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.