Here is the Solar System that Claire put together for school. She worked hard in this, and even took it on our weekend trip to Houston so she could finish it. It came out great! Claire even added her own flair such as the asteroid belt.
But sadly, that is the Earth laying there on the ground. It became unseated and fell off unceremoniously to the floor. Tragedy happens.
After several years of swimming, Claire has finally graduated from Emler Swim School. She knows all the strokes, and they have nothing left to teach her. Claire can really, really swim now. Mission accomplished.
Elmer has been a major part of our routine over the last few years, ever since she started there back in 2011. Claire has gone to countless classes there. She had a birthday party there. Elmer even became a fun part of our Tuesday routine for a while, back before homework took over all weekdays after school. Since then it was a major part of our Friday nights routines, along with meeting Maddie and Kamile’s family at Jason’s Deli across the street before swimming.
Molly still has time left at Elmer, but it won’t be the same without Claire diving in too. Seriously, though, they taught Claire a lot. That girl can swim.
The other day, Claire suggested that she might not need a kid’s car booster seat any more. At first I thought, “Of course she needs a booster seat! Only really big kids can ride without a booster!” Well, guess what. Claire is a big kid now. We tested out the seat belt on her without a booster, and it was just fine.
Our baby is all grows up!
For shoes, Claire has had slip-on’s such as Crocs mot of her life. She has also dabbled in velcro. We recently branched out to real shoelace shoes, some running shoes that she loves. It took her a lot of practice to learn to tie these shoes herself, but she’s officially able to do it on her own as of today. And by the way, the “rabbit through the hole” analogy for tying shoes was officially not helpful to her.
Had had a rare Christmas week off the year, something that will only happen once a decade or so. Since she could travel this year, we decided to head down to her parents’ house in Corpus Christi for Christmas for a change. The girls will stay on in Corpus for a few more days of their winter break before heading back home to Austin next week.
In Corpus, we had Kit’s parents, Kit’s uncle Bob, and my parents. We had a great, slow Christmas day with the whole family. We stuffed ourselves on ham, green beans, salad, and pecan pie. We watched Home Alone and sat around chatting while the kids played. It was a good day. People were curious and excited about my new job at Whole Foods. We also headed down to Corpus Christi waterfront for a sunny afternoon walk and to let Molly try her Plasma Car on a big, wide sidewalk.
We also got to visit our friends, the Carroll’s. The highlight of that visit was Claire and Ze doing a “science experiment” from one of their Christmas presents in the Carroll’s bathroom. They overdid an ingredient from the experiment and clogged the bathroom sink, left a mess on the hall carpet, and ruined some bathroom towels. We were concerned that the kids might have gotten some science goop in their eyes or mouths, but it turned out alright.
This year, with Kit working 70-hour weeks leading up to Christmas, and me starting my new job the week before Christmas, we were overwhelmed and frankly almost did not get all the presents we needed. We just eeked it out this year! Basically Kit and I need up with a two-hour window on the Sunday before Christmas to focus on shopping. We had between 3:00, when Kit was done with her work, and 5:00, when the babysitter had to leave, to talk and shop. This was not for lack of planning. Kit and I had been trying to do this since Thanksgiving, but we barely had time to talk about it, much less actually shop, at least when Kit was in a state where she could spare the brain cycle for it.
Anyways, Santa managed to find Claire a remote controlled indoor/door min-drone. It is a quadra-copter about the size of your palm, and with practice, you can fly it around the house. It was a tough start, getting hung up on the ceiling at first and later getting tangled up in Muffin’s tail hair. But Claire started to get a hang of it with practice. Santa gave Molly a Plasma Car, which is a 4-wheeled scooter you can ride around the house or a sidewalk. It was a perfect fit for Molly, and she spent most of Christmas day wheeling around the house.
The pile of presents from each other was huge and sweet. A highlight was a hand-made book telling the history of everyone in our family, both Purdy’s and McGonigle’s. It was meant for Claire and Molly to have and read decades from now, but we all got a copy of this amazing book. There were lots of other presents, everything from Playmobil sets to fitness bands to the Claire & Molly annual art calendar that I normally make.
The morning after Christmas, the girls and Kit stayed back in Corpus while I headed home to my new job and to try to restore some sanity to the tornado scene that is our house.
Claire had a great actual 9th birthday. He birthday party with her friends was the next day. Claire initially wanted to do a swimming or Jumpoline party, as she had done in the past. But we ended up doing a tie-dye party at a little art studio. It was a fun time, and her friends work their tie-dye shirts to school the next few days.
Claire’s birthday fell on a lucky Saturday this year. And being late November, there were several fun holiday-related things to do around town. Kit and I decided to fill up the day with fun stuff and call it “The Day of Claire”. It is not very often that you have a whole day to spend on your kid’s birthday.
We started out with the post-Thanksgiving / pre-Christmas Chuy’s Children Giving to Children parade downtown. We ran into one of Claire’s former classmates, whose family had a great spot at the parade and let us jump in with them. The highlight was when the parade stopped and all the kids got to run out into the parade to dump presents into pickup trucks on the parade route. Molly loved Curious George and was a little puzzled about the Disney princesses in the parade. Shouldn’t they be at Disney World?
We let Claire choose where we would have lunch, and she picked IHOP right away. We were all in good spirits and had a really fun, silly lunch with a lot of laughing and joking. The pancakes helped, I am sure.
During a break at home, I went to Royer’s Pie Haven to pick up Claire’s birthday pie. We asked Claire what she wanted for her birthday dessert, and she decided on pecan pie. When I picked up the pie form Royer’s, I told the cashier that our 9-year-old selected that for her own birthday, and she said in admiration, “That is awesome!”. Then we discussed how much better pies are than cakes.
Next we went to a late afternoon showing of Elf: The Musical at the Long Center, which was showing for only three days, one of which was exactly on Claire’s birthday. More good luck! After some confusion and delays, we almost missed the show. We had it to the door, carrying Molly for speed, with literally 1 minute to spare. The first usher told us to run to the next door. The next usher saw us running and said, “Okay, you’re good.” and let us in just as the lights were going down. We all liked the musical, and even Molly managed to sit through it without any issues. But I think the girls’ favorite part was exploring the Long Center during intermission and Auditorium Shores afterwards. The girls ran around in the dark, rolling down grassy hills, and admiring the giant “candy canes” that the theater’s columns had been decorated as.
Finally, we stopped by Whole Foods and let everyone pick out their own favorite food from the hot bar. The macaroni and cheese was a big hit with the kids. We sang happy birthday, stuck some candles in the pecan pie, and just had a nice relaxing night together. Claire had already opened her birthday present, which was a giant Playmobil hotel that the whole family had pitched in on. We decided to all get her one big thing instead of a bunch of little things. Claire got to open it early when everyone was around on Thanksgiving, and we spent most of the day assembling the 983-piece set.
The Day of Claire turned out even better than expected. For once, we were all in a good mood almost the entire day. Even the nearly missing the musical didn’t dent our mood. Even Molly didn’t have any issues and just trooped along and had a fun day. Claire’s 9th birthday was a very good one. Next year it will probably be on a Tuesday, and we’ll hurry though a quick dinner and cake like usual, but this year’s birthday was one to remember.
BTW, a few days later, we all agreed that Claire’s birthday was great, but Molly said she didn’t really like it after all.
Claire has been walking Molly into school in the mornings. She drops Molly off at class and then heads off to her own class. Watching Claire and Molly cross the street together and head up the hill towards school is just about the most precious thing I have ever seen.
McG Kids 