growing

Wise Beyond Her Years

| patmcg

I was getting Claire ready for her bath tonight. For some reason, Claire observed that she was small. I said yes, she is small now, but she is growing every day. One day she will be really big, just like a grown up! Claire did not have any of this. She said in a slightly worried tone, “I don’t want to be a grown up.” The other day, when I picked her up from school, Claire said, oddly, “We need to figure out how to keep me from growing.”

I thought all kids wanted to grow up and be big so they can eat and drink whatever they want, and go to their fancy offices, and stay up as late as they want, and drive cars around really fast… you know, the whole nine yards. But Claire seems to have her eye on the ball on this one. She knows that being a kid is so fun, why would you want to grow up? It’s preposterous.

Let’s see what she says in another 10 years.

A Real Bath

| patmcg

A warm, bubbly bath has been a key part of Claire’s bedtime routine since she was just a little baby. It helps her unwind and tells her, “It’s time for bed.” Until tonight, Claire hast taken her baths in a small, blue, plastic infant/toddler bathtub on the kitchen counter. We had a such a strong bathtime routine that we could have practically done it in the dark (which is not out of the question with the power grid around here). We had her washcloths and pajamas stuck in the kitchen drawer below the counter, special playlists going on the iPod, and everything else you could think of. But alas, little Claire is getting too big for her plastic tub, and tonight she finally graduated to a real bathtub.

So Kit and I clumsily took a first stab at a new routine in the “nice” bathroom. There was an issue with the bathmat being too spikey, which stool to sit on, getting the water temperature right, and waiting for the water to fill up high enough (wow, that is a lot of water). Claire was happy enough to stand up in the tub, but it took some extra convincing to get her to actually sit down in the water. After that, the bath went well, and she seemed to enjoy being dried off and dressed on the cushiony bench in the bathroom. In the end, the new routine officially worked, as Claire went to sleep just like normal.

Goodbye, little blue tub! Thanks for all the hard work.