Clara

I know that a lot of you don't know Clara Jean personally, so I thought that I would tell you a story or two about her. A story that will show, a little bit better, who she is.

Clara was an easy baby. She was content and entertained herself. She was always moving and exploring, but was so easily entertained. Her favorite thing was high heeled shoes. That girl could walk in heels better than I can at age 2. I am not kidding.

One Thanksgiving we were with some of our extended family having breakfast. Clara was about 20 months old and I think that it was the first time that she had spent time with my grandparents. They live in Florida and we don't get to see them as often as I would like. Anyway, Clara had on her little nightgown and a pair of her grandma's high heels. The floor was tiled and she was stomping all around in them. My grandma (remember, CJ really didn't know her) was sitting on the couch with her breakfast plate. Clara walked right over to her, grabbed the bacon off of her plate, stuck in her mouth and pranced off. It was a riot!

A couple of years later I was sitting on the couch in our living room. Clara and I were the only ones at home at the time and I heard her talking, coming down the stairs. As she came around the corner I saw that she was talking on the phone. Now I hadn't heard the phone ring, but I could have missed it. So I asked her who it was. "It's Bob" she says. So I ask her, "who? who is Bob?" She leans in, points at the phone and whispers, "it's this guy on the phone." And I ask her again, "WHO??? Who is Bob??" She leans in again and whispers, "Bob is the guy who is going to give me Cinderella checks." WHAT!!?? I take the phone away from her and ask the man on the other end, Bob, who he is. He gets a little mouthy and tells me that he is selling checks to that woman and that I better give her the phone back. I tell him that that woman is my 3 year old daughter and I hang up. Clara is gone. I go and find her, in her room, crying with a flyer from check.com. Sure enough, she had dialed the 1-800 number and told Bob that she wanted Cinderella checks! She was crying because I hung up on Bob and now she wasn't going to get the checks that she wanted.