This evening over dinner Claire began an interesting line of questioning me about something she learned in school today.

She first wanted to know if I ever knew about King Maarther. I'm thinking of the fellow with the round table, but she informed me that was wrong.

Intrigued, the conversation continued.

He thought something was wrong.

He thought that everybody should be able to go to the park.

He was a great man.

He talked to the people again before he got shot.

In the last five months or so Claire's progress in learning the violin has been wonderful, almost stunning. She passed from the "Pre-twinkle" phase into "Suzuki book I" and is picking up on songs at a good clip. She has a great ear and can pick up simple tunes in the key of A pretty easily. She only knows the fingerings for tunes in the key of A. She also likes to sit at the piano, on which she has no formal training, and plink out the tunes she knows on the violin. It's fun.

Yesterday Claire, Ella, Melanie and I were going into a building. It had a circle drive in front of it for drop off/pickup. The curbs were all labeled "no parking, fire zone".

Claire looked at these bright red curbs and asked Melanie a very simple question.

"Mommy, is that only parking for red cars?"

Claire started preschool last month at Highlawn Montessori, a school not too far from home (much closer than the 45 minute ride we were seriously considering for the closest Waldorf School).

The Montessori classroom is full of materials for project work. Ella calls it a museum. Every few days she talks about going to Claire's Museum with excitement - taking Claire to and from School is exciting for Ella.

Claire likes the Beatles tune "Let it Be" and regularly asks us to play it on the piano or to play back a recording of it.

This morning both Ella and Claire woke up before I left for work. Ella wanted to eat (applesauce), Claire wanted to dance. I queued up a playlist of every version of Let it Be we have in our mp3 collection, put it on repeat so it would last well past my leaving for work, and went upstairs to prepare to leave.

When I came back down, Claire had put on the ladybug ballet costume that she loves to run around in. Nothing unusual there. She was dancing away. As I donned my phone, wallet and keys Claire danced up to me and explained her choice of outfit.

We arrived at a guesthouse on the beach this afternoon where we'll be spending the next 24 hours. The girls saw sand and went nuts. We tossed our luggage in the room, liberally applied sunblock, put them in bathing suits and went outside.

Claire pointed out to Melanie that the guesthouse had a pool. Melanie asked where it was. Claire indicated to the ocean, saying "it's a really big one!".

Many hours later, after much sand had been thrown, bits of coral and shells collected in a bucket, splashing in the ocean, chasing local cats, getting excited about dogs on the beach, Claire was in a thoughtful mood. We were sitting a little bit off the beach together when she turned to me and said "Daddy, this is the perfect house. I can have swim lessons at this house and play in the water and sand all day."

In late 1996 I grew a full beard. In July of 1997, while in Hong Kong on a two week business trip, it was too hot so I shaved it into a goatee. It's been like that ever since.

Last night I decided that I would shave even that off. It has been twelve and a half years with a goatee. I wanted to go without for the summer.

Claire happened to wake up early today, before I left for work. As we were sitting and talking, she didn't notice that my facial hair was gone. At a pause in our conversation, I said "Claire, did you notice my beard is gone?"

She stared at me, eyes wide, silently taking in this change. She asked but one simple question:

Claire has straight hair.

She likes it this way. Recently she has been telling Melanie that she does not like curly or wavy hair. She's decided that she does not like people who don't have straight hair.

There's a diversity and acceptance lesson here that we are both reinforcing. It's pretty easy in most cases.

"Uncle Mark's hair is not straight. Do you like Uncle Mark?"

"Yes, he's ok"

"Grammie has wavy hair. Is she ok too?"

"Yes, I like Grammie."

"Daddy's hair is crazy in the morning and not straight. Do you like Daddy?"

"No"

Ok, kidding on that last one. I hope...

On January 22nd Claire's violin teacher challenged her to practice for one hundred days in a row. The reward would be going to a pizza and ice cream party in the springtime.

This evening Claire proudly checked off box 100 on the 10x10 square we've been filling out over these past few months. We missed three days, to illness and a holiday. That can be ignored.

I'm proud of her too, and frankly impressed. I don't believe that at any point in my life I've practiced my instrument back to back for 100 days.

Driving home tonight with Claire in my car we had a great conversation. One bit of it started with her asking me if we could do a wedding when we got home. She has this little stuffed pony, and it needs to get married. Tonight. I'm not sure of the circumstances as she did not elaborate. But it was critical that the pony be married as soon as we got home.

I quickly agreed that the pony could get married when we got home. No answer to who the groom would be (the pony is pink! she protested when I asked if it was a boy or a girl).

Satisfied that there would be a wedding, Claire began to plan. This was about a 20 minute drive.

Claire has been enjoying hoping up on the piano bench and playing at the piano over the past few months.

She's actually gotten pretty good in the way she plays. She presses one key at a time, mostly white keys, and works up little melodies which she sings over.

There's been a new twist in the past week. Now she brings up a book that she likes, opens it to a page, and plays what she sees on that page and sings a song that she makes up that tends to reflect the picture.

This evening she took it to a new level, and grabbed one of the clips I use to hold my music books open on the piano and clipped the pages of her book open (they were having no problem staying wide open).

Claire called her uncle Mark tonight and asked if he would be her valentine. She was concerned that he didn't have a valentine this year. Mark's wife Penny passed away in September.

Claire frequently makes up words while she plays. Names for various characters in her play are common, and sometimes she comes up with new nouns and verbs.

This morning Ella, Claire and I are laying on the floor playing with trains and pretend food from their kitchen. Claire has a train with a few round pieces of wood (cookies) on it and declares that this is the "Smackle Train".

"What is Smackle?"

"It is what the train carries. The bear on the train is a Smackle Bear"

[Interruption while writing this: "Daddy, I have a Smackle Drink for you!". It's a wooden circle in a little play cup]

At times our car situation works out that I have both girls in their car seats in the back of my Mini. They both love it, and call the car the "Daddy Cooper" It is always exciting to ride in the Daddy Cooper.

The car is fairly low to the ground and is built to be pretty tight on corners. Even when I take a wide turn well below the speed limit, there is a little bit of centrifugal force exerted on the passengers. This has come to be called "Wheeee!!!"

There is a chorus in the back of my car as we drive that goes like this.

"Wheee Daddy! More Wheee!!! Daddy!! We want Wheeeeeee!!!!"

This evening, about 45 minutes ago, we had what probably qualifies as our first major overnight 'incident'. Claire's had an upset stomach all day. She did a great thing. She got up after midnight, got herself into the bathroom, and mostly got everything into the toilet. While bathing her, she had the following insight.

"Daddy, I got almost all of the pieces. I wiped them myself"
"That's great Claire. Good job. Which piece did you miss?"
"The piece on the floor"
"Oh, I see"

There was a long pause, and she continued

"Daddy, how did it get on the bottoms of my feet?"

You can fill in roughly how much fun we've had tonight. :) As incidents go, this one was pretty well contained on the tile. Lots of little footprints, an earnest attempt to clean everything up on her own, and two proud sleepy parents that she did so much by herself, even if we did need to scrub up a few foot prints.