the end, the bags were left outside, and the rolies escaped. The girls were sad, and I was relieved. Sam and his girls left that afternoon. It was fun to have them. Ever and Wren are really big fans of Tess and Rue.
Tiny lives in her "Anna/Elsa" dresses. This is how we went grocery shopping one morning after school drop-off - Anna/Elsa dress for Tiny, jammies and Anna/Elsa purse for Wrenzy. We're not winning any awards for style.
I got excellent facial expressions inside.
Tiny tried, unsuccessfully, to make a castle out of yogurt.
I always have the littles help me unload the dishwasher. They do a really good job, except for the time that Tiny put the silverware in my back pockets instead of in the drawer.
Tiny got an insane, full-body rash that lasted for days. The picture doesn't do it justice. It was really, really awful. Apparently it was just caused by a virus. She seems to be rather rash-prone.
Naked Zoza helped me clean one day. Ever wouldn't get out of the frame, but I had to record Wrenzy Swiffering the floor and singing, "I don't know if I'm related to gassy..." from Frozen. (The real line is, "I don't know if I'm elated or gassy, but I'm somewhere in the zone."
After the Swiffer, she got into vacuuming and went all around the family room with the attachment. She even folded the rug up to get underneath it. I was so proud of my little perfectionist.
Jim had the idea of Pippi Longstocking for Ever's dress-like-a-movie-character day at school. He found and cut wire that worked great. I looked at some pictures of Pippi and then selected the best clothes I could find in her closet. We did eyeliner freckles, too. I thought she looked amazing. We really nailed it for a throw-together-at-the-last-second costume.
Creative play:
The girls love the song "Angela" by The Lumineers. Wren and Tiny think the line "Home at last" in the chorus is "Hope a-la," and that's what they call the song. One afternoon, we had Pandora on, and Tiny said, "I want Hope A-la." Shortly after that, the song happened to come on, and before I had even identified it in my head, she exclaimed, "It's Hope A-la!"
All of the girls are very opinionated about music (and clothes, for that matter). They know what they like and what they don't like.
The destruction of the bedroom and bathroom continued. Jim and Ever surveyed the damage.
Jim had to take out these giant support beams along where the old closets were. When he cut down the first one, he was scared it would be so heavy that it could put a hole through the floor when it fell. He situated a board underneath it to break the fall and calculated well.
The side of the room with the closets removed:
We had a lot of debris in our entryway for a while.
Jim let me hire a big French Canadian named Pierre from Clear Junk Removal to haul it all to the dump the week we left for Coco's house. It was so great to get rid of it (especially because rat droppings had appeared around the mess, to my horror).
Jim has left our bedroom and bathroom carpet and amenities to the extent possible. The toilet is still useable, but you have to step through a door frame across a little floorless section, staying to the left side of the door opening, and then step left to the toilet. Immediately past the door opening on the right side is a pile of tools, debris, and all sorts of junk. It looks like this:
One night Wrenzy cried for me, and I got up quickly and went to her. I should have waited to see if she'd go back to sleep, and I certainly should have waited to get my bearings. But I didn't. I was kind of out of it because I hadn't been asleep very long and was so exhausted. I felt how I used to feel when I got up with babies in the night - a little unsteady and fuzzy-headed. I went to Wrenzy, and she just wanted something dumb like for me to put her blanket on her. I decided to use the bathroom while I was up. I made it in the dark to the door frame pictured above and stepped through with my left foot. When I stepped with my right foot, though, I stepped into the mess on that side and went down. I cried out. Jim got up and asked if I were OK. I said I was, but a minute later I turned on the light and saw that I was bleeding. He got back up and fetched me a Band-Aid. It was a pretty good slice.
Jim and I have talked forever about putting artificial grass in the back yard. It's just not right to water lawns here, and he can't keep the lawn how he likes it anyway. He plants this beautiful, fine grass, and then "bad grass," as he calls it, comes in and takes over. He has planted and replanted this yard several times. He agreed not to do it again because we're just going to put in turf. But he couldn't help himself. The man is unstoppable when it comes to the yards. The morning we left for DC, he was outside poisoning the bad grass so he can reseed one more time.
