video

First step!

| patmcg

Molly took her first official step (that I know of) today when I dropped her off at school. I was chatting with her teacher out n the playground where they go in the mornings, and I had to put Molly down to get something from my bag. I expected her to just sit down when I let her go like usual, but this time she kept her legs straight and just stood there by herself looking up at me. She stayed there standing nice and steady for a long long time, maybe more than a full minute. (It is hard to judge these things since I was standing there in shock with my jaw wide open.). Finally, Molly decided she wanted to come to grab onto my pant leg for support, but she did not want to sit down and crawl only a foot or so to make that happen, so she tentatively and slowly stepped towards me! The first step was successful — she did not fall, and she stayed up for another step. She took a tumble on the second step, but it was amazing to see her first real step.

Here is some video a couple days later in the same spot standing (but not walking) for a much, much shorter period of time. These moments are like the Sasquatch — impossible to catch on film!

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Pushing the limits

| patmcg

Molly is one “step” closer to walking, thanks to the help of a small wooden stool that her Grandaddy made for her sister a while back…

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Ballet Recital

| patmcg

Here are some footage and pictures of Claire’s ballet recital this weekend. She takes a 45 minute lesson every Saturday at the YMCA with her friends Coco, Zoey, and Isa. This was the culmination of the last few weeks of class. The dance teacher said it was not really a recital, but she just wanted to show off what the kids could do because she was so proud of their progress. The teacher also said, much to everyone’s relief, that the recital would not last the scheduled two hours, and would instead take about 30 minutes.

During this recital, I also got a troubling text message from Kit, who was at the doctor’s office with Molly.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Helping Hand

| patmcg
Claire offered to feed Molly her solids this morning. Claire did not want to simply “help” feed Molly. She wanted to just do it herself. Claire has been on a real helping kick lately, wanting to help fix dinner, wanting our help to clean up her room, etc. Claire had been pretty good with some limited Molly feeding in the past, and frankly I could use an extra hand with things, so I decided to turn Claire loose to feed Molly. She poured Molly’s pureed carrots into a little bowl, got a baby spoon, a set up shop in front of Molly, who I had already sat down in her feeding chair wearing a bid.
It went really well. Claire did a careful and thorough job feeding Molly, even cleaning up the food mess as she went, and Molly got lots of carrots. See for yourself. (The sound seems to be missing for some reason. I think my camera phone is messed up. It’s not big deal, though, since everyone was mostly quiet anyways.)

http://www.youtube.com/get_player

Flippin’ Out at Flipnotics

| patmcg

How did we end up with the wild kid at storytime? Claire is the blur in the brown dress trying to get a mosh pit going.

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Hats off to Laura Freeman for her inspired performance at Flipnotics. She really knew how to get the kids — or at least Claire — going.

Goin’ for Ice Cream

| patmcg

Here is some more footage thanks to the new Flip Video camera. Claire has her leg cast off, but she it still walking a little funny on the left leg.

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Cast Conversation

| patmcg

This is Claire telling the story of the cast on her leg. At this point, she has had the cast on for about three of her planned four weeks. She says her leg still hurts here, but of the many times I have asked her that question, this is the only time she has said it still hurts.

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Also, kudos to the new Flip Video camera, which takes even better 😉 footage than my cell phone.

Christmas ’08

| patmcg

This year we ended up hosting Christmas at our house for the first time. It all had to do with Kit’s call schedule at the hospital. At first Kit was not supposed to be on call for Christmas, then the schedule got botched and she was supposed to be on call. Since we cannot travel or even go very far from our house when Kit is on call, we planned to spend Christmas at home in Dallas. All the grandparents agreed to come up. Sometime after that, it was determined that Kit did not need to be on call after all.

But the plans were already made, and so we still had Christmas at our house. This was a good development anyways because Claire gets so excited (read: messed up) over the holidays with all the grandparents and presents and being out of school and off her routine. She gets so worked up that she has trouble sleeping or even just settling down. Staying at home also saved us a potential 16 hour round trip in the car with the kid and the dog. I am sure the first 4 to 6 hours would have been fine; it was the other 10 to 12 hours I was worried about.

Well, I learned one thing from Claire’s recent birthday blog entry. I could go on and on about every little thing and try to tell a nice involved story about the holidays, but frankly that approach is going to wear me out and would probably do the same to you reading it. So I will keep it short and sweet (just like Claire?). How about a bullet list of highlights?
  • We had seven people and three dogs in the house, which was a little tight but not too bad.
  • Christmas dinner was a festive affair coordinated by my mom and Kit’s mom, served early (ie, normal lunch time) in hopes of accommodating Claire’s nap schedule. Claire still had trouble with her Christmas nap, as expected.
  • Claire charmed the socks off of everyone, singing songs, telling stories about trains and princes and the kids at school, or pretending to be a waiter taking our lunch order, or a Little Einstein.
  • Claire is learning the Christmas music, but she does not have it down perfectly. She is very insistent that on the first night of Christmas, my true love gave to me a pirate in a pear tree.
  • We were all determined to cut back on presents, but with me & Kit, the grandparents, an uncle and aunt, cousins, and oh yes — Santa! — it was a very good haul for Claire. For posterity, the list included a kid’s art easel set, a treasure chest full of princess stuff, a deluxe play-dough set, a giant teddy bear, something called “connectagons“, and a kid-sized shopping cart full of fake food goods to collect and distribute.
  • Claire gave everyone hand-made items, in one case quite literally. She gave Kit and me a framed handprint with decorative paper cutouts around it.
  • Many hours were spent, mostly by the ladies, working on a jigsaw puzzle. It was a tricky puzzle portraying a dog and cats made up in holiday cheer with no straight edges or corners at all. At the end of the holidays, part of a dog’s head could be recognized.
  • We took a driving tour to see the fine holiday lights on Armstrong Parkway, and also swung by George W. Bush’s future house, just out of curiosity. The “W” house was nice but not nearly as fancy as the houses on Armstrong Parkway. Some people in the neighborhood had street signs that read “Welcome home, George and Laura!”
  • Claire freaked out pretty bad when the last of the grandparents left, screaming that she wanted to go too. Kit’s theory is that Claire knew that was the end of the fun.
  • Three days after Christmas, with everyone gone, Claire is still having trouble getting to sleep. Her refusal to sleep has driven most of us to madness at one point during the holidays as we tried to lure her to rest.
  • After Christmas, we were getting together some things to donate. We wanted Claire to pick out an old toy to give away, but she resisted stubbornly. She was adamant that she would give away any brand new toys from Christmas, but no old toys!

Finally, here is a video montage showing Claire getting more and more excited as Christmas day goes on, and into the next day.

Claire Turns 3!

| patmcg

Claire tacked on another year today. She is now exactly three feet tall and three years old. To tell you the truth, this was sort of a tough birthday. But Claire soldiered through it quite admirably and had a pretty good day.

Claire had been talking about this day for a long time. For months, she had been asking, “When is my birthday?” Unlike last year, this time she really had the drill down. She must have been inspired by all the birthday parties at school. She has been reminding us not to forget the balloons and party hats and birthday cake — especially the birthday cake! She had been specifying a “red cake!” for a few weeks, but in a surprising and provocative move, she switched to blue in final days before her party. Further, she clarified that she was talking about the frosting, and she did not have a preference on what the inside looked or tasted like, just as long as it was cake.

The grandparents all planned to come up for the big day. The Houston grandparents made the trip up for Thanksgiving and the birthday, although Claire and I had just been down to Houston the weekend before. Grammy and Granddaddy would not have missed it for anything… except one thing, which stepped in and kept them back in Corpus Christi. They had to arrange funeral services and legal matters for Kit’s Gramma Marvel, who had just passed. We will all miss Marvel.

This next part is sort of an aside. The afternoon before the birthday, Kit and I left Claire at home with Noni and headed out to get some mylar helium balloons for the party. Kit knew from Marvel’s 103rd birthday party a few weeks earlier that Claire loved playing with these shiny balloons. We arrived at Party City and went straight to the the balloon counter. There, surrounded by countless colorful inflated animals and cartoon characters, was a gloomy and cheerless lady who initially refused to even acknowledge our presence. When we tried to ask about getting some balloons, she sighed and rolled her eyes like we were really out of line. She explained with some exasperation that we needed to give her “at least a day’s notice” for any balloon orders, and the balloons would probably not be ready in time. How did this lady end up at the Party City balloon counter, of all places? Maybe was just burned out from the grueling world of party balloons, or maybe the local DMV office was not hiring. We decided towait until tomorrow and get whatever balloons they had at the nearby grocery store, where they presumably could to blow up whatever balloon you want right then and there (amazing, I know).

Then it was off to said grocery store to pick out a cake. I was prepared to get burned on this too. If Party City could not blow up some balloons in 24 hours, how could I expect someone to bake a special cake in that time? I had just recently given up on the idea of baking one at home, because that was going to take away time from other fun. Not surprisingly, the grocery had no blue cakes ready to go. But they did have a really cute”character cake” with the frosting done to look like a furry brown unnamed Sesame Street character. I asked the nice lady at the bakery if they could do that one in blue. She said no, but they could do a Cookie Monster, who always comes in blue, and they could have it ready first thing in the morning. Now that is more like it!

The next morning was the actual birthday. Today of all days, you would have expected Claire to wake up early and excited. She did wake up early, but not because she was excited. She woke up because she was uncomfortable. She was acting worn out and slightly irritable. We would find out a couple of days later, when the doctor’s office reopened after the Thanksgiving weekend, that Claire has been suffering from a tough case of pneumonia and an accompanying ear infection. On her birthday, it turns out that Claire was in bad shape, and was even in some pain.

Knowing this now, I am really proud of the way Claire handled herself. Though she certainly felt miserable, she managed to enjoy herself, especially as long as we kept her full of kid’s Tylenol. We had planned a zoo trip for the morning. With Claire sick and the weather cold, we made the trip pretty quick and took a monorail tour through the African section rather than walking around on foot too much. We dropped by the grocery store on the way home to get the Cookie Monster cake and pick out a balloon. We settled on a giant ladybug. Claire loved the balloon and played with it in the car and the all day. A week later, it was still afloat and still a favorite toy.

It took three of us to carry Noni’s and Phil’s present from their car. It was a huge dollhouse / treehouse, which took up a large part of the living room and was taller than Claire. She could not even reach the top with her hands! Only a picture can really describe this thing. Claire loved the present, but soon started to show signs of wearing out, so we skipped the other presents for the time being to avoid overwhelming her.

The pièce de résistance for the birthday was the lunch with cake, candles, more balloons, and of course the birthday song. Claire carefully picked out birthday hats, all with different colors and patterns, for everyone. (She would spend the next few days putting on each hat and pretending to be that person.) By this time she was getting exhausted. With her pneumonia, her appetite was down, and she barely touched her special birthday spaghetti. She managed, with some help, to blow out the candles on her special blue cake (and blow pneumonia germs all over it!). She could not quite eat her whole slice of cake, although still she did eat a lot of it. Birthday cake was probably the only thing in the world she would actually right then, so it was lucky we had it. Grammy and Granddaddy called in from Corpus Christi to wish Claire a happy birthday and to sing the birthday song to her. They would see her in person soon enough, just not today.

Claire spent the remainder of the day hanging around the house resting up, playing with her new tree house, and just cuddling with everyone. You could certainly do worse than that for a birthday, but still, I think we owe her an extra fun one next year!

Here is a short video montage of the birthday activities.

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