Girl's Gone Child: July 2012

Bo took her first step this week. Hold up, what's that you say? Girl, I'm not even kidding. It was only one step before she fell down, but she's standing pretty sturdily on her own now which is bonkers. She does this thing where she slowly stands up and then spreads her wings and flaps them until she falls over. And then she turns and smiles and claps and does it again.

Today she set her world record of nine seconds. And then Revi was like, "Hold up. That's NOTHING, sister!" and stood for TEN seconds. Because apparently twins do all of the same things at the same time? (Or is it just mine?) See also: milestones as competitive sports.

cue Olympics theme

Revi's a little more fearless in the standing department and is attempting to "walk" down steps because she can't crawl down them. She is my "AHHHH!" baby because her hobby is danger and she needs CONSTANT supervision. Thankfully, Archer has stepped up to become Revi's keeper and he follows her around the house and any time she comes near anything mildly dangerous he picks her up and carries her elsewhere while saying, "No Revi Coconut. Come with me."

Having six plus years between children is an incredible thing and I completely understand how people with a thousand kids make it work. Older siblings for prez.

great grandparents for vice prez

We had our tree removed last week. Er, the week before? The week before. We had our tree removed the week before which was heartbreaking but we were told by three different tree people that it HAD to be done because of the way it was growing, its trunk pushing up on our house.

"When something dies, its shadow stays for a little while. See that little part down there, Fable? That's the tree's shadow."

Nana made me feel better about the whole thing.

"Gardeners have to rip out plants all the time. It's sad but it's necessary. We'll plant a new tree in its place."

So I bought a fig tree.

And then Nana gave me a list of plants to buy and then I tried to buy them except none of the SIX NURSERIES I visited carried anything on the list so Nana pulled a bunch of stuff from her garden, made some phonecalls and BOOM! Garden party 2012.

And now I will copy and paste the email my Nana sent me with the "recipe to our garden"

Our Garden Recipe
By: Nana

"...For Flanking Window: 2 (5-gallon) Mandevilla vines (Mandevilla ‘Alice du Pont’) to climb up the iron grill.

- 2 (5-gallon) Silver-leafed princess flower (Tibouchina heteromalla) as foils for the mandevilla one on each side, and one foot further out from wall.

- Tree for south side of bed, slightly out into the lawn:1 5-gallon green fig tree (Ficus carica ‘Peter’s Honey’)

- For planting the remainder of the bed: 8 (4-inch) Rosemary (Rosemarinus officinalis ‘Tuscan Blue) (1-gallon) dwarf yellow daylilies (Hemerocallis ‘Stella d’Oro), 8 Spanish lavender (Lavendula stoechias ‘Winter Bee’), 2 English lavender (L. angustifolia ‘Blue Cushion’), 6 (4-inch) woolly yarrow (Achillea tomentosa), 3 (4-inch) woolly thyme (Thymus pseudolanuginosis ‘Hall’s Woolly’), 2 (4-inch) curry plants (Helichysum italicum), 8 (12-inch cuttings) rose geranium from (my) garden (Pelargonium graveolens), 1 large flat of lobelia annual bedding plants (Lobelia erinus ‘Lucia’ Dark Blue.)

- For massing beneath the existing Australian tree fern (Dicksonia antarctica) on left side of entry to patio: 2 (1-gallon) yellow daisy shrubs. (Euryops pectinatus ‘Viridis’) One on each end of the east-facing wall. (These will commence blooming in September and bloom all winter and spring. (Deadhead occasionally if desired. Shear off all dead flowers and 2 or 3 inches of foliage all over the tops of the plants in June.) 12 large divisions (3 plants each, with roots already cut back) orange-flowered, hybrid clivia (Clivia miniata) from Pat’s garden.

SOIL PREP for heavy adobe clay:

1. One week prior to working heavy adobe, spread on soluble gypsum, water into the ground to soften the soil. (We did not do this since I did not know we were planting in adobe soil. Rebecca and Hal will now treat the entire front bed and lawn with liquid gypsum. Dig and till ground to depth of one foot if possible.

2. Spread 8 (2 –cubic-foot bags) composted organic soil amendment designed for combining with soil over bed.

3. Use tiller to work compost into the top foot of soil.

4. Spread Grow-Power all-purpose fertilizer over soil according to package directions. Work this into the top 6-inches of the ground.

5. We followed up with sprinkling on organic Preen preemergent weed killer, which is harmless to kids or pets.

6. We treated the clivia by sprinkling on one full container of Sluggo, organic snail bait (Shshsh! Please don’t tell Archer or Fable who love snails!)

7. After planting entire bed Archer sprinkled a small amount of Apex Blue 14-14-14 around each plant.

8. I then thoroughly watered the entire bed and washed off the patio and path so adobe would not be tracked into the house.

9. Note: I also put a handful or two of slow-release fertilizer in the bottom of the planting hole for the fig tree. I wish I had had a bag of gypsum on hand so I could have thrown about a coffee-can full of that in the bottom of the planting hole and dug it into the ground to improve drainage."

(We're going to plant Cyprus trees in the fall on either side of the window.)

(mandevilla + daylillies)

(cutelillies)

We shot two more episodes of ChildStyle this week, two more incredible spaces including a bunk bed built for three girls in a room the size of a closet. I know I've written about "sharing spaces" before. And I apologize if this sounds at all unsolicited advice(y) but one of the reasons I'm president of the kidssharingbedrooms fan club is that kids who share bedrooms are typically more hospitable, better at sharing and more evolved cohabitors, and I'm not even talking about my kids. I'm talking about adult humans that I have shared beds with throughout the years, mainly, Hal, who unlike me DID share a bedroom with his sibling.

I had my own room from birth until I moved out on my own and I've struggled as a "roommate" ever since. I have major space entitlement issues and I am convinced its because I always had my own room always always always, me me me.

Anyway. These three girls, all of whom shared this lovely little bedroom could not have been sweeter to each other and to us. They even baked us cookies and slid the following note under our door while shooting. Incredible.

Which brings to my next point that has nothing to do with the last point: SWIMSUITS! Remember my postpartum bathingsuit post? Well, ONE of the two suits I ordered arrived. (Apparently my Esther Williams suit is being delivered via tortoise because I ordered that bad boy a month ago and it still hasn't turned up.) What did arrive? This J Crew wonder which fit me like a glove (ed: size 8) even though it was a little on the (very very VERY matronly) side. So weird how these things look a thousand times better on models.

Not to mention VERY unflattering on the strapless side of things. Hi, tree stump boob.

Goodbye treestump boob!

So, sadly, I had to return that sucker. And today, at my parent's pool, I wore one of my sister's old stretched out bikinis which (miraculously) was far more flattering.

Speaking of flattering, these people:

We're in San Diego for the week with my family which is why I'm writing this post at a million o clock with pool hair and wet bathingsuit bottoms. I just wrote a super ranty paragraph about my new mission to preserve my historical neighborhood because THIS IS WHAT'S HAPPENING AND I AM SO ANGRY and then deleted (my rant) because this post is already getting out of hand all over the place and I should probably go to bed eventually. I feel especially fiesty lately. Mercury must be in ErinBrockograde.

AND because I don't talk poop NEARLY enough for a mom blogger blogging mom mommy mom and this post is a complete disaster of mismatched nonsense, here's this morsel of hilariousness c/o Fable who this week leapt from the toilet and shockingly proclaimed , "What the what? My poop looks like finger puppets."

And you know what? Her poop looked exactly like finger puppets.

Goodnight.