friends

Finally, a Sleepover

| patmcg
Claire and Maddie enjoying a bedtime story together.
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
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.

Claire’s 8th Birthday Party!

| patmcg

Claire is (almost) eight years old!

This year Claire had her birthday party with her friends at Jumpoline Park.  Initially Claire had talked about having a petty zoo come to our house.  Once we expressed some concern about where to put the animals, weather, and other practicalities, Claire immediately said, “That’s easy.  We’ll do it at Jumpoline Park.”

And so we had her birthday at the perennially favorite spot, the largest and greatest indoor trampoline you can imagine.  The kids had a great time.  The girls were still young enough that they wanted us parents out there playing with them.  It was myself and Cullen, the dad of Claire’s friend Maddie, who took on the important duty of “bouncing” the kids.  This involved the girls laying all around a parent on the trampoline, then the parent jumping up and down as high as possible, trying to bounce the kids up as much as possible. This was tiring work, and soon sweat was dripping from my brow.  The kids also liked to be chased across the trampoline, and some were quite good at taunting.  I required many breaks to avoid collapsing in exhaustion.

This year, Claire knew ahead of time what some of the kids were going to give her for presents.  They basically just told her at school ahead of time.  The two big must-have items this year were My Little Pony stuff and a Rainbow Loom.  Claire adores My Little Pony and wants to know who your favorite characters are (Rainbow Dash and Pinky Pie of course, and Apple Jack is great but under appreciated).  Some of the other kids at school think My Little Pony is babyish, but Claire stands her ground.  She just loves that cute little ponies.  The other big item was a  Rainbow Loom, a rubber-band loom that is super popular at school.  Claire got to take hers to school and use it on the playground and the bus, like her friends.

End of Summer Party

| patmcg

With sumer dragging on and Claire not having seen much of her friends the last couple of months, I felt like she could use a little lift before school suddenly started.  We decided to have an end-of-summer party to match Claire’s beginning-of-summer party.  Claire invited a small group of friends over to celebrate basically going back to school and being together again.  Really, it was just a glorified play date.

The party featured a small inflatable pool with the world’s smallest water slide, water sprayers, and water balloons.   Yes, school is starting, but it is really still summer outside.  Claire had also wanted to do a lemonade stand, and she happened to have a workable cardboard lemonade stand that she had made with her favorite summer sitter, Julia.  The girls set up shop on our front curb.  The lemonade, made from a mix, was $.50 per cup — or free if you don’t have any money or too large of a bill to make change.  Claire’s friends were really good at hailing cars, bikers, and walkers.  It helped that the weekend exercise types were out in force.  The girls ended up selling about $12 of lemonade in about 45 minutes.  They split up the money and resolved to donate part to a cause of their own choosing.  One friend was going to donate all her money to the Philippines.  Another’s went to the pet shelter.  Claire is saving hers for Winter the injured dolphin, who is featured in a favorite movie of hers.

The girls also put on an impromptu show when the various parents came for pickup.  It was sort of a very disorganized Hawaiian luau of sorts.  It was fun, and the parents clapped, etc.  Then the kids ran and hid to try to avoid going home, if only for a few more minutes.

The girls happily included Molly in the water play, the lemonade stand , and the show.  They all think Molly is adorable and want a little sister like her.

BFF in Beaulieu-sur-Mer

| patmcg

Today’s mail included a postcard addressed to Claire, from Beaulieu-sur-Mer, France.  It is a note from her kindergarten friend Juliet, on vacation in the South of France, enjoining Claire not to forget her “BFF”.  I was actually hoping to set Claire up with a play date with Juliet, but I’m not sure we can afford to fly her over to France.

Postcard

Postcard from Beaulieu-sur-Mer, France

Last Day of Kindergarten!

| patmcg

It does not seem so long ago that Claire started kindergarten.  Today, Claire successfully completed kindergarten.  Her final report card indicated that she has officially been promoted to first grade.  She also received a “Certificate of Commended Attendance” for showing up most of the time.   I am happy to say that Claire was not late to school once all year, and our morning off-to-school routine was “spit spot”.  It became such a solid routine that I could (and sort of did) go through it in my sleep.

The last month of school has been full of fun-themed days such as Friendship Note Day, Water Day, Pajama Day, Pillow and Movie Day, Bubble Day, and No Shoes Day, to name a few.  In fact, there were only two “normal” days in all of May.  Totday, the last day of school, was Game Day.  The kids got to bring in non-electronic games to play with their friends all day.  Claire brought in Zingo, Inside Game Daywhich is sort of a fun, kid’s bingo.  We saw at least two other kindergarteners carrying the same game into school today.  Kit has the week off, so we were all able to take Claire to school together.  When we dropped Claire off to school, all the chairs tables were cleared to the side of the room to make space for games.  Claire told us later that they really just played games all day.  They took a lunch break, but no recess.  This was a serious day of playing.

This was a good if sometimes bumpy school year for Claire.  She learned a whole lot, including a solid start on reading, writing, and math.  But not just that; she also gained some maturity this year, such as a better ability to focus and listen to directions.  There was also a slightly confusing monkey bar incident where Claire was apparently unkind to another student and even had to visit the principal.  Claire learned a lot about being sensitive to others from this incident.  Luckily, this was not quite as serious of a situation as we thought it was at first.  At first, we had bad information and thought Claire might be asked to leave the school!

Claire seemed to really enjoy kindergarten, and never complained about it or asked to stay home from school.  She would clearly have missed playing with her friends too much.  Her enthusiasm only flagged early in the year when she had a little trouble adjusting to her new school.  Claire also learned to love Extend-a-Care after school.  She seems to have figured out that Extend-a-Care is just a big play date every day after school.  She made some good Extend-a-Care friends, had lots of extra outdoor play time compared to coming home, watched almost no TV on weekdays (no time), and even started Girl Scouts.

We went to pick up Claire early from Extend-a-care, around 3:00, on the last day so she would not be the last, lonely kid at school.  When we got there, there were lots of kids, and Claire asked to stay at school a while longer so that she could do the water balloon fights and make sundaes.  So Kit and I went back home for a couple of hours to let her have her final fun at school!

The rest of the evening featured melted frozen yogurt and a shared bath in which Molly peed in the water.  Claire calmly noted that yes, the water did turn yellow, and kept playing.  We had to get them both out quickly and sort of sponge-bathe them.  Oddly enough, that was the first — and now clearly the last — time that happened all school year.

 

A Hoppin’ Good Time

| patmcg

Claire celebrated her 6th birthday today with about 20 friends at Jumpoline Park.  According to their website, “Jumpoline Park is for everyone who is seeking excitement and entertainment while exercising.”  It was actually a lot more fun than they make it sound!  Who cares about exercise?  These kids just love to run and jump!  Basically, this place is one gigantic trampoline, or at least a bunch of big trampolines spliced together.  It is hard to describe, so some pictures will have to suffice.

It doesn’t look like much from the outside…
But there is lots of fun to be had on the inside.
Here’s Claire with Coco, Zoe, and Hannah.
Almost every picture from the party was a blur.
Cupcake time.
The monkey theme came from Claire’s kindergarten class mascot.

Oddly enough, Claire’s Uncle Tim, who lives in Washington DC, recommend Jumpoline Park to us.  He said some friends of his had visited Austin and discovered this crazy giant trampoline place.  So we went to check it out and quickly estimated that it would be perfect for Claire’s birthday party.

We invited all of Claire’s kindergarten class plus a few “old” friends from preschool and the like.  I think we’re getting pretty good at these big kid’s parties now, at least when we can rent out a facility like this.  I have heard “horror stories” about hosting a party at your own home, with 20 kids running around tearing the place apart.  But this party went really well and was not too tough to pull off, even right on the heals of Thanksgiving (as always!).

Grammy helped with the preparations and was on duty as the official Molly watcher at the party.  She spent most of the party protecting Molly from bigger kids in the little bounce-house obstacle course.  Without Grammy, I am pretty sure we would have lost track of Molly, as in “Where is she?  Oh no, I thought you had her…”

There is not much more to report, but I do like to make a note of some presents since it might be interesting later.  Claire is opening two presents a day, and so far she has made out with…

  • A fresh influx of pink, girly Legos from Noni
  • A super-cute Lalaloopsy doll from Grammy
  • A Hello Kitty water dispenser
  • An indoor “princess castle” play tent 
  • Decorate-your-own frame and bracelet sets
This was just the beginning.  Claire’s official birthday is coming up soon!

Monkey Mail

| patmcg

Claire’s kindergarten class now has an internal mail system up and running.  The kids can send each other notes in the classroom’s mailbox.  So far, Claire has received several letters from her classmates, and they all say, “You are a great friend.”

I was talking about Monkey Mail with some of Claire’s classmates’ parents, and they said their kids all get the same message, “You are a great friend.”  And they always have a picture of the two kids standing next to each other.  It is very sweet.  Here is a perfect example.

Independence Day ’11

| patmcg

For July 4, we met up with some friends and went to the Tarrytown neighborhood parade.  The friends enthusiastically collected candy tossed from the parade and/or generally acted goofy in celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  Claire and Molly had fun too but were not quite as silly.

Soccer Sideshow

| patmcg

Claire has really enjoyed her first season of soccer on Team Tornado.  She doesn’t seem to particularly enjoy the actual game of soccer so much, or at all.  She seems to enjoy just getting outside, running around, and socializing with her fellow Tornadoes.  And she seems to especially enjoy socializing with one teammate named Logan.

Claire and Logan really hit it off this week.  It started during pre-game drills, when they started chatting about something or other.  All I know is they were talking and giggling a little bit.  Once the game started, Claire continued to try to chat up little Logan.  When they were both subbed out for a break, I offered Claire a drink of water, as I always do.  She thought for a minute and politely said, “Uh, no thanks.  I think I just want to go talk to Logan.”  Logan was dutifully waiting through a short lecture by his dad about (not) focusing on the game, and then proceeded to wander off with Claire, who was waiting nearby.  I apologized to Logan’s dad about Claire distracting him, and he said, smiling, “It’s okay.  He doesn’t stand a chance.”

Logan is on the far left of the top row,
over Claire’s right shoulder.

Once Claire and Logan were called back on the field, they were still chatting and giggling.  In fact, they just completely ignored the game.  The game was a mere distraction to them.  Somehow they ended up standing right in the middle of the field, gazing at each other, gently holding both of each other’s hands.  It literally looked like they were in the middle of their wedding vows!  Logan’s dad shouted, failingly, “Logan!  Focus!”  Right around that point, the soccer game, which was still going on around them despite their impromptu wedding, had an exciting moment.  Claire’s teammate Sullivan had blocked a kick on their goal and had delivered a strong kick down field towards the opponents’ empty goal.  The ball rolled right past Claire, who was still in the middle of the field, holding Logan’s hands, and his gaze.  Claire and Logan never even noticed the ball, which bounded down the field, within two feet of Claire, towards the other team’s goal.  The ball missed the opponents’ goal, but not by much.  It may have been the closest that the Tornadoes came to score that day.

At some point shortly thereafter, a whistle blew, and Claire wandered over to me to ask if the game was over.  I said I thought it was over.  It was the Tornadoes’ worst defeat this season, a complete loss, but I am sure for Claire, nothing could have been further form the truth.