Moments from a Tuesday.

There was a dead fly lying on the table, and Claire started hitting it - hard - with her sister's high chair tray.
Me: What are you doing?
Claire: Hitting a bug.
Me: Stop hitting the bug, Claire, he's already dead.
Claire: I was trying to hit him some more so he would be more dead.

***

Most everyone knows about our constant struggle over how much our girls eat. I mean, EVERY 7 MINUTES I hear, "Can I have a snack?" or "What can I eat?" or some other variation. Today Claire walked up to me and said...
Claire: I've got a new rule - Only one snack every day.
Me: I think that's a great rule, honey.
Claire: I might not listen to it.

***

Tonight Averi Kate made me sing "Baa Baa Black Sheep" 812 times before she went to sleep. She also said, "I love you" for the first time. Totally prompted and probably coerced by me, of course, but my heart melted a little bit anyway.

My Favorite Things Lately

My favorite thing Claire has said lately: "Everyday I take vitamins, so I'm good for myself."

 And then there was the other time when I was crying in the car (because, really, what better place is there to cry than the car?) and Claire said, "Mom. It's okay. Quiet down. Drink some water. Just stop it."

My favorite thing AK has done lately: Eat chocolate for the first time.

 But don't worry, lest you think that now her appetite has been tainted and all she wants is junk food, here she is devouring her oatmeal.

 My favorite thing the girls have done together lately: Play the piano. Claire is starting to show some interest in actually learning the "hows" of playing, so that's exciting.

 Favorite pictures lately: The girls in dance attire.

Quick Lists

A Quick List for Claire

• Growing. I was reading "Guess How Much I Love You" to the girls this morning. AK wandered off in the middle and I was left reading it to just Claire, and I just about got choked up thinking about how I used to read that same book to Claire when she was small enough to cuddle in my lap in the rocking chair. It was hard to think that that little baby seemingly overnight had turned into the long and thin almost-4-year-old sitting in front of me

• Learning. Oh my, how she is a sponge these days. She remembers things that I don't even remember. She wants to know the details and the why of everything. I have been doing more systematic preschool-type activities with her for a few months, not because I think 3 year olds in general need to sit and learn certain skills but because she thrives on it. She gets so excited every week when we start a new letter and verse. She is just a sharp kid.

• Books. She still loves to sit on the couch and read books together. We recently read through "Little House in the Big Woods" (although we had to return it to the library before we finished, but we'll check it back out and finish soon.) That was our first chapter book to read together, and she loved it.

• Music. She still loves music. She likes to listen to it, to dance to it, to sing it. Her life is pretty much a musical, as she narrates about 74% of it in song.
• What can I do? This is the question I hear 8,511 times per day. You can stop asking me that question, babe. That's what you can do.
• Ya know. This is how she still ends a large percentage of her sentences. Tonight she was walking around doing bicep curls with a jar of applesauce, saying, "Applesauce is kind of like weights for kids. Ya know?"

 ***

Talking about Franklin the turtle (a kids' storybook character)...

C: Is he a boy or a girl?
Me: He's a boy.
C: Okay. I love that kind of a boy.

***

"Logic"

Me: Claire, what are you doing? Don't put those scissors on your mouth!
C: But I need to get the cinnamon off.

***

Just part of a discussion about the moon...

Me: Did you know that the moon doesn't actually have any light inside of itself? It acts kind of like a mirror to reflect the light of the sun.
C: (pause) I have to think about that.

***

A Quick List for Averi Kate

• Incredible focus. She picks a task and is determined until she is finished with it.
• Easy to please, quick to laugh. She can be tricked out of a fussy mood pretty quickly. She is at such a fun age right now. Everything is hilarious to her. She just cracks herself up, and all of us too.

• Loves music, loves to dance. Some of her favorite songs are Wheels on the Bus and Father Abraham.
• No fear of the physical. She will climb, jump off things, tumble, without hesitation.

• Terrified of noises. For such an adventurer, she is not friends with thunder, loud trucks, the vacuum cleaner, or the printer.
• The look of intense panic. She has this awesome face that she makes when she hears one of those noises. Or when she hears the phone ring. Or when she sees Barney. Or any other thing of great importance in her mind that she feels compelled to share with us. Like the time she saw a bug on the floor...

• Dish towels. Seriously, one of her favorite things to play with. She loves laying them out, smoothing them, sitting on them, folding them, wrapping her babies in them, putting them on her head and laughing hysterically.
• Words. She knows how to use them but doesn't feel compelled to use them all the time. Unlike her sister, who uses them compulsively. AK can talk if she wants to, and in fact tonight she had a 30 minute diatribe on how the moon ("moo") is both outside ("ay-ya") and up ("uppa"). Yes, Averi Kate. We got it. But more often than not she is the quiet, thinking child.

• Jackets. She does love to wear a jacket, no matter the weather. Sometimes she gets it in her head that she wants to wear a jacket and she stands in her crib at naptime, crying and yelling "jacket" until I come in there and put a jacket on her, and then she just smiles and lays down and sticks her thumb in her mouth and goes straight to sleep.
• Lala. She does love her some Elmo, aka "Lala" according to her (Claire called him Lala too when she was little, interestingly. Well, littler. She's still little.) She sleeps with a Lala and begs to watch him every day on Youtube.
• Toenails. She loves to have her nails cut. Um, yeah.