Life Lately

I keep meaning to start a baby book or a journal or something for Claire. Let's just say it's on my mental to-do list which is yay high {picture me stretching my short and stubby arms as far as they can sadly reach}.

 

So let's just document on ye olde blog here, shall we?

 

Yesterday morning, while Claire was getting her first film of toddlery milky smell on her (moms out there know what I mean... that first layer of toddler stench, right?) while eating her morning yogurt, I just had a burst of love while looking at her and said "Claire? I love you." and she kept her head down, steadfast on the yogurt task at hand. "I love you, Mama." My heart swelled, as it is wont to do when my 2 year old tells me she loves me. Then she piped up again. "I love you Murphy. I love you Baby Sister." OK, if that doesn't make you want to weep with motherly pride, then I don't want to know you.

 

Claire seems slightly jealous of Baby Sister thus far, but maybe I'm just projecting this onto her. She doesn't like to talk much about the baby, but then again, she must not get it all that much. We've been talking about Baby Sister for months now, she probably thinks we're all talk, no walk. I asked her the other day what Baby Sister's name should be. She was confused. "Umm. Sister!" Once I thought about it, it makes sense. We call(ed) her Baby Claire, and we call other babies Baby Grace, for example. So all along we've been saying Baby Sister, with sister just being the placeholder word. Whereas she thinks Sister is the name. I thought it was cute. I tried to explain that we could call her lots of different names. The one she finally suggested is Buddha. No idea where Buddha came from. No, we don't practice eastern religions. Or any religions for that matter.

 

Speaking of which. After the tornado, when most of Claire's books were destroyed, we got a plethora of books donated to us by her daycare friends. (Again, cue waterworks/heart swelly feelings.) One of the books is about Christmas, and tells the story of Jesus' birth. For being a kid who had never heard of Jesus before this book, she is downright obsessed with Baby Jesus. In fact, she was studying the tag on her washcloth the other day, and saw the Gerber baby face on the tag. "Baby Jesus!!!" She was so shocked that Baby Jesus appeared in places other than her beloved book. Every night, she wants to read the Baby Jesus book. She even fills in the words for us. It'll go like this:

"Then Mary and.... "  

"Joseph!"

"had to walk all night long to..."

"Bethlehem!"

"And when they got there they were very..."
"Tired!"

"but they had no place to sleep. So they slept in a..."

"Stable!"

"And that night..."

"Baby Jesus was born!"

 

It's pretty damn cute, even if it is about Baby Jesus, who I don't really have much else to teach her about except the night he was born.

 

My last little blurb is about a little ritual that Nick started with Claire. I think he got it from the book The Help. He basically tells Claire some affirmations and she repeats them. It's so precious. It typically goes like this:

"I'm pretty."

"I pretty!"

"I'm funny."
"I funny!"

"I'm smart."

"I farp!"

 

For being a kid with such an amazing vocabulary, a talking wonder if I may say so myself, this is the sweetest little speech impediment I've ever heard. She can't say "sm" and instead says "f".   So "smart" turns into "farp". {Let me digress a little to say that yes, we've considered the short-term ramifications of this, and have vetted out the possible ways in which we can get our daughter to swear. Smuck. Yes. We went there. I was not pleased nor proud.}

 

I totally "get it" now when I think back to the story my mom told me once about how I used to say "K-Mout" instead of "K-Mart". She said it was the sweetest thing, and the day I said "Let's go to K-Mart" her heart broke a little. I totally get it. Once she masters "smart" I will probably shed a proverbial tear.

 

These stories are probably only interesting to me, but there you go. A little glimpse of 2 year old Claire.