McG Kids

This weblog tracks my kids’ early years. Each entry is a snapshot from their childhood.

Please pardon any type-o’s, misstatements, or factual irregularities. This blog is written by an often dazed dad, normally after 11 pm when he should really be in bed if he had any sense. Even the basic quick edit is not a regular practice here.

T-Shirt Idea

| patmcg

Molly has plenty of silly things to say these days, but she is not the only one.  Claire can get pretty silly too.  Here’s an example from the last few nights over dinner.

Claire has invented a character of a little girl, probably toddler-aged, who demands that her parents take her all over the world to collect random t-shirts.  She wants to go to California to get a “California Cafe” t-shirt with a picture of a muffin on it.  From Hawaii, she wants an “I Heart Hawaii” t-shirt with a picture of a pineapple wearing sunglasses.  She wants to go to Paris for a shirt that has picture of the Eiffel Tower and says “Paris!”.  She says “teeeeeeeeee” over and over until she gets the t-shirt.  And you cannot order these t-shirts from Amazon; no, you have to go get them.

Tonight, Claire came up with an extra silly t-shirt idea that had her laughing so hard she could barely breath.  It says “Ooooooooooh my gosh!” in big brown letters on an orange short.  And then at the bottom in small print it says, “Pakistan”.

Pakistan t-shirt mockup
Mockup of Claire’s t-shirt idea

She loves the addition of “Pakistan”.  We have been listening to Malala Yousafza’s book I am Malala recently and taking about it a lot.  This is what made her think of Pakistan.  What made her think of the other parts, I will never understand.

Firemen During Winter

| patmcg

Molly in a many-striped outputMolly says a lot of silly things.  She has a really active imagination, and share her thoughts throughout the day at random times.  Molly’s thoughts reveal a mind trying to understand a complicated world that just doesn’t make sense yet.  I usually do not record the numerous silly things she says, either because I just flat out do not understand what she is talking about, or more likely because I can’t take the time or record them in the moment, and they are soon forgotten.

But just this once, I remember one of her thoughts as I sit down hours later at night before I go to bed.  So here is a good example of the kind of things Molly says daily.  This is actually one of her more coherent moments.

While driving to the YMCA on this cold, cloudy day, Molly postulated on why we need firefighters in the winter time.  She said, “We need firefighters during winter because sometimes the snow is burning hot and some people leave their windows open.”  She went on to explain that the burning hot snow would light a house on fire if it lands inside.  I pressed her on this idea of “hot snow” a bit, and she conceded that maybe it is just warm snow.  Really warm snow.  Snow that is warm enough to burn down a house.  And except for the danger of burning snow, we would not need any firefighters during winter.

So there you go, a quick snapshot into Molly’s mental model of the world at age five and a half.

Molly Words

Aside | | patmcg

Picture of MollyNow at age five, Molly does not say a whole lot of words completely wrong any more.  But she does have a couple of oddities.

  • Molly calls pretzels “prentzels”.  It sounds really funny when she says it.
  • She calls a toilet plunger a “plumber”.
  • Toxic is “toskic”.  Plus for Molly, “toskic” and “non-toskic” are interchangeable.

But Molly is new enough to the language that she does not find this video about funny foods names very funny.  Claire and I crack up at “speggy and merbles”, but Molly seems to think that sounds just about right.  She doesn’t laugh one little bit.

On a side note, Molly did get one word just right, and not a good one.  It was a word that would normally get her in a lot of trouble but was funny this one time.  One morning before school, Molly was getting frustrated putting her jacket on, and she said very clearly and seriously, “I can’t get this f**king jacket on!” Oh, you had to be there.  It was so funny I had to run out of the room to laugh into my hand just to avoid encouraging her.  Claire and I giggled about that one for a while.

And yet she still can’t say “pretzel”.  Go figure.

Top Things You Should Know About Claire, by Claire

| patmcg

For her book club, Claire and her friend had to compile a list of things people should know about them.  Here is Claire’s list.  Our Claire is a little hard on herself.

  1. Sometimes I’m mean to my sister.
  2. I love to sketch because I can get all my ideas out.
  3. Sometimes I watch too much TV.
  4. I think I’m bad at math.
  5. I love my family because they use their time and money to keep me alive.
  6. I love sleepovers because I get real time with my friends.
  7. The color blue makes me confused.

I asked Claire about the last one, and she said she didn’t know what she said the color blue confuses her.  But we talked about it a bit, and we decided that Blue is confusing because really dark navy blue and really light baby blue are almost completely different colors.

Molly Takes Some Questions

Video | | patmcg

Molly was in the mood to answer some “tabletop questions”, so we went with it.

Molly covers her inner dialogs, her favorite toys and books, her courageous fight against naps, how she felt about her first day of school, and what she likes about her big sister.

The Solar System

Image | | patmcg

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.