fussy

Fredericksburg

| patmcg

To break the doldrums of the family being cooped up at home for four straight days over the long Thanksgiving weekend, as well as to stay clear of Black Friday traffic, we decided to make a daytrip out to the hill country today. We decided on Fredericksburg as our destination, with it’s location only a 90 minute drive away and its nice, walkable Main Street, lined with historic buildings and unique shops, providing a nice medium between indoors and outdoors on this cold day. After my parents headed back to Houston, we loaded up an inordinate amount of baby supplies, snacks, and other essentials for the 90-minute trip. The plan was to drive to Fredericksburg and enjoy the countryside while Claire watched movies (Annie, etc.) on her DVD player and Molly had her morning nap. We even had a pair of earphones, Claire’s first, ready for the DVD player to keep the noise down so Molly could nap reliably.

We rolled through the hill country, Kit and I having a rare long chat (ie, more than 5 minutes) while Molly slept and Claire watched her movie. But it would not last. Right around Johnson City, the earphones idea backfired badly. Claire broke her 45-minute silence by saying — no, shouting — “Mama! Can I have my water?” Kit and I quickly told Claire to quiet down, please! Claire looked confused and dismayed, like “What? I just asked for some water.” In retrospect, Claire probably did not even realize she was shouting over her earphones. Anyways, the disturbance caused Molly to wake up mid-way through her nap. Within five minutes, Molly was crying, then shrieking, and occasionally spitting and gasping. We could not settle her down. This lasted for final 45 minutes to Fredericksburg, the last 15 minutes being stuck in gridlock on the final mile into town. Yes, Black Friday seemed to hit even Fredericksburg, way out here in the country.

Once we finally parked and got out of the car, Molly almost immediately stopped crying, and Fredericksburg was great. We strolled onto Main Street in the slightly cool, sunny afternoon. We poked around a couple of craftsman and/or antique stores, where Claire exercised her “one finger rule” for touching any wares, and Molly’s little arms were always held out of reach of anything at all. We had a delicious German-inspired lunch in a crowded corner cafe. We looked at old antique gates for sale in an alleyway. Claire said the gates looked good even though they were old and rusty, although she still preferred shiny, golden gates. Claire also enjoyed the koi pond in front of the old hospital. Molly enjoyed the crowds and a chance to crawl and climb (under supervision) on a nice iron bench on the busy sidewalk. We picked up a Christmas decoration and headed back to the car, where we gave Claire another lecture about keeping quiet. Then we loaded up and headed home.

Claire was very quiet in the car on the way back. When she did talk at all, it was a quiet whisper. This lasted until right around Dripping Springs. At that point, Claire was so engrossed in her movie that she once again shouted something out by mistake, and once again Molly woke up, and once again Molly cried and shrieked as if mortally wounded until we got home to Austin. After we got home, Molly settled back down pretty quickly and played with her big sister. Kit, who was understandably rattled by all the crying, took about 15 minutes to herself upstairs and then came down in a better mood. I would have hoped that this fun excursion would not have required a 15 minute “cool down” period at the end. Still, it was a really great day overall, even though I would give back about 90 minutes in the car. I am sure Molly would agree.

Breathe, Molly, breathe!

| patmcg

Molly had a bad scare this Saturday at the doctor’s office. It really started a few days earlier…
On Tuesday, just before noon, I got a call from school that Molly had a 103.5 F fever and was inconsolable. They thought she might also have an ear infection. I set up a doctor’s appointment for 1:30 and went to pick her up. When I got to school, the assistant director was walking Molly around outside to calm her down.
Molly spent the next two days at home with a temporary nanny. Her fever went down pretty quickly, but here energy, mood, and appetite were also way down. She went to school on Friday and had a decent day, but her daily note mentioned she had developed a small rash. On Friday night, Molly woke up around midnight crying, which is not terribly unusual. The unusual part was that she did not stop crying until after 4:30 am. Kit and I took hour-long shifts holding, but not really helping, poor Molly. Claire cleared out of the shared bedroom around 2:30 and slept the rest of the night in the guest bedroom. She was the only one who got anything remotely resembling her normal sleep that night.
On Saturday, while I took Claire to her ballet recital, Kit took Molly to the doctor again. Molly was exhausted and cranky from her lost sleep and fighting whatever was ailing her. During the recital, I got this text from Kit:

Molly just gave me a heart attack. She passed out when she got her shot. Seems ok now.

Yes, Molly actually passed out while receiving an antibiotic injection. Kit says that Molly had opened her mouth to let out a big bellowing wail, as she often does. But instead of actually letting out the big shriek, she stayed tensed up with her mouth open. After about 20 seconds of this, her eyes rolled back and she went limp. There was some panic, but the nurse and the doctor helped get Molly back to normal pretty quickly.

I am happy to report that Molly was in better health even by Saturday afternoon. The rash may have been a reaction to another antibiotic she had been on. Grammy and Grandaddy happened to be passing through town on Saturday and added some extra support as well. Molly slept well on Saturday night and was pretty much her normal self on Sunday. We even had lunch outside on the patio, where Molly put down some smoked turkey, beans, and papaya with a smile. Whew!

Not Liking the Car

| patmcg

Molly has, as a whole, not enjoyed the car rides so far in her young life.  When I drop her off to school and pick her up, she spends most of the time in the car crying, then screaming a really odd scream with strange pitches and timbres.  Then comes the gasping and coughing, and more crying and screaming.  Trying to reach back and comfort Molly does not help.  In fact, a tap of  your hand seems to agitate her even more.  Then after 10 to 15 minutes, we are at school or home.  It is not an easy 10 to 15 minutes on me and Claire, but most of all on Molly.

Thankfully, Molly has just started to have some quiet car rides.  Maybe a little whimpering or light crying followed by quiet, when she either falls asleep or just settles down.  Today she was quiet almost the whole way home.  It was actually disconcerting.  I kept looking back to make sure she was okay.

This dislike of car rides is something I had heard about before from several people we know, so it must be pretty common.  Thankfully, Molly really likes her crib and settles down and sleeps in there with amazing consistency.  So I will take that trade any day.

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.

Green Is Not My Best Color

| patmcg

Driving home from today’s swim lesson, traffic slowed to a crawl as police closed lanes and directed traffic. Just as I started to become irritated, the sight of a lady walking down the sidewalk with a crazy green hat and green-and-white striped stockings changed my mood. It was a Saint Patrick’s Day parade! Crowds of green-clad pedestrians were funneling their way down Greenville Avenue towards the apparent parade site. I started daydreaming about going to the parade. The parade route past the old brick cottages of Lower Greenville, coupled with the cool damp weather, seemed perfect for an Irish celebration.

Then Claire chimed in her thoughts…

She wondered why everyone was wearing silly green hats. I explained that it was for Saint Patrick’s Day. She should wear green to school on Tuesday, since everyone was going to be wearing green for Saint Patrick’s day. She took some exception to this idea. “Green is not my best color. I like pink! Pink is my favorite color! I don’t like green,” she explained. I told her she could wear green and pink. “No! I want to wear pink. That’s the only way to do it.” I said that’s alright, and just in case she was confused, I went on to explain that Saint Patrick was not me, her dad. He was a guy in Ireland a long time ago. Yep, old Saint Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland. What a guy. They like to celebrate him every year. Claire was not impressed, replying, “I do not want to wear green, and I do not want to go Patricking!” I loved that, the idea of “going Patricking.”

Anyways, I guess Saint Patrick’s Day is not really for three-year-olds (not even for rather Irish ones).

Claire Turns 3!

| patmcg

Claire tacked on another year today. She is now exactly three feet tall and three years old. To tell you the truth, this was sort of a tough birthday. But Claire soldiered through it quite admirably and had a pretty good day.

Claire had been talking about this day for a long time. For months, she had been asking, “When is my birthday?” Unlike last year, this time she really had the drill down. She must have been inspired by all the birthday parties at school. She has been reminding us not to forget the balloons and party hats and birthday cake — especially the birthday cake! She had been specifying a “red cake!” for a few weeks, but in a surprising and provocative move, she switched to blue in final days before her party. Further, she clarified that she was talking about the frosting, and she did not have a preference on what the inside looked or tasted like, just as long as it was cake.

The grandparents all planned to come up for the big day. The Houston grandparents made the trip up for Thanksgiving and the birthday, although Claire and I had just been down to Houston the weekend before. Grammy and Granddaddy would not have missed it for anything… except one thing, which stepped in and kept them back in Corpus Christi. They had to arrange funeral services and legal matters for Kit’s Gramma Marvel, who had just passed. We will all miss Marvel.

This next part is sort of an aside. The afternoon before the birthday, Kit and I left Claire at home with Noni and headed out to get some mylar helium balloons for the party. Kit knew from Marvel’s 103rd birthday party a few weeks earlier that Claire loved playing with these shiny balloons. We arrived at Party City and went straight to the the balloon counter. There, surrounded by countless colorful inflated animals and cartoon characters, was a gloomy and cheerless lady who initially refused to even acknowledge our presence. When we tried to ask about getting some balloons, she sighed and rolled her eyes like we were really out of line. She explained with some exasperation that we needed to give her “at least a day’s notice” for any balloon orders, and the balloons would probably not be ready in time. How did this lady end up at the Party City balloon counter, of all places? Maybe was just burned out from the grueling world of party balloons, or maybe the local DMV office was not hiring. We decided towait until tomorrow and get whatever balloons they had at the nearby grocery store, where they presumably could to blow up whatever balloon you want right then and there (amazing, I know).

Then it was off to said grocery store to pick out a cake. I was prepared to get burned on this too. If Party City could not blow up some balloons in 24 hours, how could I expect someone to bake a special cake in that time? I had just recently given up on the idea of baking one at home, because that was going to take away time from other fun. Not surprisingly, the grocery had no blue cakes ready to go. But they did have a really cute”character cake” with the frosting done to look like a furry brown unnamed Sesame Street character. I asked the nice lady at the bakery if they could do that one in blue. She said no, but they could do a Cookie Monster, who always comes in blue, and they could have it ready first thing in the morning. Now that is more like it!

The next morning was the actual birthday. Today of all days, you would have expected Claire to wake up early and excited. She did wake up early, but not because she was excited. She woke up because she was uncomfortable. She was acting worn out and slightly irritable. We would find out a couple of days later, when the doctor’s office reopened after the Thanksgiving weekend, that Claire has been suffering from a tough case of pneumonia and an accompanying ear infection. On her birthday, it turns out that Claire was in bad shape, and was even in some pain.

Knowing this now, I am really proud of the way Claire handled herself. Though she certainly felt miserable, she managed to enjoy herself, especially as long as we kept her full of kid’s Tylenol. We had planned a zoo trip for the morning. With Claire sick and the weather cold, we made the trip pretty quick and took a monorail tour through the African section rather than walking around on foot too much. We dropped by the grocery store on the way home to get the Cookie Monster cake and pick out a balloon. We settled on a giant ladybug. Claire loved the balloon and played with it in the car and the all day. A week later, it was still afloat and still a favorite toy.

It took three of us to carry Noni’s and Phil’s present from their car. It was a huge dollhouse / treehouse, which took up a large part of the living room and was taller than Claire. She could not even reach the top with her hands! Only a picture can really describe this thing. Claire loved the present, but soon started to show signs of wearing out, so we skipped the other presents for the time being to avoid overwhelming her.

The pièce de résistance for the birthday was the lunch with cake, candles, more balloons, and of course the birthday song. Claire carefully picked out birthday hats, all with different colors and patterns, for everyone. (She would spend the next few days putting on each hat and pretending to be that person.) By this time she was getting exhausted. With her pneumonia, her appetite was down, and she barely touched her special birthday spaghetti. She managed, with some help, to blow out the candles on her special blue cake (and blow pneumonia germs all over it!). She could not quite eat her whole slice of cake, although still she did eat a lot of it. Birthday cake was probably the only thing in the world she would actually right then, so it was lucky we had it. Grammy and Granddaddy called in from Corpus Christi to wish Claire a happy birthday and to sing the birthday song to her. They would see her in person soon enough, just not today.

Claire spent the remainder of the day hanging around the house resting up, playing with her new tree house, and just cuddling with everyone. You could certainly do worse than that for a birthday, but still, I think we owe her an extra fun one next year!

Here is a short video montage of the birthday activities.

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The Glowing Towers of Dallas

| patmcg

Ever since it has started to get dark earlier, Claire has developed an intense interest in the glowing towers of Dallas. The first one that got her attention, and still her favorite, is the 921-foot tall Bank of America Tower downtown. Not only is it extremely tall, but is it also decorated with neon green lights from top to bottom, like a gigantic Christmas tree. Driving around Dallas, to and from school, shopping, or whatever, we sometimes catch fleeting glimpses of this tower, and Claire yells, “There’s the green tower!” Claire’s theory is that a prince lives in the top of the tower, and kids live on the other floors. At one point, Claire became so obsessive about this tower that she cried and yelled when she could not see it any more, and the disappointment ruined her mood for the whole night until we put her to bed. I think that episode was more about being tired or otherwise messed up than the tower itself. We talked about it the next day, and she sort of apologized for acting so mad about it and said she just wanted to see the tower again sometime.

Her fondness extends to other towers as well. She enjoys the Cityplace Tower, which is closer to our house, so we get better views of it. She calls this “the tower that matches my hair”, although she also knows it and the Bank of America Tower by their official names. (I personally like to call it Nakatomi Plaza since it reminds me of the movie Die Hard). From school she can see a clock tower and an office building with blue neon lights around the top. She says a prince also lives in the blue tower, but probably no kids live in the clock tower. You can tell she thinks these things through.

Fear and Loathing in the Bathtub

| patmcg

Not long ago, bath time was a fun and relaxing nightly routine. Claire played with her three little plastic dolphins in the bubbly, warm water. We listened to lazy music and ended up all clean and sleepy for bedtime.

Those days seem to have passed, at least for the moment. Bath time, especially since we moved to the new house in Dallas, has become a stripped down, sometimes frantic, usually unhappy affair. Gone are the bubbles; Claire does not want bubbles any more. And the favorite old “Sleepy” and “Moonlight” playlists that we had gradually worked to perfection on our iPod are no longer welcome; Claire prefers silence. The water is “too hot!” even if it is tepid. She cries and screams when we start the bath water, and she ends up running all over the house, screaming, usually naked, before we scoop her up and make her clean up. She protests, “I’m not dirty! I don’t need a bath!” The scene has at times devolved into some of the biggest fits she has ever had. We often just splash her off as she stands in the tub. She ends up going to bed mad and frustrated, but at least sort of clean. Mostly, we are trying to stick somewhat to the routine.

We have asked her why she doesn’t like baths, but she does not give us any real answer.  It could be related to potty training, as she has had a couple of “accidents” in the bath, and they freaked her out. Or sometimes it seems like she just does not want to go to sleep, and she knows darn well that bath time means bedtime. She just wants to keep playing, even though she is obviously tired.

Last night, we had a rare fun bath time. We played and splashed and laughed. She was happy as we got her into her pajamas and off to bed. Hopefully this is the start of a trend. All three of us could use some relief from the nightly bath trauma.

I don’t like it!

| patmcg

For a while now, we have been reading to Claire a big picture book called The Inside Out Book of Texas, partly for fun and partly to prepare for next summer’s move to Dallas. The first page features a big drawing of the Dallas skyline. Normally when Claire sees it she happily says, “Dallas!” But yesterday she saw it and said, “I don’t like Dallas!”

At first, this seemed like a bad sign for the big move, but I felt better today when Claire repeatedly declared, “I don’t like Thomas!” Thomas, of course, is Claire’s very favorite train character. She even named her favorite bathtub toy, an orange plastic dolphin, after him.

Claire has since claimed to dislike our dog Muffin and butterflies — yes, butterflies. It’s almost a good thing to be on Claire’s “don’t like” list these days. I expect that tomorrow morning I will hear her say, “I don’t like pancakes!” even as she gobbles them down.