Claire the pincher

Claire's birthday party yesterday was a hoot as only a kids party can be.  There was a Singing Lady who brought bells to shake as the kids and parents all sang, eggs with noise making stuff inside to shake, and Claire was oblivious to all of it.  The older kids loved it but she was way too busy toddling around with a small sucker in her mouth to care too much about singing.  I tried to snap a pic of Claire but she was a constant motion machine.  I'll get one soon so you can see her in all her cuteness.  She has lots of  it.

When the singing lady was finished, everyone went outside for grilled burgers and dogs, and to play on the climbing wall and swing on the swings.  Bruce and I visited with mom Laura and dad John's moms and met some of their friends.  We also got scoop on our neighb's that we didn't know.   Claire's b-day is Monday, John's was Friday, and yesterday was really Laura's.  Whoa.  Birthday-a-rama.  Then they told us Claire has a huge crush on Alex, their nanny's five year old son, and I could certainly see why.  He was the sweetest, best behaved almost six year old and is just a really kind boy.  The problem is, he has a four year old little sister, Hazel, that Claire sees as competition for Alex's attention. Once a while back, Hazel was standing too close to Alex where Claire wanted to be, so Claire sidled over and pinched her.  Uh, oh.  Laura said that when they go out to dinner, Claire doesn't like it when the waiter's try to take her plate away when she's finished.  She'll grab on to her plate and hang on to it.  We were howling over Little Miss Territorial.  She's definitely female and knows what she wants.  I guess there are lots worse things to worry about.

I'm about to finish one of my new books that's supposed to be the new " The Help".  The title is Calling Me Home, was written by an author who lives in Arlington, Texas, and is based on a story she found out about her own grandmother.  As a young teen back in the '40's, her grandmother fell in love with their family's black housekeeper's son, and that's just part of the story.  It took awhile to grab me but it's got me now and I plan to finish it this afternoon.  I just have to find out how this ends.