claire

Check Mate

| patmcg

Claire told us this story tonight over dinner…

During her gymnastics class at school today, Claire accidentally bumped into her friend Julian.  Claire and Julian get along great, and Julian’s parents have even told us “he has been sweet on Claire for years.”  Anyways, when Claire bumped into him, she followed standard school protocol and checked on him.  “Are you hurt?” she said.  “Yes”, Julian replied.  “What do you need?” said Claire, following protocol.  Julian thought for a second and replied, “I need you to stop checking on me!”  Then he “laughed so hard he cried”, according to Claire.

Anyways, this was supposed to be a joke of Julian’s, not anything mean.  But you could interpret it as sort of a mean joke, if you didn’t know these kids.  Taking on the role of amateur psychologist, I asked Claire how this exchange made her feel.  She thought for a minute and said, “It made me feel… weird.”  I swear, these kids are getting complicated.

Santa Fe

| patmcg
Kit, Claire, and I all took a trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico this week.  Kit went for a three-day liver biopsy conference, and Claire and I just went along for fun.  We decided that Molly was still not up for an extended trip like this; with her still somewhat baby-like sleeping and eating requirements, we would be pretty well tethered to the hotel and would not have a chance to explore.  Maybe next year, Molly will “pull herself together” enough for this kind of trip, as Kit and I like to say. But this time, Molly stayed at home with Grammy and Grandaddy, who offered to come up and lavish her with attention while we were out of town.
Describing a big trip like this can quickly get out of hand for a single blog post. And hey, this is a kid blog, not a travel log.  So this post will focus on Claire’s experience of the trip rather than our tourist impressions of New Mexico as such.  Suffice it to say that New Mexico was beautiful, and Kit learned a lot about livers (I suppose). Now let me just paint a sketch of how the trip went for Claire, and I’ll try not to let it get too long…
Claire was very excited about the airplane flight in particular. She got to pack her carry-on Mickey Mouse suitcase with more or less whatever she wanted to entertain herself on the trip. She piled it full of books, notepads, and stickerbooks. In the interest of keeping things running smoothly in case Claire got bored over the next few days in airplanes, cars, and the hotel room, I packed some extra electronic entertainment such as her Leapster game system, some movies and games on the iPad, and even some audiobooks to listen to. As it would turn out, Claire did not need any of this stuff. She spent most of her travel time drawing in her special travel notebook from Noni, talking and joking around with me and Kit, and reading books with me and Kit.
Claire spent most of her flying time drawing with her fuzzy green pen.
On the plane, we also talked a lot about our route to Santa Fe: fly from Austin to Houston, then fly to Albuquerque by another plane, then take a bus to pick up a rental care, then drive to Santa Fe. Claire jokingly called Albuquerque “Albu-cookie”. In the Houston airport, Claire got to choose pretty much whatever she wanted for lunch, and she ended up with a collection of curiously retro food: Fritos, Orange Crush, and a turkey sandwich. What is this, 1979? By the way, that Orange Crush made it all the way to Santa Fe, where Claire continued to sip on it daily throughout the rest of the trip, and not for lack of other (fresher) options.

Claire travels back to a 1979 TV commercial for lunch.
Once in New Mexico, we drove the Turquoise Trail to Santa Fe. Claire had been interested in seeing the desert, but had also been worried about being poked by a cactus.  Fortunately, we steered clear of cactuses (alright, “cacti”). Claire had expected New Mexico to look like the desert planet Tatooine from Star Wars. It was not quite as sandy as that, but in Madrid, NM, we did come across something that looked kind of like the feared Sand People of Tatooine.

Claire runs from a Sand Person
A “real” Sand Person, as a matter of comparison
By the time we actually got to Santa Fe, we were all exhausted, and we dined in our hotel room on Lunchables from the local convenience store, and then went right to bed. 
The next morning, Kit headed downstairs for her conference, and Claire and I headed out to explore Santa Fe on foot.  We ended up in the literally freezing wind at the beautiful central plaza.  The cold weather was sort of a shock coming from the balmy weather back home. We ducked into a mall across the street from where there was supposed to be a great breakfast restaurant where we were supposed to be having a nice warm breakfast right now.  But alas, the restaurant was closed for remodeling.  The mall, and actually the whole city, was empty, I guess because it was Sunday morning and everything was closed.  We slowly trudged our way back two or three blocks to the hotel, ducking in for cover from the wind as the situation allowed.  Claire complained bitterly about the cold, which was not like her. She did not even want to walk and asked me to carry her the whole way. We made it to the hotel and eventually took the car to an open restaurant (which we ended up going to three different times) where we warmed up over some breakfast and a gigantic hot chocolate, which Claire barely touched.  
Then we tried heading out again, this time to a park overlooking the city. Claire was miserable the very minute we got out of the car, and she begged to go back to the car as soon as I took this one picture of her being miserable.

Claire continue to complain and was not acting like herself the rest of the day. She eventually settled into an unusually quiet mood and seemed somehow uncomfortable.  Only later did we put it together that she was probably sick and exhausted and just gathering enough strength for me to drag her around town. Poor thing.  Anyways, we did manage to meet up with Kit for lunch.

We did manage to see some of Kit. 

Still not realizing Claire was probably sick, I took her to the local children’s museum in hopes of lifting her spirits.  It kind of worked.

Claire loved the museum’s kid-sized door.
The museum had yet another Star Wars reference to enjoy.

The next day, we took the 90-minute drive to Taos to see the 1000-year-old pueblo.  I explained to Claire that when pilgrims landed in American, this village was already here, and it was already hundreds of years old.  That actually did impress Claire, who responded with a genuine, “Wow!  Really?”  The drive to Taos was scenic, and it was a good chance for Claire to sit and rest up.  At Claire’s behest, we played “Max and Emma” for almost the whole drive up and back.  This is a game where Claire is a girl once year older than Claire named Emma, and I am her little toddler brother named Max.  Occasionally Emma reverts to a baby, but usually she’s older.  The game is mostly about talking funny, and she especially like when little Max badly slurs his “S” sounds because he’s a toddler.  She’ll also give me ideas to riff on, such as, “Pretend you think those rocks are giant meatballs and you want to eat them, and you get really upset because you can’t…” Anyways, that got us to Taos.

At the Taos Pueblo, Claire was asked where all the Indians were.  I pointed out a few locals, and she seemed surprised, I think because they were not wearing native clothing.  We were told not to take pictures of the natives without asking their permission.  Claire, who also had a disposable camera from Noni for her travels, took this rule very seriously and went to great trouble to not take anyone’s picture.  She thought she might have accidentally taken a local’s picture, but the panic was over when I told her it was just another tourist like us.

Claire at her favorite spot at Taos Pueblo.
Claire wanted to take a picture of her camera.
But she first made sure it was okay, with the picture rules and all.

We made friends with a couple of village dogs and chatted with some storekeepers before buying some small pottery for Kit.  Claire loved to hang out at the river and was fascinated by all the insects, mostly ants, crawling around the common dirt area.  There was even a gigantic ant carrying a whole dead caterpillar back to it’s clam-sized hole all by itself.  Right around that point, the fascination turned to fear, and we carefully hopped around the insects all the way back to the car.  Then it was a stop by the modern town of Toas for some souvenir shopping and lunch.

Claire was pretty droopy by this point.
But she did her best to put a good face on it. 

Then it was back to Santa Fe.  On the drive back, you guessed it, more Max and Emma.

Let me just wrap this thing up with a few final highlights…

We were able to sneak Kit out of town during an extended lunch break for a quick trip to the closer-by pueblo of Tesuque.  It was good to show Kit some of the countryside north of Santa Fe and some pueblo goodness.

At Tesuque, we found a real-live tumble weed,
which looked better tumbling around on the ground.
On the way back, we also got to see this cool rock thingy by the highway.

I think this was called “Devil’s Rock”,
or something like that.
On the final day, once we realized just how worn-out Claire was, we took it super easy and went to see a movie in the afternoon.  We chose the only kid’s movie, Gnoneo and Juliet, which was pretty enjoyable, actually.  Being a kid’s movie at 2:40 on a Tuesday afternoon, Claire and I were the only ones in the theater.  It was a little weird with nobody else around, but we did not have to whisper when we wanted to talk to each other.
The plane flight home was dominated by jokes from a book of 2000 kid’s jokes, supplied by Grammy for the trip.  The book did have roughly 2000 jokes.  At least.  I guess what lacked in quality it made up for in quantity. 🙂  Claire absolutely loved this book, although she did not really understand most of the jokes.  She just liked the tone and delivery of the jokes. She did pick out a doctor joke for Kit, “What do you call a children’s knees? Kidneys.”  Claire spent most of the flight home making up her own jokes, including a “New Mexico joke” what went like this, “Why did the hill go to the hospital?  Because it got poked by a cactus.”  This went on for hours, until we stopped to literally run across the Houston airport to catch our connection to Austin.  We made it to the gate after everyone had been seated, with about five minutes until take off.
By the way, New Mexico was a new state for Claire.
Okay, that should do it.  I am worn out, and it’s time to move on.  I think that should paint a more than ample picture of the trip.  (Jeez, next time I really need to keep these trip blogs to a minimum!)

Team Tornado

| patmcg
Claire participated in her first soccer game today. Not just that, but it was also her first ever organized sports game of any kind. Well, sort of organized, anyways… as organized as a bunch of four and five year olds chasing around a soccer ball without any teamwork or strategy can be. Still, it was, without a doubt, kids playing soccer.
Claire had asked me to sign her up for soccer after burning out on the old swimming/ballet routine at the YMCA over the last few months. Even with her friends Coco, Zoey, and Isa in the classes with her, the routine had turned into a grind. Claire had been interested in basketball ever since wandering into a YMCA youth league basketball game a couple of months ago after ballet class, but we had to wait for the next sport to come around, and that just happened to be soccer. Claire was not “into” soccer before this. We had kicked a ball around a few times in the back yard before, but she usually lost interest in favor of just running around, especially simple foot races back and forth, over and over.
Still, Claire was really excited to start soccer. And that we even before she knew she would get soccer gear. We made a trip to Academy late Wednesday night and picked up some silver and pink soccer shoes, pink shin guards, and pink shorts. We failed to find any pink socks that went up high enough for shin guards, so we had to settle for plain old white socks, but still, she looked really cute, if not 100% pink. The soccer league would be supplying the shirts, which were, sadly, black and red or gray. Those are not princess colors! Claire tried on her outfit in the car and surprised her mom with her new look. Claire looked like a real soccer player, and a surprisingly grown up one at that (but still really cute).

Claire had been assigned to Team Tornado via email, and we did not know any of the names on the Tornado roster. There would be one other girl on the team, named Francesca, and the rest were all boys. Overall, there were over 400 kids signed up for this season of soccer at this YMCA alone. I had decided to go with the YMCA soccer league instead of the heralded WAYA league simply because YMCA had games on Saturday mornings and no practices, while WAYA had Wednesday night games (seriously, every Wednesday?) plus weekend practices.
Claire’s first game was scheduled for today at 10 am, when Team Tornado would be opposed by the dreaded “Aztex”. That was all we knew going into today’s game. Before the game, Kit and I prepped Claire on the first (only?) rule of soccer: don’t touch the ball with your hands. Good enough crash course, right? I might have added “kick the ball towards the other team’s goal, and away from yours” but that was a relatively minor point, I suppose.
I took Claire to soccer while Kit took Molly for the morning, as Molly was already rubbing her eyes by about 9am and would clearly be needing a nap during the 10am game time.
You can see Claire running quickly, mostly towards the ball, in the middle-right of this picture
The team made some very quick introductions and got right into some pre-game drills. Claire looked pretty sharp for a kid who had kicked a soccer ball a total of about 8 times in her life. After about 10 minutes of drills, the game started. The herd of kids chased the ball around the small soccer field, and Claire chased the heard of kids chasing the ball around. Claire ran like crazy.  She seemed to be all over the place, always hovering about 5-8 feet from the ball. But she didn’t make much actual contact with the ball.

At halftime Claire seemed concerned and a little dismayed, and she sort of wanted to just go home. She said she could never get to the ball. I told her that she was running faster than almost any kid, and if she gets a chance, don’t worry and don’t wait; just kick the ball as hard as she can (I guess nevermind which direction the ball goes). In the second half, I prodded myself to yell out “Kick the ball, Claire!” whenever she was in range. She did get a few kicks on the ball this time around. She even managed to clear the ball from her home team’s goal area a couple of times. This seemed to make her feel marginally better, although she still was not having too much fun. When the final whistle blew, and the game seemed to stop, she ran over to me and said, “Is the game over?” I said, “I think so”, and she replied, “Yeah!!!”  I was proud of her for sticking through the whole game and even giving it something extra in the second half.  As far as I can tell, the Tornadoes probably lost, but the game’s outcome did not seem to be of any real significance to anyone.

Pre-game drills
After post-game snacks with the team, we walked towards the car, past the YMCA where her old ballet class would have just let out. We peaked in the window, and right there on cue were Coco, Zoey, and Isa, all dressed in tutus. We went in for a quick visit. When Isa’s mom asked Claire if she liked the soccer game, Claire hesitated and said, “A little bit.”, which seemed pretty accurate. Still, everyone agreed that Claire looked really good in her soccer outfit.
Time to cool it off


Rainbow Star Wars

| patmcg

We made the mistake of recording Star Wars again, this time the whole original trilogy, episodes IV through VI, and letting Claire know about it.  She was really excited to get a chance to watch it some more after her initial teaser a few months ago.  On the plus side, she finally got to meet Yoda.  Her favorite episode is Return of the Jedi, although she can’t tell us why.  Maybe the ewoks?

Claire notices a lot of things in the movies like people’s outfits and even the colors of their lightsabers.  She says that if she had a lightsaber, it would be rainbow-sparkle colored.  She asks a lot of questions about what people are doing and why.  She is fascinated with Darth Vader and the idea that he is kind of nice after all.  But when Darth is being mean, she calls him ugly names like “mustard syrup” and says that she would poke him in the eye or kick him in the shin to make him go away.

Even though Claire likes Star Wars, she insists that does not mean she likes “boy stuff”.  As if to punctuate the point, she sometimes wanders off mid-movie to go play with her My Little Pony toys.

Capital Time

| patmcg

We finally, after several weeks of requests from Claire, went to the Texas capital building today.  It is not far away, practically in our neighborhood in fact.  But the weekends tend to fill up or pass us by before we ever get over there.  Usually Saturdays fill up pretty quickly with Claire’s ballet and/or swimming classes in the morning, then Molly’s nap time, then lunch, then Molly’s and sometimes Claire’s afternoon nap time and/or errands.  But today ballet was cancelled, and we decided to limit Molly (the sleepyhead) to one nap, and then the day sort of magically opened up for things like seeing the capital.

We spent all of five minutes driving to the enormous, 1888 limestone and granite 308-foot-tall neo-classical domed building and 22 acres of parklike grounds just sitting there down the street open to the public free of charge.  We just parked, walked across the grassy approach, right up to the front door, and just let ourselves in.  A state trooped escorted us through a metal detector and presented Claire with a “Junior Trooper” sticker as well as an extra one for her to give to Molly.  Molly would end up clasping this sticker in her right hand for the better part of the next two hours.

As impressive as it is from the outside, the main building is perhaps even more opulent on the inside.  The wide, elegant wood and marble hallways were flooded by soft light and lead to senators’ offices and wide staircases in every direction.  Claire and Molly both loved the main rotunda.  Molly pointed straight up with her usual look of wonder, and Claire spun around while looking up for a cool effect.  The building exuded a calm confidence and sense of purpose rivaled only by a large, old cathedral.

This was all pretty good, but the real kicker for Claire was the fact that the House chamber was open, and something was going on in side.  Kit and I took turns going in and watching from the balcony viewing area with Claire.  It turned out to be junior high school kids holding a mock legislative session, debating the merits of some sort of domestic animal protection law.  There was a lot of ernest, mumbling adolescent debate going on, along the lines of “Imagine if this was, like, your own dog or cat or whatever.  Wouldn’t you want it to have a shelter to go to?  Or would you want it to just, like, die and stuff?”  Claire was fascinated by it all.  She just wanted to stay and listen.  It was more entertaining to Claire than watching Arthur.  I almost had to physically drag her out of there.  But we needed to move on to lunch at the farmer’s market, plus Molly was starting to audibly fuss just outside the House chamber.

We promised Claire a return trip to listen in on the House debate.  Claire spent a lot of the after noon pretending that the dog catcher was trying to “get” Muffin, which I assume was tied to something one of middle schoolers said in the House chamber.

After running around madly on the capital grounds for a while, we did manage to get over to the farmer’s market, another new weekend treat for us on our newly open schedule.  We all had fun there too, even over Claire’s initial objections (who wanted to stay at the capital and listen to the teenagers debate).  Kit enjoyed the best (and only) asparagus truffle benedict she had ever had while Molly chomped on a raw green tomato with abandon.

A Fine Friday Evening

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Good things happen when you have time off from work.  After taking a trip back to Corpus Christi and tackling countless piles of papers that have been building up for years, Kit has been able to relax a little bit this week.
Kit and I both picked up the girls from school today, thanks to Kit’s week off and an early day off for me.  Claire loves those rare occasions when both Kit and I pick her up.  As an extra special treat, we got her a bit early, while she was still out on the playground.  Claire noted that we got her even before her friend Renee went home, which basically never happens.  Usually Claire and Molly are among the first to be dropped off at school and among the last to be picked up, and usually it’s just Dad doing the picking since Mom is off helping people at one of the hospitals around town.  So this was a really special occasion.

After we got Claire on the playground, we all went by to get Molly, who was also excited to see us.  Even though Molly is walking around now, I usually carry her back to the car, just out of habit.  But today Molly had other plans.  She grabbed Claire’s hand and nonverbally asked her to walk her out to the car.  It was a really good idea, and it worked nicely, as you can see below.
Then came dinner plans.  Usually we are worried about filling Molly up with food (todo link), but tonight Claire had that honor.   She had recently experienced a new bout of asthma, her first in almost a year, and she was prescribed a steroid to help her breathing.  These nasty steroids had caused Claire to feel (and act) really bad last time we used them, and apparently taking the medicine with as much food as possible helps lessen these negative side effects.  So we are filling her up with her favorite foods.  Last night it was pizza. Tonight we came up with hot dogs.  The pleasant early spring weather beckoned us to the Trailer Park Eatery where Claire could load up on hot dogs, Kit and I could enjoy the best tacos ever at Torchy’s, and Molly could sample from the rest of us.  Claire ended up spending most of her time playing a game of “freeze tag” with a little boy she met there.  She saw said boy, wearing a large inflatable guitar on his back, introduced herself, and got a game of freeze tag going on the large dirt driveway within two minutes.  Both kids stopped off at their respective picnic tables every now and again for a bite to eat and a sip of water, sort of like a pit stop.  Kit and I yelled “Car!” any time a car showed up on the scene, no matter how slowly and carefully it was traveling. Claire managed to get down two full hotdogs with ketchup, minus the buns, during this game.  The dogs seemed to keep the nasty steroid issued at bay (which was ostensibly the whole excuse reason for coming here to eat).
Molly, meanwhile, giggled and watched the scene while nibbling at Claire’s spare hotdog buns.  As it grew dark, Molly was captivated by the light balls hanging from the trees, which were colorful and bright and roughly the size of an adult’s head.  She kept pointing at them and saying “ball”.  Finally we found one that was low enough that we could lift her up to touch it.  She whacked away at the orb, sending it swinging above us, producing a big smile on her face.  Molly also got a brief chance to try to chase down Claire and her freeze-tag friend, which she took to with glee and some screaming.
Next week, Kit will be back to work and on call.  It will be back to boring dinner at home, possibly with Kit off at some hospital for some or all of the night.  But now that Kit has her full allotment of vacation this year, hopefully we will see more fun nights like this.

The Land of Ice and Snow

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This week, Texas, and most of the country, received an extended frigid blast of winter weather. We did not have to tolerate anything too bad here in Austin. Sure, it was real cold — down into the teens at night, some days never above freezing all day, and windy to boot. But we were fortunate enough to avoid any power outages or other substantial discomforts. Kit’s parents were not quite as lucky. They were in town and got stranded here for a few extra days due to ice and other logistical issues.

The girls, of course, had a ball. They missed a bunch of school due to the weather (and illness) and stayed home with good ol’ Grammy while Kit and I worked. Claire recovered from strep in time to enjoy the snow on Friday, which provided a rare opportunity for snowball fights and a snowman, not to mention some fun pictures and videos (see below). Claire and I also enjoyed a brisk walk around the block right before bedtime on one of the colder nights, punctuated by some refreshing hot peppermint tea at home.
Finally, some footage of us pelting Molly with snow balls. I promise, she enjoyed the snowballs just about up to the point where we started rolling video.

Arthur

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Claire is hooked on Arthur, the PBS cartoon about the adventures of Arthur, a human-like aardvark, and his human-like animal friends and family in the fictional town of Elwood City. The show is not as odd as it sounds. You forget pretty quickly that everyone is ostensibly an animal, just like in most kids’ books. The opening reggae theme song still surprises me, though.

Claire has watched Arthur for months now. This show does not get old. There are so many characters and so many episodes (hundreds!). As I write this, the show is in its 14th season, so it has more legs than something like Imagination Movers, which Claire tired of once it started repeating its limited episodes a lot.

The show is also engrossing. It has stories that a kid Claire’s age can relate to, involving friends and fun, plus conflicts and insecurities and how to deal with them. I feel like she learns positive behavior from the show.  Even about.com has a lot of good things to say about the show.

Claire’s favorite episode is “Elwood City Turns 100”, which has lots of music and dancing and features an interview by the real Larry King.


Them Bones

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Claire has really enjoyed reading The Magic School Bus: The Search for the Missing Bones, a stocking stuffer from Santa this past Christmas. We have read this chapter book several times, and each time she pays keen attention to the various notes and diagrams about the human skeleton. She seems to enjoy the diagrams more than the story itself. She has lots of questions and is just curious about people’s bones. I had told her we would get out a replica human skeleton that Kit has around somewhere… just as soon as we could find it.
Today Claire stumbled upon this skeleton, wrapped carefully in bubble wrap, in a cabinet downstairs, behind a coin cup that I use almost every day (of course!). Claire was really excited when we unwrapped it and set it up on its stand. She quickly dressed it in plastic jewelry and gave it a plastic purse to hold onto. She also took a scientific interest in the skeleton. She repeatedly and carefully counted the vertebrae in this skeleton’s backbone. It usually comes out to 15, but sometimes comes to as many as 17 by her count. ( The “real” answer is 33. Maybe she is counting 2 as 1?) She is also particularly interested in the rib cage and its relationship to the heart and stomach.
Then it is back to letting her Littlest Pet Shop toys crawl around the skeleton and sleep in his mouth or look for his missing heart. (She has also been watching The Wizard of Oz.)