claire

Draggin’

Video | | patmcg

Claire is out of school for two weeks for winter break, and Molly’s school closes early, at 4:30 instead of 6:00, around the holidays. So have been getting back home with the girls before 5:00, over an hour before a normal week day.  This extra hour makes a huge difference!  We cook together, play, or just hang out.  The normal weekday involves nothing but rushing to get dinner on the table and then get right to bed.

Molly and Claire are really enjoying the extra time.  They have so much fun just goofing off with each other.  I caught a little video clip of one of their games, a kind and gentle dragging game.  Originally Claire and Molly wanted to drag Molly by her neck, but they took my advice and adjusted to the torsop-based approach as shown here.

 

Christmas 2012

| patmcg

Minimalist post, only pictures… 🙂

Robot Night Dance

Video | | patmcg

After enjoying the crazy holiday light show at Mozart’s, the girls were feeling a little frisky walking back to the car.  They are not usually out walking around when it is completely dark outside.  Somehow they stated doing a crazy robot dance in the light of Kit’s phone, and this is what we ended up with.

Vomit

Video | | patmcg

Molly woke up up vomiting the other night.  She vomited all over herself, her blankets, her mom, me, and her stuffed animals.  Molly had caught a stomach bug going around that would eventually get 14 of the 16 kids in her class, and 2 of the 3 teachers.   Molly would spend a couple of days at home recovering, and it was her first time to use the “sick bed”, an inflatable bed that we get out when people are vomiting and cannot be trusted to keep their real beds vomit-free.  Claire had used this several times before, but this was Molly’s first shot.  As bad as she felt, Molly was thrilled with the sick bed and all the attention and fussing over her.  Claire, too, was pretty excited to be up in the middle of the night helping out.  For the next few days, Claire and Molly would tell anyone who would listen about the night of vomiting, and Molly in particular would have a big grin on her face when telling the tale.  Claire would say, “Oh, Molly’s just bragging.”

We did not take any pictures of the action on the night of vomiting, but we did get this sweet moment the net day when Claire took it upon herself to entertain Molly with a book in her sick bed.

Claire Turns 7!

| patmcg

Claire turned seven years old today!

Sadly, I am actually going back and writing about it late at night months later.  I will leave it mostly to the pictures, mostly.  We had Claire’s party at her indoor swim lesson facility, Elmer Swim School.  Claire was really into this idea, and it was fun for everyone to go swimming in late November!  This was all on the weekend after her birthday.  On Claire’s actual birthday, we took her out to Jason’s Deli, her perennial favorite.

Fall Program Intro

Video | | patmcg

Claire was chosen as the “stage manager” for her first grade class’ fall music performance, the Fall Program.  She even got to dress up for the part!  Claire originally had a part introducing one of the songs in the middle of the show, but her song got cut, so she was assigned the role of letting the parents in the door and introducing the show.  She did not have a chance to memorize the whole script, so what you see here is Claire basically reading the script aloud.  This is amazing, considering that she is still learning to read!

The first and last song of the show was Fifty Nifty United States.

Fifty Nifty!

Video | | patmcg

Claire’s class sings “Fifty Nifty United States” as part of their Fall Program.  Claire had been practicing and singing this song for weeks, and we were absolutely amazed to hear at home her gradually list off all 50 states in alphabetical order, eventually with ease. That is hard!  The theme of the program was the various United States, and this song was the centerpiece of the show.  Other songs included “New York, New York”, “California, Here I Come”, and many more.