Other people's footwear

Evidently, the coolest thing for our 19 month old to do is to wear our shoes around. Sometimes she'll already be wearing her own shoes when she dons the additional pair, like in this shot:

Re-plumbed

Almost a year after we moved into the house, I replaced 90% of the original water pipes in the house. Why? Because the old ones looked like this:

No exaggeration. (And not my pic or text on it, but you get the idea.)

I replaced all the pipe I could without opening up walls with PEX, a plastic pipe, that costs a lot less than copper, is less prone to freezing and bursting, and quick to run. Took me about a day to get everything converted and knock-on-wood, no drips. I installed this fancy thing, a manifold, which works like an electric breaker - easy to cut off a faucet or to expand later.

Kate named it Diva after the character from "The Fifth Element:


Everything hooked up:


Next:
1. Put in some additional supports
2. Build a wall on the right side of the room (by the blue pipes) and clean up all those lines
3. Install a tankless water heater

Should be a good year.

GG Visit - the full story

My husband is a man of few words, but many pictures. You got a quick glimpse into GG's visit in his prior post, but I wanted to give you a bit more.

Mabel
LOVES
GG!

From the second GG walked in the door Mabel was in love. We had prepped her that GG was coming, but she had no idea what we were talking about. 18 month olds have a hard time grasping "in two days" or "tomorrow." But the second GG walked in Mabel knew what was up. She instantly rounded up a bunch of books and made GG read them to her. And the rest of the weekend was pretty much that...Mabel being a GG slave driver.

Poor GG had to read, play with stickers, play with dolls and basically keep Mabel entertained at all times. Now, we know that is why she came out here but Mabel was relentless. GG's 34 years of grandmothering experience showed as she kept up and kept Mabel very happy.

When Mabel wakes up in the morning she does roll call. Mak? Yes. Ama? Yes. Dada? Yes. Mama? Yes.
Now GG has been added to the list. And it breaks my heart every morning when we have to tell her GG went home. Hopefully another visit will be in the near future.

Gym time

Last week, with GG in town we all headed down to the gymnastic playground:







We saw our friends Annie and Maya there as well:


Wish they grown ups were allowed to run around - super cool place. Could certainly see a birthday party here.

(Great-) grandmother visit

My grandmother, Mabel's great-grandmother, came to visit us from Cleveland. Mabel knows her as "GG" mostly from Skype, so great to have her out. GG served up lots of books and songs.



Next she is heading to L.A to further avoid the miserable Cleveland winter. We look forward to having her out again.

Learning tower time

We finally had enough of Mabel's wanting us to pick her up when we are cooking in the kitchen.