fussy

Reality Check

| patmcg

You may have noticed that in most of these posts Claire comes off seeming fun, sweet, and good natured. That is not an accident; she is all of these things. But I feel like I should add a reality check here to avoid the inaccurate impression that Claire is only fun, sweet, and good natured, and every day is a breeze. That would actually be a little creepy. Claire is more complicated than that.

Besides being fun and sweet, Claire is also sometimes a fussy toddler. Or if not fussy exactly, she is often working on “asserting her independence” as her mom says, by resisting and disagreeing about arbitrary and trivial things. Here are a few examples…

Dressing Claire in the morning had become a mortal struggle for while. Taking off her pajamas caused a messy, crying fit. Putting the new clothes on was worse, as she did everything in her power to keep that shirt from going over her head. She can actually put on a fairly impressive display of strength if she is determined. It turns out that manhandling your crying kid for 20 minutes is not a good way to start a busy work day when you are trying to get out the door as quickly as possible. Fortunately, we may have turned a corner on this issue, as Claire is once again fairly cooperative getting dressed in the morning.

Sometimes if we give Claire a milk to drink with dinner, she will sort of slap the cup and whine, “Water!” If we exchange her milk for a water, she whines, “Milk!” Occasionally we’ll just give her both to see what happens, and she ends up trying to actually hold the milk, the water, and 3 or 4 empty cups plus their lids if we give those to her. It’s actually kind of funny.

Mostly Kit and I just get worn out by all of our demands, going around like tired zombies, or frustrated because we just can’t do everything or we can’t do any one thing well. I am writing this post after midnight, knowing I will be worn out tomorrow, but lacking any other time to do this. Of course, I enjoy writing the blog, but it’s frustrating because it basically has to come right out of my sleep time.

Ok, I guess that gives you an idea. I think I am starting to whine now, and it is a sign that I need to go to sleep myself.

Girl Can Talk

| patmcg

Most of Claire’s conversations still sound like this one today: “Baby Davis. Crying. Gracie. Infinity and beyond!” It is sort of a loose stream of consciousness monologue. In this case, Clair is noting Baby Davis’ common practice of crying, something which she sometimes imitates as “Waaaa! Waaaa!” Caire goes on to notate her other two main weekday companions, Grace of course, and Reese doing Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story.

But Claire is occasionally involving us in real conversations lately. She had this discussion with her Mom while getting ready for her bath last night.

Claire: Mommy, do it!
Kit: Do what?
Claire: Toby!
Kit: Who’s Toby?
Claire: I dunno!

And then she giggles and storms down the hall, returning a minute later to reiterate, “Toby! Toby!” Kit and I, by the way, have no idea who Toby is, but we were rolling on the floor laughing after this exchange. (Editor’s note: We later discovered that Toby is a blond four year old boy in Reese’s class who Claire thinks is especially funny.)

Claire is also forming more substantial sentences. This week when I was picking her up from Grace, Claire carried a book over to Baby Davis and proclaimed, “I’ll read it to Baby Davis” rather than just something like, “Read baby Davis.” Another example is if I walk out of the room, she’ll sometimes say, “Daddy’s coming back.” And today (Sunday), Claire was looking at a picture of herself with Reese and Grace and announced, “I’ll see Gracie tomorrow.” She may actually understand the idea of tomorrow and the basic schedule of two days at home and then back to Grace. On the other hand, she seems to invoke “tomorrow” to mean more or less the same thing as “later”, but a little stronger, like “more later”.

Claire sometimes even talks about her emotions. A few weeks ago, she walked into the living room after a bad wakeup from a nap, and with her lips puckered, she quietly said, “Sad” and then walked away. Yesterday in the car she was having a small fit because we took her drink away from her, and she said, “I’m crying.” And after a brief struggle this morning over changing out of her pajamas and into real clothes, she actually said, “I’m sorry. It’s okay.” The funny thing is that when she says something like this, that she is sad or crying or sorry, she almost always calms down immediately. It is almost like she is soothing herself. Hey, whatever works!