A while back, Claire bought one of those toy plastic bows with suction cup arrows, for the movie Brave. She never really figured out how to shoot it and never had a good place to practice. She taped up a hand-drawn target on a piece of paper on the playroom cabinet, but of course the suction cup arrows never stuck to the paper.
At the end of her latest sleepover, Maddie’s dad tried it out and stuck an arrow right into the white board of the kids’ art easel. Brilliant! A few days later, Claire’s friend Claudia come over, and they drew a target on the easel. Pretty soon, after working on their technique, Claire and Claudia were firing and sticking one arrow after another to the easel.
Today before we picked up Molly, Claire got her first perfect bullseye. She shot and just nailed it. So here is a picture to commemorate her first bullseye.
Claire just got her first loose tooth! It’s a bottom tooth near the front.
Claire is so excited about this. It’s the first thing she tells everyone. Claire has been watching her classmates lose their teeth for the last couple of years wondering when it would happen to her, and now she’s really in the big kid club.
Molly says that she will probably be getting her loose tooth any day now too.
As a side note, I just had a gum grafting done on my own mouth, so I have to be a little careful about which part of my mouth I chew with. Now loose-tooth Claire gets to join in the weird-eating club.
Claire and Maddie enjoying a bedtime story together.
Finally, after many months of patiently asking and waiting, Claire got to host her first sleepover. Claire had spent the night at her friend Maddie’s house a while back, and now we got to return the favor. We ordered pizza and watched A Dolphin Tale. The girls stayed up little late, about 10:00 or 10:30, with Claire telling Maddie “scary stories that weren’t that scary.” Maddie is accustomed to sleeping in somewhat later than Claire. However, Claire convinced Maddie that they should get up at 7:00 am since sleeping in late amounted to “wasting precious play time”.
We set up the “sick bed” for Molly in our room to avoid messing up Claire and Maddie’s scene (and to avoid a madhouse with Molly in there). The sick bed is the portable, inflatable mattress we use when someone is vomiting, etc. and needs to stay in our room. Molly saw the bed and asked who was sick. Kit said that the mattress was the “fun bed” tonight. Molly liked it. She got to arrange the covers and pillows just so, taking a lot of care with it. She was very cozy and seemed to enjoy sleeping in our room. It took her over an hour to fall asleep, although that is normal for Molly.
Molly enjoying the sick/fun bed
The kids played the next morning until Maddie’s parents got her around noon. There were some challenges in the morning with not sharing the Wii, etc. and maybe some homesickness on Maddie’s part, but overall we just had a quiet morning. Claire’s friend Harper had suggested that Claire “order donuts” for breakfast. I asked Claire what that meant, and she said she didn’t know, but Harper usually “orders donuts” when she has a sleepover. Is there a donut delivery service I am not aware of? Anyways, I ran up to Howdy Donut and waited in line for 20 minutes to get some pretty great donuts and some really awesome sausage kolaches (one each per person).
So it was a nice, cozy sleepover with an old friend. Claire loved the idea of a sleepover and is already planning her next one. She is actually randomly inviting girls she is sort of friends with, and who have never ever been to our house to play before, for a sleepover just because their mom is there. That is how much she loves sleepovers.
Molly has seen plenty of movies at home, but today she saw her first one in a movie theater. While visiting Corpus Christi for Thanksgiving, in a breakthrough in the saga of Molly’s toilet training, Molly finally managed to poo in the toilet! We had promised her we would take her to a movie if she did that. So she got to see Frozen, her first theater movie.
We took the kids to Ikea for the first time in years. Neither Claire nor Molly had any remembrance of it. When we told them we were going to a furniture store, they we pretty bummed. Once we explained that it was not just any furniture store, but a big, crazy, Swedish one named Ikea with sample houses you could explore, a cafe, and a huge warehouse, they were sold. We were just shopping for a few household items, maybe a TROFAST here, or a SKYLTA there. Don’t forget the BJURSTA and the ÄPPLARÖ/ HÖGSTEN.
Among other treats, Molly was able to spend her first allowance money. She had earned $4 over the last two weeks doing the standard dishes, shoes, cleanup routine that Claire has been doing. Molly had been expressing a desire to have some of this stuff called money that Claire keeps buying cool stuff with. When we first told Molly we would be giving her allowance now, she was thrilled. The first time she took in her dishes, she held out her hand and said, “Where’s my money?” Anyways, Molly had $4 to spend. At Ikea, even $4 goes a long way. Molly bought four tiny stuffed animals for $2 and saved the other $2.
Molly was just a hair short to get into Småland, the kids’ play aera. But the girls had a great time exploring the famous “375 Square Foot Home” display, and snuggled up in the little bedroom together. They also enjoyed Swedish meatballs (Claire) and chicken fingers (Molly) with Lingonberry juice while watching Finding Nemo in the kids lounge. It was a fun morning shopping for housing goods. Now that is almost a contradiction in terms, but not at Ikea!
Molly was just a bit too short for Småland.
Swedish meatballs, Lingonberry juice, and Finding Nemo.
BTW, the name of this message came from the Pavement song of the same name.
We went to a friend’s house to let Claire and Molly play with their own kids, a little younger than Claire and Molly, respectively. After a rowdy lunch, including multiple spilled drinks, screaming, and food on the floor, we all decided to give their pool a try. The pool water turned out to be too cold, of all things, so we put everyone in the hot tub.
I did not think the girls would go for the hot tub. After all, Molly cries and screams at a bath that is even slightly warmer than room temperature. And Claire doesn’t like her baths much warmer than that. This would be their first time in a hot tub. But it turned out to be no problem! In fact, they loved it. Molly swam around in the tub, and Claire put on some floaties and put down some apple juice. Ah, the life!
While driving Molly and Claire home from school this afternoon, Molly was looking at a picture book, as she often likes to do. She tends to sort of babble about the pictures while she reads, and we don’t always listen very carefully to her. About five minutes into examining the book today, though, Molly said, “That word is ‘Luke'”. At a stop light, I asked her to show me the word, and sure enough, she pointed right at the word “Luke” in the story.
So that is officially the first word that Molly has read (that I know of) besides her own name. Molly must have recognized the word from a friend’s name, but still… preschool literacy is working for Molly!
Claire sporting her new iPod Touch, hidden away in her little purse.
Claire has been wanting an iPod Touch for a long time, mostly because a few other kids at school have them. She occasionally likes to use my iPhone to do some drawing with Flowpaper or the like, but she has largely lost interest in games like Angry Birds. However, inspired by her friends, Claire wanted an iPod Touch, perhaps more as an accessory than a useful or fun device.
Kit and I were skeptical of Claire having an iPod Touch, but seeing a nice lesson in saving and delayed gratification, we said she could buy one herself. We offered her a used one for a marked down price of $75 rather than $200 new. We told Claire is was actually an old iPhone, but she did not mind. Claire quickly agreed and proceeded to save up her $5 weekly allowance, which was already accumulating. She did not spend any allowance for months, quickly passing up sticker and other treats without a thought. It was just like she didn’t have allowance money. Each week when we gave her $5, she disinterestedly put it right away in her savings without an apparent thought.
Then suddenly she had $75. Kit in particular, and me to some extent, concerned about Claire doing too much iPod Touch. We didn’t want her to stop doing all her playing and art projects. So one contingency on selling her the iPod Touch was a contract so we were all on the same page. It did not specifically limit Claire’s time on the iPod Touch, but it did leave room to do
Claire’s iPhone 4, I mean iPod Touch.
that if we had to. Claire happily signed the contract and handed over her (sort of) hard earned money. It was quite an accomplishment for Claire to save up for so long, and she made it seem effortless.
Now that Claire has earned her iPod Touch, she basically doesn’t use it. It just sits there. She takes it around a little bit as an accessory and likes to sometimes take pictures. She has yet to play a single game of Angry Birds.
Claire entered her school’s optional art contest a few weeks ago. The assignment for the art contest was to create a picture of the Austin skyline or a local landmark. The contest started the week before Spring Break and was due the Thursday after Spring Break. For her subject, Claire picked the University of Texas tower. Claire kept wavering on actually doing the project. She always had something else to do, and it was in danger of becoming another homework-type struggle if we pushed it too hard. So we just gently reminded her about the contest every couple of days, even going so far as to say she could just skip it since it’s just for fun. Over Spring Break, we sent Claire off to Corpus Christi with a photo of the UT tower and the official contest paper. Claire came home with nothing.
Then, two nights before her art submission was due, Claire decided to focus on it. She got far on her initial ideas but ran out of time the first night. On the second — and last — night, Claire got into a really good groove after dinner. She asked, “Does it have to look exactly like the tower?” to which we said no, you just have to be able to tell it is the tower. Claire got excited and started adding bright new colors to the tower itself and imagined details around the base of the tower. She worked hard on it up to and past bed time, giving up her nightly story time to finish the picture. She got to bed 30 minutes late but with an awesome picture to take in the next day.
We found out today that her picture won first place for first grade! Claire was so proud and excited. As a prize from the school, she received a compact art kit, containing paint, colored pencils, oil pastels, and more.
McG Kids 