Shannon Phillips

Sam and Robin and Pappy rode the Niles Canyon train yesterday, and Sam got a good photo:

We’ll be going back to Niles next month. We’re renting the caboose on the train for Robin’s birthday party—it’ll be the first of his birthdays that we’re really making a big deal about. He understands what a birthday is now and he’s keenly looking forward to his. I bought a bunch of cute train-themed invitations so I need to get those in the mail!

Robin at the piano:

Davy with his blocks (a birthday gift from auntie Nina):

It’s a nice Saturday morning here; we’ve got Pappy and Nonna visiting for the weekend, which the kids are thrilled about. They also brought us a piano! It’s been talked about for a while as “Sam’s piano,” as in, “So when are you guys going to take Sam’s piano?” So last night I asked him, hey, how did you get that piano, anyway? “Mom gave it to me,” he said.

“Well, where did she get it?”

“I dunno. She just asked me one day if I wanted a piano.”

Then we did an impromptu dramatic re-enactment of the scene. “Hey,” he said, “want a piano?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said.

“It’s yours.” So now it’s my piano; I guess that’s how it’s done. Anyway, I’m quite delighted to have a piano in the house, as I understand that if either of my children happen to be musical geniuses it will be important to start their lessons early. I am emphatically not a musical genius, so I’m going to look around for someone in the neighborhood who does piano lessons for kids. Also, after its journey across the Sierrras, we’ll need to get it tuned.

We’ve also been getting some projects done around the house. We have a fence for the backyard now, and completed a bunch of interior repairs that we weren’t able to get done when we first moved in; we repainted several rooms in the house, and the wallpaper hanger is coming by on Tuesday. I’ll put up some before-and-after pictures once the wallpaper is in place!

Also, I…have an agent? I guess? Andrew Zack of the Zack Company, the agent I’ve been communicating with, actually sent me a contract to sign. But at the same time I still need to revise the novel to his satisfaction before he’d be willing to shop it around to publishers. So it’s more like I provisionally have an agent, I think. I ought to be really excited but I can’t shake this bleak sense of doom about it—I think I’m just at the point where I’ve been working on this manuscript so long that I’ve come to loathe and despise it, and I’m now having trouble imagining that it could ever really be publishable. This is making it hard to sit down and work on the revisions, actually. I need to just make myself do it.

Update: The piano has changed hands again. “Hey Robin,” I said, as the guys were unloading it from its trailer, “want a piano?”

“Yes!” he cried.

“Okay,” I said, “here you go.” So now it’s Robin’s piano. I can see this being an endlessly amusing family joke, trading ownership of the piano amongst ourselves for years to come…

I’m still not completely recovered from the day’s earlier excitement, but I managed to pull it together long enough to make a birthday dinner for my baby. (We had garlic-rosemary roast chicken and potatoes, and strawberry-rhubarb pie.)

Yes, he’s a year old today! Go Davy! It’s your birthday!

OMG AN AGENT JUST CALLED

AND THEN THE BABY STARTED SCREAMING SO LOUDLY I COULDN’T HEAR A SINGLE WORD

THE AGENT SAYS HE WILL E-MAIL

I COULD PUNCH THINGS. SO FRUSTRATING!

We were invited to a pool party this weekend, and Robin, I must say, was stylin’.

He didn’t start out with all that gear on. Considering that he was only willing to stand on the first step leading down into the pool, we figured he could get away with a simple pair of floaties on his arms. However, as other people went in and out of the pool, Robin scavenged their cast-off gear and brought it to us, insisting that he “needed” it. Soon he was wearing the full ensemble that you see here—and he was perfectly happy with himself, too.

Davy helps load the dishwasher, while Robin sweeps the floor…

(Not really. But they like to try to help, and that’s worth encouraging, I think!)

Robin loves to paint. He would do it every day, but I don’t let him, because the clean-up time involved afterwards is serious. He doesn’t like crayons or colored pencils nearly so much—it’s paints and brushes that really do it for him.

Here’s my favorite of his recent compositions:

The key to getting eye-pleasing works out of him is to provide him with harmonious colors, and to take the page away before it gets completely filled up. It’s also fun to ask him what the paintings are. “A yellow robot!” “A monkey-whale!” “Ants!”

Robin in the AM: “No! No potty training! I’m NOT a big boy! I won’t sit on the potty!”

Robin in the PM: “Mommy, you a beautiful lady.”

Parenting, it has its ups and downs.