Asleep in the Hall

Claire has always resisted naps. When it is time for a nap at home, she normally stays in her bed but does everything she can to keep herself awake. We can here what is going on in there from the baby monitor we have installed. Claire has conversations with her stuffed animals, complete with distinct voices for herself and the animals. Sometimes the conversations are borrowed from favorite movies. She sings elaborate songs to herself, usually about the events of the day. Sometimes her room gets quiet for 10 to 15 minutes, and just when we think she has dozed off, she suddenly starts singing or yelling really loud, apparently to wake herself back up. We are told that at school she takes an hour or more to put herself to sleep, although she is very congenial about it. Now Claire is old enough to talk to us about it. She tells us that she does not want to go to sleep because she wants to keep playing. (I cannot blame her for this behavior since I do the same thing, only instead of talking or singing to myself, I fortunately entertain myself with the computer or an audio book.)

Today Claire was obviously exhausted when nap time came around. She spent about an hour talking and singing to herself before it got quiet in her room. After another 20 minutes, I went to see if she was in fact asleep. Sure enough, she was asleep -- in the hallway outside of her room! I went and got Kit to see this unexpected situation. Not wanting to disturb her sleep, we left her alone and went back upstairs to work on a few things to prepare for the new baby. When we came back downstairs a half hour later, Claire was back in her bed sound asleep. It is hard to imagine Claire picking herself up, walking back into her room, and putting herself to sleep. But I can only assume the stuffed animals did not carry her back to bed.

Flippin' Out at Flipnotics

How did we end up with the wild kid at storytime? Claire is the blur in the brown dress trying to get a mosh pit going.



Hats off to Laura Freeman for her inspired performance at Flipnotics. She really knew how to get the kids -- or at least Claire -- going.

No no no no no no no no

As I have stated before, this blog is more about the highlights than the lowlights of raising Claire, so much so that when I go back and read this in 10 years, it will probably seem like even the "terrible threes" was nothing but fun. As sort of a reality check, I like to toss in the occasional reminder that raising Claire is not always 100% fun and sweet. This is the type of thing that happens from time to time...

Tonight, Claire wanted to do some pretend cooking with her playdough. Hey, that's a great idea. So I set her up with a couple of varieties of playdough and a some plastic plates and cups. That made Claire pretty happy, and then she asked for a spoon. I gave her sort of a leftover spoon that we don't normally eat with. That way, she was not going to confuse her "playing" spoon with an actual "eating" spoon. When I handed Claire the spoon, she said she wanted a real eating spoon. I told her no, sorry, but we use the playing spoon for playdough. Usually Claire respects this type of rule reluctantly by peaceably. But not tonight. Claire suddenly started yelling "no no no no no no no no no no no no no no" over and over. It went on for literally 30 minutes, with her just sitting there in front of her playdough yelling "no" over and over. I did a few things around the house. Still, "no no no no no!" Finally I asked her to help cook our actual dinner, and that broke the cycle. She was happy again.

Kit gets this treatment much worse than I do. Kit can say, "Look, the sky is blue," and Claire will respond, "No, it's not blue. Why did you say the sky is blue?!" in a rather annoyed tone. They say this is a preview of the teenage years, and I can believe it.

Pack Rat

We spent a good part of the weekend preparing for the move to Austin, with the help of Kit's parents. Claire has mostly busied herself with packing and unpacking various bags. Her favorites, by far, are her backpacks.

Backpacks have been a long-standing amusement for Claire. She spends a lot of time stuffing them to the seams with whatever toys she has on hand, plus maybe a twig or two (another favorite). Several weeks or months later, out of her backpack comes a missing toy, such as Leo from Little Einsteins or that one puzzle piece we had been looking for. She has also lately learned to add load on the outside of her backpacks, by attaching a balloon or a stuffed animal with a string.

But today she took her backpack stuffing to new levels when she asked us to help her put her little backpack, already stuffed to the brim with detritus, inside the other backpack. "Will you help me put my backpack in my backpack?" were her exact words. Common sense took over pretty quickly, though, and we were able to talk her down from this idea. However, she did manage to load up her big backpack to the point where she was literally unable to get up. She kept struggling to stand up from a sitting position on the floor, and was only able to get up with a helping hand or two.

Office Worker

For a few months now, I have been promising Claire that I would take her to see my office. She has been to Kit's office at the hospital a couple of times, and she really enjoyed it. Claire knows I am not a doctor, and simply refers to me as an "office worker." Hey, that's senior office worker to you!

With time running out before the move to Austin, I finally decided to take her out to the office. We spent about half an hour looking at my cubicle and wandering the halls. Claire liked the names posted outside of people's cubicles and asked if a "Joe" worked here. So we walked down the hall to see. The closest we got was Bud. The other names tended to be a little more exotic, such as Senthil and Thuy.

Claire's favorite room was the conference room, which had lots of soft, rolling chairs and a big white board. Here is Claire pretenting to be a project manager:



Claire actually managed to put the fun back into project management!

Dream Day

Somehow Claire and Kit got into a conversation about Claire's perfect day. Claire described it as:

1. Her cast would be off so she could walk wherever she wants
2. There would be no pond monsters (who are from her favorite scary book, The Dark, Dark NIght, and have been haunting her dreams)
3. We would go to Chick-fil-a (probably more for the playground than the food)
4. We would all go get ice cream.

I bet if she really thought about it hard, she would also probably include no nap and staying up playing as late as she wants. I picture a bloated, exhausted, and sweaty Claire snoozing on the floor in the living room, which of course is a sign of a truly good day.

Giggle Bean

Kit was putting Claire to sleep when I suddenly head loud laughing coming from upstairs. After a pause, there was more laughing. It kept going on and off. I was wondering what was going on when Kit showed up and explained.

Kit had said something to Claire like, "Goodnight, my little snuggle bean." In response, Claire threw up her hands and said in a vaguely New Jersey-ish sort of way, "Do I look like a bean to you?" This cracked Kit up, which in turn cracked Claire up. Claire enjoyed this turn of events and repeated, "Do I look like a bean?" It went on like this for a while before Kit left Claire to entertain herself and hopefully fall asleep.

It ended up taking Claire a couple of hours to get to sleep. We could hear her in there repeatedly saying, "Do I look like a bean?" and making herself laugh. Claire, of course, has always tried to find ways to keep herself awake at night, and this was a fun new way to do it. Over the next few days, we heard the same refrain over and over from Claire. "Do I look like a bean?" As you can tell, the humor wears off after a while, but it was pretty funny the first couple of times.

Green Is Not My Best Color

Driving home from today's swim lesson, traffic slowed to a crawl as police closed lanes and directed traffic. Just as I started to become irritated, the sight of a lady walking down the sidewalk with a crazy green hat and green-and-white striped stockings changed my mood. It was a Saint Patrick's Day parade! Crowds of green-clad pedestrians were funneling their way down Greenville Avenue towards the apparent parade site. I started daydreaming about going to the parade. The parade route past the old brick cottages of Lower Greenville, coupled with the cool damp weather, seemed perfect for an Irish celebration.

Then Claire chimed in her thoughts...

She wondered why everyone was wearing silly green hats. I explained that it was for Saint Patrick's Day. She should wear green to school on Tuesday, since everyone was going to be wearing green for Saint Patrick's day. She took some exception to this idea. "Green is not my best color. I like pink! Pink is my favorite color! I don't like green," she explained. I told her she could wear green and pink. "No! I want to wear pink. That's the only way to do it." I said that's alright, and just in case she was confused, I went on to explain that Saint Patrick was not me, her dad. He was a guy in Ireland a long time ago. Yep, old Saint Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland. What a guy. They like to celebrate him every year. Claire was not impressed, replying, "I do not want to wear green, and I do not want to go Patricking!" I loved that, the idea of "going Patricking."

Anyways, I guess Saint Patrick's Day is not really for three-year-olds (not even for rather Irish ones).

Candy Time Out

Claire has scored more than her share of candy lately. First, Valentines Day was a jackpot. She came home with a white paper bag full of candy (and accompanying valentines cards) compliments of her 16 classmates. I think I was those only parent who just sent Valentines cards and no candy. I figured I was doing other parents a service by giving them one less piece of candy to deal with. I can see now that this is an uphill fight, and maybe I was just being uptight about the whole thing. Next year, it's Fun Dip for everyone!

The following day was a birthday party for her friend and classmate Georgia. As luck would have it, the party was right after Claire's swim class, a couple of doors down. So Claire topped off her 40 minutes of swimming (well, crying) with another 45 minutes of running and jumping and rolling around. Then came the pizza and juice boxes, after which sadly, Claire could not eat all of the birthday cake put in front of her. To top it off, they sent her home with a party bag full of candy to add to her Valentines collection.

We dealt with this candy glut by giving Claire one piece of candy each morning and one piece each evening (Kit did some of her own "helping" as well). One night after Claire had already enjoyed her candy allotment for the day, she started asking for more candy. She was being very sweet about it, actually. But I said no, she already had her candy for the day. She asked again nicely, and I said no again. Then she sighed a slow "oookaaay" and carried the white candy bag over to her "timeout" corner, where we normally send her for two minutes if she misbehaves (like hockey). She left the bag on the floor there and walked back to me. I asked her why she left the bag there, and she explained that the candy was having a timeout. That nearly killed me. I almost gave her a piece of candy right there on the spot just for being so cute. (But sadly, I did not.)

Book Shortage

This morning, I was explaining the day's plan to Claire. It seems to help her to know what to expect. I started with the basics: it is Sunday, so it is not a school day; it is a Mommy & Daddy day. Claire corrected me and explained that today is actually a Mommy, Daddy, and Muffin day. Then I went on to explain the errands for the day. First we would go buy some shampoo, and then we would go to the bookstore and get some new books for Mommy. Claire glanced up at the 12-foot tall bookshelf in the living room, half covered in books, and looked a little confused. After a few seconds, she said, "Are we running out of books?"

Name Your Friends

In the past, Claire's stuffed animals had names that were accurate but not very exciting. She had Bunny the bunny, Longhorn the longhorn cow, and so on. I think we actually named those for her. But she has gotten more creative recently. Her stuffed kitty is named Cranberry Sauce. I think this happened during Thanksgiving when the conversation about dinner got mixed up with the conversation about her kitty. For less understood reasons, her stuffed puppy is named Salsa Bleeze. I cannot be sure about the spelling, but that is exactly how it sounds when she says it. Her rocking horse has gone nameless for a long time, but now she has officially christened it Texas Island. This just gets weirder and weirder.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.