Talking Up a Storm

Molly continues to talk up storm.  Now she knows way more words than can be listed.  She will often point at things and name them: a picture of a butterfly (“bu-fly”), her diaper (which she sometimes calls a “BM”), or a stuffed bear, crocodile, etc.  Sometimes she points at something in a way to sort of ask what it is called.  Usually this involves repeatedly tapping the object.  She’ll tap a hair brush until someone says, “brush”, and then she will repeat “brush”. One time Molly was tapping a sort of stamp thing for one of the girls’ art projects, and being distracted and not entirely sure what to call it, I said, “That’s a, uh… thing”.  Molly repeated very carefully, “thing”.  She’ll have to sort that one out over time, I guess.

Molly has finally figured out what to call her sister.  She is “Care Bear”.  Molly is probably trying to say, “Claire Bear”, which we sometimes call Claire.  When Claire was feeling grumpy the other day, she said she does not like being called Claire Bear because a bear is “boyish”.  She would rather be called “Claire Bear with flowers and bows in her hair”.  Molly has not adopted this idea yet.  I was trying to get Molly to call her sister just plain ol’ “Claire” but that hasn’t taken either.  There is always a “Bear” stuck on the end, much to her sister’s chagrin.

Molly is also combining words with great acuity.  She will describe what belongs to who, as in “Molly’s bottle” versus “Care Bear’s bottle” and “Mommy’s shoe” versus “Daddy’s shoe”.  In panic or frustration, “Molly’s bottle” sometimes still turns into “mine!”.  We sometimes have a real, practical conversation, for instance when Molly did not want to carry her stuffed bear in from the car but she wanted me to bring it in, which came out as the pretty clear “Daddy do it”.

Kindergarten Reservations

On Monday, Claire will start kindergarten, thus kicking off what we hope to be a solid 13-year career in Austin public education.  Including Molly’s future career, this is the start of 16 years of getting people to school on a strict schedule at 7:45 am.  No more wandering into day care between 8:00 and 9:00, depending on how things are going that morning.  And then there are all the many, many days off, which will no doubt turn into many, many babysitters, grandparent visits, and summer/winter/spring-break camps.  Okay, enough about my own reservations about this whole process… Let’s move on to Claire’s!

Actually, Claire is pretty excited about kindergarten but has two main reservations.  The first is missing her friends at day care.  Claire is well aware that she will not see most of her daycare friends again, and it makes her a little sad.  I know this because she told me, “I know I won’t see my day care friends any more, and that makes me sad”.  (I am very insightful.)  One daycare friend is luckily coming to Claire’s elementary school, but in a different classroom.  The rest of the old friends gradually faded away over the last weeks of summer camp back at day care.  Claire was just about the last of the core friends left by the end of the summer.  It was really a sad process to watch even from a relative distance.

Claire’s other reservation is that “In kindergarten, you have to listen really well.  If you don’t listen, you get in trouble.  I’m afraid sometimes I won’t listen”, she said tentatively.  I’m not sure where this fear comes from, I guess a “warning” about big, mean kindergarten from a teacher or a fellow student back at day care.

Here is another one… Claire is excited that she will learn to read in kindergarten.  I told her one night as we were reading before bedtime that she will learn to read some books all by herself in kindergarten.  She won’t have to always depend on Kit and me to read everything to her.  She liked the idea, but she emphasized that she did not want to read to herself for bedtime.  She still wanted her Mom and Dad to read to her every night.  Kit and I assured her we would not stop reading to her once she learned to read to herself.

Judging from today’s open house, Claire is also somewhat afraid of being left at kindergarten and not being picked up.  This morning, all kids and parents were invited to come see their classroom and meet their new teacher.  Claire liked the open house but kept a close eye on me and Kit to make sure we weren’t leaving her there.  Today Claire would get to come home and play with Grammy, who was in town for a few days, but Monday it would be a different story.  Claire understood she would stay at school without us next week, but she was not ready to be left there alone just yet!

Last Day of Daycare

Claire finished her daycare career today.  On Monday, she moves on to kindergarten at elementary school!

It has been sort of a sad end to daycare, as her friends have gradually slipped away one after another week by week over the course of the summer.  We will keep up with some of the old friends as much as possible, but Claire knows things will not be the same again, and it understandably makes her a little uneasy.

Anyways, Claire’s final day in daycare was a half-day that revolved around the completion of her swimming class.  She had to swim across the width of the deep 9-foot deep pool, as opposed to the shallow 4-foot pool they normally use.  Thanks largely to this swimming course, Claire is able to swim a little bit now, but she chose to cross the deep pool with the aid of a foam “noodle”.  Using the noodle, she swam so quickly and confidently I would not have guessed it was even her from a couple of months ago.  She got to the other side and received her gold medal for completion of the course.  She was really proud and beaming with a huge smile.

We then headed back to the school to sign Claire out for the last time and pick up Molly, who was finishing lunch.  Molly is moving up the the Little Lambs class down the hall from her old classroom, with the same friends as before.  So she is a little bit in her sister’s shadow today, but even moving down the hall is a big change too.

Claire’s last sign out

Due to their changing lunch situations (Claire buying lunch at school for $2.15 — yes! — and Molly outgrowing her tiny old lunch box), we are also retiring the trusty old Wizard of Oz lunch boxes that have clanged their way through the halls of daycare the last year or so.  Here is a picture in memorial.

The well-worn lunch boxes of the last year

Claire’s Diner

If Claire had a restaurant, she would serve three specialities:

  • Deli Stackers
  • Cereal Cups
  • Tomato Delight
The Deli Stacker is her favorite entree this summer, and onc of Claire’s own inventions.  It is a generous pile of deli-sliced ham and/or turkey, sitting on top of a slice of cheese (preferably Colby Jack).  There is no bread, nor any toppings.  It is pure and simple.  This is what Claire wants most nights for dinner if she can have it her way.

The Cereal Cup is another innovation of Claire’s.  It is like a bowl of cereal, but in a convenient cup.  Fill a small plastic cup with frosted shredded wheat cereal, add milk, and enjoy with a spoon.  Repeat and rinse.  Why settle for a boring bowl of cereal when you can use a slightly more difficult cup?  Seriously, she will not have cereal in a bowl anymore.
The Tomato Delight is a pared down version of something from Rachael Ray, I think.  It is a magical dish that gets Claire to eat an almost unlimited quantity of fresh tomatoes.  Slice a roma tomato into nice bite-sized chunks, then drizzle on some olive oil (“EVOO”), and finally top with lemon juice and sea salt.  Claire had three tomatoes like this just tonight.  I actually had to warn her, “Claire, this is the last tomato for tonight,” as if I were talking about Oreos.  I didn’t want her to overdose on tomatoes.  She does not like many vegetables, but she makes up for it with the Tomato Delight.

Claire Goes for a Swim

Just a few months ago, Claire’s swimming skills had plateaued, falling somewhat short of actually swimming.  She was starting to dislike her indoor YMCA swim lessons and actively campaigned against going to the YMCA each Saturday morning.  She did not like her goggles.  She was even starting to get a little more scared of the water, and resisted getting in.  So we gave swimming a break for a while.

Things have really turned around this summer.  Claire has started to enjoy swimming again, thanks in large part to swim lessons with her friends at summer camp.  And today for the first time, she actually swam all by herself.  It happened during a weekend visit to Houston to see her grandparents.  Claire love’s their community pool, which has a 3-foot shallow end, the perfect depth for Claire to take some chances but still touch the bottom in a pinch.   We went swimming four times in under 48 hours, at Claire’s repeated request.  We calculated that Claire spent roughly one third of her waking hours that weekend in the pool.  We are very grateful for sunscreen!

Anyways, Claire was so happy and proud when she swam all by herself.  Here is some documentation of the big milestone, including videos of both her underwater style and her dog paddle style.

Besides the solo swimming, Claire is also enjoying her goggles now.  She loves putting her face in the water at the 9-foot deep end, in particular, to look down to see just how deep it is.  That is a far cry from the scared girl who wanted to sit out swimming class at the YMCA just a few months ago.

Kangaroos’ Gathering

While Claire and I were off in Houston swimming, Kit kept Molly back in Austin, due to work and several  social engagements.  One such engagement was the end-of-the-year gathering for Molly’s pre-school class, the Kangaroos.  Apparently everyone had a great time cooling off at the splash pad.

Mani-Pedi

Kit having the week off, she wanted to treat Claire to something fun and special.  So Kit took Claire for her first professional manicure/pedicure this afternoon.  Apparently Claire enjoyed it and took the whole thing pretty seriously.  Claire tells me that they applied two separate coats to her fingernails for that pink, sparkly look: a pink base, and a whole separate sparkly layer on top of that.

Sentences

Molly has just recently started putting together simple two-word sentences, the main one being, “eat it”.  This normally refers to actual food, and not a mean jab.

I am not sure if this counts as a sentence, but Molly also loves to say “Oh, Daddy”.  I invariably reply “Oh, Molly”.  Clever, I know.  We riff back and forth like this for minutes at a time.  Molly loves it.  She has a big smile on her face the whole time, and she plays around with different ways to inflect the two words “Oh Daddy”.

For her part, Claire insists that Molly is not saying “Oh Daddy”.  She strongly believes that Molly is saying “Old Daddy”, and she thinks I should not say “Oh Molly” back because it’s supposed to be “Old Molly”, and that doesn’t make sense since Molly is a baby, or actually a toddler, or a “Boddler”, as Claire says.

One of Molly’s favorite phrases is actually three words, although it sounds like one word when she says it: hearyago.  She’ll often walk up to you and hand you something, saying “hereyago”, aka “Here you go”.

She also recently learned a classic three-word phrase, although she was just repeating it at her Mom’s prompting.  When I was leaving the room one night for Kit to put Molly to sleep as she does each night, Kit said to Molly, “Can you say I love you to Daddy?”  Sure enough, Molly repeated “I love you”, her first time to say such a difficult phrase (in more ways than one!).

Today, Molly made her first original, unprompted three-word sentence.  While eating lunch, she dropped an orange slice on the floor.  When our dog Muffin came to inspect it, Molly said, “Muffin eat it.”  Pretty good for a boddler!

Claire’s First Job Offer

We received a postcard in the mail today from Orvis.  It was addressed to Claire, with the heading “Now hiring”.  It continued, “Many of our valued associates were once our best customers!”  Apparently Orvis is hiring a Fishing Manager and other positions for their new store, and they are interested in five year old girls taking on this responsibility.  Also, apparently, they think Claire has heard of Orvis.

I told Claire about this exciting opportunity, her first job recruitment.  She smiled and said, “What?  I think they think I’m an adult!”  I told Claire that, while she certainly could not spare enough hours to work full time right now, maybe she should consider the part-time Sales Associate position in Women’s Apparel.  She knows something about ladies’ clothing, right?  Claire just giggled and said, “No, Dad!  I’m a kid!”

Okay, I guess I agree with her.  It is too early to commit to a sales position, especially with only a few weeks to go before kindergarten starts.  Maybe she can work hard in kindergarten and apply for a position next summer once she has some report cards to put on the application.  All she has to go on now is basically that her friends and family like her, and maybe a recommendation from a pre-school teacher or two.  But that alone will not get you into the retail sales game, not in this economy anyways.