Claire sitting at the coffee table eating dinner while Dante lays under her feet in hopes of catching some crumbs, “Dante! Leave! You’re pissing me off!”

Mama and Dad’s eye brows raised toward one another.

Me, “um….” Thinking it’s my truck driver vernacular that got us to this point.

Mama, “Claire, you shouldn’t tell the dog that he’s pissing you off. Tell him he’s upsetting you. That’s an adult phrase.”

Claire’s reply. “But, Mama, what if he IS pissing me off?”

Today at karate Claire was early, sitting with other kids, and watching the other class. She suddenly shrieked, began to cry, and ran to me. “He punched me in the face!” she screamed.

I scanned the room. “Who?” I demanded.

“Him.” She pointed at a four year old boy near where she was sitting. I immediately jumped up, took three huge steps across the room, leaned down into this little guy’s face, and said “Don’t even think about touching my kid again.”

He timidly whispered “Ok” as he looked like he was about to pee himself.

Hahaha they won’t mess with my kid. The teen years sure’ll be fun.

I don’t mind traveling for work, and I enjoy flying around the country (for the most part), but being away from Claire is hard. When she was two months old she flew to PA while I took a trip down the east coast. This was a little hard because she was so new, but her mother was with her so that helped. In 2007 Donna and I flew to Europe without Claire. I’d been away from her for a few days before flying to Berlin that year, and by the time I hit Vienna I missed her so much. I can dig a day here or long weekend there, but once again she’ll be off to PA this summer to see her grandparents. I will literally be away from my daughter for 21 days: 3 weeks. Yes, I realize she will be around her grandparents and family and busy, and I will be super busy myself but it’s still hard. I hope to talk to her a few times, and I hope to Skype her. I will have to get my mother-in-law access to my ning to post photos of Claire so we can all enjoy them, too. Things’ll work out but it’s always a little disconcerting. In another decade she can just stay with us during this time and all will be fine.

On the way to our Easter celebration with out friends and family, Claire asked what the Easter Bunny looked like. I had received a Twit Pic earlier in the day from Jason Avant that he’d shown to his son; I had the photo still open on my phone so I yanked it out. She took one look at the picture, held my phone for a while, handed it back to me, and then simply said, “Oh”.

Later I heard her telling Donna that the Easter Bunny is black and has long ears. Haha!!!

We returned to school on Monday after being off for over two weeks for Spring Break. Before break she always dressed mostly in shorts, jeans or long pants, and whatever shoe fit her fancy. After break she suddenly wanted to wear dresses, have her hair done, and bathe daily.

Mama hates to get up early. This morning Claire announced that she wanted to her hair braided by Mama at about 4:30AM. My wife’s alarm goes off at 7AM. I chuckled and told her to go into our bedroom to ask. I stood quietly by the door to see what my wife’s response would be, because I knew how she’d respond to me! She nicely said “gimme a minute to wake up” and proceeded to get out of bed within minutes. Go figure!

Claire’s taking karate now, which requires her to wear a starched, bleach white karate uniform four days a week. Well, climbing in and out of cars is dirty and so are parking lots. It’s quickly becoming a chore to put on and take off this uniform as we come and go and fit karate in among other things. Today, after karate, we were heading to ASU to pick up a friend. Claire hopped into her car seat and strapped herself in quickly, but as I got on the road she checked with me about where we were going and how we had some errands to run, and then she grabbed a blanket we keep in the back seat and tossed it over her head. I knew she was tired or thought she was playing, but after what seemed like 14 nanoseconds, she tossed off the blanket (almost as if ti cry TADA!) and she was full clothed in a really cute blue plaid short set with pink tank. She smiled at me like she was Helen Slater in that cheesy Supergirl moving from like 1983. Remember the one where Helen Slater was getting a few jobs because her brother was suppose to be the next Jack Nickolson? Anyway, Claire gave me this smile, like “this is how I roll and I’m ready to rock, Dada…”

Helen has her phone booth; Claire has her fleece moose blanket!

Used under (cc) from Mark Owens, 2009.

Disclaimer: No I don’t advocate allowing your 3/4 year old unbuckle her car seat & strip in public.

Tonight I headed home early from work so I could work on my English 102 course in WebCT. Of course since I was headed home early today to work, WebCT was down. It’s never bothered me before because I don’t usually use this CMS but this school year I do. This sucked for me. I had 4 out of 20 students emailing me before 3:00PM. So here I was sitting at home, ready to work. Claire was balling because Daddy wanted to watch adult TV instead of her watching some cartoon. I got to a point where I didn’t want to deal anymore, so I told her to get her butt into my bedroom where our small second tv sits. I put in her DVD and hit play. Fifteen minutes later she came out and said she had paused it to go potty and couldn’t turn it back on. She was carrying the remote.

The remote was up on top of the file cabinet where the tv is when I left the room. I asked Claire how she got the remote, and she simply told me “I used my tippy toes”. To her, this was the obvious answer. She couldn’t've been more clear if she just replied with “Doh!” I sat down in the bedroom with her and showed her the play button and the pause button. We put the show back on and I headed back out to the living room. A few minutes later she came back and said she was done watching.

She hung out for a few minutes, and then disappeared. I went in after hearing the tv on. She was in my bed with our blanket pulled up to her chest, chewing on chocolate cookies, and watching a new DVD. I asked what she was doing, and she simply told me that she was watching a new DVD as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Ok I just don’t get it. I mean the girl has an evening routine. Take medicine, brush teeth, put on pajamas (unless clothes are soft and comfy), read book, give water (optional), say goodnight 3,000 times, etc… So why is it that she won’t let me, her father, brush her teeth? I go in there with her, and she just screams and flails. When she was littler I could just hold her down and that was that. Now she fights me tooth and nail. Now when Mama goes in with her, Claire sits like a good little girl and just lets her brush teeth number one through number 20. Just like that. I don’t push harder. I don’t jam the brush into her gums. I don’t vice grip her to the toilet. Nothing. So what makes me the anti-dental mean daddy who just can’t get it right?