funny

Another Mystery Solved

| patmcg

A few weeks ago, Claire was talking about her friend Jad at school.  She told us, “Jad has a wizard in his car!  He really does!  They keep him in a cage!”  Now that seemed odd and a little creepy, but kids this age have a powerful imagination.  I figured either Jad made it up and told Claire, or Claire just made it up herself.  The odd thing was that Claire was so insistent about it, and she referenced Jad’s mom.  “His mom even said they have a wizard in their car.”

So I was at a birthday party for another kid, Lucy, in Claire’s class.  While the kids had their bounce house fun, I chatted with the other parents.  I told Jad’s mom that I heard they have a wizard in their car.  She laughed and said, “Lizard.  Sometimes we keep a lizard in our car when we are watching it for our neighbors.  He does have a little cage.”  We had a good laugh.  She said she remembered when she told the kids about it at school. Claire seemed really surprised and said, “Really?!?!” in an astonished way.

I was telling Kit about this whole story, and the fact that it is a lizard and not a wizard.  Claire was sitting there in the room with us.  When Kit and I chuckled about it, Claire looked a little embarrassed and said quietly, “It’s not funny”, then turned her attention to a toy.  I actually kind of hated to squash this little spec of mystery and surprise in Claire’s world.

Coco & Zoey

| patmcg

One of the best things about our new house in Austin is that, by complete coincidence, we are just down the street from some friends of friends names Paulette and Richie.  Paulette and Richie are always having their adorable grandkids over to their house.  Coco and Zoey are about six months younger than Claire, but they are loads of fun.  Claire has been invited over many times to play on Sunday afternoon.  The afternoon is a dream for Claire, who gets to go nuts with the other girls.  There are games and books and snacks.  But mostly there is running around and yelling and just being silly.  It is probably the most fun Claire has all week.

Paulette and Richie are also very nice.  Paulette jokes that, since they live a half mile down our street, I should just pin a note to Claire and send her down on her own.

Asleep in the Hall

| patmcg

Claire has always resisted naps. When it is time for a nap at home, she normally stays in her bed but does everything she can to keep herself awake. We can here what is going on in there from the baby monitor we have installed. Claire has conversations with her stuffed animals, complete with distinct voices for herself and the animals. Sometimes the conversations are borrowed from favorite movies. She sings elaborate songs to herself, usually about the events of the day. Sometimes her room gets quiet for 10 to 15 minutes, and just when we think she has dozed off, she suddenly starts singing or yelling really loud, apparently to wake herself back up. We are told that at school she takes an hour or more to put herself to sleep, although she is very congenial about it. Now Claire is old enough to talk to us about it. She tells us that she does not want to go to sleep because she wants to keep playing. (I cannot blame her for this behavior since I do the same thing, only instead of talking or singing to myself, I fortunately entertain myself with the computer or an audio book.)

Today Claire was obviously exhausted when nap time came around. She spent about an hour talking and singing to herself before it got quiet in her room. After another 20 minutes, I went to see if she was in fact asleep. Sure enough, she was asleep — in the hallway outside of her room! I went and got Kit to see this unexpected situation. Not wanting to disturb her sleep, we left her alone and went back upstairs to work on a few things to prepare for the new baby. When we came back downstairs a half hour later, Claire was back in her bed sound asleep. It is hard to imagine Claire picking herself up, walking back into her room, and putting herself to sleep. But I can only assume the stuffed animals did not carry her back to bed.

Flippin’ Out at Flipnotics

| patmcg

How did we end up with the wild kid at storytime? Claire is the blur in the brown dress trying to get a mosh pit going.

http://www.blogger.com/img/videoplayer.swf?videoUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fvp.video.google.com%2Fvideodownload%3Fversion%3D0%26secureurl%3DqAAAAHfApvOOOB_WlESfHfM9b02QdFagT67qgHaUWrY6O3OAvoYyJUdnzDoJal8CU3NJoU5aqZhPwvCbD63yUMAuKQ2T4h4dOJwi6jEuqLj4eEfZE2wH61ZMQpOG3gLkP81uP4EXu9304VLlRHJtNZH2qFURHPGLEoO5oKFPdSWkwHv2qTO73WUBywy0zQb6lh1SmcaWiiL6sfE294DJP9nHkzpQDsBYfieR1wVqX2-Q1635%26sigh%3DtUW4E-aKX0VFJknJxZs3umgknRM%26begin%3D0%26len%3D86400000%26docid%3D0&nogvlm=1&thumbnailUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.google.com%2FThumbnailServer2%3Fapp%3Dblogger%26contentid%3D76f8a57a0d9850ba%26offsetms%3D5000%26itag%3Dw320%26sigh%3DXTzCob8WgEv79DaTVY7dfuIOT1k&messagesUrl=video.google.com%2FFlashUiStrings.xlb%3Fframe%3Dflashstrings%26hl%3Den

Hats off to Laura Freeman for her inspired performance at Flipnotics. She really knew how to get the kids — or at least Claire — going.

No no no no no no no no

| patmcg

As I have stated before, this blog is more about the highlights than the lowlights of raising Claire, so much so that when I go back and read this in 10 years, it will probably seem like even the “terrible threes” was nothing but fun. As sort of a reality check, I like to toss in the occasional reminder that raising Claire is not always 100% fun and sweet. This is the type of thing that happens from time to time…

Tonight, Claire wanted to do some pretend cooking with her playdough. Hey, that’s a great idea. So I set her up with a couple of varieties of playdough and a some plastic plates and cups. That made Claire pretty happy, and then she asked for a spoon. I gave her sort of a leftover spoon that we don’t normally eat with. That way, she was not going to confuse her “playing” spoon with an actual “eating” spoon. When I handed Claire the spoon, she said she wanted a real eating spoon. I told her no, sorry, but we use the playing spoon for playdough. Usually Claire respects this type of rule reluctantly by peaceably. But not tonight. Claire suddenly started yelling “no no no no no no no no no no no no no no” over and over. It went on for literally 30 minutes, with her just sitting there in front of her playdough yelling “no” over and over. I did a few things around the house. Still, “no no no no no!” Finally I asked her to help cook our actual dinner, and that broke the cycle. She was happy again.

Kit gets this treatment much worse than I do. Kit can say, “Look, the sky is blue,” and Claire will respond, “No, it’s not blue. Why did you say the sky is blue?!” in a rather annoyed tone. They say this is a preview of the teenage years, and I can believe it.

Pack Rat

| patmcg

We spent a good part of the weekend preparing for the move to Austin, with the help of Kit’s parents. Claire has mostly busied herself with packing and unpacking various bags. Her favorites, by far, are her backpacks.

Backpacks have been a long-standing amusement for Claire. She spends a lot of time stuffing them to the seams with whatever toys she has on hand, plus maybe a twig or two (another favorite). Several weeks or months later, out of her backpack comes a missing toy, such as Leo from Little Einsteins or that one puzzle piece we had been looking for. She has also lately learned to add load on the outside of her backpacks, by attaching a balloon or a stuffed animal with a string.

But today she took her backpack stuffing to new levels when she asked us to help her put her little backpack, already stuffed to the brim with detritus, inside the other backpack. “Will you help me put my backpack in my backpack?” were her exact words. Common sense took over pretty quickly, though, and we were able to talk her down from this idea. However, she did manage to load up her big backpack to the point where she was literally unable to get up. She kept struggling to stand up from a sitting position on the floor, and was only able to get up with a helping hand or two.

Office Worker

| patmcg

For a few months now, I have been promising Claire that I would take her to see my office. She has been to Kit’s office at the hospital a couple of times, and she really enjoyed it. Claire knows I am not a doctor, and simply refers to me as an “office worker.” Hey, that’s senior office worker to you!

With time running out before the move to Austin, I finally decided to take her out to the office. We spent about half an hour looking at my cubicle and wandering the halls. Claire liked the names posted outside of people’s cubicles and asked if a “Joe” worked here. So we walked down the hall to see. The closest we got was Bud. The other names tended to be a little more exotic, such as Senthil and Thuy.

Claire’s favorite room was the conference room, which had lots of soft, rolling chairs and a big white board. Here is Claire pretenting to be a project manager:

Claire actually managed to put the fun back into project management!

Dream Day

| patmcg

Somehow Claire and Kit got into a conversation about Claire’s perfect day. Claire described it as:

  1. Her cast would be off so she could walk wherever she wants
  2. There would be no pond monsters (who are from her favorite scary book, The Dark, Dark NIght, and have been haunting her dreams)
  3. We would go to Chick-fil-a (probably more for the playground than the food)
  4. We would all go get ice cream.

I bet if she really thought about it hard, she would also probably include no nap and staying up playing as late as she wants. I picture a bloated, exhausted, and sweaty Claire snoozing on the floor in the living room, which of course is a sign of a truly good day.

Giggle Bean

| patmcg

Kit was putting Claire to sleep when I suddenly head loud laughing coming from upstairs. After a pause, there was more laughing. It kept going on and off. I was wondering what was going on when Kit showed up and explained.

Kit had said something to Claire like, “Goodnight, my little snuggle bean.” In response, Claire threw up her hands and said in a vaguely New Jersey-ish sort of way, “Do I look like a bean to you?” This cracked Kit up, which in turn cracked Claire up. Claire enjoyed this turn of events and repeated, “Do I look like a bean?” It went on like this for a while before Kit left Claire to entertain herself and hopefully fall asleep.

It ended up taking Claire a couple of hours to get to sleep. We could hear her in there repeatedly saying, “Do I look like a bean?” and making herself laugh. Claire, of course, has always tried to find ways to keep herself awake at night, and this was a fun new way to do it. Over the next few days, we heard the same refrain over and over from Claire. “Do I look like a bean?” As you can tell, the humor wears off after a while, but it was pretty funny the first couple of times.