"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.

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.

Claire Breaks a Heart

Claire may have broken her first heart today. It happened on the sidewalk in front of the Carter's baby clothing store in Sandy Springs. That is where Claire left a 15 month old boy crying on the sidewalk, not because she hit him or bit him, or because he had skinned his knee. He was crying because Claire was leaving, and he wanted her to come back.

My mom and dad (Noni and Granda Phil!) were in town for the weekend to get a Claire fix to hold them until Thanksgiving. We all took a rare trip OTP (Outside the Perimeter) to the Carter's store near Perimeter Mall to find Claire some new pajamas. Her venerable old ones had served us well but were finally starting to get too small.

Fresh off a fun lunch at La Madeleine, we headed to Carter's. Kit sorted through the PJ's while I kept an eye on the kid. Claire was pretty happy to be out and about, and was in a playful, chatty mood. She sorted through the floor-level clothes racks repeatedly saying "How cuuuute!" and then pointing at the tags and saying, "It's twenty months!" (even though the tag actually said 24 months. I mean, get with it, kid!) As I checked out, Kit tended to Claire, who was happily playing with some small stuffed toys in the back.

As we all left the store and were on the wide sidewalk walking towards the car, a little toddler boy was heading towards the store with his parents and gramma. Claire ran forward and jumped right in front of the boy, patted herself on the chest, and declared, "This is Claire! Nice shoes!"

This little display just about floored all of us, including the little boy's parents. The boy was shocked and speechless. Claire then proceeded to pull out all her tricks as everyone watched on. She sang parts of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and The Wheels on the Bus as she danced and spun around. She ran around and tried to do some hopping, although that was less successful. She gave a heartfelt but largely unintelligible monologue. As her finale, she patiently recited the entire alphabet, almost flawlessly. The boy's mom said, "Oh my god! Is she saying the alphabet?" The little boy watched Claire this whole time, engrossed, with his mouth half open.

Finally I had to pick Claire up since it seemed like she was just starting to show off at this point. We talked for a bit with the boy's parents. The boy was 15 months old and was named Conner. They were in "the city" for the day to do some shopping. Little Conner did not have any brothers or sisters and stayed at home with his mom every day, so he had not been exposed to many other little kids. Maybe he would have been fascinated with Claire even if she had not put on such a show. But I felt a little bad for him because it seemed like his mom was thinking, "Why can't Conner do that?" Either that or, "Them city kids is smart." Just kidding. Anyways, we tried to explain that Claire was barely even talking at 15 months.

Eventually, we had to part ways. As we walked off, Claire looked back, waved, and said "Bye Conner!" Then she said quietly just to me and Kit, "That was fun." At this point we heard Conner crying. Looking back, he was trying to run towards Claire, and his parents were trying to grab him. I think he wanted to see Claire's second act.

Now that I have finally written this up, a couple of weeks later, we still talk about Conner occasionally. Sometimes Claire lists him along with her other friends, like Grace and Reese and the kids from school. She even named her new wiggling pig head toy after him. So I guess Conner made an impact on Claire too.

Girl Can Talk

Most of Claire's conversations still sound like this one today: "Baby Davis. Crying. Gracie. Infinity and beyond!" It is sort of a loose stream of consciousness monologue. In this case, Clair is noting Baby Davis' common practice of crying, something which she sometimes imitates as "Waaaa! Waaaa!" Caire goes on to notate her other two main weekday companions, Grace of course, and Reese doing Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story.

But Claire is occasionally involving us in real conversations lately. She had this discussion with her Mom while getting ready for her bath last night.

Claire: Mommy, do it!
Kit: Do what?
Claire: Toby!
Kit: Who's Toby?
Claire: I dunno!

And then she giggles and storms down the hall, returning a minute later to reiterate, "Toby! Toby!" Kit and I, by the way, have no idea who Toby is, but we were rolling on the floor laughing after this exchange. (Editor's note: We later discovered that Toby is a blond four year old boy in Reese's class who Claire thinks is especially funny.)

Claire is also forming more substantial sentences. This week when I was picking her up from Grace, Claire carried a book over to Baby Davis and proclaimed, "I'll read it to Baby Davis" rather than just something like, "Read baby Davis." Another example is if I walk out of the room, she'll sometimes say, "Daddy's coming back." And today (Sunday), Claire was looking at a picture of herself with Reese and Grace and announced, "I'll see Gracie tomorrow." She may actually understand the idea of tomorrow and the basic schedule of two days at home and then back to Grace. On the other hand, she seems to invoke "tomorrow" to mean more or less the same thing as "later", but a little stronger, like "more later".

Claire sometimes even talks about her emotions. A few weeks ago, she walked into the living room after a bad wakeup from a nap, and with her lips puckered, she quietly said, "Sad" and then walked away. Yesterday in the car she was having a small fit because we took her drink away from her, and she said, "I'm crying." And after a brief struggle this morning over changing out of her pajamas and into real clothes, she actually said, "I'm sorry. It's okay." The funny thing is that when she says something like this, that she is sad or crying or sorry, she almost always calms down immediately. It is almost like she is soothing herself. Hey, whatever works!

Talking Maniac

Claire has been elevating her talking to the next level lately. She used to say mostly single words about things and people, like "blanket" or "Gracie". Now she is sometimes speaking in actual sentences. If she spills her drink, she'll say "I spilled it." Dropping something, she'll say, "I dropped it." If she wants a book that is out of reach, she says "I have it." That last one sounds kind of rude in a way, but I think she picked it up from me asking her to give us something she has, like a flashlight. I normally say, "Can I have it?" as I hold out my hands. She even told Kit, "I love you" the other night out of the blue.

I guess this means that one day I will have a conversation with Claire over breakfast beyond the current standard, "Pancake. Table. Reesie. Goergie." But what else could there possibly be to talk about?

She is also "messing up" fewer words, which she does so cutely. Sadly, flamingos are no longer "'mingos". I think she was onto something with her "mingos". We call aligators "gators", right? And "ome-ne-ne" has largely been replaced by the technically more correct, "Open it". She is even sort of counting now. Somehow a game evolved where we spread the phonebooks out on the kitchen floor in a crooked line, and Claire steps from one to another. As she steps, Kit and I count, "Oooone. Twooooo. Threeeeee..." Claire has picked this up and will usually repeat the number, and sometimes even say the next number before we do: "Fooooooour" That just kills Kit and me.

But happily, she does not say everything perfectly yet. Here are some things that she still says funny. I wanted to get these down before she fixes these too.

• Oatmeal is "elmote". It sounds like "Elmo", with a distinct "T" on the end.
• She also adds a sharp "T" to the end of "arbor", which is Spanish for tree, making it "arbort". Sometimes this devolves into "Eye-bort".
  
• "Close the door" is just "Clodoor!", usually said with gusto as a single word.
• Elephants are "ephelants"
• A lion is a "liney"
• A spider is a "pider", and Spiderman (Reese's favorite) is "Piderman"
  
• She loves saying Cock-a-doodle-doo, but leaves out the "doodle", making it the more concise "Cockadoo!"
• A strawberry is a "strawburrrdy", usually said with gusto.
  
• Pasta is "patsa"
• Blueblerries are "blue-blerrrries"
  
• A quesadilla is a "kadeeya!"
• A heart is a "lart"
  
• Corn is "corner". This especially applies to the Mr. Potato head character Pop Corn.
• Some phrases are a mystery, like "Apple duty!", which she repeats often.
• When we say "Gimme five", she'll slap our hand and say, "Go five!"

Power Outage

Today did not start off well. I woke up at 5:15 to the sound of beeping in the living room and downstairs. The UPS battery backups were complaining that the power was out (again). It was an overcast night, and the house was pitch dark; I could not even see my hand in front of my face. But I had a small flashlight right by the bed, and I quietly roamed around the house turning off the beeping batteries. I even made it back to bed without waking anyone up.

Fifteen minutes later, as I was trying to get back to sleep, Claire started calmly saying from her room, "Eyeball. Eyeball." At first this seemed like an odd thing to say. But I figured out what she meant pretty quickly. Normally if she hurts something or if something is not quite right, she will simply say the name of the offended body part, like saying "finger" if she were to hurt her finger. She did not sound panicked this morning, so I figured her actual eyeballs were okay. She must have been complaining that she could not see anything at all in the pitch dark, and maybe she was afraid here eyeballs were not working. I was impressed how calm she stayed when she suddenly realized she was, well, blind, and that she figured out a way to tell me that she could not see. I took her back to our room since it was still completely dark in the house and I did not want her to be scared.

We could not get her back to sleep since it was almost time for her to wake up anyways. But she laid down at the foot of our bed, asked for her blanket, pulled it over herself, and twice proclaimed "Sleepy time". She rested there, but did not sleep, for a little while. But by 6:00 am, she was off the bed and wandering down the hall to gather toy animals from around the house. Pretty soon she was asking for pancakes. So our day started a little early, but luckily we got the power back within about an hour, and everyone was happy and safe.

Catch Phrases

Claire has developed a couple of catch phrases lately.

The first one she stumbled upon accidentally when she randomly said something like "Stay safe!" over dinner one night. She said it sort of seriously, but with a little grin, and looked at us for a reaction. Of course, we were rolling around laughing. The other phrase she likes is "Take it easy", which I occasionally say if she gets worked up about something, like splashing her bath water too much or redistributing all her socks around the house. One day I said it, and she repeated it back to me with flourish. "Takeiteasy!" she said as sort of a single word.

She says both of these phrases a lot now, at least as a parlor trick if we remind her of them, and she usually says them back to back. It probably cracks me and Kit up more than anyone. Kit has started singing the Eagles song "Take it easy" to get Claire going.

We'll finish with a message from Claire:

"Stay safe!"
"Takeiteasy!"

Braaay!

This morning Claire and I set down for breakfast, as we do every morning. Usually during breakfast, she'll go on about the "pancakes" or maybe that she misses "Reesie". But this morning, she started saying "Braaaay! braaaaay! braaay!" quite enthusiastically, as if trying to tell me something.

I didn't know what the heck she was talking about.

She could tell I was confused, so she tapped my shirt. When I looked down, I realized I was wearing an Atlanta Braves shirt. She patted the shirt right on the Braves tomahawk and said what I now realized was "Braaaaaves", with a proud smile. Just in case I did not know what she was talking about, she followed this comment up with "ba-ball", meaning baseball.

I guess when we have the Braves games on TV, she's actually paying attention, a lot of attention. I wonder if she knows how to get Andruw Jones out of his slump.

The Daily Menu

Here is Claire's menu these days. This is actually handy just for myself as a quick reference when I feel like there's nothing for her to eat. Plus it's taken a while to work out a good eating plan, so I'd like to document this success.

Breakfast
Always starts with whole milk, and on alternating days one of...

• Whole wheat "baby" oatmeal
  
• Frozen whole wheat pancakes

She definitely prefers the "pancakecakes", as she calls them, and requests them often, even for dinner. It is often the first word out of her mouth in the morning.

Occasionally when I have time in the morning, I cook up a tomato/onion/pepper/cheese omelet instead, which she enjoys. (Hmm, I should try this sometimes for dinners to vary things up.)

She used to eat fruit in the mornings too, especially watermelon, but lately she is not so interested.

Lunch / Dinner
Start with a vegetable, which is pretty much down to one of:

• Sliced tomato (aka, a 'mato)
• Canned green beans
• Steamed brocolli (which she can actually say well and occasionally requests)
• Maybe black beans or black eyed peas
  

At either lunch or dinner, she gets 4 oz full fat yogurt or cottage cheese for the main course.

For the other meal of the day, she gets one of these for her entre:

• Frozen "Doctor Praeger's" broccoli or spinach and potato pancake
• Cheese ravioli or tortellini
• Sliced deli turkey
• Rice & beans
• A quesadilla, aka a "kadeeya!", such as a frozen one from Sam's Club, or a"Mini Me" quesadilla from Moe's if we're out. I have not perfected the homemade quesadilla yet.
  
• Random leftovers from our meals or eating out. If she's lucky it's beef brisket, pulled chicken, or something like that, ideally something with some fat and/or protein.

Then a fruit:

• A chopped up orange, which she usually likes
• A few strawberries, which she often requests as "strawburdy!"
• Grapes (sliced up to avoid choking!)
• Watermelon
• She's medium on most other "misc" fruit as everyday fare, but we have had some success with the occasional peach or pear.
• Bananas are completely avoided since they are constipating, although she knows what they are called and can say "banana" real well.
• Apples were on our no-eat list until recently, because one of Claire's doctors told me it was constipating too. That has since been rebuked by another doctor, so we might give them a try.
  

Finally, a bread:

• Usually a whole wheat pita
• Maybe some sort of grainy cracker
• Occasionally a tortilla or bagel
• A graham cracker if she's real lucky ("Cracker! Cracker!")