Friday, July 01, 2005

Vacation

Camping was wonderful. Peninsula is such a pretty park. We relaxed every minute we were there, thanks to Nana! Not having to worry about Claire was so nice. Everyone we went with had kids, and everyone made sure to tell us how lucky we are to have family close by, for more reasons than just enabling us to take a weekend away. And the break was very well timed since Mike started Trauma Surgery today. Its going to be a tough month for him. Its suppose to be one of the most difficult rotations you can choose (by that I mean stressful and time consuming). But it will give him a good look at Emergency Medicine (that is what he is considering most seriously right now), he thinks it will be a lot of fun, and he has to do a surgical rotation his fourth year anyway...so it will be good. If this year is anything like last year, we'll both be really happy he chose to do the difficult stuff first. My plan is to keep busy while he is living at the hospital this month.

I'm not sure there is much else important enough to mention. Claire and I spent some time outside watching trucks today. Its so nice that its cooled off enough that sitting outside is comfortable. Claire is really getting into trucks and vehicles other than cars. Yellow buses (school buses) are her favorite, but the construction trucks and such run a close second. We have some construction on our street, and we always go extra slow to see all the activity. I think she would really love to go to the airport and look at air planes as well, but she just can't get clearance. We'll have to get Grandpa to work on that.

3 comments:

jimhalberg said...

I had a chance to babysit Claire for a couple hours during your vacation and it was great! I was a little worried that when nana left we were going to have to deal with some hard times - I know realizing you are stuck with Jim has been traumatic on others in the past. It was not a problem at all though! Nana snuck out undetected and a few minutes later Claire and I conducted a room to room search to determine if she was truly gone. After checking all the usual hiding spots she yelled "Nana". I told her that Nana had gone which didn't really seem to register. Then I recalled that people that aren't around are "at work", so I threw that in there and everything was immediately fine. Seems like she understands that 'being at work' really isn't a problem - people that go to work always come back in a bit anyway.

I had been wondering some about what we would do with our 2 hours together - well, as it turned out my time thinking on the subject was completely wasted. Claire had an agenda already set for the evening and I had nothing to worry about. First, some blocks were pointed at: so we played with some blocks. Then, she went to the kitchen and pointed at the fridge and in turn, the pudding. but where does she eat? No worries Uncle Jim, she calmly directed me to the high-chair. Other activities included going "seaside", which was easy enough to translate when the finger was pointed at the front door for a walk (I was shown to the stroller). We also decided to spend some time sitting in the car in the garage - she was in the driver's seat of course and seemed quite concerned that we were in the wrong gear. After some time there it was off to the living room for a combination of playing with cars and watching a cartoon.

A very good evening with my niece!

Anonymous said...

I loved my time with Claire during your camping trip. What a sweetie she is! She brings such joy to everyone's life.

During our time together we took walks (the once around the block in an hour kind where everything is investigated and explored), played with bowls of water (and spoons and whisks and floaty things) in the kitchen, danced and sang (what do you think it meant when she kept telling me "all done" as I sang?), ate whatever we wanted (don't tell her parents), and had numerous other "Nana and Clairey" adventures.

Thanks for such a special time!

Sheila said...

I'm so glad that Claire was such a sweetie for everyone. She is like that always...really she is.