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.
Claire’s school hosted a fun run for the students this weekend. Claire got to take part in the quarter-mile run around the track at the middle school. She was not too enthusiastic about the run until she got there and saw her friends. Claire finished near the end of the pack, but to be fair, one of her friends took a nasty tumble on the second turn, and I think Claire slowed down to see what was going on.
Molly was thrilled to get a shot at running the track after the race was over. We asked if she wanted to run, and she said, “Yeah!” So I thought I’d take her for a run on one straightaway side of the track. But Molly turned the corner and just kept going. She wanted to do the whole track. Molly gave it her all, bouncing up and down like a bunny rabbit down the track.
Kit got some great pictures with our new Cannon G12 camera, so mostly, I wanted to include those.
Claire in mid-strideClaire celebrating after the raceClaire celebrating with her momClaire celebrating with Molly and me
A few pictures from Easter. Easter itself involved a familyEaster egg hunt in our backyard, and me driving to Dallas for work. The two days before, my parents were in town, and we enjoyed some Easter-ish celebrations and dinner with them, as well as a trip to Pease Park.
After waking Molly up from her nap today, Kit asked her, “How did you sleep?” Molly’s response was to say, “Like this!” and fold her hands together beside her head, like a pillow, pretending to sleep. Yes, Molly is right, she did sleep that way, didn’t she. I mean, how else would she sleep?
Claire has suddenly developed an opinion on how we should do the online backups for our home computer. This morning, after watching TV with her breakfast, Claire approached me and said in a serious voice, “Dad, I think we should use carbonite.com. That way if you lose a file, you can, like, restore it.” (The way she said “restore”, you could tell this was a new word for her, or at least a new usage of that word.) Clearly, Claire was doing her utmost to be helpful. I said, “Thanks for the tip, Claire. I’ll keep that in mind. We already use something like that called Mozy.” Claire’s response was, “Okay. But maybe we should change to carbonite.com.” And then she wandered off to get dressed.
If you ever doubted the value of a TV advertisement, as I do from time to time, then let this be a lesson. It sure worked like a charm on Claire. I am not in a hurry to switch to carbonite.com, though, since it means weeks of uploading all our data to the new service, which means weeks of slow internet access. Trying to think how to frame that for Claire…How about, “That’s a nice idea, but it would mean learning.com and starfall.com would be really slow and annoying for a while.” That just might do the trick.
A firetruck came to visit Molly’s school today. Here are some pictures.
By the way, Molly is not yet able to pronounce her “T” sound, ugh less “TR”, and she substitutes “F” instead. So when she told us about the firetruck, it sounded like a weird, nasty word at first.
Molly's class on the fire truckMolly giving the fire truck a spin
Here is the latest installment of the favorite books series…
Molly loves her Elmo sticker book. For a while, she refused to go anywhere without it. “I want my Elmo book”, was commonly heard, especially just before leaving the house. She would sit and study it in the car for long spells, such as the recent trip to Houston.
The Elmo bookMolly engrossed in her Elmo book
Molly also spent quite a while absorbed in an issue of Austin Family magazine, which we happened to bring home from some restaurant or the like. She would love to look over the pages for bedtime, labeling all the things in its pages, a mommy, some vegetables, a ball, swimming. She really loved this magazine!
Austin Family magazine
At the moment, Molly’s favorite book is definitely the classic of classics, The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss. This is Kit’s and my favorite too. It is lots of fun to read, really an amazing book. This “Dr. Seuss” guy has a lot of promise! The Cat in the Hat book takes a while to read, though, especially if you take the time necessary to read it in a fully fun and dramatic way. So we usually skip the middle just to get Molly to bed in time!
Claire has been enjoying a variety of books, although no specific book has risen as the unchallenged leader lately. She has been somewhat into nonfiction, often inspired by a movie. She has checked out school library nonfiction books on dolphins (thanks to the movie A Dolphin Tale), lions (thanks to The Lion King), and even a resurgence in books on ancient Egypt (thanks to A Night at the Museum 2). The lion book was from National Geographic and was sufficiently realistic to be quite gruesome (but still fascinating). Claire does not like lions as much since reading that book! Dolphins are still sweet and cute, though.
Most importantly, Claire has also been reading to us more than ever! She brings home a folder of beginner books from school and takes great pride in reading them to us at bedtime. She is now reading more complex books with real stories, and not just the sample, repetitive books she started out with. She is pretty confident with her reading skills and keeps plugging away at tough words and sentences until she figures them out. And this late in her day when she is most tired. We’re so proud of her for sticking with it!
As she had a few years ago for the Peachtree Road Race, Kit convinced me to go run in the Capital 10k fun run today. I only registered yesterday at the “last-minute” registration at the convention center. I was not really in shape to run the full 6 miles, and our morning was squeezed for time, so I decided to take advantage of the fact that our house was almost exactly along the half-way point of the course. The plan was for Kit and the girls to drop me off at the starting line, drive back to our house, and wait for me in the crowds along Enfield Road. I would run the first half of the race, bow out at our house, and get on with the day. This was a good plan. Only later would I find out that our house, besides being almost exactly half way through the course, was also located almost exactly at the highest point on the course. So I would be running mostly uphill for 3 miles. Believe me, that last stretch burned!
I waited at the starting line......while the girls waited with Kit back near our house.
Anyways, Kit and the girls were a welcome sight at that highest point. Claire, as always, had made some friends, and the girls had managed to borrow some pom-poms from someone nearby. I decided that I did, in fact, want to exit the race at our house and suggested maybe next year I could run the whole thing, when I was better prepared and we hopefully did not have haircuts and furniture shopping to deal with that same morning.
...And we made a sweaty race-side reunion.I ran to the top of that bump between 4 and 5 km. I probably could have skate boarded to the end with one push.
When Kit got home today, she said Molly looked “really dorky” in her clothes. Hey, Kit picked out the rainbow shirt. I just added the purple pants, felt boots, and sloppy pig tails! She’s adorable! (In a dorky way)
Molly in her dorky outfit. The pom-poms were 100% her idea.
McG Kids 