funny

A Girl Named Leo

| patmcg

These days, Claire won’t tell you who she is, but she sure will tell you who she isn’t.

The other day, Kit said, “Let’s go to dinner, y’all” and Claire responsed, “I’m not a y’all!” We couldn’t tell whether Claire was intentionally making a joke, but it was funny either way.

Today when I picked Claire up from daycare, her teacher, Ms. Laura, said “Goodbye, sunshine!” to which Claire, of course, responded, “I’m not a sunshine!” Claire had a coy smile on her face when she said it, so I think it was actually meant as a joke. Ms. Laura got a chuckle out of it too.

Even if you call her by her actual name, that is “Claire”, she takes exception to it. She insists on going by June or Leo (from Little Einsteins), Dora or Diego, also of TV fame, or one of her classmates like Ian or Sydney. If I say, “It’s time to go to school, Claire” she insists, “I’m not Claire! I’m Diego!” She also insists that Kit and I are Dora or Boots or Leo or someone else to go with her character. We don’t really “do” anything anything else to act like these characters, but Claire seems to get a kick out of it anyways.

By the way, she does not just occasionally pretend to be Leo or Dora or whatever. She does it all the time, all day. You can never get away with calling her Claire, even during the course of an entire weekend. It is always, “I’m not Claire, I’m Leo”, sometimes even if you did not actually call her Claire. You might simply say, “I’ll be right back”, and she will respond, “I’m not Claire, I’m Diego.” I guess she just wants to be sure we know.

Career Options

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Claire is showing distinct interest in a few career fields at this point.

We were recently looking at pictures of the visit we took to the Atlanta History Center  few months ago. This is where Claire manned a pretend fast food drive-through window, chirping “You want a combo?” over and over. These pictures got her going on this game again, but now she is a little more verbose. After accepting her offer of a combo, she’ll say something like, “Let me see if I can find a combo.” Then she pretends to find a combo and then says, “That’s a dollar-eight” with a big smile on her face. You can always settle up with two pennies, which is the flat cost of any transaction with Claire. This may not be a well-paying line of work, but she does seem to enjoy it.

Her other perennial favorite is being a doctor. Now she puts on a whole show. She’ll come up to you and furrow her brow to look real concerned and say, “You hurt your knee?” After establishing that your knee is hurt, she invents some way to treat it. Her methods involve pressing a random toy against the affected area, rubbing it with her hands, or kissing it. Then she proudly says, “You’re all better!” and scurries off to find another knee to heal. She seems to be a knee specialist, I guess because they work well for her height.

Claire used to have a real stethoscope, donated to her from her mom. But now, much to her dismay, it is missing. She is always looking for it and asking me and her mom if we have seen it. She likes to use it as part of her examination, listening carefully to our knees, and sometimes to our shoulders if we are sitting down on the floor. Our knees and shoulders sometimes say, “Mommy, mommy, mommy” or “Daddy, daddy, daddy” slow and steady like a heartbeat. She has also been know to treat a bad knee by pressing her stethoscope against it with just the right touch.

Other interests, practiced less often but just as passionately, include being a sailor, a pirate, a singer, a dancer, or a comedian who does a “dumb guy” schtick with a funny slow voice. She has yet to show real interest in my field, computers, unless it involves watching videos of herself on the iMac.

Striking Out On Her Own

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Claire and I had this conversation in the car today, perhaps inspired by talk of the move to Texas.

Claire: Daddy, I’m moving to my own house.
Me: Oh really? Wow! (feigning belief) How big is the house?
Claire: Big enough, Daddy! Big enough!

She sounded pretty serious.

Crooner

| patmcg

Claire likes to sing her own little songs about different people now. She’ll pick a person and sing a little song. Sometimes it even sounds pretty good. Normally her songs go like this one about Muffin.

“Muffin is a wonderful doggy, Muffin is a wonderful doggy, so wonderful, Muffin, Muffin, Muffin.”

She doesn’t sing it to any tune I can readily identify, but it might be inspired by “Frere Jacques”. She adapts this same format to the people in her life, like, “Grammy is a wonderful lady…”

One day Kit and I were driving to dinner with Claire, and she started singing a different variation, about our jobs. “Mommy is a doctor, Mommy is a doctor.” Then she started singing, “Daddy is a ….” After a long pause she sort of mumbled something quietly to herself, like “Daddy is a …. mrpahpahpah”. She couldn’t figure out what I was besides a daddy! After a few more seconds, Claire found another way out of the conundrum. “Daddy is a … handsome guy!” (Later, she changed it to “office guy”)
Thanks for compliment, Claire, but for future reference I am a “systems analyst”. Don’t worry, I don’t know what it means either, but it seems to have something to do with computers.

Dancing with the Cows

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We are in the middle of selling our house in Atlanta right now. “Fantastic Renovated Bungalow with Finished Basement!”, anyone? So far, no offers. There are 22 houses for sale in our little neighborhood of Woodland Hills, so it is going to be tough.

Anyways, someone had arranged to look at the house this evening, and we all had to clear out of the house between 5:30 and 6:30. So Kit picked up Claire from Grace, I dropped Muffin off at our friend Melissa’s house, and we all met up at Chick-fil-A where we could turn Claire loose on the playground for a while. They were having some sort of kid’s night there, and the place was crawling with kids. Claire played a “spin the wheel” game, where in reality she won a Cinnamon Cluster, but thankfully they gave her a little toy cow with a sign reading “Eat mor chikn” instead.

As we ate dinner, a really big guy in a cow custume started wandering around the place waving at the kids. At first, Claire was a little scared of the six-foot-tall walking cow, as I think any sane person would be. But she did wave back at him, softly saying, “Hiiiii.” Besides that, it was mostly an arms-length situation, and the cow went on his way to pester some other kids.

After gnawing on some more chicken nuggets, Claire got her courage up and hopped out of her chair without a word. She waddled across the crowded restaurant all by herself straight for the giant cow. I was hoping the cow would not accidentally step on her. He did not, and in fact he crouched down and waved at her. Claire then stepped forward and hugged the cow’s large legs. After a lot of staring and waving between the cow and Claire, the situation bizarrly turned into a dance-off! The cow stomped his foot, then Claire stomped her foot. The cow wiggled his arm, then Claire wiggled her arm. Eventually Claire took the lead, doing some light hopping and then some hilarious rear-end wiggling, some serous getting-down. The giant cow matched her step for step. After that it went back to some waiving and stomping, and then I had to escort Claire away from the gigantic cartoonish cow to give other kids a chance to play with him.

Claire made another break for the cow a few minutes later, but by then it was getting late and we needed to do some errands before heading home. Sadly, we did not have all night to watch our daughter dance with a giant cow. Wow, that is a really weird sentence. But we were very proud of Claire for being so brave as to go after that “silly dancing cow”, as she would recollect later before going to bed.

Still Can’t Read

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Claire was in her room looking at a pile of her books before bath time this evening. Then she brought a big board book into the bathroom where I was drawing her bath and getting everything ready for bedtime. She asked me to read the book, and I said sorry, not right now, I am busy. She threw the book down and started crying. Usually she gets a little annoyed, but not that upset, when I tell her I’m busy. So I asked her what was the matter. She looked down, with tears in her eyes, and said in a quiet voice, “I’m too little to read it.” It was so sweet and sad. Then Kit showed up and read the book to her and cheered her up. I am afraid Claire has a pretty long wait before she can read books “all by her own self”, as she says, but it is nice to see she is motivated.

Many New Questions

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Claire has started to ask some rather interesting questions about the world.

For example, you may recall that she likes to pretend to be working at a fast food drive-through, sticking her head out and saying, “You want a combo? You want cheese?” It still cracks us up. Lately, she has extended this game to sit-down dining, holding a notepad and crayon in hand, saying, “You want bar-b-que? You want Diet Coke?” Anyways, the other night at dinner Claire said, “Combo? What’s that? I’ve never seen a combo.” It must seem funny to her. Every time you ask for a combo, you get a hamburger, fries, and a drink instead. But what the heck is a combo? It must be some kind of food. Does it taste good?

Claire also noted recently that she has never seen a dinosaur. This is a pretty remarkable observation. She has seen most of the other animals we talk about, at least at the zoo or the aqauarium. She has seen elephants, lions, meerkats, whales, sharks, birds, and countless other fun animals. But what is with these reclusive dinosaurs? There is no dinosaur display at the zoo. I told her that is good because they are awfully big and fast and scary, to which she agreed, “Yeah!” and did a big roar sound. I also told her they have a dinosaur skeleton on display at the airport, but that did not especially interest her.

She also seems to be grappling with the seemingly arbitrary distinction between girls and boys. This topic came up during dinner when her school friend Nathan was mentioned as being a boy. “Girls and boys. What’s that? That’s silly!” This one I could not readily explain other than to say that they’re all just kids. But she has a good point. Why do you have to specify someone’s gender every time? You might as well use different words for kids with different colored hair.

It is a strange and confusing world indeed.

Barney for President

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Tonight we watched the news coverage of the 2008 Iowa presidential caucus over dinner. There was a lot of talk about the race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination.

Claire was apparently paying attention, because after dinner, as she was playing with her Barney the Dinosaur stuffed animal, she started saying, “Barack Obarney! Barack Obarney!” over and over. She would do well in an actual caucus meeting.

Riding the Rails

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Today is a funny day, a single work day sandwiched between Christmas week and New Year’s Day. I was planning to send Claire off to Grace for the day, who had last week off, but it turns out Grace is still in Florida visiting her family, and does not plan to be back in Atlanta until Tuesday. So I unexpectedly have Claire for the day. After all the recent hustle and bustle of the holidays, and all the recent travel, and working on the house, I am going back to an old routine — just me and Claire, taking an unplanned day off. Losing the day to unexpected circumstances is tough, with so many things to do and so little time. But that is to worry about later; today Claire and I are going to have some fun with our day off!

I was initially thinking of going to the zoo, but it was foggy and cold and wet, so spending a lot of time outdoors did not seem ideal. But I felt sort of couped up and wanted to get out on some sort of adventure, preferably something new. With Claire’s continuing fascination with trains, I thought it would be fun to take the MARTA train somewhere. Something about zipping around the city on the train in the fog on New Year’s Eve sounded fun and adventurous. It seemed like a very Curious George type of thing to do.

But where would we go? We finally decided on Underground Atlanta because it was right by the main downtown MARTA station, and it had plenty of fun stuff for Claire to see, including, according to the web site, “caricature drawings and fortune telling, homemade candy, delicious dining and souvenir shopping.”

So I packed up a small survival and dining kit (diapers, wipes, a drink cup, a bib, a fork, and some snacks), and we headed out to Lindberg Station. As we hopped on the train, Claire gleefully yelled, “All aboard!” We grabbed the only free seat, with Claire sitting on my lap, next to a sort of rough looking guy with greasy hair, hunched over sleeping (or pretending to sleep). The train car was largely full of middle aged women all dressed in the same goofy black and yellow outfits, as if for some sort of Georgia Tech pep rally. As we headed into town, the train filled up with more and more Clemson fans. I guess there was a football game today, but fortunately things did not get too tense between the GT and Clemson fans. One of the GT ladies said something about a parade and pointed at the rough guy next to me, jokingly saying, “We should put him on charge.” She looked at me and said, “I hope he doesn’t wake up mad.” This was just funny, not scary; that guy looked harmless enough, and besides, he was way smaller than me. Once the train cleared up a bit, though, we did move to a more “comfortable” seat. During the ride downtown came the requisite Claire comments and compliments from all the GT ladies, with Claire introducing herself to our neighbors and saying, “MARTA train” over and over with a big smile.

We got off at Five Points across the street from Underground Atlanta. and didn’t get 10 steps onto the sidewalk before Claire saw something she liked. There were about 10 pigeons cruising the sidewalk among all the pedestrians, hunting and pecking for food. Claire liked to see real birds up so close, and she insisted that we stay for a good 15 minutes just watching them, laughing whenever they flew around a little bit.

I finally dragged her across the street, and there was more great stuff to look at. They were setting up for the big peach drop, which is Atlanta’s version of New York’s big apple drop in Times Square. There were food stands and lights and generators everywhere. Claire was almost constantly saying, “What’s that?” as we walked along. The camen the big wide stairs into the Underground, which was another prime attraction. We walked down each step, probably 100 of them in all, Claire enjoying every step. Awaiting us at the bottom of the stairs was a big bouncy moonwalk, like the one Claire had loved at the Kit’s pathology picnic a few months ago. I steered us clear of the moonwalk, as I knew we would not get a step further if Claire discovered it.

Inside the Underground were more wonders. We saw big colorful balloons, lots of CHristmas lights, life-sized paintings of Dora the Explorer and Mickey Mouse, a big wooden train, and lots of little kid-sized rides, including a school bus, a fire engine, and a tug boat. I wasn’t sure if Claire would be hungry yet, at it was only 11:30 or so, but when we checked out the food court, Claire said, “Daddy, let’s have some dinner.” So we split some lasagna and pizza, which Claire ate very, very slowly as we watched all the people around us.

It was getting late (in Claire terms), so we gradually worked our way back to the MARTA station, dodging pony rides and mini-carousels along the way, stopping for one last look at the street pigeons on the way back. The train was delayed, so I had to hold an increasingly tired and grumpy Claire at the platform for 15 minutes. We looked at the MARTA system map for entertainment, and Claire pointed out where she thought Mommy was.

The train ride back was different than the one down. Instead of colorfully dressed football fans, almost everyone on the train this time was dressed in dark winter coats, with dark hoods and hats, looking sort of glum and serious, or just tough. And then there was Claire, in her little pink pants and yellow jacket, happily taking her own seat on the aisle next to me. The train was pretty quiet. As the train took off, Claire said — no, yelled — “Here we gooooooo!” with pure glee. I could see some of the stone-faced passengers crack a bit of a smile. Then Claire started talking to the guy in the seat across from her, who looked like a tough hip hop artist along the lines of Dr. Dre or Big Boi. She said, “He’s happy!” The guy smiled and said hi. Claire sort of made friends with him, and he was very nice about it and said, “Is she always this happy? She is one happy kid.” Eventually Claire turned her attention back to me and said, “You’re pooping” over and over. I saw some of the people around us cracking smiles again. We finally got off the train, saying goodbye to all of our unlikely friends, waving as we walked away, fetching a couple more smiles for good measure.

We had a good adventure today, worthy of Curious George, but fortunately lacking the disasters that normally accompany George. Yes, another forced day off, and another good one at that.