2008 in Review

Here is this year's Christmas mass mailing.


2008 was an eventful year for us. We started the year in a house in Atlanta with a two year old, and ended the year in a townhouse in Dallas with a three year old. That may not be the most radical transformation imaginable, but it seemed pretty big to us. Fortunately, the two year old turned out to be the same kid as the three year old, just slightly aged.

Kit spent the first half of the year finishing up her pathology residency at Emory University and preparing for her fellowship at UT Southwestern in Dallas. She completed the dreaded medical boards and endless other exams, licensures, and registrations to practice medicine in Texas. On the other hand, I transferred my current software position to the Dallas office by simply filling out a change-of-address form.

Meanwhile, we prepared to sell our house in Atlanta. Although the market was tough, we did turn down a generous cash offer from an "English woman" whose email happened to originate from a Nigerian cyber-cafe. In the end, we managed to sell the house to a local person who was legitimate but substantially less generous. Moving was not easy, but with some creative scheduling and plenty of help from our parents, we eventually got everyone and everything to Texas in good shape.

We left behind great friends and memories in Atlanta. We have also enjoyed our time so far in Dallas. Claire declared upon seeing her new house, "I love it! It's my Christmas day!" She is a huge fan of the Texas Rangers baseball team, a connoisseur of the local parks, and even a local architecture enthusiast, especially the Bank of America Tower, which is trimmed with bright green lights from top to bottom like a 921-foot tall Christmas tree. Claire insists that a prince lives in the tower, but I am pretty sure it is zoned for office space. Claire left her beloved nanny back in Atlanta but has transitioned admirably to daycare, where she has met many fun friends, learned about art and music, and developed a taste for
chicken fingers.

We are now trying to figure out what to do when Kit's fellowship ends next summer. It is shaping up to be another eventful year.

Merry Christmas and everything else from Kit, Pat, and Claire.

Movie Mistake

Today we were looking for a fun activity to fight the post-Christmas blues. It was too cold for the zoo, and we wanted to do something new anyways. So we decided to go to a movie. This would be Claire's first real movie in a theater!

The theater at the nearby mall had two cartoons showing in the late morning.The Tale of Despereaux was about a mouse who lives in some sort of castle and maybe sings or something. Then there was Bolt, about a scrappy superhero dog. We leaned towards Bolt since it looked cute and was about a dog, which is always fun, right? The reviews on imdb also favored Bolt, plus it was showing earlier in the morning. So it was clinched, we would take our sweet little girl to the cute movie about the scruffy white dog.

Bolt started out promisingly enough, with the expected cute puppy playing around with a little girl. I whispered to Claire that the little girl looked just like her. She seemed to enjoy the giant movie screen and the engrossing sound, all of which really shamed our little TV at home. Her eyes and mouth were wide open.

Ten minutes later, we had witnessed roughly three helicopter explosions, a pair of bad guys being "shaken down" for information with their car dangling off a bridge, the violent deaths of several evil guys in black suits and masks with deadly electric shocking hands, the destruction of an entire dessert valley along and the entire army of evil guys populating it, and of course several near-death incidents involving the scrappy white dog and the little girl who looked just like Claire.

Claire was terrified. Well, may not quite terrified, but she was definitely scared and grasping her mom's arm really hard. She tried to say something, but I could not hear it. I asked if she wanted to leave the movie for a while, and she nodded her head. I took her out to the lobby to get some delicious theater popcorn. We sat in the lobby for a few minutes enjoying our popcorn. When we returned to the movie, it had settled down. In the movie, all of the mayhem was revealed to have been fake -- a show within a show. But of course Claire did not understand these concepts. It was just scary to her, really scary. When the little girl in the movie got dragged off by bad guys at the protests of her howling dog, who was being dragged off somewhere else, Claire calmly asked to leave. And so we did.

Uh, what was this thing rated? Oops, it turns out Bolt was rated PG, which basically means, "think about leaving your sweet little three year old at home". Normally we pay pretty close attention to what Claire sees and hears. But not today! We had assumed that Bolt was rated G, or maybe we just hadn't thought about it at all. Either way, it was the idiot moment of the day.

We snuck next door to try out The Tale of Despereaux, which was just beginning and really was rated G. It started out as a nice sweet movie about some soup -- yes, soup. Things picked up, and eventually a bunch of people were chasing down the silly protagonist rat, who was running for his life. There were no explosions or scary evil guys. It was standard old-school little kid cartoon stuff, lighthearted and decidedly more funny than scary. But Claire's mood for this sort of thing had already been ruined by Bolt, and she politely asked to leave.

We spent the unexpected free time getting a little post-Christmas shopping done at the mall. Ann Taylor Loft had a kid's bench set up outside the fitting room, filled with Dr. Seuse books, which was a nice touch. I read Green Eggs and Ham and Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? to Claire while Kit tried on sweaters. Claire may actually enjoy Bolt in another 10 years. It's supposed to be a good movie, at least for the right audience. But for now, Dr. Seuse was just the ticket. It was silly and colorful and very G-rated.

Christmas '08

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.

Sleepy Time

Claire has been pretty good about taking her naps the last few months. But today she was extra wired up around nap time, maybe because she was over-tired. When Kit put her down to nap, Claire came right back out of her room and declared that she wanted to play instead. Then Kit did her trick where she sets a timer for 20 minutes and tells Claire she can come out when it beeps. Claire begrudgingly agreed to this plan and disappeared into her room. Within a couple of minutes she was quiet.

Three hours later.. Claire showed up on the stairs outside her room, a little confused and rubbing her eyes. She asked very sincerely, "Did the timer beep yet?"

We said yes, and she could come down and play now. Her hair was soaked with sleepy sweat. She motioned toward her room and said, "But my pillow is sweating, We need to clean it up." She may have gotten too much of a nap, actually, because she woke up pretty early the next morning, and that darn pillow was sweating on Claire's head again.

First and Last

Kit, her mom, Claire, and I were playing a game called "First and Last" from a deck of cards called "52 alternatives to TV". This game read as such...

Someone says the name of an animal, and the next person says an animal that starts with the last letter of the name. So if you said "elephant," the next person might say "tiger." Take turns saying animals without repeating any until someone can't thin of another one. The last person left gets to pick the next category (countries, people's names, etc.).

This turned out to be a pretty fun game. We did not make Claire play since she, uh, cannot read or spell, but she sort of hung around and watched. The game was pretty tough, actually. It went something like this...

Kit: Elephant
Joyce: Tiger
Pat: Raccoon
Kit: Nene (this is a Hawaiian bird from a book Joyce brought back from Hawaii)
Claire: Eagle!

Yes, the three year old jumped in with a good answer. She even said it with real conviction, like she just knew "eagle" was right. We cannot say how Claire knew "Nene" ended in an "e" and "Eagle" started in the same letter. She may have gone by the sounds of the words, or it may have been a lucky guess, or maybe she actually knew what she was talking about. We'll give her the benefit of the doubt and go with the last one.

Claire Turns 3!

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.

The Glowing Towers of Dallas

Ever since it has started to get dark earlier, Claire has developed an intense interest in the glowing towers of Dallas. The first one that got her attention, and still her favorite, is the 921-foot tall Bank of America Tower downtown. Not only is it extremely tall, but is it also decorated with neon green lights from top to bottom, like a gigantic Christmas tree. Driving around Dallas, to and from school, shopping, or whatever, we sometimes catch fleeting glimpses of this tower, and Claire yells, "There's the green tower!" Claire's theory is that a prince lives in the top of the tower, and kids live on the other floors. At one point, Claire became so obsessive about this tower that she cried and yelled when she could not see it any more, and the disappointment ruined her mood for the whole night until we put her to bed. I think that episode was more about being tired or otherwise messed up than the tower itself. We talked about it the next day, and she sort of apologized for acting so mad about it and said she just wanted to see the tower again sometime.

Her fondness extends to other towers as well. She enjoys the Cityplace Tower, which is closer to our house, so we get better views of it. She calls this "the tower that matches my hair", although she also knows it and the Bank of America Tower by their official names. (I personally like to call it Nakatomi Plaza since it reminds me of the movie Die Hard). From school she can see a clock tower and an office building with blue neon lights around the top. She says a prince also lives in the blue tower, but probably no kids live in the clock tower. You can tell she thinks these things through.

Quesadilla Crack

Claire had a quesadilla, her perennial favorite, for dinner tonight. She did not finish eating the whole thing, so I started to pack up the leftovers to put them away in the fridge. Claire waved at the quesadilla and said with a smile, "Bye bye, quesadilla! I'll eat you later!"

Fun With a Bag

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.

Muffin Man

Here we are trying out a weird toy at Claire's favorite park. Stay with it; the last part is funny.

I Did a Poo!

Claire did her first poo in the potty at home!

Right before her bath tonight, Claire got real quiet and just stood still, looking a little red in the face. This means she is about to poo.

I picked her up and set her on the toilet in our bedroom. After about two seconds, she said, "I'm done!", which is pretty much the normal routine. But she obviously still had to poo, so I told her I would read a book to her if she would stay on the potty. She agreed, and I read her Goodnight, Texas twice. Around the end of the second reading, she did her poo and then got a happy smile on her face and said, "I'm done!"

Kit and I clapped and hollered and hopped aroound and told her we were so proud. She seemed a little surprised by all the attention. She has purportedly done this particular "trick" numerous times at school, I assume without receiving this kind of attention.

We went downstairs and picked out a special sticker for her potty sticker poster. Since this was an extra special case, we also gave her a little bit of lemon sorbet as a treat. For some reason, this ended up being called simply "flavor" later, as in, "I want a flavor!" Anyways, she liked it a lot and went off to bed proud and happy.

Claire has done the same trick a few more times, but usually in her pants. Afterwards, she sometimes asks for a sticker and "lemon flavor", so maybe she is missing some of the point about using the actual potty. Or maybe it is just wishful thinking, and it can't hurt to ask, right?

Chrysanthemum

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.

In the Shadow of the Taj Mahal

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.

Reign of the Croc

Claire has worn her little pink Crocs almost every day for as long as I can remember. I think she got those Crocs as a present from Grammy last year for Christmas or her birthday, so she has been wearing them for close to a year straight. These little pink rubber Mary Janes have gone from a little big too to a little small for her feet, but they still work great, and after a good rinse they look like new.

But the reign cannot last forever. The venerable shoes finally have a challenger, or two. Claire was looking through her clothes the other day when she discovered a pair of brand new Dora the Explorer shoes we got her a few months ago on sale. They were too big for Claire until now. Claire now likes to wear her Dora shoes as often as her Crocs. She also got a pair of golden slippers -- yes, golden slippers -- at a consignment sale this weekend. These may be her new favorites! She insists on wearing them with a dress, and loves to dance in them.

With all of this rapid shoe change, I just wanted to give those Crocs a tip of the hat before we forgot about them. It is hard to imagine a better shoe for a little kid, and they seemed like a perfect match for Claire.

Potty Update

The potty training has been progressing slowly but steadily. Claire can use the potty, and apparently does at school, but she does not yet have confidence in her control.

Claire's basic cry for help is, "I don't want to pee!" The morning routine can involve 5 or 6 panicked trips to the potty, often running downstairs with shaving cream on my face or a mouth full of toothpaste. Dinners out often involve 3 or 4 trips to a smelly public bathroom. Sometimes we have to pull Claire out of the bath, slippery and covered in soap, to use the potty. We even have to make trips to the bathroom in the middle of story time right before putting her in bed.

Now, I don't mean to complain or sound sour about this. Kit and I know this is all part of the process, and we all just have to soldier through. Part of the reason for this blog is to look back in a few years and remember the strange phases we went through with Claire and the little ways it affected our days.  (Ok, to tell you the truth, it is very tiresome.)

I Did a Tinkle!

Tonight, Claire took her first big step away from diapers.

This was the first time she did it at home, anyways. Claire has purportedly had some luck with using the potty at school, where she had been going diaper-less this week. Claire did have some accidents at school over the last few days, as proven by the wet shorts coming home with her in the evenings. But besides the wet clothes and several fruitless attempts at home, Kit and I had been pretty much in the dark about potty training. Tonight, though, Claire finally let us in on her potty training success.

After playing at the Abbott Avenue park for a while, we all headed to Dickey's Barbecue Pit for dinner. At the restaurant, Claire started wiggling around and looking worried and then sort of screamed, "I don't want to go pee-pee!" Kit took her to the bathroom for another fruitless attempt. Claire repeated this exercise a few minutes later, and this time I took her to the bathroom with no success. On the five-minute drive home, Claire worked herself up into a lather, screaming that she did not want to pee-pee.

We got home just in time for her bath, a now-dreaded routine which leaves Claire mad and me and/or Kit soaking wet from hold Claire in the bathtub. Interestingly, we had started to think Claire now hated baths because she was afraid of having an accident, as she had done a couple of times, when her daiper was off. As if to confirm our suspicions, Claire had recently started in on her same routine about screaming, "I don't want to pee-pee!" during her baths.

But as always, we put Claire on the potty before her bath tonight. This time, after a couple of minutes, she declared, with a smile on her face, "I did a pee-pee!" Punctuating the point, I could hear a tinkle sound in the water. Kit and I jumped around and cheered and clapped, and Claire seemed real proud. We put a congratulatory sticker on the "My Potty Poster" that Noni had given us.

The bonus was the usual screaming and fussing was absent during her bath. It was just a relaxed, civilized bath. Afterward, Claire even wanted to use her fun green froggie towel, which she had not asked for in a long time, and she declared with a smile that she was Katie the Frog. It was the most relaxed I had seen her (and myself) for bathtime in weeks.

This is just the start of diaper-independence, and I am sure many accidents and challenges lay ahead, but at least Claire is on her way now.

A Girl Named Leo

These days, Claire won't tell you who she is, but she sure will tell you who she isn't.

The other day, Kit said, "Let's go to dinner, y'all" and Claire responsed, "I'm not a y'all!" We couldn't tell whether Claire was intentionally making a joke, but it was funny either way.

Today when I picked Claire up from daycare, her teacher, Ms. Laura, said "Goodbye, sunshine!" to which Claire, of course, responded, "I'm not a sunshine!" Claire had a coy smile on her face when she said it, so I think it was actually meant as a joke. Ms. Laura got a chuckle out of it too.

Even if you call her by her actual name, that is "Claire", she takes exception to it. She insists on going by June or Leo (from Little Einsteins), Dora or Diego, also of TV fame, or one of her classmates like Ian or Sydney. If I say, "It's time to go to school, Claire" she insists, "I'm not Claire! I'm Diego!" She also insists that Kit and I are Dora or Boots or Leo or someone else to go with her character. We don't really "do" anything anything else to act like these characters, but Claire seems to get a kick out of it anyways.

By the way, she does not just occasionally pretend to be Leo or Dora or whatever. She does it all the time, all day. You can never get away with calling her Claire, even during the course of an entire weekend. It is always, "I'm not Claire, I'm Leo", sometimes even if you did not actually call her Claire. You might simply say, "I'll be right back", and she will respond, "I'm not Claire, I'm Diego." I guess she just wants to be sure we know.

"Slice" of Life

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.

Running Game

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!)

Fear and Loathing in the Bathtub

Not long ago, bath time was a fun and relaxing nightly routine. Claire played with her three little plastic dolphins in the bubbly, warm water. We listened to lazy music and ended up all clean and sleepy for bedtime.

Those days seem to have passed, at least for the moment. Bath time, especially since we moved to the new house in Dallas, has become a stripped down, sometimes frantic, usually unhappy affair. Gone are the bubbles; Claire does not want bubbles any more. And the favorite old "Sleepy" and "Moonlight" playlists that we had gradually worked to perfection on our iPod are no longer welcome; Claire prefers silence. The water is "too hot!" even if it is tepid. She cries and screams when we start the bath water, and she ends up running all over the house, screaming, usually naked, before we scoop her up and make her clean up. She protests, "I'm not dirty! I don't need a bath!" The scene has at times devolved into some of the biggest fits she has ever had. We often just splash her off as she stands in the tub. She ends up going to bed mad and frustrated, but at least sort of clean. Mostly, we are trying to stick somewhat to the routine.

We have asked her why she doesn't like baths, but she does not give us any real answer.  It could be related to potty training, as she has had a couple of "accidents" in the bath, and they freaked her out. Or sometimes it seems like she just does not want to go to sleep, and she knows darn well that bath time means bedtime. She just wants to keep playing, even though she is obviously tired.

Last night, we had a rare fun bath time. We played and splashed and laughed. She was happy as we got her into her pajamas and off to bed. Hopefully this is the start of a trend. All three of us could use some relief from the nightly bath trauma.

The Big Move

I was reviewing the blog, and I realized there was nothing at all posted about the little matter of, oh I don't know... moving half way across the country! You will notice that, besides this post, there is nothing else at all during the actual move. This post was written a couple of months later just to fill in the blanks while I still remembered anything about it.

This was probably some of the most interesting and challenging times in Claire's life so far, but alas, I simply did not have the time/energy to write up anything about the move. The long and short of it was that we did successfully sell our house in Atlanta and move to Dallas.

My dad and I headed out with the big truck a few days ahead of Kit, Claire, and Joyce, with the goal of getting mostly settled in before everyone else got to Dallas. Kit, Claire, and Joyce stayed in a "hotel house", ate Chik-fil-et in the room, and did a little swimming at the pool, all of which Claire talked about for some time afterwards. She would sometimes asks, "When are we going back to the blue house?"

Claire (sort of) saw two new states, Mississippi and Louisiana, on the trip to Dallas.

Here are some quick high- and low-lights of the move, from my perspective. Claire was, by design, not along for most of this.  (I should probably ask Kit to add some additinal comments for when she and Joyce had Claire...)

• Getting more and more behind schedule with the house closing moving around
• A couple of real country folk loading up the Penske 20" truck somewhat sloppily in Atlanta, and Joyce squeezing everything from our storage unit into the last remaining space in the big truck on a very hot late afternoon on Cheshire Bridge Road
  
• Paying something close to a dollar per mile with record-high gas prices all the way to Dallas
• Thinking I really should not be driving this gigantic truck half way across the country, or even around the block. Shouldn't "they" require some sort of training or a license before I get behind the wheel of this monstrosity?
• The formerly road-weary Muffin riding shotgun on a bed of pillows and blankets, and sleeping most of the way.
• Nearly getting lost trying to avoid a traffic jam in Birmingham.
• My dad tailing me in the Accord, although most of the time I could not see him.
  
• Driving endlessly in East Texas as the sun was setting trying to find a hotel where I could realistically park the truck. I called by dad on the cell phone just in time for him to exit at a junky hotel in Longview that did accept big trucks. Menacing guys hung out on picnic chairs outside their rooms, and there was a Days Inn sign sitting wrecked in the woods past the parking lot. My dad remarked "It's not even good enough for Days Inn."
  
• Eating dinner in the outskirts of Longview at some half-deserted catfish restaurant in what seemed to be an office building or warehouse.
• Finally pulling up to the beautiful townhouse in Dallas and waiting for the movers to show up to help unload. They scoffed at how the truck was loaded, and asked who the heck did it like that.
• My mom showing up with Carolyn, Beth, and Worth, not to mention a boat load of drinks and snacks, to help unpack. Beth tripped on the stairs to the lower level, and messed up her ankle pretty good.
• Finally passably moved in that night, me and my parents went out to eat at Taco Cabana... a real Taco Cabana, not that fake one back in Atlanta.
• My mom working her magic on the Claire Club in the cave-like recessed area in the living room. It was beautifully done.
  
• Waiting impatiently for the ladies to arrive!
• Claire and Kit looking around the new place and saying, "Ooohh! Ahhh!" Calire even said, "It's my Christmas day!"
• Claire hopelessly tangling the pom-poms hanging outside the Claire Club. My mom spending an hour or two untangling them. Claire hopelessly tangling them again in minutes.
  

Career Options

Claire is showing distinct interest in a few career fields at this point.

We were recently looking at pictures of the visit we took to the Atlanta History Center  few months ago. This is where Claire manned a pretend fast food drive-through window, chirping "You want a combo?" over and over. These pictures got her going on this game again, but now she is a little more verbose. After accepting her offer of a combo, she'll say something like, "Let me see if I can find a combo." Then she pretends to find a combo and then says, "That's a dollar-eight" with a big smile on her face. You can always settle up with two pennies, which is the flat cost of any transaction with Claire. This may not be a well-paying line of work, but she does seem to enjoy it.

Her other perennial favorite is being a doctor. Now she puts on a whole show. She'll come up to you and furrow her brow to look real concerned and say, "You hurt your knee?" After establishing that your knee is hurt, she invents some way to treat it. Her methods involve pressing a random toy against the affected area, rubbing it with her hands, or kissing it. Then she proudly says, "You're all better!" and scurries off to find another knee to heal. She seems to be a knee specialist, I guess because they work well for her height.

Claire used to have a real stethoscope, donated to her from her mom. But now, much to her dismay, it is missing. She is always looking for it and asking me and her mom if we have seen it. She likes to use it as part of her examination, listening carefully to our knees, and sometimes to our shoulders if we are sitting down on the floor. Our knees and shoulders sometimes say, "Mommy, mommy, mommy" or "Daddy, daddy, daddy" slow and steady like a heartbeat. She has also been know to treat a bad knee by pressing her stethoscope against it with just the right touch.

Other interests, practiced less often but just as passionately, include being a sailor, a pirate, a singer, a dancer, or a comedian who does a "dumb guy" schtick with a funny slow voice. She has yet to show real interest in my field, computers, unless it involves watching videos of herself on the iMac.

Striking Out On Her Own

Claire and I had this conversation in the car today, perhaps inspired by talk of the move to Texas.

Claire: Daddy, I'm moving to my own house.
Me: Oh really? Wow! (feigning belief) How big is the house?
Claire: Big enough, Daddy! Big enough!

She sounded pretty serious.

Comfy

Today Claire was making her usual proclamations, such as "Muffin is furrrrry!" or "Cheese is yummy!" when I picked her up and held her in my left arm. After a few seconds, she said, "You're comfy, Daddy."

Besides feeling a little bit like a sofa, I couldn't ask for a better compliment.

I want Grace!

Claire has been going to Grace during the day for over two years now. She loves Grace like another mom, and she is often upset to leave Grace at the end of the day. But once she gets home, Claire knows she is with her own family and does not ask for Grace.

Recently, however, with only about one month left in Atlanta before we move to Texas, Claire has occasionally started saying things at home like, "I miss Grace!" or "I want Grace!". This is strange timing. We have not actually talked to Claire yet about moving, as it is supposed to be too early for a kid her age to understand. But maybe she is picking up on some subtle clues anyways. Maybe these kids are smarter than they act.

Ant!

Claire has a history of being rather scared of ants. Sometimes we would sit on the white-painted wooden steps in front of the house, playing or just hanging out. On those bright white steps, a little tiny ant showed up easily, and Claire never seemed to miss one. She would yell, "annnnttt!" and frantically scramble up or down the steps, away from the minuscule intruder. Eventually her fear was moderated, and she would generally just avoid any ants she saw, gradually with less and less trepidation.

Now it is the ants who should be afraid.

Tonight Claire noticed a little ant crawling on the table during dinner. She said in a loud but not panicked voice, "ant!" Kit and I, out of habit, were reassuring her it was not going to hurt her, and there was nothing to be afraid of, as the ant crawled closer to her plate. Claire kept staring at it intensly, and then -- whack! -- she brought her hand up and down quickly and smashed the ant on the table. The fierce strike immediately stopped the ant, and Claire went back to eating her pizza.

I was a little horrified, actually. I don't normally squash insects unless they are really being a nuisance. I am not sure where Claire even got the idea to smash it; from all the older boys she hangs out with, I guess. Nonetheless, I was also strangely impressed by her power and coordination. Claire normally sort of fumbles with soccer balls and runs around in circles giggling. But this toddler can take care of business if she needs to!

Class Picture 2008

From top left:

Ms. Betsy, Ms. Janet

Nathan, Abbey, Tiller (Matilda), Kai

our Claire, Turner

Crooner

Claire likes to sing her own little songs about different people now. She'll pick a person and sing a little song. Sometimes it even sounds pretty good. Normally her songs go like this one about Muffin.

"Muffin is a wonderful doggy, Muffin is a wonderful doggy, so wonderful, Muffin, Muffin, Muffin."

She doesn't sing it to any tune I can readily identify, but it might be inspired by "Frere Jacques". She adapts this same format to the people in her life, like, "Grammy is a wonderful lady..."

One day Kit and I were driving to dinner with Claire, and she started singing a different variation, about our jobs. "Mommy is a doctor, Mommy is a doctor." Then she started singing, "Daddy is a ...." After a long pause she sort of mumbled something quietly to herself, like "Daddy is a .... mrpahpahpah". She couldn't figure out what I was besides a daddy! After a few more seconds, Claire found another way out of the conundrum. "Daddy is a ... handsome guy!" (Later, she changed it to "office guy")

Thanks for compliment, Claire, but for future reference I am a "systems analyst". Don't worry, I don't know what it means either, but it seems to have something to do with computers.

Dancing with the Cows

We are in the middle of selling our house in Atlanta right now. "Fantastic Renovated Bungalow with Finished Basement!", anyone? So far, no offers. There are 22 houses for sale in our little neighborhood of Woodland Hills, so it is going to be tough.

Anyways, someone had arranged to look at the house this evening, and we all had to clear out of the house between 5:30 and 6:30. So Kit picked up Claire from Grace, I dropped Muffin off at our friend Melissa's house, and we all met up at Chick-fil-A where we could turn Claire loose on the playground for a while. They were having some sort of kid's night there, and the place was crawling with kids. Claire played a "spin the wheel" game, where in reality she won a Cinnamon Cluster, but thankfully they gave her a little toy cow with a sign reading "Eat mor chikn" instead.

As we ate dinner, a really big guy in a cow custume started wandering around the place waving at the kids. At first, Claire was a little scared of the six-foot-tall walking cow, as I think any sane person would be. But she did wave back at him, softly saying, "Hiiiii." Besides that, it was mostly an arms-length situation, and the cow went on his way to pester some other kids.

After gnawing on some more chicken nuggets, Claire got her courage up and hopped out of her chair without a word. She waddled across the crowded restaurant all by herself straight for the giant cow. I was hoping the cow would not accidentally step on her. He did not, and in fact he crouched down and waved at her. Claire then stepped forward and hugged the cow's large legs. After a lot of staring and waving between the cow and Claire, the situation bizarrly turned into a dance-off! The cow stomped his foot, then Claire stomped her foot. The cow wiggled his arm, then Claire wiggled her arm. Eventually Claire took the lead, doing some light hopping and then some hilarious rear-end wiggling, some serous getting-down. The giant cow matched her step for step. After that it went back to some waiving and stomping, and then I had to escort Claire away from the gigantic cartoonish cow to give other kids a chance to play with him.

Claire made another break for the cow a few minutes later, but by then it was getting late and we needed to do some errands before heading home. Sadly, we did not have all night to watch our daughter dance with a giant cow. Wow, that is a really weird sentence. But we were very proud of Claire for being so brave as to go after that "silly dancing cow", as she would recollect later before going to bed.

Still Can't Read

Claire was in her room looking at a pile of her books before bath time this evening. Then she brought a big board book into the bathroom where I was drawing her bath and getting everything ready for bedtime. She asked me to read the book, and I said sorry, not right now, I am busy. She threw the book down and started crying. Usually she gets a little annoyed, but not that upset, when I tell her I'm busy. So I asked her what was the matter. She looked down, with tears in her eyes, and said in a quiet voice, "I'm too little to read it." It was so sweet and sad. Then Kit showed up and read the book to her and cheered her up. I am afraid Claire has a pretty long wait before she can read books "all by her own self", as she says, but it is nice to see she is motivated.

Many New Questions

Claire has started to ask some rather interesting questions about the world.

For example, you may recall that she likes to pretend to be working at a fast food drive-through, sticking her head out and saying, "You want a combo? You want cheese?" It still cracks us up. Lately, she has extended this game to sit-down dining, holding a notepad and crayon in hand, saying, "You want bar-b-que? You want Diet Coke?" Anyways, the other night at dinner Claire said, "Combo? What's that? I've never seen a combo." It must seem funny to her. Every time you ask for a combo, you get a hamburger, fries, and a drink instead. But what the heck is a combo? It must be some kind of food. Does it taste good?

Claire also noted recently that she has never seen a dinosaur. This is a pretty remarkable observation. She has seen most of the other animals we talk about, at least at the zoo or the aqauarium. She has seen elephants, lions, meerkats, whales, sharks, birds, and countless other fun animals. But what is with these reclusive dinosaurs? There is no dinosaur display at the zoo. I told her that is good because they are awfully big and fast and scary, to which she agreed, "Yeah!" and did a big roar sound. I also told her they have a dinosaur skeleton on display at the airport, but that did not especially interest her.

She also seems to be grappling with the seemingly arbitrary distinction between girls and boys. This topic came up during dinner when her school friend Nathan was mentioned as being a boy. "Girls and boys. What's that? That's silly!" This one I could not readily explain other than to say that they're all just kids. But she has a good point. Why do you have to specify someone's gender every time? You might as well use different words for kids with different colored hair.

It is a strange and confusing world indeed.

Catching up

The last couple of months have really gotten away from Kit and me. It has been sort of a perfect storm. Being chief resident at Emory takes up lots of Kit's time on top of her regular demanding work. Plus she is constantly studying for various massive tests to complete her residency. My job at Verizon got out of hand trying to deliver an especially difficult project ("Option 4 IP Provisioning Automation for MLFR") under tough circumstances. And we are trying to get our house cleaned up and remodeled to sell this spring, as well looking into our upcoming living situation in Dallas. Fortunately, we had many visits and a ton of help from the grandparents, which really helped save the day. My parents came to Altanta and watched after Claire for the better part of a weekend while Kit and I scrambled about. And among many other things, Joyce even painted our whole kitchen all by herself.

Of course, this is a blog about Claire, not about Kit and me. But it is interesting to note that this has probably been the most challenging few months in our lives. Fortunately through all of this, we have managed to keep Claire mostly happy and healthy, although she did have a runny nose through most of January.

But niceties like this blog fell out of the routine. Now things have cleared up for me at work for the moment, and it is time to catch up on this blog. I am afraid I have missed a few funny / interesting / cute things that Claire has done lately, but I am now going to backfill some things I still remember. Plus I had some written down in rough draft but never published all the way back to last November. I will probably not catch up on everything, but as I get these finished some entries will magically show up "before" this one.

Varied Musical Tastes

In the continuing theme of moving to Texas, I have put together a "Texas Tour" playlist on my iPod, completely made of songs about Texas places. Kit originally had the basic idea to do a Texas mix, but it turned into a fun little project for me. Most of the songs are pretty mellow, and we listen to it sometimes during bath time. The playlist features things like Patsy Cline singing "San Antonio Rose" and Arlo Guthrie singing "Streets of Laredo". Claire does not react much to those particular songs, but she seems to enjoy "Galveston", of which we have on old Gordon Calcotte country/surf version and a nice newer alt rock version by some band called Sparklehorse. Claire will sometimes say, "Let's sing about Galveston!" She also seems to enjoy the Lightnin' Hopkins blues song, "Goin' to Dallas", of which she will sometimes say, "That was a good one" when it is finished. Then again, these are two of my favorites, so maybe she is just tuning into that.

But Claire's real favorite music is The Countdown Kids and their renditions of toddler classics like "Old McDonald Had a Farm", "The Wheels on the Bus", and "Frere Jaques". She tries to sing along and occasionally clap. The Countdown Kids helped make the six-hour car trip back from Florida back to Atlanta in December more bearable by just keeping Claire occupied for a couple of hours. She also seems to like The Wiggles, who sometimes accidentally appears on our TV after Calliou or Curious George, but Kit and I try to avoid them just because they are kind of creepy and annoying.

Claire can even sing a couple of songs somewhat successfully all by herself, such as "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". It's just so sweet to see her sing; she concentrates real hard to remember the words, and she gets a big smile on her face when she finishes the song.

Barney for President

Tonight we watched the news coverage of the 2008 Iowa presidential caucus over dinner. There was a lot of talk about the race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination.

Claire was apparently paying attention, because after dinner, as she was playing with her Barney the Dinosaur stuffed animal, she started saying, "Barack Obarney! Barack Obarney!" over and over. She would do well in an actual caucus meeting.

Goodbye, High Chair

Claire has been recently resisting sitting in her high chair. In the last day or two as we started to put her in her high chair for a meal, she started to specifically ask to sit in a regular chair. "I want to sit there!", she says, pointing at one of the normal adult chairs. So we tried it out a couple of times, and Claire did just fine. We use one of Kit's big, thick pathology books as a booster to make things a little easier, but even that is optional. She doesn't mind reaching up high to grab her food, and she seems to revel in how big and independent she is becoming.

So today, as part of our massive and ongoing cleanup and de-cluttering efforts, we moved the high chair down into the basement "loading zone" area to eventually donate or sell. It's yet another step to Claire gradually becoming a big kid, and perhaps a fitting way to start off the new year.