claire

Giggle Bean

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Kit was putting Claire to sleep when I suddenly head loud laughing coming from upstairs. After a pause, there was more laughing. It kept going on and off. I was wondering what was going on when Kit showed up and explained.

Kit had said something to Claire like, “Goodnight, my little snuggle bean.” In response, Claire threw up her hands and said in a vaguely New Jersey-ish sort of way, “Do I look like a bean to you?” This cracked Kit up, which in turn cracked Claire up. Claire enjoyed this turn of events and repeated, “Do I look like a bean?” It went on like this for a while before Kit left Claire to entertain herself and hopefully fall asleep.

It ended up taking Claire a couple of hours to get to sleep. We could hear her in there repeatedly saying, “Do I look like a bean?” and making herself laugh. Claire, of course, has always tried to find ways to keep herself awake at night, and this was a fun new way to do it. Over the next few days, we heard the same refrain over and over from Claire. “Do I look like a bean?” As you can tell, the humor wears off after a while, but it was pretty funny the first couple of times.

“Intelligence”

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Kit was reading Claire her books for bedtime tonight, when I heard Kit say, “Claire! Wow! I am so proud of you!” Usually Claire doe not get that reaction for simply listening to a story, so I was wondering what was gong on. Fortunately, Kit called me in and said that she was really proud of Claire. Claire explained, “I spelled a really big word!” Prompted for the word in question, Claire said she had spelled intelligence.

What Claire had actually done was read the letters from a book, so in a sense she read the word rather than spelled it from memory, but still it was extremely surprising. We don’t normally work on spelling with Claire. She might have occasionally spelled very short words like cat. But apparently she has been paying attention in school, and now she seems to really know her letters, at least I, N, T, E, L, G, and C.

Ruminating

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Normally after her bath, I will wrap Claire up in a towel and let her get all warm and dry while she sits on my lap for a couple of minutes. Tonight we did the usual drill, except it was late so I cut it just a little short. After about a minute, I motioned towards her pajamas.

“Can we just sit and think for a minute?” said Claire.
“Okay, let’s just sit and think,” I replied.

A few seconds went by before Claire broke the silence.

“I’m thinking about zebras, Daddy. What are you thinking about?”
“Kids,” I replied.

Another few seconds went by.

“What are you thinking about now, Daddy?”
“Dogs,” I said, spotting some of Muffin’s hair on the floor. “What are you thinking about?”
“Monkies,” said Claire.

Then Claire said that she had done enough thinking for the night and wanted to get dressed for bed. The next night, she wanted to sit and think again. The topic this time was “opposites”.

Green Is Not My Best Color

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Driving home from today’s swim lesson, traffic slowed to a crawl as police closed lanes and directed traffic. Just as I started to become irritated, the sight of a lady walking down the sidewalk with a crazy green hat and green-and-white striped stockings changed my mood. It was a Saint Patrick’s Day parade! Crowds of green-clad pedestrians were funneling their way down Greenville Avenue towards the apparent parade site. I started daydreaming about going to the parade. The parade route past the old brick cottages of Lower Greenville, coupled with the cool damp weather, seemed perfect for an Irish celebration.

Then Claire chimed in her thoughts…

She wondered why everyone was wearing silly green hats. I explained that it was for Saint Patrick’s Day. She should wear green to school on Tuesday, since everyone was going to be wearing green for Saint Patrick’s day. She took some exception to this idea. “Green is not my best color. I like pink! Pink is my favorite color! I don’t like green,” she explained. I told her she could wear green and pink. “No! I want to wear pink. That’s the only way to do it.” I said that’s alright, and just in case she was confused, I went on to explain that Saint Patrick was not me, her dad. He was a guy in Ireland a long time ago. Yep, old Saint Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland. What a guy. They like to celebrate him every year. Claire was not impressed, replying, “I do not want to wear green, and I do not want to go Patricking!” I loved that, the idea of “going Patricking.”

Anyways, I guess Saint Patrick’s Day is not really for three-year-olds (not even for rather Irish ones).

Wise Beyond Her Years

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I was getting Claire ready for her bath tonight. For some reason, Claire observed that she was small. I said yes, she is small now, but she is growing every day. One day she will be really big, just like a grown up! Claire did not have any of this. She said in a slightly worried tone, “I don’t want to be a grown up.” The other day, when I picked her up from school, Claire said, oddly, “We need to figure out how to keep me from growing.”

I thought all kids wanted to grow up and be big so they can eat and drink whatever they want, and go to their fancy offices, and stay up as late as they want, and drive cars around really fast… you know, the whole nine yards. But Claire seems to have her eye on the ball on this one. She knows that being a kid is so fun, why would you want to grow up? It’s preposterous.

Let’s see what she says in another 10 years.

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.)

Book Shortage

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This morning, I was explaining the day’s plan to Claire. It seems to help her to know what to expect. I started with the basics: it is Sunday, so it is not a school day; it is a Mommy & Daddy day. Claire corrected me and explained that today is actually a Mommy, Daddy, and Muffin day. Then I went on to explain the errands for the day. First we would go buy some shampoo, and then we would go to the bookstore and get some new books for Mommy. Claire glanced up at the 12-foot tall bookshelf in the living room, half covered in books, and looked a little confused. After a few seconds, she said, “Are we running out of books?”

Music Update

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Claire always loves her kids’ music. She loves to hear anything from the Countdown Kids. She will listen to them sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame or I’ve Been Working on the Railroad over and over dozens of times. She is also enjoying a Backyardigans CD I bought her recently. They sing so high and squeeky, but the music itself it not half bad.

Normally Claire is not a big fan of “real” music. When I play my own CD’s in the car, she’ll say, “That’s one of your songs, Daddy. Is it time to listen to one of my songs?” But occasionally she actually likes grown-up music. Her current favorites are the Fleet Foxes. They are a very strange group, combining folk, progressive rock, and lots of vocal harmonies that sound kind of folksy and choral at the same time, along with a little Beach Boys tossed in for good measure. It is weird stuff, but Claire likes it. She asks what the songs are about, and she asks to hear them again.

Her other favorite is Christmas with Weezer. She just cannot get enough of the perennial geek rock band performing We Wish You a Merry Christmas. She has enjoyed Weezer in the past too. There was a period about a year ago where she seemed to enjoy The Sweater Song. She even noted, “That is a gooood song.”

Kid Hug

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This afternoon when I picked up Claire from school, all the kids were running around and playing in the big indoors playroom like normal. Claire did not see me at first, but another kid saw me and said, “Claire, your Daddy is here!”. Then Claire ran over for a hug. I said, “Are you ready to go?”, which a split second later I realized was a mistake. What if she said no? Fortunately, Claire had only one request before leaving. “I want a hug from a kid.” Before I could ask her to expand on that idea, or perhaps suggest a particular kid, a slightly older girl who was in earshot ran over to Claire and gave her a nice big extended hug. Then Claire grabbed my hand, and we headed out the door. 

This whole transaction had the feel of being set up, like Claire had gone to this other girl a few minutes earlier and said, “When my Daddy comes to get me, come over and give me a hug.  He is going to eat it up!”.  Well, it worked.