A Journal of Urban Living

Peter planted a mini-cornfield in the front yard in July. We harvested in late September. The ears were strangely stubby and not sweet.

shucking corn

Peter was very disappointed. It’s hard to get sweet corn in SoCal. We’ll try again next year!

stubby corn

But we’re back!

Let’s start with the latest. Then we’ll try to get caught up with grandparents, baptism parties, chicken drama, cat karma and Halloween.

We’ve had a couple of stormy days.  Nothing compared to what R’s parents in NJ had to deal with after some unseasonably early October snow, of course. They had no power for three days and a major cleanup!

But we love the way the rain clears out the air and dusts the peaks of the San Gabriels with snow.

just a 15-minute walk from our front door, uphill

This afternoon, we hiked up the hill above the Oxy campus to take in the clouds.

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Due to a bevy of comment spam we’re going to close out open commenting system for a little while.  We’ll see if it returns.  Also, more baby pictures soon.

on our persimmon tree:

On Monday, Simon wore his Pirate Parrot onesie to celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

First Mate Squeaky Panda, Cap'n Simon the Red

On Tuesday, Simon visited Raquel’s office. He smiled at her editor/boss, flirted with the receptionist and cuddled with her friend Shaya. He already knows who to suck up to and has a better understanding of office politics than his mother will ever have.

AP's finest: Administrative Assistant extraordinaire Donna, Reporter-in-Training Simon, Night Writer/Video Journalist Raquel

After a quick snack in a spare edit room, he fell asleep in my arms. Now no one will believe me when I complain about how he screams and keeps us up all night…

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Simon’s 2-month pediatrician’s visit on Thursday made it official: He weighs 11 lbs., 11 oz., sans diaper. That’s an ounce more than Ginger, who is clocking a steady 11 lbs. 10 oz. She doesn’t wear diapers.

Here’s Ginger at her latest weigh-in. The dial is off because she was squirming. I pet her and she purred, so we were able to get an accurate measure.

Ginger weighs in before the fight.

Simon doesn’t enjoy being weighed either. When I put him in the laundry basket lined with clothes (dirty), he got his tiny little toes stuck in the slots and started screaming.

I like to weigh things. Here’s a chart from when the chickens were just fluffy little chicks. I weighed them almost daily until they moved outside to the coop. I was also charting daily egg production for a while but that stopped when Simon came.

I’ve promised not to weigh Simon more than once a week.

Simon does:

The elusive thumb sucker, in the wild in his natural habitat

We’ve hoped that Simon would find his thumb and we were a tad worried that he seemed more interested in a plastic substitute but it looks like he knows what he’s doing.  This is perhaps the only benefit to working late on overseas hardware.  And thanks to Cisco Systems‘ sending the wrong router I may get to do it all over again tomorrow.  I’m confident that Simon will put the right part number in his mouth now that he knows where it is.

It was hot enough to fry an egg in a pocket here at the Dilwedel compound today.  The mercury hit 103F at the closest weather station atop Mount Washington.  Backyard digital thermometer registered 104.7F.

A pocket? you ask.  Wouldn’t that be messy?  Yes it was. It was an accident — not one of Peter’s culinary experiments.

Yesterday Peter fetched four freshly-laid eggs from the coop. He put one in his pocket and smashed it while reaching for the other eggs.  (The chickens have developed a nasty habit of laying under the roost instead of in the convenient nesting box.)  He showed me the gooey spot and we laughed about it. Then he shimmied out of his shorts and left them on the concrete step next to the back door, where they sat all day in the sun…

When I picked them up to throw them in laundry this afternoon, much of the egg was cooked — and caked — on the inside of his pocket.  I had to use the hose on full blast to spray it off.

So there you go! Hot enough to fry an egg in a pocket.

Peter and Simon were watering the front yard cornfield Saturday evening when they spotted a rainbow.

Simon's rainbow

It’s always hard to capture such a phenomena with a camera. It was very bright, arced over the hill up the street and even was a double for a moment. But no one cried.

brilliant colors

I don’t think Simon could see the rainbow. He seemed more interested in the spectacular sunset out back — the dark shapes of the trees, utility poles and buildings against the bright sky.

Simon's sunset

Then the sky turned ominous red and thunder rolled. We saw a couple bolts of lightning over Highland Park. Later during a late night feeding session, I heard rain falling. It was just a few drops. That’s something we get excited about here in Southern California. Usually we don’t get a drop from May to October so I thought Simon would have to wait until Fall to learn about precipitation. Poor kid.

I miss summer thunderstorms on the East Coast. Poor me!