fun

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!

The Librarian and Mrs. Katrune

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We went over to Pease Park this morning, as we often do on the weekends.  At the park, Claire met another girl of similar age on the playground, and after a certain amount of persistence, Claire got the other girl to play with her.  Whenever we go to the park, there is almost always one other about girl Claire’s age, and they always hit it off, at least after some initial sizing up.  Claire’s technique used to be to simply ask the girl, “Do you want to play with me?”  Now she has refined her approach.  She followed the other girl around the playground, suggesting different play ideas until she finally hooked the other girl into playing.  This one was a tough customer, a being a little shy and wrapped up in her new barbie bike, but eventually Claire snagged her.

As a sample of how this kind of thing goes, here is how it went today…

Claire had brought along some of her books to the park, and the winning idea this time around was to pretend that they had secretly stolen some books from the library.  I, being the nearest adult, was obviously cast as the librarian.  I gave myself the name Mr. Potter.  I explained that they were free to check the books out of the library and didn’t have to sneak them out.  But that was a silly suggestion.  What fun would that be?  That is such crusty adult thinking!  There would be no drama if they simply checked out some books.  That is no kind of game at all.  No, they snuck the books out.

To add to the drama, they had also snuck some books away from a teacher.  I suggested Molly, who was wondering around babbling, could be the teacher.  I asked Claire what the teacher’s name was.  Claire instantly came up with Mrs. Katrune.  So there was poor Mrs. Katrune (Molly) wandering around the playground looking for her missing books.  Claire and her friend got to hide the books and run away when Mrs. Katrune approached, and all other manner of fun.  In truth they were very careful with the books, although they made some dramatic references to the books getting damaged.  I occasionally put up a protest that I needed my books back, or they better at least check them out properly!

Eventually, this game ran its course, and the girls ran around and did swings, etc.  Eventually even that ran its course, and they tried to figure out ways to make each other giggle.  At one point, the other girl briefly pulled her pants down, causing a roar from herself and Claire.  Claire thought this was cool and started to do the same.  I had to step in and stop the madness.  This was technically a new, previously unstated rule: keep your pants on in the park!  The other girl’s dad, who had been absorbed by his own toddler as well, came over at that point and reinforced the keep-you-pants-on rule.  The girls continued to push the limits in less risquĂ© ways, such as running to the edge of the park close to the road.  Molly was also getting especially reckless as this point, and it was clearly time to leave.

So there is it, the ups and downs of a day at the park with the girls.  It was a fun, delightful, perplexing day at the park which really needed to end about 20 minutes ago.

Halloween 2011

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This year, for the first time since Claire was a baby, we actually did trick-or-treating in our own neighborhood.  In the past, Claire has preferred to go trick-or-treating with friends in their neighborhood, but it did not work out this year on account of it being a Monday and not having time to get something like that together.  Claire handled the disappointment of trick-or-treating in the neighborhood with her family pretty well. 🙂

The dynamic duo working a house

Accordingly, it was the slowest, most low-key Halloween we have had in a long time.  Instead of running and giggling wildly with her friends, Claire, dressed as a fairy-Barbie, paced slowly along with us from house to house, keeping in good spirits but not getting to crazy.  In fact, Claire was so slow that she wasn’t even keeping up with Kit and me, and I was walking slowly from an injured knee (trampoline injury).  We think Claire was tired, maybe from the recent carnival.  Molly, dressed up as a ladybug, didn’t know quite what was going on, be whatever it was was pretty fun.  She and Claire go to go to each house together a team, where Claire would ring the doorbell, and they would wait someone to come.  While waiting for the candy, Molly tended to turn around a make sure Kit and I were still there waiting behind them.  Molly didn’t necessarily know she was even candy, but she did enjoy the process of collecting nice, wrapped objects in her little bag.  She did not actually eat any of her candy.  We do actually want to fatten her up, but not on Snickers and Blow Pops (yet).

This being a late night close on the heals the carnival, Kit and Molly pealed off around 7:30 to get Molly to sleep and hour late.  Claire and I kept going for a while.  Once home, Claire got to answer the door for some trick-or-treaters and distribute some candy, a duty which she seemed to prize.  Claire strategized about the order in which to consume her candy, two pieces per day, and ten went

Molly got to wear her costume to school

Claire’s very favorite treat was some crazy vampire teeth

Claire (and Kit and I) decorated a pumpkin
as Cinderella for a school project

Carnival!

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We all got to go to our first carnival for Claire’s school tonight!  This was a big, crazy shindig to raise money for the school.  After weeks of volunteer forms, raffles, meetings, and contests, the carnival finally manifested itself tonight between 5:30 and 8:30.  Usually Molly starts to bed at 6:30, and Claire at 7:30, but we went wild tonight and let them stay out for the carnival until about 8:30!

Claire had lots of fun doing a giant, bouncy slide and basically just jumping around and giggling with her friends.  Molly also had fun, but she did not get to actually do a whole other than watch other people have fun, but that was still pretty good.  Molly loved watching the aforementioned giant, bouncy slide, and she yelled and cheered like a cheerleader as each kid come down the slide.

The end of the night included some meltdowns from out tires, weary carnival-goers, as expected for a late, exciting night.  Claire’s happened when the haunted house was closed and we could not go into it, even though lots of people were still in the house at the time.  They had stopped taking in new customers since the wait was an hour, and the fair was going to close before that.  To Claire, this did not seem quite right.  Molly didn’t care about the haunted house, but she was getting tired and cranky in her own right.  So we got home and tossed the kids in bed and discovered that we were exhausted too.  But we had an awfully fun night and pitched in a little bit of money for the school in the process.

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.

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.

Capital Time

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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.

Claire turns 5!

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A very proud Claire turned five today. She is excited to be one year older all of the sudden. Leading up to her birthday, she had asked me if she would get taller when she turned five, since her five year old friends tend to be taller. She was sort of interested when I told her she gets a little tiny bit taller every day.

Her birthday fell on a boring old Monday this year. She had actually spent the previous four days at home for Thanksgiving, patiently awaiting her birthday. I had been tempted to let her open one of her presents early over the long weekend, but I held off, assuming that would set a dangerous precedent. I can just hear, “Please Daddy! It’s almost my birthday” next year.

We decided to push her big birthday party to following weekend, and for tonight let Claire pick where to eat for dinner after we picked up her and Molly from school. She was initially overwhelmed by the decision. She thought briefly about going to Jason’s Deli because they have hot dogs and free ice cream. But she decided against it because the ice cream would spoil appetite for birthday cake after dinner. She settled on McDonald’s, mostly because of the playground.

We ordered hamburgers and went out to the playground seating. So we sat out there on the dark playground alone as a family at 6 pm on Monday night. It was a little odd, but Claire was happy, and Molly was really excited about the whole thing. Pretty soon, a girl Claire’s age and her little brother showed up, along with their mom and dad. Claire went to the girl and said her usual, “Do you want to play with me?” And of course within a minute there was a lot of running and screaming and laughing. Claire got excited enough to climb all the way up the tall, dark, plastic tower and slide down the pitch black covered slide several times. This was unusually brave for Claire, who would normally be hesitant to climb the tower even when well lit.

We eventually turned loose a very interested Molly, who immediately crawled over to the bottom of the slide and tried to crawl up it, never mind incoming kids twice her size. Molly was overjoyed to get a shot at the slide, and she kept frantically trying to climb up the slippery slope and let herself slide down. With our help, she got to slide down a few feet at a time. She was overjoyed, and was having a great time celebrating with Claire.

Once we got home, we put an exhausted Molly right to sleep and did presents and cake with Claire. We gave Claire a little purple stuffed kitty with an unusually long furry tail, and an Annie costume. She had been going through an Annie obsession lately, and had been asking to be an “Annie actor” a lot, specifically asking for an Annie dress, an Annie locket, and tap dance shoes (by which I think she meant black dressy shoes). We thought this would be the perfect gift, and she was anxious to try it on. Once she got it on, though, for whatever reason, she froze up and started to look very awkward and uncomfortable. We really felt bad for her. I don’t think I have ever seen her look that uncomfortable in all her life, and why will always remain a mystery. The wig was really bad and didn’t really look like Annie; maybe that had something to do with it. Anyways, it was not a loss in the end. She would go on to wear that outfit many times over the next few weeks, but she would never perform any Annie songs or dances in it. She just liked to put in on after school and curl up on the couch and watch TV in it. Whatever makes our five-year-old Claire happy!