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.
Here we are trying out a weird toy at Claire’s favorite park. Stay with it; the last part is funny.
Claire’s favorite book these days is Chrysanthemum. It has become the book she always wants to read, and she still enjoys it no matter how many times you read it to her. She even likes to “read” it to us. She does a pretty good job at it too, considering that she has some sections of the book memorized. There is a page in the book with pictures of about 16 kids, and a name above each. Claire has all the names on that page memorized.
When Claire reads to us, she starts out, “Chrysanthemum, by Kevin Henkes. The day she was born was the best day in her mother and father’s life…” then she needs some gentle reminders past that. Kevin Henkes is the author of another past favorite, Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse. Both books feature mice dealing with tough times at school and ultimately coming out better in the end. I am sure our little mouse is going through the same process every weekday.
Here is some footage of Claire reading Chrysanthemum.
This is Claire commenting on the architecture near her playground at school.
As she runs off, she is yelling, “Little Einsteins!”, who had visited the Taj Mahal in one of their books.
Here is some footage of a typical dinner with Claire. I got a little bored waiting for Claire to finish eating, and after taking a few photos with my cell phone, I remembered the video recorder. It is fun to have real conversations with Claire nowadays.
Thanks to my new cell phone, we can now easily bring you video clips of Claire. They are not high quality, or alternately, they have a nice retro reel-to-reel feel to them. Our first cell phone video is a game Claire invented walking home after dinner one night on McKinney Avenue.
(Please pardon the annoying finger on the bottom of the screen. I’m still learning!)
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.
McG Kids 