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Another Mystery Solved

| patmcg

A few weeks ago, Claire was talking about her friend Jad at school.  She told us, “Jad has a wizard in his car!  He really does!  They keep him in a cage!”  Now that seemed odd and a little creepy, but kids this age have a powerful imagination.  I figured either Jad made it up and told Claire, or Claire just made it up herself.  The odd thing was that Claire was so insistent about it, and she referenced Jad’s mom.  “His mom even said they have a wizard in their car.”

So I was at a birthday party for another kid, Lucy, in Claire’s class.  While the kids had their bounce house fun, I chatted with the other parents.  I told Jad’s mom that I heard they have a wizard in their car.  She laughed and said, “Lizard.  Sometimes we keep a lizard in our car when we are watching it for our neighbors.  He does have a little cage.”  We had a good laugh.  She said she remembered when she told the kids about it at school. Claire seemed really surprised and said, “Really?!?!” in an astonished way.

I was telling Kit about this whole story, and the fact that it is a lizard and not a wizard.  Claire was sitting there in the room with us.  When Kit and I chuckled about it, Claire looked a little embarrassed and said quietly, “It’s not funny”, then turned her attention to a toy.  I actually kind of hated to squash this little spec of mystery and surprise in Claire’s world.

Love that Pen!

| patmcg

Claire has never really had a true lovie, comfort item, or whatever you want to call it. There has never been a consistent object that she would not part with, she wanted to bring to bed, and she looked for the first thing in the morning. The usual suspects have failed the test. She likes her stuffed animals well enough, but they are really just regular toys that end up getting scattered around her room and then summarily ignored. She likes her purple sleep blanket, but she does not normally use it outside of sleep time.

So imagine our surprise when Claire developed a strong, dedicated attachment to a pen. Actually, it’s a highlighter. A green one. But we call it a pen.

She tracks this pen with great dedication. She holds it in the car seat on the way to school. She walks it to the front door of the school, where I finally collect it from her. She asks who is going to pick her up, and which car we will be in. If the afternoon car is different than the morning car, then she asks if we can possibly transfer her green pen to the other car so she can have it immediately after school. At night, she always holds her green pen during story time and puts it down on the floor right next to the bed when it is time to turn out the lights. Occasionally there is a small panic if we cannot find said pen before bedtime. It is truly a lovie. Except she is not allowed to cuddle with it in bed. You know, because of the pen marks and all.

This pen is the sister of a purple highlighter Claire’s her mom gave her for entertainment in the hospital when she broke her leg. I think that was the seed for why this pen is special. Claire quickly dried the purple one of ink, and we ended up giving her the green one as a replacement. She quickly dried the green one of ink too, but she still carries it around and has not lost interest yet.

Publisher’s Note: On the night of July 30, 2009, Claire really, really lost her green pen. However, by pure luck, she was distracted by some new Horton Hears a Who! finger puppets, which she took to bed in her pen’s stead. Over the next week or so, the finger puppets have yielded to a “squiggly straw” as her new comfort item. So we are officially over the missing green pen. But that pen definitely held the record by far for number of days as Claire’s lovie.

Name Your Friends

| patmcg

In the past, Claire’s stuffed animals had names that were accurate but not very exciting. She had Bunny the bunny, Longhorn the longhorn cow, and so on. I think we actually named those for her. But she has gotten more creative recently. Her stuffed kitty is named Cranberry Sauce. I think this happened during Thanksgiving when the conversation about dinner got mixed up with the conversation about her kitty. For less understood reasons, her stuffed puppy is named Salsa Bleeze. I cannot be sure about the spelling, but that is exactly how it sounds when she says it. Her rocking horse has gone nameless for a long time, but now she has officially christened it Texas Island. This just gets weirder and weirder.