funny

Sausage King of Chicago

| patmcg

Molly has been especially interested in letters lately.  Sometimes she will see a letter and actually say the letter, or least say a letter.  She might see an R and say “R”, or she might say “A” instead, but she definitely gets the idea that these letter shapes are significant and have names.

It is sort of a special thing for Molly to say a letter, not an every day occurrence.  But there is one very special prop which has Molly saying letters every time.  It is my Abe Froman, the Sausage King of Chicago, shirt.  Almost every time I am holding Molly while wearing this shirt, she loves to point at the letters and try to guess what they are.  She often gets the A, B, and O right.  Sometimes she points to the crown after the E, and I just have to say “crown”, which she now thinks is a letter.

If you’re wondering who the heck Abe Froman is, this clip from Ferris Beuller’s Day Off should clear it up for you.

By the way, this shirt has another magical power.  It starts conversations with strangers, many of whom instantly recognize it from the movie.  This shirt, acting on it own, even got me a free fountain drink at Rudy’s BBQ.  Another ten of those, and this shirt will have paid for itself!

Down with Rock & Roll

| patmcg

Today when Claire was in one of her occasional sour moods in the car on the way home from school, we were discussing different kinds of music to put on to maybe cheer things up.  Kid’s music?  Beach Boys?  An audiobook?  Rock & roll?

Claire did not like the rock & roll idea at all.  “I hate rock & roll!” she proclaimed.  “It’s the worst kind of music there is!  I hate rock stars too!”  She then paused to add, “And I hate movie stars!”

Yeah!  Eat it, Bono!

Once she got that out of her system, she was calm and relaxed, and we drove home a little more happy but with no music.

Oh so ironic… that was such a “rock & roll” way for Claire to work out her emotions.  Take down the man!  Yell it out!  I think she might have slammed a guitar into an amplifier if she didn’t hate rock & roll so much.

Running Scared

| patmcg

Molly is usually curious, and often brave.  She will climb, grab, or throw any unknown object with the best of them.

But Molly does at times get scared by ordinary things.  For instance, she used to have a paralyzing fear of shredded paper in her old classroom as a baby.  When they got out the shredded paper for a special festive play activity, Molly reportedly screamed and cried and crawled out of the area as fast as she could.

Apparently she still holds a fear of unexplained, colorful, festive items in the classroom.  The picture below appears among dozens of others from Molly’s classroom.  In the picture, you can see a teacher wearing a colorful parachute on his head, surrounded by delighted toddlers.  When you look a little closer, you can see Molly, alone among her peers, running away as fast as possible.

Molly seems to be thinking…

That man has a poisonous octopus on his head!  No, wait, that IS his head!  Run for your life!

Happily, later photos show Molly contentedly playing with said teacher and parachute, so she was able to calm down after the initial panic.  I should not make too much fun of Molly, though.  This quick, irrational fear may have been useful for some long past ancestor when, say, a colorful snake appeared in a tree above.  While her fearless friends stuck around to see what it was, maybe this ancestor ran for her life and was able to produce a long line of similarly panicked and embarrassed offspring.

Little Baker Molly

| patmcg

Molly has been pretty good about entertaining herself lately while I make dinner.  Tonight as I was chopping tomatoes, Molly waddled through the kitchen.   She was wearing a winter hat that resembled a baker’s hat, and she was carrying a bag of uncooked pasta in her arms.  She looked up at me without stopping, smiled, said “Hey”, and proceeded to wander around the corner with her pasta as if she were off to make her own dinner.  I still don’t know where that pasta ended up.

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.

Stairway to Something

| patmcg
Picture a baby climbing this…

Today we had finally packed up all the Christmas decorations and had the boxes ready to load into the attic. Usually we prefer to do chores when the kids (or at least Molly) are sleeping. But we had to load the boxes into the attic during waking hours because the attic stairs are right next to the girls’ room, and it would be loud and disruptive to do it while they sleep. So we just took both kids upstairs into the hallway and tried to do it quickly before Molly got into any trouble.

Molly almost immediately disappeared around the corner into our bedroom. But Claire alerted us, and we went and returned Molly back within our sight. At this point, we had the attic ladder down, and Claire asked if she could climb up into the attic to see what it looked like. We thought it sounded sort of dangerous for a five year old girl to climb up that rickety ladder, but we said she could go up there very carefully under supervision when we were done loading up. During this very conversation, Molly went ahead and just started climbing the rickety ladder up towards the attic. It was shocking to see this little 17-pound girl, who cannot quite walk, confidently climb this wobbly open ladder with at least a full foot between rungs. And she climbed it fast! By the time we fully absorbed what was happening, she was nearly half way up, and pretty soon she was near the top. We really had to scramble to keep her from actually going into the attic, which she no doubt would have done.
Hey, she could have at least taken a box or two up with her, right?

Bob

| patmcg

Kit and Claire went out to a Christmas sing-along tonight, and I was left at home to put Molly to bed. I was sitting quietly with Molly in the rocking chair right before putting her in her crib when she lifted up her sleepy head, looked over my left shoulder, and very clearly and loudly said, “Bob!” Then she quietly put her head back down. It was so convincing that I instinctually peeked over my left shoulder, just to make sure that a man named Bob was not standing there. Thankfully, there was only a wall and a bookshelf, as expected, and me and silly little Molly.

Toss Up Talk

| patmcg

Molly woke up last night at 4 am to discover, to her astonishment, that she was vomiting. Of course, she probably had no idea what was going on, but her cries made it clear she did not like it one bit.

Pretty soon, the whole family was awake and gathered around poor Molly. While Kit held and comforted Molly, I got some paper towels to clean up Molly, Kit, and myself. Claire, who was suffering from “walking pneumonia” and had missed the prior day of school, was very interested in what was happening and asked how she could help. Claire and I quickly removed Molly’s stained sheets, wiped down her plastic-covered mattress, and put on a fresh clean sheet. We sent Claire to the guest bedroom to sleep while Kit and then I held Molly until morning.

We kept Molly home from school the next day. Molly’s teacher called me in the morning to ask if Molly was okay. She said she had visited Claire’s classroom and saw Claire was in school, so she figured Molly was sick (oops, I should have called). She said Claire told her excitedly that Molly threw up in the middle of the night.

Molly spent the day at home with me mostly sleeping, drinking Pedialyte, not eating, and acting groggy. Her fever spiked to 102.

When I picked up Claire, with Molly in tow, Claire’s friends on the playground were excited to hear about Molly’s misadventure. After I explained to them what had happened, each of the cute little girls, each dressed in a cute little dress, proudly shared their own unique story of vomiting. One had vomited all over the carpet at night as a baby. One had vomited on the kitchen floor and got to watch a movie while her mom cleaned it up (it took quite a while, I am told). Claire got to tell everyone how she had vomited on the stairs while racing up to our bedroom. There was a debate about the best place to vomit, with “outside” being the consensus. Molly, who I was holding during all of this, enjoyed the animated conversation and, for the first time that day, smiled a great deal.

We headed home to try to get a little solid food down Molly and wait for Grammy to drive up and help with the crisis. Trusty ol’ Grammy would save Molly from being taken care of by a random temporary nanny and/or me from taking a third day in a row off from work.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Roomates

| patmcg

We had been tossing around the idea of Claire and Molly sharing a room since we moved into the new house. Claire had been unexpectedly excited about the idea. She seemed to love the idea of sharing a room so she and Molly could “keep an eye on each other” during the night. And she liked the idea of being “roommates” with Molly. We liked the idea of opening up a guest room for all the hardworking grandparents.

Today we finally took the plunge. Kit is off this week for an all too rare vacation, today the kids’ school is closed for a teachers’ work day, and Claire is still gung ho about sharing rooms. So today was dedicated to merging all of Claire’s stuff into what had been Molly’s much larger, poorly appointed room.

Among other activities, Kit worked with Claire on a special new sign for the new shared bedroom door. “Claire and Molly’s room” it said, featuring a photo of the sisters together and the letters E and G, their middle initials, included at Claire’s insistence.


We did have some friction over where to place Claire’s bed. Kit had a very sensible arrangement picked out, with Claire’s bed and Molly’s crib on opposite walls. Claire really really wanted to stick her bed in the middle of the room right next to Molly’s crib! It was a ridiculous arrangement by any normal standard, but I talked Kit into going along with it temporarily to ensure that this little experiment started off on the right foot. I did not want Claire to sour of sharing a room with Molly before they even started.


We put Molly to sleep first, an hour or so before Claire. As we got Claire ready for bed, she proudly explained how she would look out for Molly during the night. She explained to us that she would be the closest one to Molly if she had any trouble (crying, etc). “Who do you think is closer? Someone here in the room with Molly?” she said using her fingers to illustrate her position in the house near Molly. “Or someone way over here in your bedroom?” she said, holding one finger a couple of inches away. We agreed that Claire would be closer. “Yep”, she said proudly. She also explained that Molly would be in better hands now since three people would be looking out for her at night. “What is a bigger number: two or three?” she beamed.

Kit read Claire her bedtime story in our bedroom and then took her into the darkened room where little Molly was sleeping. It was quiet at first, but after a while, Molly started crying, as she has been doing a lot lately, apparently due to some new teeth coming in. I gave Molly a few minutes, but the noise got worse, and then it turned into talking and giggling. I went to check out the scene, standing semi-hidden in the doorway. Claire was patting Molly on the back, sweetly saying “it’s okay, little baby”. Molly, who must have been surprised and delighted to suddenly have her sister there talking to her, sat up and started talking and giggling back at her big sister. Claire ate this up, and leaned in for giggles and hugs. That was it, I had to step in and end all the sweetness. It was time to sleep! I gave Molly some teething gel and told Claire her job was to help Molly get back to sleep by laying down and showing her how a big girl goes to sleep. Claire took her duty very seriously and did as suggested. Kit would check on the girls later from the doorway and exchange hand signals with Claire indicating they loved each other and everything was going okay. After another period of giggling and flirting, mostly on Molly’s part, the girls were asleep.

When I checked on them I before going to bed myself, they were both asleep in exactly the same position, both laying on their right side at the same angle with their little arms sticking out the same way. What a pair!

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad