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Claire Goes for a Swim

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Just a few months ago, Claire’s swimming skills had plateaued, falling somewhat short of actually swimming.  She was starting to dislike her indoor YMCA swim lessons and actively campaigned against going to the YMCA each Saturday morning.  She did not like her goggles.  She was even starting to get a little more scared of the water, and resisted getting in.  So we gave swimming a break for a while.

Things have really turned around this summer.  Claire has started to enjoy swimming again, thanks in large part to swim lessons with her friends at summer camp.  And today for the first time, she actually swam all by herself.  It happened during a weekend visit to Houston to see her grandparents.  Claire love’s their community pool, which has a 3-foot shallow end, the perfect depth for Claire to take some chances but still touch the bottom in a pinch.   We went swimming four times in under 48 hours, at Claire’s repeated request.  We calculated that Claire spent roughly one third of her waking hours that weekend in the pool.  We are very grateful for sunscreen!

Anyways, Claire was so happy and proud when she swam all by herself.  Here is some documentation of the big milestone, including videos of both her underwater style and her dog paddle style.

Besides the solo swimming, Claire is also enjoying her goggles now.  She loves putting her face in the water at the 9-foot deep end, in particular, to look down to see just how deep it is.  That is a far cry from the scared girl who wanted to sit out swimming class at the YMCA just a few months ago.

Mani-Pedi

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Kit having the week off, she wanted to treat Claire to something fun and special.  So Kit took Claire for her first professional manicure/pedicure this afternoon.  Apparently Claire enjoyed it and took the whole thing pretty seriously.  Claire tells me that they applied two separate coats to her fingernails for that pink, sparkly look: a pink base, and a whole separate sparkly layer on top of that.

Sentences

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Molly has just recently started putting together simple two-word sentences, the main one being, “eat it”.  This normally refers to actual food, and not a mean jab.

I am not sure if this counts as a sentence, but Molly also loves to say “Oh, Daddy”.  I invariably reply “Oh, Molly”.  Clever, I know.  We riff back and forth like this for minutes at a time.  Molly loves it.  She has a big smile on her face the whole time, and she plays around with different ways to inflect the two words “Oh Daddy”.

For her part, Claire insists that Molly is not saying “Oh Daddy”.  She strongly believes that Molly is saying “Old Daddy”, and she thinks I should not say “Oh Molly” back because it’s supposed to be “Old Molly”, and that doesn’t make sense since Molly is a baby, or actually a toddler, or a “Boddler”, as Claire says.

One of Molly’s favorite phrases is actually three words, although it sounds like one word when she says it: hearyago.  She’ll often walk up to you and hand you something, saying “hereyago”, aka “Here you go”.

She also recently learned a classic three-word phrase, although she was just repeating it at her Mom’s prompting.  When I was leaving the room one night for Kit to put Molly to sleep as she does each night, Kit said to Molly, “Can you say I love you to Daddy?”  Sure enough, Molly repeated “I love you”, her first time to say such a difficult phrase (in more ways than one!).

Today, Molly made her first original, unprompted three-word sentence.  While eating lunch, she dropped an orange slice on the floor.  When our dog Muffin came to inspect it, Molly said, “Muffin eat it.”  Pretty good for a boddler!

Claire’s First Job Offer

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We received a postcard in the mail today from Orvis.  It was addressed to Claire, with the heading “Now hiring”.  It continued, “Many of our valued associates were once our best customers!”  Apparently Orvis is hiring a Fishing Manager and other positions for their new store, and they are interested in five year old girls taking on this responsibility.  Also, apparently, they think Claire has heard of Orvis.

I told Claire about this exciting opportunity, her first job recruitment.  She smiled and said, “What?  I think they think I’m an adult!”  I told Claire that, while she certainly could not spare enough hours to work full time right now, maybe she should consider the part-time Sales Associate position in Women’s Apparel.  She knows something about ladies’ clothing, right?  Claire just giggled and said, “No, Dad!  I’m a kid!”

Okay, I guess I agree with her.  It is too early to commit to a sales position, especially with only a few weeks to go before kindergarten starts.  Maybe she can work hard in kindergarten and apply for a position next summer once she has some report cards to put on the application.  All she has to go on now is basically that her friends and family like her, and maybe a recommendation from a pre-school teacher or two.  But that alone will not get you into the retail sales game, not in this economy anyways.

MPCV

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Claire and Molly saw their first real, live spaceship today.

Kit read in the newspaper that NASA’s new Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) was parked about a mile away in the parking lot of the Bob Bullock Museum tonight.  The spacecraft was on it’s way from California to Florida and just happened to be passing through town.  We decided to go check it out after dinner, even though Molly would be late for bed.  I mean really, a spaceship sitting there a mile away for one night?  You have to go check that out.

So we did go check it out, and it was pretty cool to see this space-pod thing sitting there on the back of a flatbed, and we waited in a long line to take look through the window.  We even got to talk to some of the engineers who designed the spacecraft.  Claire and Molly ran around on the grass while we waited, and Claire made a couple of friends.  It was a good night.

Shower Time

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Inspired by her after-swim rinse in the shower at Deep Eddy Pool this morning, Claire has decided that she is a big fan of showering.  So much so, in fact, that she asked if she could take a shower instead of a bath for bedtime tonight.  I had actually wondered at what age Claire would want to switch from baths to showers, and I supposed it would be somewhere around ten years old, but now she has that beat by half.

This is a major change for Claire, who in the past could hardly stand any water on her head or face.  And now she is making major leaps in the area — literally.  At Deep Eddy today, Claire enjoyed repeatedly jumping into the pool, with water splashing around and sometimes over her face and head.  This was followed by said shower in the surprisingly fresh and clean, open-air public changing room (featuring a courtyard of tropical plants).

What may have helped pushed Claire over is her twice-weekly swim lessons at summer camp.  Learning to swim with her long-time friends seems to be helping her develop a new boldness with water in general.

Anyways, Claire went ahead and took her first real shower tonight, the whole nine yards, including a shampoo.  She did not have any help from me except getting the water running at the right temperature, and some help with the shampoo. The only mishap was when she accidentally swallowed a little bit of shampoo, but she quickly recovered by spitting it out and rinsing with fresh water.

As a side note, Claire is always a little lawyer at bedtime, and a rather capable one at that.  Her goal is to push off getting ready for bed as long as possible.  Tonight after announcing she would take a shower instead of a bath, Claire asked if she could have a few extra minutes to play since we wouldn’t have to wait for the bath to fill up.  Well played, Claire…well played.

Molly’s First Trip to Houston

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I have been trying to avoid long posts, and I have found that posts about travel and holidays are nearly impossible to keep short.  They can quickly get out of hand, resulting in long, rambling posts (and much lost sleep on my part).  I was reminded of this just recently.

That said, it is worth noting that Molly took her first trip to Houston this weekend, to see my parents.  Claire, of course, came along too.  It was a busy and fun trip.  We accidentally overcommitted on Saturday’s plans, which included two play dates, lunch out, and swimming.  Molly’s favorite activity was probably sorting hair bands into a little plastic bag, which she did for at least an hour.

Molly also made her first trip to Corpus Christi recently, to see Kit’s parents.  I managed to keep that post short too, which was especially easy since I did not actually go on that trip.

Molly’s First Swim

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Molly had her first ever dip in a pool today.  Somehow we never took her swimming last summer, or to the kids’ indoor pool at the YMCA over the winter. But today, water finally beckoned.  We wanted to get away from the house while the painters finished up outside, and we opted for a swim in lieu of the Art City Austin festival, which for Kit was definitely a case of putting the kids’ interests ahead of her own (not so much for me).

Suits and smiles

Molly’s first swim was a good one, on a warm day, but not too hot, at Deep Eddy Pool.  The really great thing about Deep Eddy, besides being spring-fed, non-chlorinated, and apparently the oldest public swimming pool in Texas, is that is has a really big, really shallow, shallow end.  The shallowest point is only 9 inches deep, which is good for small waders like Molly.

At first, Molly did not know what to make of the pool.  When we first tried to lower her body into the pool, she quickly lifted her feet and legs out of the rather cold spring water.  She did this a few more times, not crying or getting upset, but really just not caring to get her feet so cold and wet all of the sudden.  Why would anyone want to do that?  But after Kit “slurshed” Molly’s feet through the water in a fun way, Molly started to get it, and within a few minutes she was splashing and squealing with delight.  Pretty soon Molly was literally trying to throw herself head-first into the water.  Now this is what we were expecting!  She did get away from me once or twice and ended up successfully throwing herself head-first into the shallow water, coughing up a mouth full of water when I pulled her out, but that did not stop the fun (not for very long, anyways).  Molly even used some of her new words while splashing around, namely “more” and “happy”.

We promise Claire had fun too, just not while taking this picture.
It meant stopping freeze tag.

It was also a fun outing for Claire, and it was her first swim in a while (she had burned out on those indoors YMCA swimming lessons months ago) and her first visit to Deep Eddy as well.  Claire liked the shallow water and opted to play “freeze tag” most of the time, with me as well as with some friends she met in the pool.

It was a good way to start out Molly’s swimming career and the summer season.  Now if Deep Eddy would only bring back the diving horses, zip line, and Ferris wheel, we could have spent all day.

Team Tornado

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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