The second grade put on a fabulous Thanksgiving show today. They played a half-hour musical to a cafeteria packed with parents. The performance involved a Thanksgiving crisis as the turkeys decided to go on strike this year. The arbiters and mediators tried to hammer out a solution. The cranberries and squash fought for a new place in the middle of the table. In the end, they kids all sang “It’s not about turkey, it’s not about Thursday, it’s not about the big game. We call it Thanksgiving because it’s thanks that we’re giving…” It was a great message and extremely cute.
Claire was cast as “a public”. So she got to dress as an adult and sing as part of the general public. She was a little bummed about the less-than-glamorous role, but she did get to appear and sing a little. The next day, Claire asked me what my second favorite part of the play was. Obviously my favorite part was Claire’s bit, but what did I like after that? I told her it was the singing cranberries. Claire said she liked them too.
If there is anything more adorable than a second grade Thanksgiving musical, then I can’t think of it, not even a cute little baby. Babies drool and puke. Second graders sing their hearts out and try to make you smile.
We recently rediscovered the Wii. Yes, welcome to 2007!
Anyways, the girls are old enough to enjoy playing the Wii now, and we occasionally let them go nuts with it. This normally happens on a non-bath night when we sometimes have a little time in our hands (what!?!?) after dinner, thanks in large part to Molly’s new school being so convenient.
The girls love Wii Sports Resort and its games such as dog frisbee, kayaking, bicycling, and Claire’s favorite: plastic sword fighting. Claire and I have both stated emphatically that we want to live on the fabulous Wii Sports Resort island. Molly, for her part, loves going crazy with the Wiimote and nunchuk. She likes the biking since you basically just wave the controls up and down as fast as you can.
But if you do turn the girls loose on the Wii, be prepared to have some worked up, possibly over-excited girls for bed time. Still, everyone has so much fun, it’s worth it.
A few pictures from this year’s Halloween. We did trick-or-treating around the neighborhood for a while, then I took Claire to meet up with her friend in her nearby neighborhood while Kit finished up with Molly near our house.
For a while, I’ve been posting the girls’ art to the portfolio section of this blog. But the portfolio is tedious and cumbersome to manage, so I’m going back now to doing the art as a regular blog. While Kit and I were in London, Joyce scanned our big backlog of the girls’ art. Here is a bunch of Claire’s art and other creations from the last several months…
Kit and I both turned 40 in the last year, and it was our 15th wedding anniversary. So we decided to celebrate with a week trip together. Grammy kindly and bravely agreed to watch the kids wile Kit and I ran off to some corner of the world for a week.
Kit and I decided to make the most of this unique opportunity to go pretty much wherever we wanted. We decided early on to go international. California, New York, Florida, etc. all sounded great. But they also sounded like something we could do with the kids. After some vacilating about where exactly to go, we picked London, beating out Venice and maybe a Caribbean beach resort as the other final contenders.
It was a great trip. Some details and tons of pictures can be found on a separate post in the new non-kids section.
Kit back home with the girls.
Me back home with the girls.
Back on the home front, Grammy and the girls held up very well while we were gone. They survived some flooding and the school carnival in Austin. We got a text message from the girls every day. Claire, in her messages, always wanted to make sure we were having a good time. Molly, who apparently thought we were in “Lindon”, went so far as to say, “I hope you come back.” (TODO: attach the messages.) Grandaddy stayed on the weekends to help out too, especially with the crazy school carnival.
As fun as our trip was, it was really great to see the girls again. Man, those girls are ridiculously cute and cuddly when you have not seen them in a while. They greeted us with a big “Welcome home!” sign, plus a happy birthday sign and homemade cake for my birthday. And there were lots of hugs. The girls got a treat too. They really liked the souvenirs we brought home from the British Museum: a glittery Union Jack notebook with matching pen, some “London landmarks” school supplies, some British chocolate coins, plus some leftover real coins.
It would be really fun to take the girls to England one day, but we’ll have to wait a few years to handle the long, cramped flight, the tedious lines at customs, and the jet lag. That would not have been fun for anyone right now. Hopefully we’ll get them to Florida or California one of these days, though.
Many thanks to Grammy for taking great care of the kids for us while we explored the world a bit.
Although Claire enjoys snuggling together for a bedtime story, she also likes to mix it up sometimes. She likes to add an element of pretend drama to story time.
Her latest idea along these lines is Tuesday Night Book Club. Instead of reading a book in bed together, we pretend it is story time at Austin Public Library. I sit in a chair and read a story (currently Henry and Beezus by Beverly Cleary) while Claire sits on the floor and listens. She becomes a girl named Sally who was dropped off at the library for story time. Actually, Claire calls it “book club” since that sounds more grown up. I act the part of the story reader and say stuff like, “Thanks for coming out to the book club tonight, kids,” at the beginning and “Looks like your parents are here to pick you up” at the end. Claire encourages me to ask questions about the book. For example, “Why does Henry not want Scooter to know that Ribsy picked up all the newspapers on Klickitat Street?” Then Sally (Claire) raises her hand to answer the question. Claire uses her official public / school voice while answering the question. “Um, he doesn’t want to lose the paper route while Scooter is on summer vacation. He want to earn a dollar for his bike fund.” Claire asks that I put a blanket over my lap to make it more sleepy. Then the “parents” come for pickup, and it’s off to bed. It really does put a fresh new twist on bedtime stories.
Molly’s camp site, down the hall in the guest room.
The latest tide of bedtime madness had ebbed some in recent weeks. Molly basically moved, voluntarily, into the guest room, where she set up camp on the floor. She has blankets and pillows surrounded by books, magazines, and a little sketch pad. She quietly puts these to use while staying up until about 10:00 or 10:30 every night. At least Kit and I can get something done around here after 8:30 now. And Molly may realize she just can’t handle being in the room with Claire at bedtime without causing trouble. She is just not tired enough to go to sleep at 8:30 or 9:00, even though she gets up at 6:30 every morning. The two-hour nap at school doesn’t help matters.
Claire missed having Molly in the room the last few weeks and would try to convince her to come back for another try, but Molly has decided she belongs in the guest room for now. Claire has gotten over being scared and gets to sleep quickly by 8:30 or 9:00. So basically, Molly is awake up to two hours past her older sister. There is just no good way to deal with that.
So last night Molly sheepishly said she wanted to try sleeping in the room with Claire again. We all said “great!” and moved Molly’s stuff back into her bedroom with Claire. All was quiet for the fist 30 minutes. Then Molly was in Claire’s bed talking quietly with her. I was afraid Molly would keep Claire up (as she is like to do), but Claire said she would tell Molly when she wanted to go to sleep. Seriously, Claire needs her sleep. I talked to Kit, and we decided to relax and let them be and maybe it would be fine. I went for a run.
When I got back 30 minutes later, Kit said things had gone badly. Molly had grabbed all of Claire’s stuffed animals and thrown them across the room. She had taken Claire’s iPod Shuffle and wouldn’t give it back. There was crying and screaming. Molly was back in the guest room with all her stuff. Claire was deep asleep by herself in her room.
Claire just wants someone to sleep in the room with her, maybe a little chit chat before bed. Molly just wants to not sleep and, further, to keep Claire awake. She has actually told us that is her intention. It’s back to the guest room for Molly tonight, like it or not.
With sumer dragging on and Claire not having seen much of her friends the last couple of months, I felt like she could use a little lift before school suddenly started. We decided to have an end-of-summer party to match Claire’s beginning-of-summer party. Claire invited a small group of friends over to celebrate basically going back to school and being together again. Really, it was just a glorified play date.
The world’s smallest water slide
Hawaiian luau part 1
Hawaiian luau part 2
Hailing lemonade customers
Strategizing on lemonade sales
It was a great day for lemonade
The party featured a small inflatable pool with the world’s smallest water slide, water sprayers, and water balloons. Yes, school is starting, but it is really still summer outside. Claire had also wanted to do a lemonade stand, and she happened to have a workable cardboard lemonade stand that she had made with her favorite summer sitter, Julia. The girls set up shop on our front curb. The lemonade, made from a mix, was $.50 per cup — or free if you don’t have any money or too large of a bill to make change. Claire’s friends were really good at hailing cars, bikers, and walkers. It helped that the weekend exercise types were out in force. The girls ended up selling about $12 of lemonade in about 45 minutes. They split up the money and resolved to donate part to a cause of their own choosing. One friend was going to donate all her money to the Philippines. Another’s went to the pet shelter. Claire is saving hers for Winter the injured dolphin, who is featured in a favorite movie of hers.
The girls also put on an impromptu show when the various parents came for pickup. It was sort of a very disorganized Hawaiian luau of sorts. It was fun, and the parents clapped, etc. Then the kids ran and hid to try to avoid going home, if only for a few more minutes.
The girls happily included Molly in the water play, the lemonade stand , and the show. They all think Molly is adorable and want a little sister like her.
This was Claire’s break between first and second grades. Only Claire’s schedule changes for the summer so far. Molly does not have a summer break, being a full time pre-school student.
We decided to try out several different camps this summer for Claire to see what worked best. Some full day camps, some half day with a sitter the rest of the day, some in between. We basically have to experiment since up until now we mostly just used the good ol’ day care.
Over the summer, Claire’s weeks were split up like this:
Four full day camps
Four half-day camps, usually morning with a sitter after lunch
Most of the camps were art-oriented, at Claire’s request, with a week of gymnastics, a week of cooking, and a week of science.
Claire and I often had lunch together while watching “Man vs. Wild”
Claire showing off a Lego creation she made with a sitter.
Horsing around the house
Regular visits from Uncle Bob
“Girls in their summer clothes”
To be honest, I think the summer was a little tough on Claire, who went from camp to camp on an irregular schedule and did not get to see a lot of her friends, some of whom were out of town for cooler climates or otherwise out of touch.
I know the summer was tough on me. The camps all started at 9:00 or 9:30, while my daily call for work was at 9:00 am. So I would drop Claire off an immediately get on a meeting on my cell phone for the drive home to work. And I would have to pick Claire up at odd times in the middle of the day (12:00, 1:00, 3:00, whatever). This is on top of Molly’s pick up and drop off at different times and places. This got old week after week.
On the plus side, Claire and I had a little time together each morning after dropping off Molly and before her camp started. We would get breakfast and do a little studying to help keep Claire sharp over the summer break. We would have a Smoothie and a bagel at Panera and then have Claire read or do some writing. That was pretty sweet.
Since most of the public pools are only open when school is out for summer, I resolved to take advantage of the limited swimming time we had available. The plan was to take the girls swimming every Friday after school/work. We always went to the little circular pool at West Austin Park. We packed a picnic or picked up something from a drive through (not as much fun!) then swam for an hour or so before heading home to see Kit and go to bed. This was a fun time for us all, except it got a little frustrating for Claire at times since I had to be 100% “on” Molly, who cannot swim, so I could not really play with Claire or even just swim with her. I did not have any free hands or attention while trying to keep Molly alive and what not. I basically stood there holding Molly while Claire entertained herself. I think Claire liked the picnic best or those rare moments when I could actually play with her too. Anyways, the goal was to do the swimming thing every Friday, which turned out to be 4 or 5 times total, with traveling, guests, other engagements, etc. often intervening.
So there you go — a sunny, fun-filled, stress-free summer! Well, it was sunny anyways. And intermittently fun and stress-free.
McG Kids 