I’m reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to Marissa and Katie. We are up to the chapter where Hagrid, the Hogwarts caretaker, is taking Harry to get his magic wand. They are taking the train to London and, because he is a giant twice the size of regular humans, the book describes Hagrid taking up two seats.
Katie giggled as she had deduced that his butt must therefore be big too. I agreed with assessment and tried to continue reading.
“He must have big toots.”
I decided to stop for reading for the night on that page.
When Claire does not want her teeth brushed or her poopy diaper changed, she will run to the front of the house to hide. The tighter she twists the curtains around her, the harder she is trying to hide from us.
Curtains for Claire
Yesterday she figured out another way to thwart our attempts to locate her.
When we approach the gnarled curtain she will report, in a voice that’s muffled:
“I, SpongeBob.“
Marissa and Katie have been good movie watchers for years, but the last movie we took the entire family to see was Polar Express last winter. Claire was two and a half and we figured it would a good first non-drive-in movie for her.
We were wrong.
Halfway through the movie she wouldn’t sit still. She ended up walking up and down the aisle until I relocated with her to the back of the the theater and bear hugged her for the rest of the movie.
Because eight months is a large portion of a toddler’s lifetime, we thought we’d give it another chance this weekend with March of the Penguins.
It didn’t work either. While she didn’t run down the aisles, she wouldn’t sit in any of the chairs in the row, nor on either parent’s lap. She did however slept in the car on the way home.
It was, however, tramatic for Katie, the otherwise avid moviegoer. It hadn’t occurred much to Katie that baby animals don’t always live. While the time lapse photography of a cracked egg freezing didn’t sink in, the shot of an adult penguin poking at his chick’s frozen carcass DID. And the adult penguins leaving their young at the end of winter didn’t go over too well either.
She was bawling when we left the theater.
You know, when I read this three weeks ago, I thought it was funny.
I no longer find it as humorous.
This is a picture of
Kids Fluoride Rinse.
Drug Mart Brand.
Alcohol Free.
Grape Flavor.
Childproof mouthwash for kids
With a childproof cap.
10 minutes ago, I had to explain how to open it to Marissa and Katie. Anyone see a problem here?
Wednesday Chris took the girls to the pediatrician as Katie has strep. In the waiting room, Claire reported that she had picked a booger. Chris frantically went looking for a facial tissue to capture it, but by the time she found one, Claire announce to everyone in the waiting room:
“I ate it!”
At the point, Chris admitted to me that she tried not to make eye contact with the other parents.
While Marissa and Katie have largely outgrown theirs, Claire is now in the throes of a major sticker fetish.
We’ve got a drawer in the kitchen for coloring books and another for stickers. From the first drawer, Claire will take a piece of printer paper, recycled from our computer’s printer, and put stickers from the second drawer all over the blank backside. She will then color all over it. Claire’s scribbling appears to be pretty abstract.
Claire will then fold the paper several times and shove it into an envelope lifted from the bedroom. Unaware that envelopes can be licked shut, Claire will use even more stickers to seal the envelope. She will then present the envelope for me to open.
While it wastes more envelopes that I would like, it is a harmless creative outlet for a three-year-old.
Claire found another stash of stickers recently in the bedroom. She must have liked them because she was sticking them on not just envelopes. In keeping with last week’s holiday, the stickers had US flags on them.
But when she presented her latest artwork to me, I was taken aback.
All the little square stickers she used had the number 37 in the lower left corner.
Chris has expressed disappointment recently in our three-year-old digital camera. It uses rechargeable NiMH batteries and even though we have very high capacity ones, the cycle time for the flash is longer than she would like. At her gymnastics meet, Katie had to stay on the podium with her arms up an inordinately long time while she waited for Chris to take a picture. Even after the delay, the picture didn’t take. That has happened more often recently that she would like.
Chris is an avid picture taker though. She scrapbooks too. She spent all of today mounting 19 cent shapshots on sheets of 3 dollar colored paper. And I spent the day entertaining the girls.
Three-year-old Claire has a camera too: a toy one that displays a rotating group of animal images in the viewfinder when you press the shutter button. This afternoon with it in hand, she ran around pretending to take pictures of her sisters.
After a series of shapshots, she lowered it from her face and announced to all who were listening: “missed it!”
Last night we watched the city fireworks from a park close to the park where they were being set off. There was a slight treeline problem for some of the low fireworks, but the park we viewed them from was much less crowded and escaping the parking lot when they were over was much easier.
I asked Marissa to tell me which ones she like best. She report she liked these the best and I agreed I like them the best too.
I liked them because the ended in a gentle cloud that seemed to hang in the air longer than the others.
Marissa like them because they looked like “big hairy balls.”
Katie’s show at the end of horse camp:
Katie on Wilber