Claire has suddenly developed an opinion on how we should do the online backups for our home computer. This morning, after watching TV with her breakfast, Claire approached me and said in a serious voice, “Dad, I think we should use carbonite.com. That way if you lose a file, you can, like, restore it.” (The way she said “restore”, you could tell this was a new word for her, or at least a new usage of that word.) Clearly, Claire was doing her utmost to be helpful. I said, “Thanks for the tip, Claire. I’ll keep that in mind. We already use something like that called Mozy.” Claire’s response was, “Okay. But maybe we should change to carbonite.com.” And then she wandered off to get dressed.
If you ever doubted the value of a TV advertisement, as I do from time to time, then let this be a lesson. It sure worked like a charm on Claire. I am not in a hurry to switch to carbonite.com, though, since it means weeks of uploading all our data to the new service, which means weeks of slow internet access. Trying to think how to frame that for Claire…How about, “That’s a nice idea, but it would mean learning.com and starfall.com would be really slow and annoying for a while.” That just might do the trick.
Here is the latest installment of the favorite books series…
Molly loves her Elmo sticker book. For a while, she refused to go anywhere without it. “I want my Elmo book”, was commonly heard, especially just before leaving the house. She would sit and study it in the car for long spells, such as the recent trip to Houston.
The Elmo bookMolly engrossed in her Elmo book
Molly also spent quite a while absorbed in an issue of Austin Family magazine, which we happened to bring home from some restaurant or the like. She would love to look over the pages for bedtime, labeling all the things in its pages, a mommy, some vegetables, a ball, swimming. She really loved this magazine!
Austin Family magazine
At the moment, Molly’s favorite book is definitely the classic of classics, The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss. This is Kit’s and my favorite too. It is lots of fun to read, really an amazing book. This “Dr. Seuss” guy has a lot of promise! The Cat in the Hat book takes a while to read, though, especially if you take the time necessary to read it in a fully fun and dramatic way. So we usually skip the middle just to get Molly to bed in time!
Claire has been enjoying a variety of books, although no specific book has risen as the unchallenged leader lately. She has been somewhat into nonfiction, often inspired by a movie. She has checked out school library nonfiction books on dolphins (thanks to the movie A Dolphin Tale), lions (thanks to The Lion King), and even a resurgence in books on ancient Egypt (thanks to A Night at the Museum 2). The lion book was from National Geographic and was sufficiently realistic to be quite gruesome (but still fascinating). Claire does not like lions as much since reading that book! Dolphins are still sweet and cute, though.
Most importantly, Claire has also been reading to us more than ever! She brings home a folder of beginner books from school and takes great pride in reading them to us at bedtime. She is now reading more complex books with real stories, and not just the sample, repetitive books she started out with. She is pretty confident with her reading skills and keeps plugging away at tough words and sentences until she figures them out. And this late in her day when she is most tired. We’re so proud of her for sticking with it!
After the fun weekend with the whole family in Houston, Claire turned right around and took off for some more spring break grandparent fun in Corpus Christi. I can’t tell you a whole lot about the trip. She was just whisked off by her grandparents.
We talked to Claire most nights on a cacophonous mobile phone on loud-speaker and were not able to make out a whole lot, other than Claire was having lots of fun around town and also relaxing at home with the grandparents. I think she saw some dolphins. I do have a couple of pictures, compliments of Grammy Joyce, of Claire on the way down to Corpus and on the drive back, all the while listening to Alice in Wonderland in the car.
Including the “Tutty Bear” that she bought at the recent King Tut exhibit, so far Claire has spent every cent of her allowance on stuffed animals and stickers. I was curious what Claire would buy for herself if she had free reign, and so far this seems about right. 🙂
King Tut is visiting Houston, and we made a special family trip to see him, and perhaps even better, see my parents.
Due to Spring Break traffic and a severe downpour, it took us seven hours to get the kids and make it to Houston. Usually it’s about a three-hour trip, but we spend a few extra hours stuck in traffic in torrential rain on Highway 71 and Interstate 10. We made it to Houston a couple of hours past the girls’ bedtime, but everyone was in good spirits and happy to see Noni and Grandpa Phil.
King Tut's jackal. No pictures inside!
Ostensibly, we made the trip to see Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs at the Museum of Fine Arts. When we got the tickets a few weeks ago, Claire’s interest in ancient Egypt was at its peak. Since then, her interest has waned some, mostly in favor of dolphins and puppies. When we pulled up to the museum on Saturday morning, Claire said, in a joking tone, “I don’t know why we have to go see this King Tut thing. You thought I was interested to see it, but really it’s Dad who’s interested. I mean what’s the big deal? He’s dead.” This really cracked me up.
Once inside, we waited in line for the big show. There was a short introductory movie narrated by Harrison Ford, and then the exhibit doors magically swung open. The crowds slowly entered and began to examine the ancient treasures with quiet awe. Within the first minute after entry, Molly had broken the near silence with loud crying and yelling. She really wanted the museum sticker on my shirt, but I could not let her have it since it served as my proof of admission. She got frustrated and began screaming. So I headed with her to the exit, which was all the way through the large exhibit. By the time we got to the exit, Molly was calmed down, and we did the exhibit in reverse. There were some really cool things. Some of Claire’s favorites were the ancient toilet seat used by the pharos, and the ancient cat coffin. She also liked King Tut’s bed, a colossal state of him, a small decorative coffin used to preserve his stomach, and an equally disgusting reproduction of the Tut’s remains. I am happy to say that Claire was pretty engrossed after all. We have no pictures of the exhibit since they were strictly forbidden.
The girls and their Houston grandparents
The main attraction for this trip was really the grandparents. It had been a longtime since we had been to Houston as a family. We mostly stayed around the house to maximize face time between the girls and their Noni and Phil. Claire had woken up very early Sunday morning and went down to get Noni. She and Claire drifted in and out of sleep until 7:00 or so and then got up and hung out until the rest of us got up. This is Claire in her element… hanging out on a lazy weekend morning with a grandma. As interesting as King Tut was, this kind of morning was probably even more fun for Claire (not to mention Kit and I, who got to sleep in a little). We got home on Sunday afternoon, where our tired Claire fell asleep on the couch watching Finding Nemo, thus accomplishing her first nap in years.
Claire has recently told me, “All you care about is boring stuff like swimming and work.” Claire has also observed that all her mom cares about is “clothes and hair.”
I think this paints a slightly humorous picture of Kit and myself, like a really traditional family from the 1950’s, and I’m not sure what to make of it. Mostly, I guess Claire has discovered the new phrase “all you care about”. That is okay with me. It never comes out in anger, and it is a nice alternative to crying and screaming about these topics.
Claire’s love of ancient history has been reinvigorated with a book sent to her recently by Noni. It is a National Geographic book called Secrets from the Past, and it used to be mine and Tim’s. Claire loves to read this book every night before bedtime. These stories of real things form far away and a long time ago seem to be more interesting to Claire right now than the fairytale worlds of the Disney princesses. This book has harrowing tales of lost cities, ice age hunters, sunken treasure, and of course, Egypt — still her favorite ancient empire by far. She loves the mummies, the weird wigs, the linen robes, the tombs, and the mighty pharos. I think it is the golden mummy masks which really won her over.
This is more exciting than a Disney princess book.
Recently, in another book which her mom gave Claire on last year’s trip to DC, we covered the sad story of Cleopatra VII, the last pharaoh of Ancient Egypt. The whole thing was covered in a few short paragraphs with colorful illustrations. Long story short, this Roman guy named Octavian (aka, Augustus) invaded and ruined Egypt and caused Cleopatra to commit suicide. This was the end of the Egyptian pharos, and basically the end of of the classic Egypt that Claire loves so much. At this point in the story, Claire was really upset with Octavian. She was saying something along the lines, of “Boo! Go back home, Octavian! Leave Egypt alone!”
Previous to this, Claire may have had some sense that the Romans were trouble. She just did not like the looks of them, or at least she was not really into them. Now Octavian has confirmed Claire’s worst fears about the Romans. On the other hand, Mark Antony did represent the Romans well, and he even married Cleopatra! Claire asked us if the Romans were good guys or bad guys. We told her “it depends” — if you were Egyptian, they were not so good at this point in history. But we also told her that the Romans did a lot of good things, and their country Italy is a really great and beautiful place, and maybe we could take a trip there one day. Claire was not impressed. She would still rather go to Egypt. (Maybe the latest news footage would change her mind.)
Claire does not directly admit to loving Egypt. She says she like dolphins ten times better. But you should see how she reacted to that darn Octavian conquering Egypt!
Claire has been enjoying her trampoline from Santa last Christmas. She likes to do this trick as shown below. When she say “high!”, she jumps up on my shoulders. Sometimes she says “hi” and waves her hand to try to trick me.
Claire’s class has been learning about America and the presidents recently. One assignment was for each kid to write what they would do if they were president. Claire’s, as usual, focuses on being nice:
"If I were president, I would help mean people be better."
This assignment was posted outside the classroom. Almost every kid in the class said something about helping other people, especially people in need. Prospective presidents would “help kids go to school”, “help people that don’t have food”, “help people who were really hurt”, “help homeless people”, “give the people clothes”, and even “give the people money.” This is basically the opposite of what we hear in the current Republican presidential debates, the theme of which is largely not helping people. I’d vote for the kindergarten kids. There was one loose cannon in the class, though, who promised to “go into a war” as president. Claire thought maybe he was confused when he wrote that.
Here is Claire’s other America-relate assignment, which also came out pretty sweet.
"I love my country because there is lots of loving people."
McG Kids 