Claire has been enjoying her trampoline from Santa last Christmas. She likes to do this trick as shown below. When she say “high!”, she jumps up on my shoulders. Sometimes she says “hi” and waves her hand  to try to trick me.
claire
President Claire
Claire’s class has been learning about America and the presidents recently. Â One assignment was for each kid to write what they would do if they were president. Â Claire’s, as usual, focuses on being nice:
This assignment was posted outside the classroom.  Almost every kid in the class said something about helping other people, especially people in need.  Prospective presidents would “help kids go to school”, “help people that don’t have food”, “help people who were really hurt”, “help homeless people”, “give the people clothes”, and even “give the people money.”  This is basically the opposite of what we hear in the current Republican presidential debates, the theme of which is largely not helping people. I’d vote for the kindergarten kids.  There was one loose cannon in the class, though, who promised to “go into a war” as president.  Claire thought maybe he was confused when he wrote that.
Here is Claire’s other America-relate assignment, which also came out pretty sweet.
A Better Valentine’s Day
While we were all enjoying our family Valentine’s dinner tonight, we were trying to remember last years’ Valentines. After a minute, I remembered that it was such as disaster that I had blogged it as an example of how ridiculous things can sometimes be. We were dealing mostly with Molly’s screaming last year, and hoping that she would “pull it together” for next year’s Valentines dinner. Well, our little Molly has really stepped up. Thanks to a maturing Molly, things were much more peaceful and enjoyable for all…
Thanks to my working from home while everyone else is off, I was able to (hurriedly) deck out the dining room in Valentines decorations. And thanks to a new semi-regular babysitter, Nesi, I was able to prepare a proper dinner of linguini, green beans, sale, and rolls (mostly pre-made from Whole Foods) for everyone in relative peace. Claire was very impressed and excited with all the Valentines decorations. We even put on some special harp, flute, and cello music to make things seem extra fancy. Claire’s only complaint was that the food itself wasn’t very “Valentinesy”. I assured her that dessert would be fully Valentines-compliant, and sure enough, everyone enjoyed the tiny Valentines cupcakes.
There was no screaming this year. The only time things got loud at all was when Claire and Molly got silly with each other, which can be bit much at tomes. Still, I like the direction this is going.
Who’s the older sister?
Claire acts silly with her teddy bear while Molly quietly reads a book.
Pease Park
Claire continues to love going to the park, and the king of the parks is Pease Park. She asks every weekend to go to the park. Sometimes she wants to go more than once in a day (although we pretty much can never do that). Claire almost always ends up making a friend like this random girl.
Sometimes Molly stays back home with Kit and naps, but sometimes she comes along. Molly is not quite old enough to make friends, and for the moment she likes to hold back and observe from a distance.
Claire Has a Dream
For Martin Luther King Day, Claire’s class had an assignment write their own dream. They had to fill complete the sentence, “I have a dream to…” with their own writing. Claire’s used her hard-earned writing and phonics skills to come up with this:
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| “I have a dream to help others when they are hurt.” |
Nice touch, Claire.
Allowance
After several months of off-and-on deliberation, we finally got Claire started on regular chores and allowance. We were having trouble deciding on the details. What exactly would Claire have to do to earn her allowance? How much would she earn? Does she get paid daily or weekly? What exactly happens if she did not do her do her chores? And so on. But on a recent Saturday night, when we hired a baby sitter for a few hours, we finally hashed it out over dinner. This date night, we had a babysitter for five hours and did nothing. We just had dinner, talked, and strolled around South Congress. It was great! And among other things, we finally nailed down Claire’s allowance plan.
It works like this… Every day, Claire needs to complete three items: get herself dressed, put up her shoes whenever she takes them off, and take her dishes to the kitchen after each meal. These are pretty easy chores, but we wanted to set Claire up for success. Of all of then, we have had the most trouble in the past with Claire dressing herself, of all things. She just really likes when we help her get dressed. Anyways, for every day that Claire does all of those things, she gets 50 cents. And on Sundays, we all clean up the play area together. If Claire participates in the clean up, she gets a bonus of $1.50, bringing her weekly total to $5.00. The allowance would be distributed as cash immediately after the clean up. This whole thing may sound a little confusing, I guess, but basically she gets $5 a week as long as long as she does all her chores, and we have some gradual ratcheting back from there.
When we told Claire about the allowance plan, she was pretty happy. She understood the rules right away, and she was really excited to get started.
I am happy to report that Claire completed all of her tasks in her first week of allowance, collecting the full $5 today. She went with Kit to Michaels craft store to buy some supplies for her “100th day of school” project, and she took her $5 spending money with her in a little glass jar. Claire came home with a wide assortment of stickers and a special Santa Claude card, her very first purchase made with her own hard-earned money. Michael’s being very affordable, the total came to $3.33, leaving her $1.67 in change to add to next week’s haul. Way to go, Claire! With any luck, I can’t wait to see what you do with your $6.67 next week!
Sleeping in silly
This was one of those great Saturday mornings when the kids slept in, and Kit and I were able to just dose until 7:30 or 8:00. Eventually we heard the tell-tale giggling from the girls’ room. The girls were certainly together in Molly’s crib having their weekend-morning wake-up fun. When we finally walked into their room, this is what we found.
Somehow Claire had convinced, or Molly had asked, to be put into the Annie costume. Luckily, Molly looked much more happy in the oversized costume than Claire did when she first got it for her fifth birthday. Another morning the girls followed a similar drill, but that time Molly’s crib was piled high with every stuffed animal in the room. I can’t wait to see what the come up with next.
History Buff
The other day, Claire said she wanted to have a party at our house. She wanted to have either a Valentines party or a history party. That’s right, a history party! The idea would be for people to come and dress up as mummies, cowboys, etc. and, you know, do historical activities. I loved the idea and started to dream up historical snacks and drinks. But I had to explain to Claire that we probably could not manage a party. There are already so many birthday parties, and we can barely scrape through a weekend as it is just getting our basic chores and survival done, and hosting a party was going to be a tall order. Still, I love the idea…
Anyways, it is nice to see that Claire’s interest in history has continued well past her trip to Washington DC, where she first discovered those glorious mummies and all things Egyptian at the Smithsonian. Her Egyptian fascination continues. She has lots of questions. Is Egypt a real place? What did the mummies do before they died? Did the Egyptians ever come to Austin? Who came before the Egyptians? Do people live in Egypt now? “No fair! I want to live there!” she says and mock cries when I tell her yes, Egypt is real, and yes, people do live there. It is almost like Egypt is Disneyland for her. It is a place of golden masks, great pyramids, mysterious gods and goddesses, and fashionable wigs and sandals.
Claire’s interest in history continued when we got Claire a copy of the movie Night at the Museum and its sequel, which is set at the same Smithsonian museum that we went to in DC. In the movies, all the museum’s characters come to life at night, including Teddy Roosevelt, a Roman general Octavius, Napoleon, Attila the Hun, an Easter Island statue, a playful dinosaur, and yes, a (fictional?) Egyptian king named Ahkmenrah. Claire got really interested in the characters and was fascinated that they were (mostly) real people, not just storybook characters. We have spent a lot of time telling Claire that such and so story or character is not real, only a story (Star Wars, Ponyo, Barbie), so it was pretty wild for her to think that all these interesting and sometimes scary people really did exist. She had more questions. Was Napoleon a bad guy? Was Custer from Europe? How did Amelia Earhart die? Was Octavius a real Roman general? Were there Ro-women too, or only Ro-men (i.e., Roman)? (Really, that was a question.)
But I don’t want to push this history thing too hard for fear of spoiling it for Claire. Well hold off a few years before tackling the Oxford History of the United States. She should be at least 9 or 10 years old, right?
McG Kids 