A few pictures from this year’s Halloween. We did trick-or-treating around the neighborhood for a while, then I took Claire to meet up with her friend in her nearby neighborhood while Kit finished up with Molly near our house.
For a while, I’ve been posting the girls’ art to the portfolio section of this blog. But the portfolio is tedious and cumbersome to manage, so I’m going back now to doing the art as a regular blog. While Kit and I were in London, Joyce scanned our big backlog of the girls’ art. Here is a bunch of Claire’s art and other creations from the last several months…
Kit and I both turned 40 in the last year, and it was our 15th wedding anniversary. So we decided to celebrate with a week trip together. Grammy kindly and bravely agreed to watch the kids wile Kit and I ran off to some corner of the world for a week.
Kit and I decided to make the most of this unique opportunity to go pretty much wherever we wanted. We decided early on to go international. California, New York, Florida, etc. all sounded great. But they also sounded like something we could do with the kids. After some vacilating about where exactly to go, we picked London, beating out Venice and maybe a Caribbean beach resort as the other final contenders.
It was a great trip. Some details and tons of pictures can be found on a separate post in the new non-kids section.
Back on the home front, Grammy and the girls held up very well while we were gone. They survived some flooding and the school carnival in Austin. We got a text message from the girls every day. Claire, in her messages, always wanted to make sure we were having a good time. Molly, who apparently thought we were in “Lindon”, went so far as to say, “I hope you come back.” (TODO: attach the messages.) Grandaddy stayed on the weekends to help out too, especially with the crazy school carnival.
As fun as our trip was, it was really great to see the girls again. Man, those girls are ridiculously cute and cuddly when you have not seen them in a while. They greeted us with a big “Welcome home!” sign, plus a happy birthday sign and homemade cake for my birthday. And there were lots of hugs. The girls got a treat too. They really liked the souvenirs we brought home from the British Museum: a glittery Union Jack notebook with matching pen, some “London landmarks” school supplies, some British chocolate coins, plus some leftover real coins.
It would be really fun to take the girls to England one day, but we’ll have to wait a few years to handle the long, cramped flight, the tedious lines at customs, and the jet lag. That would not have been fun for anyone right now. Hopefully we’ll get them to Florida or California one of these days, though.
Many thanks to Grammy for taking great care of the kids for us while we explored the world a bit.
Although Claire enjoys snuggling together for a bedtime story, she also likes to mix it up sometimes. She likes to add an element of pretend drama to story time.
Her latest idea along these lines is Tuesday Night Book Club. Instead of reading a book in bed together, we pretend it is story time at Austin Public Library. I sit in a chair and read a story (currently Henry and Beezus by Beverly Cleary) while Claire sits on the floor and listens. She becomes a girl named Sally who was dropped off at the library for story time. Actually, Claire calls it “book club” since that sounds more grown up. I act the part of the story reader and say stuff like, “Thanks for coming out to the book club tonight, kids,” at the beginning and “Looks like your parents are here to pick you up” at the end. Claire encourages me to ask questions about the book. For example, “Why does Henry not want Scooter to know that Ribsy picked up all the newspapers on Klickitat Street?” Then Sally (Claire) raises her hand to answer the question. Claire uses her official public / school voice while answering the question. “Um, he doesn’t want to lose the paper route while Scooter is on summer vacation. He want to earn a dollar for his bike fund.” Claire asks that I put a blanket over my lap to make it more sleepy. Then the “parents” come for pickup, and it’s off to bed. It really does put a fresh new twist on bedtime stories.
The latest tide of bedtime madness had ebbed some in recent weeks. Molly basically moved, voluntarily, into the guest room, where she set up camp on the floor. She has blankets and pillows surrounded by books, magazines, and a little sketch pad. She quietly puts these to use while staying up until about 10:00 or 10:30 every night. At least Kit and I can get something done around here after 8:30 now. And Molly may realize she just can’t handle being in the room with Claire at bedtime without causing trouble. She is just not tired enough to go to sleep at 8:30 or 9:00, even though she gets up at 6:30 every morning. The two-hour nap at school doesn’t help matters.
Claire missed having Molly in the room the last few weeks and would try to convince her to come back for another try, but Molly has decided she belongs in the guest room for now. Claire has gotten over being scared and gets to sleep quickly by 8:30 or 9:00. So basically, Molly is awake up to two hours past her older sister. There is just no good way to deal with that.
So last night Molly sheepishly said she wanted to try sleeping in the room with Claire again. We all said “great!” and moved Molly’s stuff back into her bedroom with Claire. All was quiet for the fist 30 minutes. Then Molly was in Claire’s bed talking quietly with her. I was afraid Molly would keep Claire up (as she is like to do), but Claire said she would tell Molly when she wanted to go to sleep. Seriously, Claire needs her sleep. I talked to Kit, and we decided to relax and let them be and maybe it would be fine. I went for a run.
When I got back 30 minutes later, Kit said things had gone badly. Molly had grabbed all of Claire’s stuffed animals and thrown them across the room. She had taken Claire’s iPod Shuffle and wouldn’t give it back. There was crying and screaming. Molly was back in the guest room with all her stuff. Claire was deep asleep by herself in her room.
Claire just wants someone to sleep in the room with her, maybe a little chit chat before bed. Molly just wants to not sleep and, further, to keep Claire awake. She has actually told us that is her intention. It’s back to the guest room for Molly tonight, like it or not.
With sumer dragging on and Claire not having seen much of her friends the last couple of months, I felt like she could use a little lift before school suddenly started. We decided to have an end-of-summer party to match Claire’s beginning-of-summer party. Claire invited a small group of friends over to celebrate basically going back to school and being together again. Really, it was just a glorified play date.
The party featured a small inflatable pool with the world’s smallest water slide, water sprayers, and water balloons. Yes, school is starting, but it is really still summer outside. Claire had also wanted to do a lemonade stand, and she happened to have a workable cardboard lemonade stand that she had made with her favorite summer sitter, Julia. The girls set up shop on our front curb. The lemonade, made from a mix, was $.50 per cup — or free if you don’t have any money or too large of a bill to make change. Claire’s friends were really good at hailing cars, bikers, and walkers. It helped that the weekend exercise types were out in force. The girls ended up selling about $12 of lemonade in about 45 minutes. They split up the money and resolved to donate part to a cause of their own choosing. One friend was going to donate all her money to the Philippines. Another’s went to the pet shelter. Claire is saving hers for Winter the injured dolphin, who is featured in a favorite movie of hers.
The girls also put on an impromptu show when the various parents came for pickup. It was sort of a very disorganized Hawaiian luau of sorts. It was fun, and the parents clapped, etc. Then the kids ran and hid to try to avoid going home, if only for a few more minutes.
The girls happily included Molly in the water play, the lemonade stand , and the show. They all think Molly is adorable and want a little sister like her.
A few quick notes from summer 2013.
This was Claire’s break between first and second grades. Only Claire’s schedule changes for the summer so far. Molly does not have a summer break, being a full time pre-school student.
We decided to try out several different camps this summer for Claire to see what worked best. Some full day camps, some half day with a sitter the rest of the day, some in between. We basically have to experiment since up until now we mostly just used the good ol’ day care.
Over the summer, Claire’s weeks were split up like this:
To be honest, I think the summer was a little tough on Claire, who went from camp to camp on an irregular schedule and did not get to see a lot of her friends, some of whom were out of town for cooler climates or otherwise out of touch.
I know the summer was tough on me. The camps all started at 9:00 or 9:30, while my daily call for work was at 9:00 am. So I would drop Claire off an immediately get on a meeting on my cell phone for the drive home to work. And I would have to pick Claire up at odd times in the middle of the day (12:00, 1:00, 3:00, whatever). This is on top of Molly’s pick up and drop off at different times and places. This got old week after week.
On the plus side, Claire and I had a little time together each morning after dropping off Molly and before her camp started. We would get breakfast and do a little studying to help keep Claire sharp over the summer break. We would have a Smoothie and a bagel at Panera and then have Claire read or do some writing. That was pretty sweet.
Since most of the public pools are only open when school is out for summer, I resolved to take advantage of the limited swimming time we had available. The plan was to take the girls swimming every Friday after school/work. We always went to the little circular pool at West Austin Park. We packed a picnic or picked up something from a drive through (not as much fun!) then swam for an hour or so before heading home to see Kit and go to bed. This was a fun time for us all, except it got a little frustrating for Claire at times since I had to be 100% “on” Molly, who cannot swim, so I could not really play with Claire or even just swim with her. I did not have any free hands or attention while trying to keep Molly alive and what not. I basically stood there holding Molly while Claire entertained herself. I think Claire liked the picnic best or those rare moments when I could actually play with her too. Anyways, the goal was to do the swimming thing every Friday, which turned out to be 4 or 5 times total, with traveling, guests, other engagements, etc. often intervening.
So there you go — a sunny, fun-filled, stress-free summer! Well, it was sunny anyways. And intermittently fun and stress-free.
I am going to rant a little bit on this one. Please bare with me. This might be interesting to read later.
After three years of Claire and Molly sleeping peacefully in the same room together, things have finally broken down.
Until about three weeks ago, Molly would sometimes get a little crazy while getting ready for bed, but once she was in bed she would sit and look at books until she fell asleep. It might take an hour or more of reading books, but she would completely leave Claire alone and get herself to sleep eventually.
Now Molly is a complete maniac once it is time to go to sleep. She finds anything possible to mess with. She peels the paper off of all the crayons she can find. Once she drew on the bed sheets with crayons. She has bitten the erasers off of all the pencils. No more writing implements in the room anymore! Molly wanders the room. She chews on stuffed animals. She walked over to our room tonight with a framed picture from her room completely dismantled. When we were on vacation in Anacortes, Washington last week (todo: link once blogged), Molly had the empty back hotel bedroom to herself while we hung out in the living room. We could hear Molly flipping through the hotel Bible for 45 minutes before she went to sleep. (We ought to try that at home, I guess.)
But Molly’s very favorite thing in the world to mess with is her big sister Claire. She tries to make Claire giggle. She tries to make Claire mad. Anything to get a reaction out of Claire. Claire usually ignores Molly at first, but Molly wears her down and pulls her in. Before long, Molly (and maybe Claire) is giggling loudly, yelling, stomping around. You can hear it downstairs and on the other end of the house. It does not stop until you move Molly out of the room and into the guest room. Just going in and telling them to it out has no effect; Molly’s primitive thrill-seeking “rat brain” has completely taken over. She says, I think accurately, that she just can’t stop doing messing around.
Is something bothering Molly? We just don’t know. Molly says she just doesn’t want to sleep, and bedtime is for playing. She says she doesn’t want to leave Claire alone; she wants to keep her awake. Sometimes when we finally move Molly to the guest room, Molly says she wanted to move in there anyways. You just can’t tell what is going on in that three-year-old head.
This goes on from about 8:00 pm to 9:30 or 10:30. We wanted to give the girls time to work it out and get to sleep together, but after weeks of this, they have not worked it out. You would think they would just get so tired they would fall right asleep, but they do not. Molly makes up for lost sleep with a nice hard two-hour nap each afternoon at school. Claire is tired but can’t get to sleep because she is all wired up by Molly. Now we are moving Molly immediately to the guest room for a few days, and it may turn into a few months (we’ll see). Not sure what we’ll do with the guests. :-O
Once we move Molly over, Claire falls back to her old issue of getting scared while being alone in the dark and still can’t get to sleep. Fortunately, Claire is seven years old and actually wants to work with us. She is slowly working on falling to sleep alone. Claire gets to sleep after an hour of two of being terrified, with occasional checks by us, but she sure toughs it out, the good ol’ sport. Claire says she knows everything is okay, and she should not be scared, but she just feels scared. She is just stuck there in bed scared but not wanting to bother us, because we have told her we are getting strung out, the poor thing.
Yes, Kit and I are going crazy. We have effectively lost our crucial 8:30 to 10:30 pm window of time for work, exercise, mail, etc. If you’r dealing with a kid down the hall yelling or crying or scared every few minutes, you are not really getting anything else done. Now days, everything has to be done before bedtime at 7:30 or so or else it just might not get done at all. By 10:30, we’re so strung out from all the commotion or just too sleepy to be effective. This schedule in particular does not work well with leaving work at 4:30 on the summer camp schedule, such as this week, and not getting back to it until late at night.
Okay, enough ranting. I just hope that soon we have (1) enough sleep for Claire once second grade starts in a couple weeks, and (2) a functioning guest room available to guests. Well, at least I knocked out this blog while the girls were going to sleep tonight!
Last night when tucking Claire into bed, she sheepishly told me she had a question. “I heard from Harper and some other kids that maybe Santa Clause gets help from parents. Is that true?” I said with a smile, “That’s a secret, I can’t say a word.” Claire said, “I knew it! You do help! It’s a secret! That means you do help! ” Claire was smiling ear to ear and was very excited.
I was a little confused at this point. Why was she so happy and excited? Isn’t it sort of a let down if the parents “help”? Then Claire cleared it up. She asked, “What is Santa like? Is he nice? How exactly do you help him?”
I stuck by my vow of secrecy. Claire had one last question. “Who decides if the kids are naughty or nice? Is that Santa or the parents?”
This coming Christmas may be interesting.
McG Kids 