grandparents

(Re)discovery Green

| patmcg


Kit was on call this week, and her mom came up to help out in case things got crazy like they did last time. I took the opportunity to take Claire to Houston this weekend to see my parents while Kit, her mom, and Molly stayed back in Austin. Claire was really excited about the trip and kept asking when we were going to Houston. In particular, she wanted to get back to Discovery Green, where were were rained out by a sudden thunderstorm last time we visited.

This time the Discovery Green visit was without incident. I could tell you exactly what we did, but maybe pictures would tell a better story.


Christmas 2009

| patmcg

This was a great Christmas, especially for Claire.  My brother Tim and his wife Cindy came to Texas for the holidays along with my parents.  Everyone came to Austin, and we hosted everyone for Christmas for the first time.  Tim and Cindy really hit it off with Claire.  Claire had countless games and jokes with them all through the two days they were here.  She started things off by showing them her very favorite new show, a Pixar animated short film which Kit had recorded, called One Man Band.  She tried to get them to laugh and scream at all the funny bits.

Claire was pretty bummed out when they had to leave.  “When are we going to see Uncle Tim and Aunt Cindy again?”  When they were actually leaving on Saturday morning, Claire wanted to avoid an extended goodbye.  “If your’e going to leave, then just leave already”, she said disappointedly.  Later we told Claire we might go visit Tim and Cindy some time, and she said, “I really love that idea.  And that’s a fact!”  She was really sad to see them, and her grandparents Noni and Phil, go.  She loved all the fun an attention.  And the presents.

As Cindy noted, Claire is the perfect age for Christmas. At four years old, she loved every present she got.  There was no complaining about not getting the “right thing” or not getting enough.  And she just loved having all the fun people around to entertain.

This was the first year that Claire was really aware of Santa Clause.  She said in a matter of fact way that Santa was going to come by at night and drop off some presents.  She wanted to know if Santa was coming to our house “first” or not.  On Christmas morning, Claire showed up in our bedroom about 6:15.  She was concerned because she did not hear Santa Clause during the night, and she thought maybe he had skipped our house.  Kit went back down to Claire’s bedroom, pointing out the stuffed stockings on the way down, and Claire was relieved to her that Santa had actually showed up.  Kit snuggled with Claire until the “morning light” came on.  The morning light is a small light we set up in Claire’s room, and it is set on a timer to turn on at 6:45 to announce the start of the day (ie, when she can come get us).  Claire patiently watched the morning light until it turned on, then she and Kit came back up to get me and start Christmas.  All the other family members were rousing around that time as well, and we got started on stockings right away.  Claire was thrilled with just the stockings, and did not mind taking a long break for everyone to get dressed and freshened up before opening the presents.

At three months old, Little Molly was not as excited about Christmas.  In fact, this year, she could not tell Christmas from the Fourth of July.  She was a little worn out from all the excitement of entertaining her aunt and uncle and grandparents on Christmas Eve, and she slept quietly upstairs almost the entire Christmas morning, through all the gift exchange.  She did not have a chance to appreciate her many presents, including one from Santa.  Molly’s time to enjoy Christmas will come soon!  You could say she was the big present to us this year.

Now this post could go on and on about all the fun of Christmas 2009.  But I better just jump to some highlights…
  • Not to be too materialistic, but this is always interesting later… Here is a partial list of presents Claire received this year:
    • A Band in a Box (from Santa), featuring a tambourine, a snare drum, maracas, and a harmonica.
    • A scuba diver Play Mobile set
    • A Crayola Glow Station
    • A variety of stuffed animals
    • An alphabet puzzle
    • A variety of books
    • Countless fun and silly little toys and gadgets
  • Molly received:

    • Soft play blocks
    • Teethers
    • Baby books
    • Baby puzzles
    • Clothes
  • Claire gave lip balm to everyone for presents.  She (and me and Kit) made up special lip balm packets from a kid-friendly “make your own lip balm” kit.
  • Christmas dinner was Texas style, feature BBQ beef brisket, black beans, cole slaw, and apple pie.  (I was a little turkeyed-out from Thanksgiving)
  • Tim and Cindy went running on Town Ladybird Lake and tracked down an award-winning public bathroom that Kit had read about. 
  • In the late afternoon after nap time, we loaded everyone up — all eight of us — in the Honda Pilot for a driving tour of the neighborhoods and houses we are considering to move into next summer. We also drove by said award-winning bathroom.
  • Claire noted on several occasional that the day after Christmas is Boxing Day.  And then Kwanzaa comes next.
  • Claire, my dad, and I went to Zilker Park in the afternoon to let Claire work off some energy.  The playground was full of happy little kids her age, some trying out brand new bikes.  Claire came home and had a good hard nap.  We repeated the same exercise on “Boxing Day”, and Claire once again had a good hard nap.
  • Claire’s night ended watching A Charlie Brown Christmas on her little potable DVD player.  Gradually five or six of us ended up watching over her shoulder.  Claire played her tambourine to the show’s music and distributed her other instruments to the rest of us for additional percussion.  We did not sound good, but it was fun.
  • Claire, of course, did not really want to go to bed on Christmas night, especially since she had so many people and toys to play with.  But she was pretty zonkered out and fell asleep quickly.
  • Molly was wiped out by the whole experience as well, or maybe she was just being her usual sleepy self, and slept through much of Christmas and Boxing Day, including some three-hour haps.
  • Kit and I were pretty wiped out too.  We had prepared to host Christmas and did our shopping in about the day and a half before Christmas.  Actually, Kit was wiped out from working 15-hour days, and I did most of the shopping and prep work.  (I had been up in Washington DC for a surprise visit for Tim’s 40th birthday party.  A big blizzard had hit DC, and I was stranded there an extra day, not leaving  much time to prep when I got back.)

Kit’s parents will come up to Austin to celebrate a late Christmas next week. They will certainly bring more entertainment, fun, and toys for Claire and Molly, and some much needed baby siting for me and Kit!

Molly’s First Day of School (Ever!)

| patmcg

Today was Molly’s first day of school. Of course, Molly was unaware of this exciting milestone.

Kit’s mom, Claire, Molly, and I all piled in the car this morning and headed off to school together. Molly is still adjusting to car rides and complained (ie, cried) a bit on the way to school.

Per the teacher’s suggestion, we dropped Claire off first at her class and then headed across the parking lot to the “small building” where the baby Chicks have their classroom. I had been taking Molly along to drop off Claire for a couple of weeks now, and Claire was still so proud to show off her baby sister to anyone who would look, including other kids, parents, and teachers. Yes, everyone in Claire’s class already knew Molly, and many were still fascinated by the sweet little baby in the car seat.

When we first arrived at the small building and set Molly down in the Chick’s room in her car seat, a big baby named Bobby showed up immediately to investigate. Once we got Molly out, he tried to climb into, or maybe tip over, her car seat. The teachers laughed and said that was Bobby.

The teachers suggested putting Molly in “the pool”, which is a round padded area in a sunny corner of the room. The main point of the pool is that is has short padded walls a few inches tall, so she is somewhat protected from Bobby and the like. We laid Molly down in the pool, and she did not complain a bit. She was immediately transfixed by all the neat stuff to look at. There were big windows with curly trees right outside, toys and mirrors in the pool, and interesting sounds from a few other babies.

We dropped off Molly’s milk, formula, bottles, diapers, diaper cream, extra clothes, pacifier, etc. We also filled out Molly’s daily note stating when she had woken up and eaten this morning. Then it was time to go, but it felt weird just leaving her there. Molly did not seem to mind or even notice. She was just looking around happily un her little corner. Still, we hung around a few minutes to make sure everything was okay. And everything stayed okay. So off we went, feeling a little weird, but without notice.

That afternoon when we picked Molly up, they said she had a great day. She did a lot of cooing and sleeping, and she loved to watch the other babies. I think Molly is in good hands and probably having more fun at school than at home.

Claire Awaits Her Baby Sister

| patmcg

While Kit and I were at the hospital delivering Molly, life went on somewhat normally for Claire.  Of course, we did need some help while Kit, Molly, and I were in the hospital.  Claire is pretty responsible, but she is not old enough to take care of herself yet.  If she did, I would just love to see what kind of dinner she would make herself, and when she would put herself to bed.  I picture her asleep on the living room floor, covered in chocolate ice cream with Horton Hears a Who playing on the TV.  But we will never know, because Kit’s parents came down to help out.  😉

Claire went to school today as normal.  Her daily note from school read as follows:

Note that Claire was “super excited” about her baby sister, for whom we had not officially picked out a name yet.  Also, it just so happens to be Mexican Independence Day, which is neat.  And who is this Pinky?  What happened to her today?  Pinky is the class hamster, and she died today.  Claire got the next door neighbor, Aubry, back in Atlanta when she was born.  And now Molly seems to have gotten Claire’s class hamster.  It is the circle of life, I suppose.

    Show Time!

    | patmcg

    At our latest sonogram appointment this last Wednesday, we learned that we will be delivering our new baby a little early.  We are scheduled to induce this coming Wednesday, in fact, about two weeks early.  There is no serious problem, but the sonogram suggested that things may be getting a little bit too tight in there for the baby, and it might be wise to go ahead and induce early.  Not ones to argue against the prudent advice of a doctor, we quickly agreed to the plan.

    So that gives us one weekend and a couple of weekdays to roll out the red carpet for the new little baby.  Fortunately, we actually were expecting to have a baby, just not quite this soon.  But we did have a bit of a start on the whole baby thing.

    With news of the early delivery, Kit’s parents literally drove half way across the continent from Washington state to Texas in about two days.  They wanted to be here in time to help out with any final preparations and just to support us any way that they could.  At first glance, it may not seem that there would be a whole lot to “do” except sit around and wait for the delivery on Wednesday.  But we wanted to get everything “just so” before the baby comes and everything goes to hell.  If you are going to have a mess on your hands, it at least helps to start out with a good baseline.  We ended up getting the house cleaned stem to stern by a dedicated crew of three maids for three and half hours, we got the cars cleaned and maintained (including an airbag error light), the refrigerator stocked, and countless other details.  Kit arranged her early leave at work.  I tried to get as much done as I could at work before going “off the grid” for a week.  It is not often that you get everything arranged “just so” in life, but we are getting pretty close today.  Based on what people have told us about having a second kid, we really need to get everything squared away if we want any shot at sanity for the first couple of weeks.

    Rolling Out the Carpet

    | patmcg

    With my parents here this weekend, we took the opportunity to finally get some basics in place for the matter of the new baby, due at the end of the month. We made countless trips to the local strip mall to pick out a crib and a mini-crib to fit in our bedroom and changing table. We also generally stocked up some baby supplies, although we did not have a good “feel” foe what exactly we needed. We had actually forgotten a lot in the last four years since we had Claire. Uh, what do we need? Diapers, I guess? Don’t we need some wipes or something? What do babies wear? It is too early for baby food?!?!

    We spent the rest of the weekend assembling and arranging said crib and changing table. The crib was not too bad to assemble, just standard please-assemble-this-at-home stuff like you might expect from Ikea. The changing table was another story. It looked simple enough in the store, but I was dismayed to find that it consisted of 128 separate parts and something like 68 different screws, all packed neatly in a deceptively simple looking flat rectangular box — an extremely heavy box. It took both me and my parents a lot of grunting and gasping to move the box from the car to the front door. I could not carry it up the stairs by myself. The simple act of unpacking the box and taking the outrageously heavy components upstairs individually took about 45 minutes. From the instruction booklet, it appeared that if I were to accidentally put one of the irreversible screws in the wrong place, then the whole thing would be ruined and we would have to go back to the strip mall and start the whole process over, probably after dumping another $300. Fortunately, I was astute enough to complete the project, after some sweating and cussing, without incident, and we did end up with a functional but disappointingly understated changing table, considering the effort put into it.

    Kit, being pregnant and all, was mostly able to offer moral support. And my parents entertained Claire, although she wandered up from time to time just to see what I was yelling about. Anyways, we sort of have a place to physically put a baby now, which is good since she is due just around the corner. I don’t think it would have been appropriate to ask her to crash on the living room sofa at this point.

    290 Express

    | patmcg

    Taking advantage of our new closer proximity to Houston, Claire and I made a quick road trip to see my parents this weekend. We left Kit back in Austin for some seriously overdue R&R. Kit was reluctant to let us go and wanted to talk on the phone a couple of times each day. She was usually waking up or falling asleep from a nap whenever we talked to her, so apparently the forced respite was a good idea.

    Claire and I got to Houston in no time. We entertained ourselves in the car by listening to audio books, namely The Cat in the Hat and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, selections inspired by her recent fascination with another Dr. Seuss story. On the way back, Claire fell asleep for about half the trip and estimated that the whole trip took about 10 minutes.

    We had some good adventures during our one-night visit to Houston. Claire got to play with my mom, briefly visit Discovery Green downtown, escape a sudden and unexpected rainstorm downtown, go out to eat in soaking wet clothes, consume an entire ear of roasted corn, dry off, go swimming, dry off again, and fall sleep on a giant inflatable bed.

    “I want to go back to Houston!” she would say more than a few times after getting home. Yes, Austin has a lot to offer, but two things it will not give you are her grandparents and (at least this summer) a good fun rainstorm.