4.6.18 - Kid snippets

Tuesday was the first time this year that I dressed Clara in shorts. Our potential new backup babysitter, Nicole, took Clara for a walk around the apartment complex, and Clara tripped and scraped her knees. It wasn't too bad but it's never happened to her before and she was pretty hard to console. She couldn't stop pointing to her knees and saying "This!" while crying, so I switched her to pants so she couldn't see it. Then I gave her a cookie and let her watch videos; she sat in Nicole's lap while Nicole stroked her hair, and she did calm down. Kind of reminds me of The Giver the first time the main character feels any form of pain (a sunburn) and it's a totally new sensation. I mean it's not as if Clara has never gotten hurt before but this was the first knee scrape, so in her 3-year-old world that's a big deal. Kind of bittersweet.

Tuesday night was also the first time Clara started to understand the robot game. Basically she sits in my lap and touches my thumb, and I make robot noises as my arms close in around her and squeeze her a few times and then open back up. I've gotten her this far before--where she makes the connection between touching my thumb and getting squeezed--but last night I also built it up to three different options: thumb = squeeze, pointer finger = tickle, middle finger = bop Jane's nose. They were both delighted. Clara sat in my lap and Jane stood on the floor holding onto my knees and just cooing and grunting and laughing and bounching up and down the whole time. We kept at it for about 15-20 minutes and they were both so excited the whole time.

A bunch of failed selfies.

On Thursday Clara and Jane were making each other laugh on the drive home from speech therapy. I don't even know what they were doing, but I could see in the rearview mirror Clara leaning toward Jane looking delighted. This was in sharp contrast to when I drive Clara home from therapy by herself and she is bored and I have to keep her entertained. I'm so glad these two have each other. I've noticed I feel a bit less anxious lately about Clara's speech issues, and I think that's because I feel a bit less worried about her growing up lonely because I keep seeing how she and Jane play together.

Finally, today we had to pause videos and all run into the nursery (me carrying Jane) so that Clara had the best vantage point from which to watch the big garbage truck do its job. She stood on the windowstill, blinds pushed aside, saying "Hi truck!" and Jane stood on the floor holding onto the edge of the toy box. Such an event. It's also raining today and twice Clara has stopped what she's doing in the living room to go into the nursery and look out the window at the rain. The second time she asked me to come with her (in her way--just said "Mama" and used body language to suggest I come with her). She stood on the windowstill and said "Oh, wow. So pretty." as she watched the rain.

Clara trying to pull Jane on top of her.