Curious Claire and the Cat

Claire loves Curious George. She loves the books, and she just discovered the cartoon on TV this morning when I stumbled on it during breakfast. When the show was finished, she politely asked for "more Georgie", as she always does with things she loves.

Anyways, it's no wonder Claire loves Georgie. She basically is Curious George. She is a good little girl, and always very curious. She wanders around the house with her big sweet eyes scanning each room for something new to tinker with. She loves to "help" around the house, especially with the dishwasher. Yesterday she helped load some of her clean cups into the dishwasher, and take some dirty ones out. I thought I got it all straightened out, but when I emptied the dishwasher today, Claire's popping wind-up car was sitting on the top rack, filled with water. I guess it needed a cleaning.

Today after Grace had left and Claire woke up from her nap at 5:30, we saw a black kitty cat out the window relaxing on our driveway. Claire really loves cats, so we decided to go say "hi". As we slowly approached, the cat looked more and more suspicious, specifically eyeing Claire and occasionally looking at me for some sort of indication that everything was cool. After all, there I was holding this pink and yellow, wiggly, three-foot-tall kid who was pointing and giggling right at the cat. But the cat held her position.

About 10 feet out, Claire was finally in "hi" range. She stuck out her right arm, squeezed her little fingers in and out as if juicing an orange, and said "hiiiiii" in her little squeaky voice. The cat took this threat seriously and jogged off just out of "hi" range. Claire and I slowly and clumsily advanced and repeated the exchange. This exercise went on a few times until we ended up three houses down and the cat finally disappeared into some bushes. Claire looked at me sadly, did the hand sign for "more", and longingly said "more kitty" a couple of times. But I was not going in after that cat, plus we were wandering uninvited into some unknown neighbor's slightly creepy yard.

This was a very Curious George moment, and I felt bad for cutting it short. But once we got inside, Curious Claire buried her sorrow in a plate full of four-cheese "patsa". Yes, fuel for more adventures.