Month: December 2012

Draggin’

Video | | patmcg

Claire is out of school for two weeks for winter break, and Molly’s school closes early, at 4:30 instead of 6:00, around the holidays. So have been getting back home with the girls before 5:00, over an hour before a normal week day.  This extra hour makes a huge difference!  We cook together, play, or just hang out.  The normal weekday involves nothing but rushing to get dinner on the table and then get right to bed.

Molly and Claire are really enjoying the extra time.  They have so much fun just goofing off with each other.  I caught a little video clip of one of their games, a kind and gentle dragging game.  Originally Claire and Molly wanted to drag Molly by her neck, but they took my advice and adjusted to the torsop-based approach as shown here.

 

Christmas 2012

| patmcg

Minimalist post, only pictures… 🙂

Robot Night Dance

Video | | patmcg

After enjoying the crazy holiday light show at Mozart’s, the girls were feeling a little frisky walking back to the car.  They are not usually out walking around when it is completely dark outside.  Somehow they stated doing a crazy robot dance in the light of Kit’s phone, and this is what we ended up with.

Newtown

| patmcg
On Friday, there was a terrible massacre of 20 first-grade kids and 6 teachers at a school in Newtown, Connecticut.  (That sentence is so awful it was actually hard to write.)  Claire’s excellent 1st grade teacher sent out the following apt message to the class parents.

[quote]Dearest Parents,

As I prepare myself for the school morning, I feel compelled to say something in regards to Friday’s tragedy.

I think when things like this happen, we all respond with a similar thought pattern: “That could have been my child.” Being that these students were first graders makes this tragedy somehow more poignant and raw for us. I have repeated the previous thought over and over in my mind this weekend, followed by, “That could have been my students. That could have been me.” Last night I dreamt of one single message: “Be the light.”

I would be remiss to believe that evil doesn’t exist in a real way in our world, that really bad things happen to good people for senseless reasons, but I want to acknowledge the truth that love and light live in greater proportions than darkness.

So…love more, do good, contribute to the greater consciousness, and turn on as many lights as possible…everyday.[/quote]

Vomit

Video | | patmcg

Molly woke up up vomiting the other night.  She vomited all over herself, her blankets, her mom, me, and her stuffed animals.  Molly had caught a stomach bug going around that would eventually get 14 of the 16 kids in her class, and 2 of the 3 teachers.   Molly would spend a couple of days at home recovering, and it was her first time to use the “sick bed”, an inflatable bed that we get out when people are vomiting and cannot be trusted to keep their real beds vomit-free.  Claire had used this several times before, but this was Molly’s first shot.  As bad as she felt, Molly was thrilled with the sick bed and all the attention and fussing over her.  Claire, too, was pretty excited to be up in the middle of the night helping out.  For the next few days, Claire and Molly would tell anyone who would listen about the night of vomiting, and Molly in particular would have a big grin on her face when telling the tale.  Claire would say, “Oh, Molly’s just bragging.”

We did not take any pictures of the action on the night of vomiting, but we did get this sweet moment the net day when Claire took it upon herself to entertain Molly with a book in her sick bed.