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Tough Time, Sweet Picture

| patmcg
Claire has been picked on more than usual the last few days. For starters, on the drive home from school, Molly has been scratching and pinching Claire. Claire is always in the back seat saying, “No, Molly! Stop doing that!” When I look back, I sometimes see Molly’s hand grasping at Claire, fingers outstretched towards Claire’s shoulder. Claire says that scratching and pinching is “non-negotiable” and is talking about moving her car seat away from Molly.
Then, yesterday, our dog Muffin peed all over Claire’s bed. We have no idea why she picked Claire’s bed, but there it was, soaked through the comforter, both sheets, several blankets, and a pillow.  Claire had to sleep in the guest room while her blankets were in the washer.  Claire was a little concerned that Muffin would sneak into the guest room and pee on her while she was sleeping.
And today, just before I picked her up from school, Claire had a run-in on the playground with a kid named Henry. Claire and Henry have had an ongoing love-hate relationship.  Apparently today, one of Claire’s “Croc” shoes came off during a race. Claire tried to put it back on, but Henry tried to grab it from her. Then he called her some sort of mean name and kept grabbing at her shoe. Then he scratched at Claire’s arm, ruining her very favorite temporary tattoo that she has been wearing for about two weeks. When I arrived, Claire’s friend Renee had rushed to her aid and comfort, I was told later that her friend Jack had somehow gone after Henry. Anyways, Claire was mad and was chasing down Henry and telling him that he should treat others the way he wants to be treated.  I was proud of the way she stood up for herself but did not yell or hit or otherwise attack Henry back.
When we got home, Claire said that she had been having some tough days, and she was going to draw a picture of what tomorrow would look like. Tomorrow was going to be a very good day (dammit!). Here is what she came up with.  Claire asked for my help to spell the words.
You can’t read some of the faint print.
Basically one girl says, “Hey, can I play too?”
The others say, “Sure!” and “Yeah!”


It’s a Walking Baby!

| patmcg

Molly is walking around really well now, as we have stated.  While on errands, she occasionally receives a surprised reaction from an amazed bystander.  “Wow!” they say, “That little baby can walk already?  How cool!”  Molly is so small that she looks like a little baby walking around.  She does not appear to be over 16 months old.  That’s our Molly, a big baby or a tiny toddler, either way, she is amazing and surprising.

Mutt and Jeff

| patmcg
Here is a photo that everyone seems to particularly enjoy. Grammy has dubbed it, “Mutt and Jeff at the sandbox”. Claire and Molly were just playing around outside late in the afternoon on a day home from school for MLK day.


Shark Towel

| patmcg

Uncle Tim recently sent Claire a crazy towel as a gift in the mail. Here is a picture of it and an email conversation with Tim.

From: Pat
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2010 1:11 PM
To: Tim
Subject: Dinosaur towel

Hey sucker, I thought you might enjoy this picture of Claire sporting her new dinosaur towel (or, as she says, her shark towel). She insists on taking it to school twice a week for “splash day”.

From: Tim
Subject: RE: Dinosaur towel
Date: June 16, 2010 2:24:19 PM CDT
To: Pat

That’s awesome! When we saw the “shark towel” (TM) we immediately thought of Claire. I think this picture is, in fact, exactly what we immediately though of.

White and Yellow Delights

| patmcg
Claire received a small notepad and a yellow marker as a party favor at a friend’s birthday party a few days ago. With nothing but yellow on white, Claire has put together some interesting and surprisingly lively pictures.
This one looks like Molly with her bottle.

This one must be our dog Muffin, since it has four legs.

I’m not sure about this one; it’s probably me or Kit.

Show Time!

| patmcg

At our latest sonogram appointment this last Wednesday, we learned that we will be delivering our new baby a little early.  We are scheduled to induce this coming Wednesday, in fact, about two weeks early.  There is no serious problem, but the sonogram suggested that things may be getting a little bit too tight in there for the baby, and it might be wise to go ahead and induce early.  Not ones to argue against the prudent advice of a doctor, we quickly agreed to the plan.

So that gives us one weekend and a couple of weekdays to roll out the red carpet for the new little baby.  Fortunately, we actually were expecting to have a baby, just not quite this soon.  But we did have a bit of a start on the whole baby thing.

With news of the early delivery, Kit’s parents literally drove half way across the continent from Washington state to Texas in about two days.  They wanted to be here in time to help out with any final preparations and just to support us any way that they could.  At first glance, it may not seem that there would be a whole lot to “do” except sit around and wait for the delivery on Wednesday.  But we wanted to get everything “just so” before the baby comes and everything goes to hell.  If you are going to have a mess on your hands, it at least helps to start out with a good baseline.  We ended up getting the house cleaned stem to stern by a dedicated crew of three maids for three and half hours, we got the cars cleaned and maintained (including an airbag error light), the refrigerator stocked, and countless other details.  Kit arranged her early leave at work.  I tried to get as much done as I could at work before going “off the grid” for a week.  It is not often that you get everything arranged “just so” in life, but we are getting pretty close today.  Based on what people have told us about having a second kid, we really need to get everything squared away if we want any shot at sanity for the first couple of weeks.