Potty Update

| patmcg

The potty training has been progressing slowly but steadily. Claire can use the potty, and apparently does at school, but she does not yet have confidence in her control.

Claire’s basic cry for help is, “I don’t want to pee!” The morning routine can involve 5 or 6 panicked trips to the potty, often running downstairs with shaving cream on my face or a mouth full of toothpaste. Dinners out often involve 3 or 4 trips to a smelly public bathroom. Sometimes we have to pull Claire out of the bath, slippery and covered in soap, to use the potty. We even have to make trips to the bathroom in the middle of story time right before putting her in bed.

Now, I don’t mean to complain or sound sour about this. Kit and I know this is all part of the process, and we all just have to soldier through. Part of the reason for this blog is to look back in a few years and remember the strange phases we went through with Claire and the little ways it affected our days.  (Ok, to tell you the truth, it is very tiresome.)

I Did a Tinkle!

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Tonight, Claire took her first big step away from diapers.

This was the first time she did it at home, anyways. Claire has purportedly had some luck with using the potty at school, where she had been going diaper-less this week. Claire did have some accidents at school over the last few days, as proven by the wet shorts coming home with her in the evenings. But besides the wet clothes and several fruitless attempts at home, Kit and I had been pretty much in the dark about potty training. Tonight, though, Claire finally let us in on her potty training success.

After playing at the Abbott Avenue park for a while, we all headed to Dickey’s Barbecue Pit for dinner. At the restaurant, Claire started wiggling around and looking worried and then sort of screamed, “I don’t want to go pee-pee!” Kit took her to the bathroom for another fruitless attempt. Claire repeated this exercise a few minutes later, and this time I took her to the bathroom with no success. On the five-minute drive home, Claire worked herself up into a lather, screaming that she did not want to pee-pee.

We got home just in time for her bath, a now-dreaded routine which leaves Claire mad and me and/or Kit soaking wet from hold Claire in the bathtub. Interestingly, we had started to think Claire now hated baths because she was afraid of having an accident, as she had done a couple of times, when her daiper was off. As if to confirm our suspicions, Claire had recently started in on her same routine about screaming, “I don’t want to pee-pee!” during her baths.

But as always, we put Claire on the potty before her bath tonight. This time, after a couple of minutes, she declared, with a smile on her face, “I did a pee-pee!” Punctuating the point, I could hear a tinkle sound in the water. Kit and I jumped around and cheered and clapped, and Claire seemed real proud. We put a congratulatory sticker on the “My Potty Poster” that Noni had given us.

The bonus was the usual screaming and fussing was absent during her bath. It was just a relaxed, civilized bath. Afterward, Claire even wanted to use her fun green froggie towel, which she had not asked for in a long time, and she declared with a smile that she was Katie the Frog. It was the most relaxed I had seen her (and myself) for bathtime in weeks.

This is just the start of diaper-independence, and I am sure many accidents and challenges lay ahead, but at least Claire is on her way now.

A Girl Named Leo

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These days, Claire won’t tell you who she is, but she sure will tell you who she isn’t.

The other day, Kit said, “Let’s go to dinner, y’all” and Claire responsed, “I’m not a y’all!” We couldn’t tell whether Claire was intentionally making a joke, but it was funny either way.

Today when I picked Claire up from daycare, her teacher, Ms. Laura, said “Goodbye, sunshine!” to which Claire, of course, responded, “I’m not a sunshine!” Claire had a coy smile on her face when she said it, so I think it was actually meant as a joke. Ms. Laura got a chuckle out of it too.

Even if you call her by her actual name, that is “Claire”, she takes exception to it. She insists on going by June or Leo (from Little Einsteins), Dora or Diego, also of TV fame, or one of her classmates like Ian or Sydney. If I say, “It’s time to go to school, Claire” she insists, “I’m not Claire! I’m Diego!” She also insists that Kit and I are Dora or Boots or Leo or someone else to go with her character. We don’t really “do” anything anything else to act like these characters, but Claire seems to get a kick out of it anyways.

By the way, she does not just occasionally pretend to be Leo or Dora or whatever. She does it all the time, all day. You can never get away with calling her Claire, even during the course of an entire weekend. It is always, “I’m not Claire, I’m Leo”, sometimes even if you did not actually call her Claire. You might simply say, “I’ll be right back”, and she will respond, “I’m not Claire, I’m Diego.” I guess she just wants to be sure we know.

“Slice” of Life

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Here is some footage of a typical dinner with Claire. I got a little bored waiting for Claire to finish eating, and after taking a few photos with my cell phone, I remembered the video recorder. It is fun to have real conversations with Claire nowadays.

Running Game

| patmcg

Thanks to my new cell phone, we can now easily bring you video clips of Claire. They are not high quality, or alternately, they have a nice retro reel-to-reel feel to them. Our first cell phone video is a game Claire invented walking home after dinner one night on McKinney Avenue.

(Please pardon the annoying finger on the bottom of the screen. I’m still learning!)

Fear and Loathing in the Bathtub

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Not long ago, bath time was a fun and relaxing nightly routine. Claire played with her three little plastic dolphins in the bubbly, warm water. We listened to lazy music and ended up all clean and sleepy for bedtime.

Those days seem to have passed, at least for the moment. Bath time, especially since we moved to the new house in Dallas, has become a stripped down, sometimes frantic, usually unhappy affair. Gone are the bubbles; Claire does not want bubbles any more. And the favorite old “Sleepy” and “Moonlight” playlists that we had gradually worked to perfection on our iPod are no longer welcome; Claire prefers silence. The water is “too hot!” even if it is tepid. She cries and screams when we start the bath water, and she ends up running all over the house, screaming, usually naked, before we scoop her up and make her clean up. She protests, “I’m not dirty! I don’t need a bath!” The scene has at times devolved into some of the biggest fits she has ever had. We often just splash her off as she stands in the tub. She ends up going to bed mad and frustrated, but at least sort of clean. Mostly, we are trying to stick somewhat to the routine.

We have asked her why she doesn’t like baths, but she does not give us any real answer.  It could be related to potty training, as she has had a couple of “accidents” in the bath, and they freaked her out. Or sometimes it seems like she just does not want to go to sleep, and she knows darn well that bath time means bedtime. She just wants to keep playing, even though she is obviously tired.

Last night, we had a rare fun bath time. We played and splashed and laughed. She was happy as we got her into her pajamas and off to bed. Hopefully this is the start of a trend. All three of us could use some relief from the nightly bath trauma.

The Big Move

| patmcg

I was reviewing the blog, and I realized there was nothing at all posted about the little matter of, oh I don’t know… moving half way across the country! You will notice that, besides this post, there is nothing else at all during the actual move. This post was written a couple of months later just to fill in the blanks while I still remembered anything about it.

This was probably some of the most interesting and challenging times in Claire’s life so far, but alas, I simply did not have the time/energy to write up anything about the move. The long and short of it was that we did successfully sell our house in Atlanta and move to Dallas.

My dad and I headed out with the big truck a few days ahead of Kit, Claire, and Joyce, with the goal of getting mostly settled in before everyone else got to Dallas. Kit, Claire, and Joyce stayed in a “hotel house”, ate Chik-fil-et in the room, and did a little swimming at the pool, all of which Claire talked about for some time afterwards. She would sometimes asks, “When are we going back to the blue house?”

Claire (sort of) saw two new states, Mississippi and Louisiana, on the trip to Dallas.

Here are some quick high- and low-lights of the move, from my perspective. Claire was, by design, not along for most of this.  (I should probably ask Kit to add some additinal comments for when she and Joyce had Claire…)

  • Getting more and more behind schedule with the house closing moving around
  • A couple of real country folk loading up the Penske 20″ truck somewhat sloppily in Atlanta, and Joyce squeezing everything from our storage unit into the last remaining space in the big truck on a very hot late afternoon on Cheshire Bridge Road
  • Paying something close to a dollar per mile with record-high gas prices all the way to Dallas
  • Thinking I really should not be driving this gigantic truck half way across the country, or even around the block. Shouldn’t “they” require some sort of training or a license before I get behind the wheel of this monstrosity?
  • The formerly road-weary Muffin riding shotgun on a bed of pillows and blankets, and sleeping most of the way.
  • Nearly getting lost trying to avoid a traffic jam in Birmingham.
  • My dad tailing me in the Accord, although most of the time I could not see him.
  • Driving endlessly in East Texas as the sun was setting trying to find a hotel where I could realistically park the truck. I called by dad on the cell phone just in time for him to exit at a junky hotel in Longview that did accept big trucks. Menacing guys hung out on picnic chairs outside their rooms, and there was a Days Inn sign sitting wrecked in the woods past the parking lot. My dad remarked “It’s not even good enough for Days Inn.”
  • Eating dinner in the outskirts of Longview at some half-deserted catfish restaurant in what seemed to be an office building or warehouse.
  • Finally pulling up to the beautiful townhouse in Dallas and waiting for the movers to show up to help unload. They scoffed at how the truck was loaded, and asked who the heck did it like that.
  • My mom showing up with Carolyn, Beth, and Worth, not to mention a boat load of drinks and snacks, to help unpack. Beth tripped on the stairs to the lower level, and messed up her ankle pretty good.
  • Finally passably moved in that night, me and my parents went out to eat at Taco Cabana… a real Taco Cabana, not that fake one back in Atlanta.
  • My mom working her magic on the Claire Club in the cave-like recessed area in the living room. It was beautifully done.
  • Waiting impatiently for the ladies to arrive!
  • Claire and Kit looking around the new place and saying, “Ooohh! Ahhh!” Calire even said, “It’s my Christmas day!”
  • Claire hopelessly tangling the pom-poms hanging outside the Claire Club. My mom spending an hour or two untangling them. Claire hopelessly tangling them again in minutes.

Career Options

| patmcg

Claire is showing distinct interest in a few career fields at this point.

We were recently looking at pictures of the visit we took to the Atlanta History Center  few months ago. This is where Claire manned a pretend fast food drive-through window, chirping “You want a combo?” over and over. These pictures got her going on this game again, but now she is a little more verbose. After accepting her offer of a combo, she’ll say something like, “Let me see if I can find a combo.” Then she pretends to find a combo and then says, “That’s a dollar-eight” with a big smile on her face. You can always settle up with two pennies, which is the flat cost of any transaction with Claire. This may not be a well-paying line of work, but she does seem to enjoy it.

Her other perennial favorite is being a doctor. Now she puts on a whole show. She’ll come up to you and furrow her brow to look real concerned and say, “You hurt your knee?” After establishing that your knee is hurt, she invents some way to treat it. Her methods involve pressing a random toy against the affected area, rubbing it with her hands, or kissing it. Then she proudly says, “You’re all better!” and scurries off to find another knee to heal. She seems to be a knee specialist, I guess because they work well for her height.

Claire used to have a real stethoscope, donated to her from her mom. But now, much to her dismay, it is missing. She is always looking for it and asking me and her mom if we have seen it. She likes to use it as part of her examination, listening carefully to our knees, and sometimes to our shoulders if we are sitting down on the floor. Our knees and shoulders sometimes say, “Mommy, mommy, mommy” or “Daddy, daddy, daddy” slow and steady like a heartbeat. She has also been know to treat a bad knee by pressing her stethoscope against it with just the right touch.

Other interests, practiced less often but just as passionately, include being a sailor, a pirate, a singer, a dancer, or a comedian who does a “dumb guy” schtick with a funny slow voice. She has yet to show real interest in my field, computers, unless it involves watching videos of herself on the iMac.

Striking Out On Her Own

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Claire and I had this conversation in the car today, perhaps inspired by talk of the move to Texas.

Claire: Daddy, I’m moving to my own house.
Me: Oh really? Wow! (feigning belief) How big is the house?
Claire: Big enough, Daddy! Big enough!

She sounded pretty serious.