Claire continues to love going to the park, and the king of the parks is Pease Park. She asks every weekend to go to the park. Sometimes she wants to go more than once in a day (although we pretty much can never do that). Claire almost always ends up making a friend like this random girl.
Sometimes Molly stays back home with Kit and naps, but sometimes she comes along. Molly is not quite old enough to make friends, and for the moment she likes to hold back and observe from a distance.
We were all at home for another extended weekend, this time for the New Year. This time we did not have the energy or courage to take a day trip like over Thanksgiving, so we just stayed around home. Claire and Molly love staying and just playing at home all day, but sometimes the fun turns into just bouncing off the walls. One time Claire actually did literally mimic bouncing off the walls, running from one wall to the next, spinning around like a pinball.
One January 2, we found ourselves lounging around the house in the morning just letting little the girls do whatever they want. Molly ended up sitting in a drawer, contentedly babbling and fiddling with stuff. Meanwhile, Claire started a zany dance interpretation of a butterfly, jumping up on a stool for a better stage. Claire does this kind of thing occasionally, but normally she is pretty camera-shy about it. This may be wise. Perhaps this post is exactly what she was trying to avoid! But for whatever reason, she did not mind the camera this time. See for yourself.
As I have stated before, this blog is more about the highlights than the lowlights of raising Claire, so much so that when I go back and read this in 10 years, it will probably seem like even the “terrible threes” was nothing but fun. As sort of a reality check, I like to toss in the occasional reminder that raising Claire is not always 100% fun and sweet. This is the type of thing that happens from time to time…
Tonight, Claire wanted to do some pretend cooking with her playdough. Hey, that’s a great idea. So I set her up with a couple of varieties of playdough and a some plastic plates and cups. That made Claire pretty happy, and then she asked for a spoon. I gave her sort of a leftover spoon that we don’t normally eat with. That way, she was not going to confuse her “playing” spoon with an actual “eating” spoon. When I handed Claire the spoon, she said she wanted a real eating spoon. I told her no, sorry, but we use the playing spoon for playdough. Usually Claire respects this type of rule reluctantly by peaceably. But not tonight. Claire suddenly started yelling “no no no no no no no no no no no no no no” over and over. It went on for literally 30 minutes, with her just sitting there in front of her playdough yelling “no” over and over. I did a few things around the house. Still, “no no no no no!” Finally I asked her to help cook our actual dinner, and that broke the cycle. She was happy again.
Kit gets this treatment much worse than I do. Kit can say, “Look, the sky is blue,” and Claire will respond, “No, it’s not blue. Why did you say the sky is blue?!” in a rather annoyed tone. They say this is a preview of the teenage years, and I can believe it.
Lots of times, Claire and I play on the playground for a while after school. Today we had an extra prop handy, which happened to be a plastic bag with dirty clothes in it from the school day. Claire invented a fun game and nearly ran herself ragged. Notice the wild giggling and stumbling. Is she drunk?
Pardon the jerky camera work. I was trying to film and catch said bag at the same time.
Claire had one of her funnest days in memory today.
First off, Grammy Joyce is in town, which always means a fun day for Claire. Grammy is recently retired and can dedicate most of her time to playing, reading, cuddling, and just goofing off with little Claire. Grammy is not quite as familiar with dumb words like “busy” and “later” as Mommy and Daddy are, and she does not tend to get distracted, tired, or irritated. Plus she’s just lots of fun. So the morning was mostly dedicated to playtime.
Around 11:00, Mommy, who is a Chief Resident, had to meet co-chiefs Chrissie and Shelby in McKoy Park in Decatur to prepare the 2nd Annual Picnic in the Park for the Emory pathology department. This was a project the three of them had been preparing for the last several weeks. Grammy and Daddy stayed at home and fed Claire a nice lunch and hung out for a while. After that, it was off to McKoy park to join Mommy’s festivities.
Ordinarily, a picnic in a park with all those people and kids and swings and grass would be pretty darn good. But this was an extra special picnic, because it had a moonwalk! We weren’t sure Claire was even old enough to handle this, but she took to it like, well, a kid to a big bouncy playroom. I could explain how much fun Claire had on this thing, but why don’t you just see for yourself (Grammy is also a dedicated documentarian).
By the time we dragged Claire away from the moonwalk, maybe an hour later, she was pretty worn out from all the fun. She spent the rest of the picnic drinking lemonade, socializing with her old pals like Kelly and Baby Luke (Chrissie’s kid), and eating watermelon and grapes on Grammy’s lap while I enjoyed lots of delicious BBQ ribs.
But Kit had to work. She stayed and took care of the picnic after the rest of us headed home. She and Shelby and Chrissie got to have their own well-earned fun while waiting for the moonwalk guy to come reclaim his big, fun toy. They had the moonwalk all to themselves, and put it to good use. They also provided snowcones to random kids in the park who lined up by the rented snowcone machine, thinking it was just a public service. It looks like Claire was not the only one who had a fun day.
Today, we joined Reese and his parents, along with some other friends, at Jackson Lake for a day of watersports and fun. Today’s high at the lake was a sizzling 102 degrees. Usually we would be holed up in the house on a hot afternoon like that, but today we were out in it. Fortunately, Claire handled the weather just fine. She pinked up pretty good in the heat, but we had a thick glaze of SPF 50 sunscreen on her all day, and she did not get burned.
The lake house was crawling with little kids and babies. It was pretty much a who’s-who of Claire’s kid friends. Reese was there with his new little brother Davis. Baby Luke, who is the four-month-old son of the other chief resident Chrissie, was also in attendance. Claire loves these babies. The last few weeks she has been whispering, “Shh… Baby Luke, sleeping. Shh… Baby Davis.” 
Claire also met Melanie’s friend’s daughter Jaia (Jaya?), a lively, two-and-a-half-year-old girl with curly dark hair. Claire had actually met Jaia a few months ago when Melanie had arranged for Grace to watch her for a few days along with Reese and Claire. Apparently Grace had her hands full during those days, but Claire sure had fun with Jaia today. Well into the night, she was saying “Jaia” over and over.
We all soaked in the warm bath-like waters of the lake, the kids in full safety gear. This was Claire’s first dip in a lake, and she seemed to enjoy it. She must have spent over an hour in the water, including about 15 minutes under Chrissie’s watch as Kit and I took the Waverunner out for a spin. That thing was crazy fast, and Kit and I felt like we were both going to get blown off the back. Fortunately, we were able to hold on and make it back to the lake house and the kid. Besides our 15 minutes of adventure, we spent most of our day watching Claire and various babies. Claire was too wired up for her nap, so I drove her around the countryside and eventually got her to sleep a little. It had been a very long time since I had to use the old car trick to get Claire to sleep. Her little nap was enough to get her through a couple more hours of playing and exploring with all the other kids.
Everyone except Reese’s grandma “Beebee” and the kids spending the night were going to ride the pontoon boat across the lake to the infamously slow Kountry Kitchen. Kit and I decided to go along and bring Claire, even though it would put her way past her usual 7:30 bedtime. Despite previous “difficult” experiences when missing bedtime by even a little bit, we decided to take a chance and join everyone for dinner.
Dinner was fun, and hot, and slow…and very late. We got to the restaurant around 8:00, and the waitress warned us before we ordered that it would take at least 45 minutes to get our food. After we ordered, Kit and I took turns sitting on the docked boat outside the restaurant in the hot night air reading Claire Curious George and the Rocket and trying to get her to sleep. Even a dark lakeside walk carrying Claire did not do the trick. Claire was charged up and ready to explore the lake or the restaurant. Eventually I brought her into the restaurant because I was about to die of hunger and thirst. We all had a fun dinner and were riding the boat across the lake around 10:30, listening to Hootie and the Blowfish’s greatest hits, when Claire finally fell asleep under the stars. She stayed asleep for the transfer out of the boat, up the driveway, into the car, on the hour-long ride home, through a change of clothes, and into her crib. She probably had one of her nights of sleep ever that night, dreaming of Jaia and Reese and lights reflecting on the warm lake water.
McG Kids 