molly

Molly sees the doctor

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Today Molly was at the doctor for a weight check and sort of a very basic check-up.  This was at 11:00 am, after I had dropped Claire off at school, dropped Molly off at her school, squeezed in a little work, and then picked Molly up to go to the doctor.  Molly was covered in a layer of sticky orange goop when I picked her up at school.  I might have asked the teachers what it was, but was in a hurry, and frankly, I didn’t think much of it since she is often covered in something or other anyways.

These magazines were entirely too well organized.

By the time we arrived at the doctor’s office, Molly had removed both shoes and socks, as she likes to do, and produced a pretty smelly BM (“byem!”) in her diaper.  The check-in nurse thought it was funny that Molly was covered in orange goop and asked what it was.  I shrugged and said I didn’t know, and she thought that was even funnier, I guess since it implied that was just the norm with her.  I cleaned Molly up as we waited.  Two face wipes, six diaper wipes, and two diapers later, she was passably clean with just a few hardened bits of orange goop left on her face.  For the next few minutes, Molly climbed on the waiting benches and rearranged the magazines as we waited.


The weight check showed the same slight weight gain as usual, despite trying to stuff Molly full of calories for the last couple of months.  Besides the weight check, Dr. Miller wanted to get a general feel for Molly’s development.  She asked Molly some questions to get a feel for her verbal development.  Where is your ear?  Where is your foot?  Am I holding up one finger or two?  Molly answered all questions enthusiastically and appropriately.  Then Dr. Miller asked about her family.  Who is your sister?  “Caire”, Molly replied, still skipping the tricky “L” sound a bit.  The next question seemed tough to me: Where is your sister?  I was thinking… How could Molly possibly know where her sister is?  Does she even remember us dropping Claire off at school this morning?  Does she know that is a school?  Does she have any idea what Claire is doing there?  Would she assume Claire is still there?  Molly’s answer amazed me, not only because it showed her perception, but also because it showed she can say a pretty tricky word I had not heard her say before: “kindergarten”.  Yep, Molly nailed it.  These little ones really do know more than you think.

We hurried Molly back to school, rushing to arrive in time for her nap.  For lunch, Molly ate a peanut butter sandwich and some cheese in the car.  By the time we got to school, Molly’s her face had a fresh coat of peanut butter and jelly spread on top of the remaining orange goop, all on top of a contented smile.  She had also removed one shoe and sock, as per the normal protocol.  We arrived just as the teachers were quietly putting the kids down to sleep for their nap, and I didn’t have chance to ask what the heck that orange goop was.  Perhaps we will never know.

Seriously, what is that orange stuff?

Trip to D.C.

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This week, we went on our first full-family airplane trip!  We traveled all the way to Washington D.C. to visit Claire and Molly’s uncle and aunt Tim and Cindy as well as our long-time friend Andrea.  This trip was Kit’s idea so that the girls could get to know their one and only uncle and aunt, and she hopes to make it a regular visit to keep the girls in touch.  This goes with Kit’s philosophy that it is worth the effort and hassle to keep in touch with your family.  I was a little hesitant at the idea of taking an exhausting and potentially frustrating trip right in the middle of the busiest time of year, but I know Kit was right to get us all out there.
This was Molly’s first airplane flight ever.  It was also Molly’s first ever trip outside of Texas.  It was also Molly and Claire’s first visit to states of Maryland and Virginia and the territory (?) of Washington D.C.
The flight went surprisingly well.  We thought it might be tough for Molly to sit more or less still in a seat for three hours, and to not scream and cry when she inevitably got frustrated by sitting there so long.  But she actually seemed to enjoy the flight quite a lot.   She seemed to enjoy the novelty of the airplane experience.  She browsed in-flight magazines and catalogs from the seat in front of her.  Then she collected all the duplicate in-flight magazines and catalogs from the adorning seats.  Then she stacked them all on the seat next to herself just so.  Don’t even think about touching those magazines!  Don’t so much as look at them!  Any disturbing of the in-flight magazine stack immediately caused a shrieking protest from Molly.  But she always settled right back down once you … left … the … damn … magazines … alone.
Claire also enjoyed the flight.  One favorite activity was playing with some reading flashcards.  After she tired of reading the flashcards, Claire invented her own “game” with the cards, a game which was completely arbitrary and impossible to win until the she basically just agreed to let you win.  To be fair, she let her opponent use the same arbitrary and impossible rules against her when it was their turn.  So… impossible and arbitrary?  Yes.  Unfair?  No.
(Jeez… We’re still on the airplane out to DC, and this is already getting long.  Got to pick up the pace…)
We actually flew into Baltimore, where the rental car company offered us a free upgrade to a minivan.  So we drove around Maryland, DC, and Virginia in a Chrysler minivan with Massachusetts plates.  It was almost like we had somehow transformed into a different family.
Approaching Tim’s house in Arlington, Virginia, Claire told us to tell Tim she was shy and did not want to talk.  But on entering their house, Claire almost immediately repudiated this tact and started chatting up her uncle who looked kind of like her dad.
The next morning, Tim took us to the National Museum of Natural History to see a butterfly exhibit.  The girls liked the butterflies, but Claire loved the mummies and the other Egyptian artifacts around the corner, past the insects, which Claire quickly bypassed because she was creeped out.  Claire was fascinated that the Egyptian mummies were real people from long ago.  She was a little bit surprised that mummies were actually real, perhaps thinking they fell into the not-so-real realm of fairies and ghosts. Kit got Claire a kids’ book about ancient Egypt from the museum store before we left, and it quickly turned into Claire’s favorite new book.  Claire also loved the animal skeletons, especially the monkeys since those are her class mascot at school.  And she loved the gems, rubies, and diamonds exhibit.  She also liked the dinosaurs a lot.  Basically, Claire loved the National Museum of Natural History, as did we all.  Molly liked the museum too, most of all when we let her out of the stroller to walk around on her own.  She seemed to like the skeletons best of all.

The girls admiring a “please touch” gemstone.
Me and Molly with Uncle Tim in the butterfly house.

Skeletons = fun

Playing it cool by the monkeys
The next day, Kit, Claire, Molly, and I headed out to see our college friend Andrea in Silver Spring, Maryland.  Andrea is providing foster care for two girls, ages 4 and 12, who we had not yet met.  Claire and the younger girl, Caitlin, hit it off nicely.  They were pretty quickly dancing and singing around the house.  They made a few trips into the bathroom together to say “bathroom words” in the one place where that was okay.  So were heard them in there yelling words like “toilet” and “diarrhea” over and over and giggling wildly.  The bathroom words were probably what sealed their friendship more than anything.  Claire and Caitlin settled down and drew pictures together.  Molly played with Caitlin’s mega-blocks and generally hung out.  We eventually walked down to the neighborhood park, where the girls played themselves nearly to exhaustion, Claire showing off her new monkey-bar skills to the younger Caitlin.  Molly had the best time of all, throwing herself down the twisty slide in as many odd and dangerous ways as possible, but walking away okay as usual. After the park, it was getting late and time to head back to Tim’s house.  Claire knew she was having to say goodbye to a great new friend, and she said to Caitlin, “I hope I see you again some day”, looking down glumly at the ground.  I nearly wept.

Claire and Caitlin drawing together.

For lunch, Molly pulled up a chair for herself
and refused a taller chair or a lap to sit on.
Molly at the park in her vaguely superhero outfit.

Sad goodbyes with Caitlin.

Back a Tim’s, Claire and Molly settled into more fun with their aunt and uncle.  Claire loved to hang out in Tim’s basement with Tim.  She kept him cornered down there for an hour at a time, chatting him up and playing with the exercise equipment down there.  When I went down to see what they were up to, they were sitting on exercise balls talking.  Tim, who has never really known a 6-year-old girl, as far as I know, explained that they were “just talking about Fancy Nancy and stuff like that.”  Claire also loved the chin-up bar in the basement.  She would hang from it and swing like a monkey.

Molly was kept close at hand the whole time at Tim’s house to keep her from provoking Tim’s two sweet but large and energetic dogs, as well as the general watch to “keep Molly’s body safe” as we are always like to do.  Plus Molly generally needed to sleep during most of the hours actually in Tim’s house.  She did like to play in the guest room bed and eat apples, though.
Molly enjoying the guest room.
So it was a great visit, if only for two full days in town.  It was tough to say goodbye, especially for Claire, who had grown quite attached to her aunt and uncle and their super fun house and city.  But Claire had also been sorely missing her teddy bear, who she decided to leave at home so she would not lose him.  When we got home, Claire spent a lot of time cuddling with and talking to her teddy and other stuffed animals, which was the first time she had shown so much interest in them.  I am glad she had her teddy or else she would have likely been crying over the fine friends she left behind in DC.

The morning after we got home, we had the national news on the television.  A reporter was covering something political from Washington DC, live, with the Washington Monument in the background.  Claire immediately recognized the setting and ecstatically said, “Hey!  Look!  She’s in Washington!”  Yes, besides meeting some great people and having a really fun time on her trip, Claire also got to see a true famous place.  And mummies.  You can’t do much better than that!

The Librarian and Mrs. Katrune

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We went over to Pease Park this morning, as we often do on the weekends.  At the park, Claire met another girl of similar age on the playground, and after a certain amount of persistence, Claire got the other girl to play with her.  Whenever we go to the park, there is almost always one other about girl Claire’s age, and they always hit it off, at least after some initial sizing up.  Claire’s technique used to be to simply ask the girl, “Do you want to play with me?”  Now she has refined her approach.  She followed the other girl around the playground, suggesting different play ideas until she finally hooked the other girl into playing.  This one was a tough customer, a being a little shy and wrapped up in her new barbie bike, but eventually Claire snagged her.

As a sample of how this kind of thing goes, here is how it went today…

Claire had brought along some of her books to the park, and the winning idea this time around was to pretend that they had secretly stolen some books from the library.  I, being the nearest adult, was obviously cast as the librarian.  I gave myself the name Mr. Potter.  I explained that they were free to check the books out of the library and didn’t have to sneak them out.  But that was a silly suggestion.  What fun would that be?  That is such crusty adult thinking!  There would be no drama if they simply checked out some books.  That is no kind of game at all.  No, they snuck the books out.

To add to the drama, they had also snuck some books away from a teacher.  I suggested Molly, who was wondering around babbling, could be the teacher.  I asked Claire what the teacher’s name was.  Claire instantly came up with Mrs. Katrune.  So there was poor Mrs. Katrune (Molly) wandering around the playground looking for her missing books.  Claire and her friend got to hide the books and run away when Mrs. Katrune approached, and all other manner of fun.  In truth they were very careful with the books, although they made some dramatic references to the books getting damaged.  I occasionally put up a protest that I needed my books back, or they better at least check them out properly!

Eventually, this game ran its course, and the girls ran around and did swings, etc.  Eventually even that ran its course, and they tried to figure out ways to make each other giggle.  At one point, the other girl briefly pulled her pants down, causing a roar from herself and Claire.  Claire thought this was cool and started to do the same.  I had to step in and stop the madness.  This was technically a new, previously unstated rule: keep your pants on in the park!  The other girl’s dad, who had been absorbed by his own toddler as well, came over at that point and reinforced the keep-you-pants-on rule.  The girls continued to push the limits in less risquĂ© ways, such as running to the edge of the park close to the road.  Molly was also getting especially reckless as this point, and it was clearly time to leave.

So there is it, the ups and downs of a day at the park with the girls.  It was a fun, delightful, perplexing day at the park which really needed to end about 20 minutes ago.

Favorite Books #2

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A relatively new installment in this blog is to make a quick note, every few months, of the girls’ favorite books.  Here is installation number 2.  There, it’s official.  This is a regular thing now. 🙂

Claire has recently started to read her own books to us, but we still like to read to her every night too.  Claire’s favorite series right now is Fancy Nancy.  She gets a new Fancy Nancy book from the school library about once a week.  The recent sampling includes Fancy Nancy and the Late, Late, LATE Night, Fancy Nancy: Halloween…or Bust!, Fancy Nancy: The 100th Day of School, and Fancy Nancy and the Boy from Paris.  Occasionally we buy a Fancy Nancy book, and sometimes they have stickers, and she’ll put one or two stickers on the pages of the book (never anywhere else) each night until nearly every open space in the book is covered by a sticker.

Molly has also been enjoying a series, in her case Elmer.  Elmer is a colorful, patchwork elephant.  He loves to explore his world and point out the colors, sizes, numbers, etc. of the animals around him.  Elmer always ends up going to sleep at the end of the story.  Molly also loves Corduroy, which is one of those sweet classic kids’ stories that is always fun to read.  When the stuffed animal Corduroy pops the button off a mattress and falls off the bed, Molly loves to say, “Oh no!  Bear fell down!”  Perhaps not coincidentally, Claire also used to love both Elmer and Corduroy as a toddler.  This pair cannot be resisted by the toddler set!

Halloween 2011

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This year, for the first time since Claire was a baby, we actually did trick-or-treating in our own neighborhood.  In the past, Claire has preferred to go trick-or-treating with friends in their neighborhood, but it did not work out this year on account of it being a Monday and not having time to get something like that together.  Claire handled the disappointment of trick-or-treating in the neighborhood with her family pretty well. 🙂

The dynamic duo working a house

Accordingly, it was the slowest, most low-key Halloween we have had in a long time.  Instead of running and giggling wildly with her friends, Claire, dressed as a fairy-Barbie, paced slowly along with us from house to house, keeping in good spirits but not getting to crazy.  In fact, Claire was so slow that she wasn’t even keeping up with Kit and me, and I was walking slowly from an injured knee (trampoline injury).  We think Claire was tired, maybe from the recent carnival.  Molly, dressed up as a ladybug, didn’t know quite what was going on, be whatever it was was pretty fun.  She and Claire go to go to each house together a team, where Claire would ring the doorbell, and they would wait someone to come.  While waiting for the candy, Molly tended to turn around a make sure Kit and I were still there waiting behind them.  Molly didn’t necessarily know she was even candy, but she did enjoy the process of collecting nice, wrapped objects in her little bag.  She did not actually eat any of her candy.  We do actually want to fatten her up, but not on Snickers and Blow Pops (yet).

This being a late night close on the heals the carnival, Kit and Molly pealed off around 7:30 to get Molly to sleep and hour late.  Claire and I kept going for a while.  Once home, Claire got to answer the door for some trick-or-treaters and distribute some candy, a duty which she seemed to prize.  Claire strategized about the order in which to consume her candy, two pieces per day, and ten went

Molly got to wear her costume to school

Claire’s very favorite treat was some crazy vampire teeth

Claire (and Kit and I) decorated a pumpkin
as Cinderella for a school project

The Opposite of a Diet

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This weekend, we stocked up on the following items at the grocery store.

  • Evaporated milk
  • Heavy whipping cream
  • Croissants
  • Cinnamon rolls
  • Corn syrup
  • Something called “ghee”, which apparently is even more buttery than butter
  • Pudding
  • Super-fat milk
  • Super-fat egg nog
  • And whole-fat “baby” yogurt, which has always been a staple
And I’m sure I left several more uber-fat things off the list.
We purchased these items on the recommendation of Molly’s gastroenterologist, who suggested we try pouring them on, or mixing them into, Molly’s food, or just let her drink them straight in some cases.  The goal is to see if Molly can be fattened up in the next month for her next visit to the doctor.  This is the least intrusive (and indeed, the most enjoyable!) way for Molly to try to get back on the growth chart.  Molly has been hanging below the bottom of the growth chart, around negative -3-5% (is that even theoretically possible?), since she was born, and has even dropped off a bit in the last few months.  Thus the gastroenterologist.
Hopefully with all this gooey fat, Molly will put on some weight in the next month and even hit the 21-pound mark!

Carnival!

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We all got to go to our first carnival for Claire’s school tonight!  This was a big, crazy shindig to raise money for the school.  After weeks of volunteer forms, raffles, meetings, and contests, the carnival finally manifested itself tonight between 5:30 and 8:30.  Usually Molly starts to bed at 6:30, and Claire at 7:30, but we went wild tonight and let them stay out for the carnival until about 8:30!

Claire had lots of fun doing a giant, bouncy slide and basically just jumping around and giggling with her friends.  Molly also had fun, but she did not get to actually do a whole other than watch other people have fun, but that was still pretty good.  Molly loved watching the aforementioned giant, bouncy slide, and she yelled and cheered like a cheerleader as each kid come down the slide.

The end of the night included some meltdowns from out tires, weary carnival-goers, as expected for a late, exciting night.  Claire’s happened when the haunted house was closed and we could not go into it, even though lots of people were still in the house at the time.  They had stopped taking in new customers since the wait was an hour, and the fair was going to close before that.  To Claire, this did not seem quite right.  Molly didn’t care about the haunted house, but she was getting tired and cranky in her own right.  So we got home and tossed the kids in bed and discovered that we were exhausted too.  But we had an awfully fun night and pitched in a little bit of money for the school in the process.

Getting Clean by Getting Messy

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I missed this misadventure personally since I was off working, but apparently Molly and Claire discovered the whiteboard cleaner that had been sitting by their art/whiteboard easel.  The first thing they did was clean the heck out of the whiteboard.  Logical enough, right?  They sprayed it and wiped it, sprayed it and wiped it, until it was absolutely spotless.  Then they decided to clean the floor.  They used up so much cleaner that eventually a small puddle of it formed on the floor beneath them.  By this time, they were giggling and feeling extremely silly, and Molly was sliding around in the cleaner and having trouble getting on her feet.

This was just too much fun, and since they still had some cleaner left, and Molly had the bottle of cleaner, it was up to her to decide what to clean next.  What do you think would be the next logical thing to clean?  A window?  A countertop?  Well, Molly thought her own face would be fun to try.  She pointed the sprayer at herself and repeatedly sprayed the non-toxic cleaner all over her face, much to the delight of herself and Claire.  Apparently there was lots of giggling.  Kit had thought all the giggling was just from playing around, but at this point she went over and had to take the cleaner away.  Molly’s face was clean very clean and, I assume, completely free of dry erase markings.

We were a little concerned, and we checked on Molly throughout the night, but she was fine.  That stuff really is non-toxic, thankfully.  This was as a good reminder not to leave the bug spray laying around!

Help From a Little Friend

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Molly has shown a very sweet, empathetic side lately.  Her sister is still having some occasional jitters from kindergarten, coming hope grumpy and sometimes very sad.  Tonight, Claire had an especially hard time and was standing in the living room sobbing about something we didn’t understand.  Kit and I were trying to comfort her, without much success, when Molly decided to give it a try too.  Molly patted Claire on the back a bit, and then she ran into the play room to grab a teddy bear.  She handed the bear to Claire, and in fact sort of insisted that she take it.  Then Molly clapped her hands and ran off to get some more stuffed animals to deliver to her poor sister.  Eventually Claire was completely covered by stuffed animals, compliments of Molly.  And right about then, Claire finally cracked a tiny smile, also compliments of Molly.  Not long after, the two girls were off playing together.  Kit and I could never cheer Claire up like that!

Molly’s teacher tells us that she has done this routine before for one of her classmates, Lexi, who was sad after being dropped off at school.  Molly patted her on the back until she stopped crying, brought her a toy, and eventually led to her into the room to play.  Molly has this down pat!