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.