Toddler Teenager...Clara

Clara is three years now and two months. But if you ask her, she declares with confidence, "I'm almost four." She very much wants to be a big girl and talks incessantly about those things that bigger kids do.

Clara Decides to Wear Cap, Slippers and Mittens to Bed This Night

All things are framed in reference to age and size. Who is bigger than whom? Who is the oldest? This comment from Clara when she woke up this morning...You're not supposed to call the fire department if you don't have a fire. When I was two, I would call the fire department when there wasn't a fire. Now I'm three, and I don't do that.

Last week at school, Clara watches a fellow classmate thrash around on the floor in full tantrum mode, frustrating all efforts by her poor grandmother to take her home. Clara cozies up to another mother, saying as if in confidence...She's acting like a two year old.

Clara With Lily and Davis At a Recent Durham Picnic With the Goldens

Clara will go into her room and stay for 20 or 30 minutes at a time listening to music. Her music. Right now it's the Laurie Berkner Band, a CD gift from Ga. She'll listen to the songs over and over again, paying attention to the lyrics, trying to understand what they mean, and committing them to memory. Paul remembers doing the same with REM songs...when he was a teenager. 

We're going through a rotation of about a dozen books right now, reading three each night at bed time. We've actually begun reading Charlotte's Web  (editing as we go to leave out story lines about such things as slaughtering piglets...Clara seems mature at times, but we're not ready for that conversation yet). We take a few pages each night in this big kids' book. 

Her preferred book at the moment, however, is A Frog In the Bog which was a gift from Ms. Gail across the street. Clara has it memorized and enjoys a game in which Daddy reads one word and she reads the next. We can cover the full book this way.

She also enjoys pretend reading with us. As we go through the words, Clara will point to them with her finger and drag it along the page while saying the words at a halting tempo to pretend she's actually reading them. She's pretty far from putting it all together, but we're amused by the ways she's putting together all the building block concepts for reading.

And finally, in the video below, Clara dresses as a cow (yet again) and joins her friend Nadine in a dance number choreographed to the song Tomorrow from the musical Annie.  

Video of Hattie Laughing

Somehow this March video of Hattie laughing with her Mama never made its way onto the blog. We remedy that now...

Hattie is a Roller Over

After showing all that early promise in March, hinting that she would be a rolling-over prodigy by going belly-to-back at the young age of three months (see it here), Hattie took a long break. The pressure was getting to her. 

In fact, she hasn't rolled off her belly since then. But yesterday she made the great leap. She went belly-to-back (you know, the harder one!) with no coaxing. We've seen her wiggling and squirming in a way that suggests she's practicing the motion. And now - on her own schedule - she was ready to unveil the finished product. She rolled over for Mama, cooing loudly with pride. Then she did it again for Clara and again and again. Show off!

So here it is, just shy of five months, Hattie has taught herself to roll over on her own.

Uncle Mark Visits

Uncle Mark stopped by for a quick visit on his way back down South from Virginia. Happy for any additional bit of attention, Clara thrust her uncle into immediate servitude. His job? Read (and read again) any book I plop in front of you. Mark obliges, such is the duty of a good uncle. 

Serious Cousin Time In Virginia

Clara loves the idea of having cousins. Better yet, she loves having four girl cousins between the ages of seven and ten who not only tolerate her, but let her run with the big girls as if she were one herself. And in her mind, of course, she is. 

Sadie Kay's 8th birthday gave us the excuse to make a trip up to Virginia. Clara was excited about it, and for several days prior wanted to imagine all the things she would be doing with her cousins. Since turning three she's a bit fixated on her age in relation to everyone else. And so she committed to memory the names of each Virginia cousin as well as the ages, glad to announce on any occasion that she is not the youngest cousin. That title belongs to Hattie (but she's older than Colin, too!).

Clara's cousins let her play outside hide-and-seek with them...in the dark...without any parental supervision! (Ok, that's not exactly true, but Paul and Kate did their best to hang back.)

With Sophie preparing for an upcoming role in her school's performance of Annie, Clara watched starry-eyed (and tried to join in despite not knowing the lyrics) as her older cousin practiced Tomorrow over and over again.   

And for the first time, Clara had a sleep-over. She happily left her parents downstairs to snuggle with Sophie and Sadie Kay in their own cousin slumber party. Paul and Kate took pains to show her how to get back down the stairs and find their room during the night. You know, in case she got scared. The parents fully expected to see her by two or three a.m. But no. Clara hung the whole night, even sticking with it through a nightmare in which she said a dinosaur chased her. Dreams be damned! She wasn't going to allow her cousins to see her as anything but a bona fide big girl!

On Sunday morning, Clara watched as her cousins prepared themselves for church. She decided that she would go, too, even though her parents were hanging back at the house. She has become more and more interested in church since she and Kate recently adopted the habit of, immediately following school, sitting in the White Memorial Presbyterian Church sanctuary listening to the organist practice for the upcoming Sunday service. In Virginia, she did the entire three hours without problem and without once asking for or about her parents. 

That's our big girl. It would seem parental supervision is becoming less necessary by the day.

Hattie's Four Month Stats and Update

Kate brought Hattie in the for the dreaded four month check-in, that pediatrician visit in which many needles are sharpened for a plunge in the child's plump thighs. Four vaccinations - three pokes and a disgusting oral syrup - while the child stares at her mother through swelling tears, a bewildered look on her face. E tu, Mama? What a betrayal! 

She survives, but she has her payback. Over the next week, she moves certain bodily rhythms from daytime to night, waking her parents multiple times from their slumber to tend to soiled diapers. 

Since she began taking the bottle, Hattie has become a bona fide chunk. On days when Kate works, Hattie has taken as much as 15 ounces of bottled milk in a six hour period. That's almost one pound...from a body weight ratio, it's the equivalent of her Father eating over 10 pounds of food! So we're not surprised when the pediatrician weigh in marks Hattie just shy of 16 lbs. 

Weight = 15lbs 11 oz is 75th to 90th percentile

She's busting through all her four month outfits...and five months...and six months. We're dressing this child in nine + month garb, and she's popping out of it length wise and width.

Length = 26 inches is 98th percentile

And that head...oh, that head. With Clara, the doctor always speculated that perhaps he should be concerned at the size of her head. Then he looked at the noggins of her parents, suggesting that we both sport enormous heads - a trait that had never prompted self-consciousness prior to those visits, but I guess we had to find out at some point - and he concluded that the proportions could be adequately explained by heredity. No need to worry about brain swelling. Well, Hattie sports that same big head.

Noggin circumference is 95th percentile

As one might note by the sparse blog remarks on Hattie's sleeping habits (as compared to constant updates on Clara's at the same age), she's doing pretty well. We suspect it's equal parts Hattie's innate nighttime sleeping talent and Kate's dogged determination that we impart the best habits possible to avoid another nearly three years of interrupted nights.  Kate is tenacious in this. Hattie never took to the bassinet, but we kicked her out of the bed very early and she has slept comfortably in the pack-n-play for a few months now.  Kate has sleep-trained her for a predictable 8 pm go-down, and on nights without special circumstances in play (i.e., sick, poopy, loud noises, etc.) Hattie is going seven to eight straight hours before feeding. 

We're still struggling with a bunch of wake-ups after the initial nursing, but she's getting better. Kate has even begun prepping Hattie's nursery in anticipation of THE BIG MOVE. Our goal is to get Hattie in the crib within a month.  (Which means, of course, just in time for her to start teething.)

Since her early promise (captured here), we have no additional documented evidence of Hattie rolling over. She is resting on her laurels.  But she's getting stronger and stronger. She sits up in her bumbos with no problem, giving us as many as three minutes at a time before wailing in boredom...we'll take it. She can kick and move her feet in the air when on her back. She can move her knees and legs under her body when laying on her stomach. She laughs hysterically while swaying in the baby swing at the park. And she babbles loudly at her parents any time she wants their attention. 

Besides our ambition of moving her to the crib soon, we expect to begin introducing solid food in the mix sooner rather than later. For the past few weeks, Hattie has begun watching her parents and sister with an intense gaze each time they put a bite of big food in their mouths.

Easter 2012

We had a busy, fun Easter weekend with Raleigh giving us some nice weather to stay outside as much as possible. We insinuated ourselves into three separate egg hunts.  The first was in the Cameron Park neighborhood with our friends the Glanvilles. (We take special glee in crashing neighborhood parties.) Clara ran hard with friend Nadine and had no trouble meeting her 15 egg quota before letting the less focused two- and three-year olds take their shots. The kids wasted no time stuffing as much chocolate in their mouths as possible.

Our second Easter egg was on the North Carolina Capitol Grounds just across the street from First Presbyterian Church. Volunteers hid 1500 plastic eggs for the kids to hunt before church began. 

The Easter service was nice. Clara went to Sunday School on her own, while Kate and Paul brought Hattie to the service. All was good while Hattie slept. But as things progressed, we noticed our baby getting wiggly, moving her legs, arching her back, groaning and grunting. All the tell-tale signs of a biological moment in the making. She held off, as if timing it for ultimate effect, until the congregation was reciting the Lord's Prayer, at which point Hattie loaned her own trumpet to the ceremonies. No doubt our minister appreciated the giggles emanating from our pew as Paul rushed Hattie out of the Memorial Hall.

After church we had lunch at the Baker's house. A lovely affair. We had dinner with them just several days prior, after which we were sitting around their family room. Their three-year old son Davis happened to put his hand on Kate's leg, paused for a moment, and then commented loudly to the group, "Ms. Kate, your legs are so hairy!"

Yes, it's difficult to find time to take care of the lower priority bathing items when one has rug rats to chase each day. (Indeed, you can count on one hand the number of times Paul shaves in a month.) We don't mention this to embarrass Kate, but rather as a segue. After Easter lunch with the Bakers, we find Clara in Davis' room with shaving cream slathered all over her leg. Davis had received a play shaving kit for Easter, and Clara was taking the opportunity to show him that at least one of the Drydens actually does tend to such grooming details. 

The third and final Easter egg hunt was a private affair put on by our neighbor Gale for the sole benefit of Clara. Gale and her husband David are semi-retired professors that have been kind enough to take the young family across the street under their wings. They see themselves as Clara's neighborhood grandparents, and there are a lot of benefits that come with that status. Christmas gifts, walks through their lovely garden, birthday presents, and - of course - your own personalized Easter egg hunt. 

Day at Pullen Park

Kate procured the cow costume from a thrift shop two and half years ago. Clara wore it for her first Halloween...and her second...and her third. It now resides in her dress-up bin, but finds itself draped back over her shoulders on a recurring basis. On this warm spring day, Clara decided her cow outfit was the appropriate uniform for a day at Pullen Park with her favorite Mordecai friends.