birthday

Can’t keep a secret

| patmcg

With Kit’s birthday coming up, I took Claire out for a quick errand this afternoon that I told Kit “might or might not have to do with your birthday.” We were going over to Whole Foods to order a cake. On the drive over, Claire came up with her pick for Mom’s cake: chocolate cake with brown chocolate icing and green leaves that are not real; they’re made of icing so you can eat them. She wanted to add the green leaves because she knew green was her mom’s favorite color.

When we got to the store, they did not have any such cake, so we settled on a black and white “chocolate eruption” cake that looked delicious. We thought Kit would like it because it was so chocolatey. I told Claire the cake was a secret, and we shouldn’t tell mom.

After we got back and sat down for dinner maybe an hour later, Claire took it upon herself to start the evening’s conversation. The first thing out of her mouth was, “Hey mom, your birthday cake is real chocolatey!” Kit and I started cracking up. Claire said, “Why are you laughing?” I reminded her that it was supposed to be a secret. Unlike some similar occasions in the past, she did not get mad or offended that we were laughing at her. She just looked sheepish and tried to change the subject. Still, maybe next year I’ll find a way to order the cake alone.


Happy Due Date!

| patmcg

Today is Molly’s due date.

We were supposed to be in the hospital today extracting Molly from her mom’s belly, but instead she is two weeks old!  I guess she just wanted to get an early start on things.  So far, the outside world seems to be treating Molly well.  She is small but growing, she is surrounded by friendly company, and she just plain looks good.  Most importantly, she has plenty of space to stretch out and do her thing.

I think this was a good deal for Kit, too.  I mean, would you want this in your belly?

Happy Due Date, Molly!

Special Addition!

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Molly arrived today!

Kit and I showed up at the hospital this morning for our 5 am appointment, which had been set for a couple of weeks before Molly’s original due date. After a brief wait in the lobby, the hospital staff took us to the delivery room where some additional staff poked and prodded Kit for a while, eventually hooking her up to some tubes to help get things rolling. The gynecologist checked in. Besides that, the morning was mostly uneventful.

Kit’s parents took Claire to school at her normal time and then joined us at the hospital mid-morning to wait for Molly. Kit was not dilating very much, and in general not much was happening. After a couple of hours, Kit’s dad and I made a lunch run to Wendy’s and picked up some hamburgers for everyone except poor Kit, who was otherwise engaged. Walking down the hall towards Kit’s delivery room, we heard some absolutely awful screams coming from one of the other rooms. This was a panicky, sustained, primal scream. Kit’s dad said, “That scares the crap out of me.” We did not mention it to Kit when we got to her room.

Kit was starting to dilate more, which was really good. And then she just kept going, dilating more and more! Even before we could finish our hamburgers, they doctor said, “Let’s do this. We’re going to have a baby, people!” About 15 minutes later, Kit pushed hard three times, and out popped Molly!

Little Molly was covered in a thick layer of what was described as alternately “wax” or “cheese” by the nurses. It took a while for the nurses to wipe Molly down enough to see a baby under there. We knew Molly would be small, but it was surprising to see just how small she was in person. We could barely feel any “heft” when holding her. She was so small, in fact, that the standard newborn shirts did not fit her. Instead, she wore little pants, turned backwards and upside won, as a shirt. Of course babies are small, and they often come a lot smaller than Molly. Either way, she was adorable, and her vitals all checked out fine. Meanwhile, Kit was in good shape and was cleared by the gynecologist relatively soon. Kit got a big smile on her face as she got to hold Molly for the first time.

It took several more hours to get everyone together in our assigned hospital room. There was a lot of waiting around. I spent a lot of time in the nursery as Molly’s surrogate while Kit waited around in the delivery room. Kit’s friend Clarissa, who works in the hospital with Kit, dropped by and saw Molly through the glass. (We saw another of of Kit’s peers later as we were leaving the hospital.)

We were not 100% sure about the name Molly for the first few hours. When people asked us her name, we said, “Maybe Molly”, so people started to call her that: Maybe Molly, or Molly Maybe. We did finally settle on that name over the next day or so.

The hospital stay was a blur. We struggled somewhat to feed little Molly, and breast feeding was a challenge. We were supposed to feed her every three hours. Finally when she had gone for five hours without food, the nurses suggested a bottle of formula, which Molly took happily. We were forced to stretch the feeding again the next few times but eventually sort of got breast feeding figured out, although not perfectly.

During the night, nurses were in and out, there were tests and checkups and forms to fill out, and a few trips to the “nourishment room” for snacks. Unfortunately, having gotten up at 3:30 am that morning, and having trouble getting to sleep the night before, and not getting enough sleep for several weeks before that, and Kit going through the trauma of labor, it turned out that staying up all night to work with Molly was tough. Were were both exhausted, and we were just getting started!

The definite highlight of the hospital stay was when Claire came by for a visit. Somehow I had the honor of picking her up from school and driving her to the hospital. She was so excited to see her little sister. To set Claire’s expectations, we had been telling her that babies can’t talk or walk or sit up or even smile. All they do is sleep and drink milk and poop and pee. Claire did not care; she was absolutely thrilled to meet her sister. From the first minute, Claire was all smiles and extremely gentle with Molly. She introduced herself by saying, “I’m your big sister!” several times and patting Molly gently. She patted Claire’s back, talked to her, and enjoyed some cookies. She also got a big sister present, a brand new kid’s Dora the Explorer watch.

So Claire was off to a great start as a big sister, and Molly was off to a good start as a baby! Now the real adventure begins…

Happy birthday, Molly!

TODO: Make and add a video

Candy Time Out

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Claire has scored more than her share of candy lately. First, Valentines Day was a jackpot. She came home with a white paper bag full of candy (and accompanying valentines cards) compliments of her 16 classmates. I think I was those only parent who just sent Valentines cards and no candy. I figured I was doing other parents a service by giving them one less piece of candy to deal with. I can see now that this is an uphill fight, and maybe I was just being uptight about the whole thing. Next year, it’s Fun Dip for everyone!

The following day was a birthday party for her friend and classmate Georgia. As luck would have it, the party was right after Claire’s swim class, a couple of doors down. So Claire topped off her 40 minutes of swimming (well, crying) with another 45 minutes of running and jumping and rolling around. Then came the pizza and juice boxes, after which sadly, Claire could not eat all of the birthday cake put in front of her. To top it off, they sent her home with a party bag full of candy to add to her Valentines collection.

We dealt with this candy glut by giving Claire one piece of candy each morning and one piece each evening (Kit did some of her own “helping” as well). One night after Claire had already enjoyed her candy allotment for the day, she started asking for more candy. She was being very sweet about it, actually. But I said no, she already had her candy for the day. She asked again nicely, and I said no again. Then she sighed a slow “oookaaay” and carried the white candy bag over to her “timeout” corner, where we normally send her for two minutes if she misbehaves (like hockey). She left the bag on the floor there and walked back to me. I asked her why she left the bag there, and she explained that the candy was having a timeout. That nearly killed me. I almost gave her a piece of candy right there on the spot just for being so cute. (But sadly, I did not.)

Claire Turns 3!

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Claire tacked on another year today. She is now exactly three feet tall and three years old. To tell you the truth, this was sort of a tough birthday. But Claire soldiered through it quite admirably and had a pretty good day.

Claire had been talking about this day for a long time. For months, she had been asking, “When is my birthday?” Unlike last year, this time she really had the drill down. She must have been inspired by all the birthday parties at school. She has been reminding us not to forget the balloons and party hats and birthday cake — especially the birthday cake! She had been specifying a “red cake!” for a few weeks, but in a surprising and provocative move, she switched to blue in final days before her party. Further, she clarified that she was talking about the frosting, and she did not have a preference on what the inside looked or tasted like, just as long as it was cake.

The grandparents all planned to come up for the big day. The Houston grandparents made the trip up for Thanksgiving and the birthday, although Claire and I had just been down to Houston the weekend before. Grammy and Granddaddy would not have missed it for anything… except one thing, which stepped in and kept them back in Corpus Christi. They had to arrange funeral services and legal matters for Kit’s Gramma Marvel, who had just passed. We will all miss Marvel.

This next part is sort of an aside. The afternoon before the birthday, Kit and I left Claire at home with Noni and headed out to get some mylar helium balloons for the party. Kit knew from Marvel’s 103rd birthday party a few weeks earlier that Claire loved playing with these shiny balloons. We arrived at Party City and went straight to the the balloon counter. There, surrounded by countless colorful inflated animals and cartoon characters, was a gloomy and cheerless lady who initially refused to even acknowledge our presence. When we tried to ask about getting some balloons, she sighed and rolled her eyes like we were really out of line. She explained with some exasperation that we needed to give her “at least a day’s notice” for any balloon orders, and the balloons would probably not be ready in time. How did this lady end up at the Party City balloon counter, of all places? Maybe was just burned out from the grueling world of party balloons, or maybe the local DMV office was not hiring. We decided towait until tomorrow and get whatever balloons they had at the nearby grocery store, where they presumably could to blow up whatever balloon you want right then and there (amazing, I know).

Then it was off to said grocery store to pick out a cake. I was prepared to get burned on this too. If Party City could not blow up some balloons in 24 hours, how could I expect someone to bake a special cake in that time? I had just recently given up on the idea of baking one at home, because that was going to take away time from other fun. Not surprisingly, the grocery had no blue cakes ready to go. But they did have a really cute”character cake” with the frosting done to look like a furry brown unnamed Sesame Street character. I asked the nice lady at the bakery if they could do that one in blue. She said no, but they could do a Cookie Monster, who always comes in blue, and they could have it ready first thing in the morning. Now that is more like it!

The next morning was the actual birthday. Today of all days, you would have expected Claire to wake up early and excited. She did wake up early, but not because she was excited. She woke up because she was uncomfortable. She was acting worn out and slightly irritable. We would find out a couple of days later, when the doctor’s office reopened after the Thanksgiving weekend, that Claire has been suffering from a tough case of pneumonia and an accompanying ear infection. On her birthday, it turns out that Claire was in bad shape, and was even in some pain.

Knowing this now, I am really proud of the way Claire handled herself. Though she certainly felt miserable, she managed to enjoy herself, especially as long as we kept her full of kid’s Tylenol. We had planned a zoo trip for the morning. With Claire sick and the weather cold, we made the trip pretty quick and took a monorail tour through the African section rather than walking around on foot too much. We dropped by the grocery store on the way home to get the Cookie Monster cake and pick out a balloon. We settled on a giant ladybug. Claire loved the balloon and played with it in the car and the all day. A week later, it was still afloat and still a favorite toy.

It took three of us to carry Noni’s and Phil’s present from their car. It was a huge dollhouse / treehouse, which took up a large part of the living room and was taller than Claire. She could not even reach the top with her hands! Only a picture can really describe this thing. Claire loved the present, but soon started to show signs of wearing out, so we skipped the other presents for the time being to avoid overwhelming her.

The pièce de résistance for the birthday was the lunch with cake, candles, more balloons, and of course the birthday song. Claire carefully picked out birthday hats, all with different colors and patterns, for everyone. (She would spend the next few days putting on each hat and pretending to be that person.) By this time she was getting exhausted. With her pneumonia, her appetite was down, and she barely touched her special birthday spaghetti. She managed, with some help, to blow out the candles on her special blue cake (and blow pneumonia germs all over it!). She could not quite eat her whole slice of cake, although still she did eat a lot of it. Birthday cake was probably the only thing in the world she would actually right then, so it was lucky we had it. Grammy and Granddaddy called in from Corpus Christi to wish Claire a happy birthday and to sing the birthday song to her. They would see her in person soon enough, just not today.

Claire spent the remainder of the day hanging around the house resting up, playing with her new tree house, and just cuddling with everyone. You could certainly do worse than that for a birthday, but still, I think we owe her an extra fun one next year!

Here is a short video montage of the birthday activities.

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Second Birthday!

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Today Claire doubled her age! I doubt she will ever do this again.

Claire’s second birthday started off with an omelet, which I managed to cook in our torn up kitchen, which is in the middle of being remodeled by Claire’s favorite handyman, Arvydas. I had to work my way through some construction rubbage just to get to the refrigerator and prepare the omelet with paper plates and a plastic spoon, finally cooking it on our one available pan. Among the construction rubbage, I discovered a 3-foot-long section of quarterround with several old nails sticking out at bent angles, laying in the corner. That probably qualifies as a child hazard, and arguably as a regulated weapon.

The first order of business today was, not coincidentally, Claire’s two-year checkup at the doctor. Claire was somewhat scared and suspicious from her previous experiences with ear infection and shots. During the ear prodding, she did some pretty good resisting and crying, and I had to hold her arms and head still. Then afterwards Claire collected herself and declared, “I’m okay” with a sheepish smile. Claire’s height and weight are both now very close to 50% percentile, down from her earlier slightly above normal numbers. Claire was again pretty freaked out, understandably, about being held down and poked with needles for her flu and hep-a vaccinations. She did her best to collect herself again, but it was the lolipop at the checkout line that really calmed her down and kept her quiet in the car all the way to see Grace and Reese.

Grace and Reese greeted her at the door singing “Happy Birthday”, which was a really nice surprise, and very sweet, especially considering that Grace does not speak much English. Reese had a present ready for Claire which he was really dying to “help” her open. Claire was still fully absorbed in her lolipop at that point and was not very interested in the present. So Reese ran off and did Claire the favor of opening the present for her. It turned out to be a new Thomas train; this one was girly and named Rosie, like Calliou’s sister. How nice! (Reese also thought so, and he “helped” Claire play with the new train all day.)

Apparently Claire and Reese each had another lolipop later in the day, and on the drive home Claire suggsted, “I want a lolipop for dinner. Lolipops are gooooood!” Coldly disregarding Claire’s dinner suggestion, we all went to out dinner at Moe’s for Claire’s favorite real food, quesadillas. She got a sticker and a little plastic guy there from Happy, the very friendly Moe’s guy, and she played a fun peekaboo game with a little girl about 5 years old.

Arriving at home, along with cards and phone messages from the grandparents who we had just seen a couple of days before, two new packages were waiting. They were from the Popes next door. They always remember Claire’s birthday because she was born exactly the day old Aubry Pope died, and they seem to be big fans of Claire. One present was a great big Winnie the Pooh “find it” book from Faye. The other was a beautiful doll in a glass display case. We went next door to thank them and have a nice visit. Well, Kit had a nice visit anyways. Claire spent most of the time wandering around their huge, smoky, maze-like house, and I spent most the time shadowing her to make sure she did not break something or fall down the stairs or just get lost. Claire really liked playing with the cat toys. It turns out the Popes hand-made the display case, and they explained that while Claire may be a little too young for the gifts, she could enjoy them in the years to come.

Finally we all split a birthday cupcake and put Claire to bed a little late. It seemed like a pretty nice day for Claire, even if she didn’t really understand what all the lolipops and cupcakes and presents were about. We actually ran out of time to give Claire the presents from us and some of the ones still waiting from her grandparents. So much fun, so little time!