For July 4, we met up with some friends and went to the Tarrytown neighborhood parade. The friends enthusiastically collected candy tossed from the parade and/or generally acted goofy in celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Claire and Molly had fun too but were not quite as silly.
Claire and Molly saw their first real, live spaceship today.
Kit read in the newspaper that NASA’s new Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) was parked about a mile away in the parking lot of the Bob Bullock Museum tonight. The spacecraft was on it’s way from California to Florida and just happened to be passing through town. We decided to go check it out after dinner, even though Molly would be late for bed. I mean really, a spaceship sitting there a mile away for one night? You have to go check that out.
So we did go check it out, and it was pretty cool to see this space-pod thing sitting there on the back of a flatbed, and we waited in a long line to take look through the window. We even got to talk to some of the engineers who designed the spacecraft. Claire and Molly ran around on the grass while we waited, and Claire made a couple of friends. It was a good night.
Today when Claire was in one of her occasional sour moods in the car on the way home from school, we were discussing different kinds of music to put on to maybe cheer things up. Kid’s music? Beach Boys? An audiobook? Rock & roll?
Claire did not like the rock & roll idea at all. “I hate rock & roll!” she proclaimed. “It’s the worst kind of music there is! I hate rock stars too!” She then paused to add, “And I hate movie stars!”
Yeah! Eat it, Bono!
Once she got that out of her system, she was calm and relaxed, and we drove home a little more happy but with no music.
Oh so ironic… that was such a “rock & roll” way for Claire to work out her emotions. Take down the man! Yell it out! I think she might have slammed a guitar into an amplifier if she didn’t hate rock & roll so much.
Inspired by her after-swim rinse in the shower at Deep Eddy Pool this morning, Claire has decided that she is a big fan of showering. So much so, in fact, that she asked if she could take a shower instead of a bath for bedtime tonight. I had actually wondered at what age Claire would want to switch from baths to showers, and I supposed it would be somewhere around ten years old, but now she has that beat by half.
This is a major change for Claire, who in the past could hardly stand any water on her head or face. And now she is making major leaps in the area — literally. At Deep Eddy today, Claire enjoyed repeatedly jumping into the pool, with water splashing around and sometimes over her face and head. This was followed by said shower in the surprisingly fresh and clean, open-air public changing room (featuring a courtyard of tropical plants).
What may have helped pushed Claire over is her twice-weekly swim lessons at summer camp. Learning to swim with her long-time friends seems to be helping her develop a new boldness with water in general.
Anyways, Claire went ahead and took her first real shower tonight, the whole nine yards, including a shampoo. She did not have any help from me except getting the water running at the right temperature, and some help with the shampoo. The only mishap was when she accidentally swallowed a little bit of shampoo, but she quickly recovered by spitting it out and rinsing with fresh water.
As a side note, Claire is always a little lawyer at bedtime, and a rather capable one at that. Her goal is to push off getting ready for bed as long as possible. Tonight after announcing she would take a shower instead of a bath, Claire asked if she could have a few extra minutes to play since we wouldn’t have to wait for the bath to fill up. Well played, Claire…well played.
A couple of months ago, during the more spring-like growing season, Grammy brought some lettuce seeds up here to plant with Claire. They planted the seeds in a container in the back yard, and before long, the lettuce was off and growing.
Now that it is hot and dry, the lettuce is just starting to wilt and die back. So last night I asked Claire if she would like to try eating some of her home-grown lettuce with dinner. She said yes, and was pretty excited about it. So I went outside and cut some lettuce off to serve up as a basic lettuce salad with our ravioli. It looked pretty nice, actually. I even made a big deal about how fresh the lettuce was. “Fresh lettuce, coming up!” Claire is not a big salad eater, and not really into salad dressing, so she just went for a tentative bite of the stem.
From the look of her face, the lettuce did go down so well for Claire. Even after adding dressing and croutons.
At first I thought Claire just wasn’t used to the (rather mild) taste lettuce, but when I tried some myself, I had to admit it was really bitter. Even with a generous amount of ranch dressing and croutons, the bitterness still fought its way through. It tasted like something you’re not supposed to eat. I hope I haven’t ruined Claire on salads!
Anyways, it was great to grown some of our own food, and I am glad the lettuce survived this far. Maybe next year we’ll try tomatoes or oranges or something. Or hot dogs. Oh wait, now that would really ruin her on hot dogs.
When Claire’s class comes in from the playground at school, they pass through the “activity room”, which is a shared, open space that different classes use throughout the day for things like gymnastics or just some indoor play time. Apparently today, as Claire and her friends came through the activity room, they discovered Molly in there with her class. Claire ran over and gave Molly a big hug. Several of Claire’s friends also thought that looked like a good idea, and maybe they should give Molly a hug too. Eventually, Molly’s teacher had to seal off an area around Molly to protect her from the horde of hugging friends.
“No more hugs, people! Nothing to see here!” I imagine the teaching saying.
Molly does have many fans among Claire’s friends, but she usually doesn’t have to deal with them all at once.
Claire had an exercise at school today that involved listing “what makes me excited about kindergarten, and what makes me nervous about kindergarten!” Claire illustrated each item with a little picture. Claire is excited that her classmate Lyla will be there and about doing homework. There it is for the record… excited about homework. She is nervous about making new friends and “because it will be tricky in kindergarten”. I have mentioned the early kindergarten start time to her, but it may not have hit her yet, or else she would have listed being nervous about getting to school every day by 7:40. At least I would have listed that one.
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| You can’t read some of the faint print. Basically one girl says, “Hey, can I play too?” The others say, “Sure!” and “Yeah!” |
McG Kids 