sweet Clare - recently turned 6 years old

Dave gave her a lego set for her birthday. Dave and Clare do legos together whenever they get a chance (if they are home alone). Clare is organized and has the patience for the really long sets. She'll work a little at a time for weeks until she finishes one. It is a fun dad/daughter thing for them to do.





A few days ago Clare was in the hallway practicing her ballet run on tippy toes. She said, "Mom look, this is the way ballet people run." Then she said "look, this is the way ugly people run" and started to run like the rest of us do. She is a funny little person. I cannot believe what a girly girl she is. She is sweet and cute.

Lately her favorite thing to do is write notes to everyone in the family. She burns through little mini-notebooks and notepads in a matter of days. Lately, she also likes to put these notes in envelopes. A few days ago I bough her her own box of envelopes (plain old white ones) and she about died of happiness. I should have saved them for Christmas! Her notes usually say I love you. Love, Clare and have pictures of herself and the person she loves. My favorite notes are to JoJo because she has both J's backwards. Precious!


She puts the little strip of paper in with her note "in case you want to do something with it like fold it or make something with it."


Clare is the peacemaker of the family. While Calvin has crazy tantrums and Lex is feisty and in the middle of the terrible 3's, Clare is a great child to have between the two! She gets along with both of them. Her and Calvin have some really great times together doing some bigger kid things on occasion. Daily, Lex and Clare are great little buddies. I love to watch them together. Clare is such a great little mother to Lex and is very thoughtful and helpful to her. It brings me such joy and is such a fun stage of life to observe.

I gave Clare her first piano lesson a few days ago. I have been wondering if she is ready to start. (I think there is a golden age around 6-7 where the kids can start piano....they are old enough to read and hands big enough to play, yet young enough to be eager to learn and get into the life long habit of practicing everyday so it becomes part of the routine.) The lesson went very well. Clare was very eager to learn and super excited to learn a couple of songs. I think I'll teach her for a while and get her going on the basics and then transfer her to a "real" teacher in a few months.

One other thing about Clare that is special is that she likes to have sleepovers with me when Dave is on call. (dave has in house call once a month now). She really looks forwards to those nights!! "Daddy, when do you have to be on call again?" I guess it is a good way to have a positive association with his nights in the hospital! When Clare sleeps in my bed she likes to cuddle. I took a break when little Jo was a newborn but now that she is only waking up once a night I have resumed these fun girl sleepovers. Lex is starting to get old enough to be aware that this is going on so we might need to find a way to do something special with her every once in a while too.

(clare is delightful and I want to remember these great things she is doing now.)