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4/21/05

Important news: the Nets are in the playoffs (woohoo!). I have begun to talk to myself about myself in the third person, referring to myself as daddy (as in "Daddy has to go wash the dishes now"). Cara has operated her Kick & Play bouncer by herself! There are foot pads where the baby is supposed to be able to make noises and lights flash on the bouncer by kicking. We usually put Cara in the bouncer to make her sleep, though, so we never really got the chance to see if she could work them. However, this morning she decided to wriggle around in the bouncer and inadvertantly set off a few sound effects. (We heard a noise and Evelyn asked me, "Did you do that?" "No." "Well I didn't do it.") It was ironic because there were all these happy sounds going off and there was Cara, struggling and crying. Is it wrong that we found this funny? Anyway, I got some pictures of her so that everyone can see the Kick & Play bouncer (her head has a tendency to turn and lean in very pronounced ways when she sits down--probably when she learns how to use her neck this will get better), and now she is calmly and peacefully sleeping in it, so no harm done.

That was a great Nets game last night. They were down 19 points in the second quarter, but they climbed back on top and hung in there till the end. Very exciting. Then we tried to put baby to sleep. She was very awake. We had her in the crib for a while, but Evie decided to take her down to the play yard in the living room and sleep on the couch. It was selfless of her, because though I ended up coming down a few times in the night to try rocking Cara or something, mostly I was able to stay upstairs and sleep. Cara migrated to the car seat after her play yard, and it ended up being 1 in the morning before she really settled down to a long nap. She was up again around 3 or so for another feeding but then went back to sleep until around 7, so not too bad.

Today we plan on relaxing and Ev is going to slip out and treat herself to a pedicure. Yesterday Jim and Sarah stayed long enough to have some takeout Thai food with us. They got to hear Cara at her full volume, and not only during her bath, as she was even a bit fussy when they took her for a stroller ride (normally this is a time when Cara is totally quiet and sleepy). Even while we were eating our dinner Cara acted up a bit, but Aunt Sarah soothed her expertly. I'm hoping Cara will be nice and calm today while I'm watching her, and we'll have a nice quiet day together--though I've already gotten two calls from work, so I don't know how quiet my day is going to be.

4/22/05

I didn't take it out of the mail box until this morning, but yesterday Carolyn got one of her first and most important pieces of mail: her social security card. Yay! She has a number. Ev and I both have the suspicion that she's getting bigger--either that or her clothes have shrunk in the laundry, because they seem tighter on her now. Her feet really fit into the feetie parts. She is still peeing away when on the changing table (she's done it to Ev now, too--ha!), and I think she's been through three or four outfits in the past twelve hours, because either we don't know how to put on these diapers right or she knows how to wriggle in just the right way to cause leaks. Cara spat up some little milk dribbles last night--she's done it before, but not more than once in the same night, so it was a special occasion. Also, just to get all the physiological stuff in here, I took a nice booger off of her upper lip after she sneezed it out last night. Cara is eating large amounts and Ev tried getting on the scale with her this morning, then getting on the scale without her and subtracting the difference. However, since our scale is not very accurate and does not show ounces, all we got out of it was that Cara is around six pounds, which we already knew.

Last night could have been better, especially for Ev. It was a quiet day, as I had hoped, with myself not doing much. I watched another Doctor Who, did some laundry, emptied the dishwasher--little things. In the afternoon Ev went out and got herself that pedicure, and also picked up a breast pump from Target, which we may try out on Sunday when we go to Ev's parents' house for Passover. It will be Cara's first family visit! That evening we sat down to watch a nice movie (it took me an incredibly long amount of time to settle on the very first movie I had suggested we watch, The Three Musketeers with Michael York and co.), and not long into it we put Cara down in the crib. This was around 8 pm. When the movie was over, Cara was still asleep. But as soon as we got into bed--bam!--the baby was up. And the baby stayed up, so Evie decided it was time once again to move down to the living room and put baby in the car seat. Evie doesn't seem to mind sleeping on the couch, but she had to try quieting the baby. She says that Cara finally got back to sleep around quarter to 2, then woke up again around 4:20 and was up for about another hour or so. Not much sleep for Ev! Plenty of guilt for me, as I got the bed all to myself and only woke up a few times, changed the baby and went back to sleep.

I expected once we had a new addition to the household that we would eventually have more trash and more laundry, but I didn't expect it to increase by so much so quickly--I used to think it was silly to have trash pick-up twice a week, but now I'm waiting for the truck to come so I can start filling up the can again. The washing machine and the dishwasher are competing with each other for running time. Our cats are acting a little odd lately. Last night they were pacing around the living room while we were there, and getting behind our entertainment center--this is something they used to do but haven't done lately. They seemed tense. Now they seem entranced by something on the kitchen floor. Even Buster, who does not usually go out of her way for attention, is rubbing against our legs more often--jealous? I think though that we are able to pay more attention to the cats than I had thought we would.

Last night during one of my chunks of sleep I dreamed that there was some group of people with supernatural abilities who wanted to steal Cara and raise her to be a girl with loose morals. I believe the idea was that I would get her back some day but I was worried that the psychological damage would already be done.

Evie wants to take baby Cara to school today to meet the other teachers. I may stay out of the picture for that trip, but then again she might need help carrying the baby and such.

4/23/05

Evie did get to go to school yesterday, and she had a nice time without me (I hadn't even taken a shower yet, so I didn't go with her). Cara got to see a lot of teacher friends and was held by a few of them, and Evie figured out how to unlock the wheels on the stroller. I spent a chunk of the day making some CD artwork--something I used to do but haven't done in a while. It was nice. It rained a little in the afternoon, which was good for my lawn (it's looking wet out today as well). Ev and I played a game of Trivial Pursuit which was only interrupted once by a crying baby. I watched a couple of Star Trek episodes that had some cool ideas but some questionable plots (why would an alien race build an exact duplicate of the Enterprise on the surface of their incredibly overpopulated planet just to get a blood sample from Kirk??).

In the evening, to assuage my guilt from Evie having spent the last two nights on the couch (and from having just let her go out grocery shopping by herself), I did some time down in the living room trying to get the baby to go to sleep. I sat next to her as she was lying in the play yard (which, by the way, is actually called the "Pack 'n Play," by Graco--I think the name is misleading, as it seems to be suggesting that you pack the thing up and then play with it) and tried various things to distract her from crying. The pacifier is an excellent tool, as long as the baby isn't really hungry--if she is, she'll just spit it out and keep crying. But if she's just fussy, it can switch off her crying like a light. It's not as easy to insert as it used to be, but it's still a good thing we have a pile of them lying around all over the house. Last night I even used the pacifier as a visual distraction, wiggling it in different spots in Cara's field of vision--her eyes seemed to pretty much follow it. Since it cooled off yesterday we decided to go back to wrapping her up, and I did a fairly good job on Cara--it took her almost fifteen minutes to work her arms out. (Earlier in the day Cara had somehow contrived to get her right arm out of the sleeve of her outfit, while simultaneously working her left leg into the right leg of her outfit, so that she had both legs crammed into a tube of fabric meant for only one leg, and her little hand peeking out through her collar--what a talented baby!) Ev came down to feed her at around 10:30, then again some time past midnight, but after that we switched places and I once again got a good chunk of sleep in the bed. We have pinpointed the hours from around 9 pm to around 1 or 2 am as Cara's "difficult" period, when she is hungry but doesn't feed much and doesn't want to go to sleep afterwards. Usually after 2 or so she actually does start sleeping in three-hour chunks, as we'd prefer.

As mentioned yesterday, we think she's getting bigger, though I have no concrete proof. She seems to be fitting a bit differently into her diapers--she also seems to be kicking around a lot more when we try to put them on. We always used to put a rolled-up blanket on either side of Cara when she was in the car seat, to support her, but yesterday we decided she didn't really need them anymore (except maybe around her head). Comments from school and others have been that Cara has long fingers. Her umbilical cord stump is getting very loose, and I am very tempted to just yank it out, but somehow I don't think Cara would like that. We're thinking about trying to do something about her fingernails today. She still gets the hiccups very often. Ev has noticed that her eyebrows are coming in. Her face and hands are incredibly expressive, and she does a lot of stretching with them. This morning Cara was back in the Kick & Play and she made all kinds of noises come out of it with her struggling--all unintentionally, though.

It looks like a rainy, sleepy day--probably we won't do much. Earlier this week we had had all of our windows open and some of our ceiling fans on--yesterday the windows were all closed and I actually put the heat back on. But our trees are good and green outback.

4/24/05

We didn't do anything with Cara's fingernails yesterday, but we did give her a bath--a first for us, since every other time it's pretty much been my mom who's washed baby. Baby didn't like it too much, but we did it, which made us feel a lot better. Still no luck on the umbilical cord, though I'm sure it will be off any day now; it's very loose. Even though it was an overcast day, we took Cara out for a stroller ride--we covered her up from the breeze. On our way back to the house, we met this guy who lives on our street. I'd seen him many times before walking around this cute little dog he has. Evie and I both assumed it was a little puppy, but he told us the dog was sixteen years old! And yet she goes for five walks a day! The owner's name is Al, the dog's name is Spunky. "Spunky" is a well-named little dog. We went back inside after our walk and Evie did something she hasn't done for a while: cooked dinner. An inventive dinner at that, as she mixed up an interesting sauce to put on some chicken. Evie became concerned yesterday that we are not "doing" enough things--she is recovering, wants to be back to normal, and wants to do things (her first attempt at becoming more dynamic was to comb the cats). I think taking care of the baby is good enough, but it would make it easier to tell people how our day was if we had more activities in our lives. Still, I seem to be able to fill up this journal pretty darn well even with nothing going on.

Last night was my laziest night since the baby came home. I went up to the bedroom, fell asleep, and that was pretty much it. I woke up a few times and looked in on Evie, who was downstairs with the baby, then I turned around and went back to bed. Evie says the baby was pretty good last night and that Cara stayed in her play yard all night without going into the car seat. (By the way, I've discovered that what I've been calling the "play yard" should actually be the "playard"--who knew?) Evie has discovered that she has now developed the habit of waking up every three hours, whether the baby wakes her or not.

This morning, Ev put together a little play mat thing that we got for the baby. It's this thing where there's a soft mat with a plastic arch that goes overhead, and little animal toys dangle from the middle of the arch. It plays music and the animal toys move around. We stuck Cara underneath in the hopes that she would respond and start batting at the animal toys. She did bat at them, but probably not intentionally--Cara probably hasn't yet figured out that her physical actions can be controlled and made to affect objects that she sees. Still, it was worth a shot, and it's probably good to start her early on all of this stuff--she did seem to at least be looking at the animals. I just saw an article in the paper about childhood obesity--we have to try to avoid that! Of course, for now I will accept the fact that Cara has cute chubby cheeks. But not when she's ten! Then we will put her on a strict regimen of jumping jacks, pull-ups, and one-handed push-ups.

Our job today will be to prepare and pack for our Passover visit. Passover is supposed to happen at sundown, but since we have a baby we're going to do it at 2 pm. We definitely have to bring lots of diapers, since Cara loves to pee while we're changing her.

4/25/05

Passover went well. It was not really Cara's first outing, since she's been out in the stroller quite a few times now, she's driven to the pediatrician twice, and Ev took her to school in the car on Friday. However, it was the first time we traveled with the Pack 'n Play. Actually we barely used the play yard except for one changing of the baby, since mainly the baby slept very quietly in her car seat or got held by various people, including Great Aunt Theresa, who was meeting Cara for the first time. We were only a half hour late! As with most of our outings so far, we got all ready to go and then the baby was hungry so we had to put everything down and feed her. Anyway, eventually we got there and had a very nice dinner: matzoh and haroseth, gefilte fish, matzoh ball soup, chicken, asparagus, and of course plenty of horseradish. For dessert we had a variety of excellent macaroons by Claire and a rather good kosher chocolate roll, and then the baby woke up. It was Theresa's first time visiting for Passover, so Janet got to regale her with all of the humorous moments in the Haggadah. We all took turns reading from the little Haggadah books which tell the story of the Exodus, and we skipped some parts to make it a little faster, as usual. In a strange turn of events, George did not give any of the young folks money so that he could have the afikoman back--does this mean we're all grown up? Evie used her parents' scale to weigh herself and the baby and found that the difference was actually something like seven pounds! Probably the more realistic number is 6.5. George showed us that we can find satellite photos of all of our houses on the internet, in a navigable interface that even shows driving routes. We saw a few minutes of the Nets' first playoff game against the top-ranked Miami Heat--they lost, but it was in Miami and the Heat have Shaq. The best we may have to hope for is that the Nets don't get swept.

We returned home with baby in the back of the car and me in the passenger seat, reading aloud from our Herriot book, and we hit some particularly good chapters in it. At home I decided to change the baby and--lo and behold--her cord had fallen off!! Probably some time during Cara's trip out. This is great news, as now her tummy time can begin and we can start thinking about tub baths. Cara has a belly button, though it still needs some time to heal over.

Last night I bravely returned to the living room for an evening with the baby. Fortunately for me, she was quite quiet until around midnight, when she woke up hungry. Ev came down and took over, and unfortunately for her, it was not a great night. Cara was up several times for an hour or more. In fact I think it's possible that Ev is napping right now while I write this, which would be a good idea. Today my parents are going to visit, which will take some baby-watching responsibility off of us. The baby has been very hungry for the past few days, which is very wearing on Evie, poor lady, so she's glad to have some time off when she can.

Cara continues to be very pretty; last night after I changed her she had her eyes open and was looking around very nicely for a while. We went through a bit of Star Trek waiting for her to fall asleep! Soon we'll be through all of season three and we'll either have to find something else to watch or go out and get season two.

Later: The parents came over and gave us a chance to go out to lunch, just Ev and I. Since baby's cord is gone, we did indeed put her on her belly a few times--something I have to get better at, since my first attempt had me flopping her over onto her face in a very undignified manner. We'll have her crawling any time now... Cara had a nice long period of wakefulness, probably because we messed with her a lot. We put her on her play mat (which is actually called a "sound and motion jungle gym") and tried to get her to bat the moving animals; she did a little, but again I think it was inadvertant. Then we got out a book that the parents gave us about how to play with the baby--it will be very helpful as Ev and I have been stumped as to what exactly to do with Cara, since she hasn't yet developed many motor skills. We ended up waving a wash cloth at her a lot, which was actually pretty rewarding as I think she paid close attention to it. It's really the best when Cara is awake and calm and reacting to what we do, and I'm glad the parents got to see a lot of that, and of course Dad filmed it extensively. Both sets of Cara's grandparents have noticed that the baby has gotten bigger. They've also both gotten to hear her really bellow.

Eventually we got Evie to take a nap--I'm thinking she should have some nap time every day--and the baby slept for a while and the parents left. I had to do some work stuff, and probably there will be more in the future for me, which I'm not looking forward to. Then I made up a to do list and over the course of the evening was able to cross everything off of it (except "ladder," but we've needed a ladder for a long time now...). Laundry, dishwasher, gerbil cage, bundling newspapers--I did it all. Then I made dinner, ate it, and cleaned up. At one point when I went outside for a second I noticed that a box had been delivered on our doorstep--another piece of mail for Cara! It turned out it was a nice little gift box from my workplace--very nice of them to do that. She got a nice sweater, a hat, and a very strange little puppet which neither Evelyn nor I could figure out how to operate. Now Evie has gone off to sleep to get in a few hours before the baby "goes off" again. I always think I've done more in a day than I'm able to remember and put in the journal, but that's all I can think of, so I'll sign off for now.

4/26/05

Last night was interesting. I watched playoff basketball while Evie slept, and I tried desperately to keep the baby from getting too noisy so that Ev could sleep longer. I found that Cara got even angrier when I tried to put a pacifier in her mouth, but that if I just walked her around the house she calmed down. So I spent a lot of time walking her around the darkened kitchen, game room and dining room. However I was forced to wake Evie around 11:20, probably not two hours since the last time Cara was fed. Ev went back to bed around midnight and I continued for another shift downstairs. I switched over to Cartoon Network and watched a chunk of their late night programming, which is called Adult Swim. This is really the best stuff on Cartoon Network nowadays, but I watched it for so long that they actually began playing stuff over again. I slept through one Japanese cartoon and watched a few others (some of the shows, for the record: Family Guy, Futurama, Harvey Birdman). Cara slept quietly until around 3 am, at which time Evelyn relieved me at my post and I went to sleep and woke at 9 am this morning. Cara is getting very energetic with her hands, and though both Ev and my mother tried filing her nails, I decided it was best to put her "mitts" back on. They fit her snugger now, so I don't think it's as easy for her to get them off. She was up and alert this morning in her Kick & Play, and I actually strapped her in and it looked like it actually fit correctly. I shook the bouncer toys at her and she seemed to pay attention to them. She set off various sound effects. Then I went out to get some takeout sushi for Evie (McDonald's for myself--my tastebuds aren't as cultured as they could be), and pretty soon we plan on venturing out to a nearby park to take Cara for a stroll, as this seems to be the last nice day we'll have for a while (rain showers ahead). This morning Evie has rearranged the toys in the baby's room into a nice basket and gotten rid of a box, and done some laundry.

Last night I watched the trailer for Star Wars III on the official web site--wow. I'm very excited. I know, the first two weren't so hot, but Star Wars is Star Wars. This a historic moment coming up. I think I can get Ev to go out to see it, as long as there are tickets available (!) and willing babysitters...But that's a few weeks away. Tonight is game two of the Nets' playoff series--we'll see if they can even it out.

I've been playing keyboard off and on over the past couple weeks to try to keep my hand in--I stopped taking lessons of course, but I don't want to forget everything. The keyboard is right by our bay window in the dining room, and the bay window is where Buster likes to sit and watch all the birds that are coming to the bird feeder. Buster is very wistful, though, and meows at some of the birds as though she would like to meet them.

I just got called by work and it looks as though I may have to go in one of these days!

Later: So we did go to the park. We've been driving over the Morris Goodkind Bridge for a long time now (it is part of Route 1 and spans the Raritan River right by our stately movie theater) and looking over at a beautiful green park, but we hadn't really ever figured out how to get there. But today Ev had the great idea of finding out about it. She directed me down some side streets and we ended up finding an out-of-the-way bike path which led into the park. It was a beautiful day today, the best way to see the park. We came in from a kind of back way, and immediately found out that they have a little leash-free dog park area where people can let their dogs bound around and romp. There's also a nice big pond with a fountain in the middle (and a sign which clearly says to not feed the waterfowl--and clearly nobody does, since the ducks we saw did not walk up to us for a handout), at least two little playgrounds with swings and slides and stuff, and a boat ramp leading into the Raritan. Along the edge of the river are lots of picnic tables and a nice path. We strolled with the baby in her travel system around the place, and it was very nice--though baby was pretty much asleep through the whole thing and didn't really see any of it (though she did give us some random squeak noises). However we are looking forward to many more visits to the park, and eventually Cara will hopefully begin to notice and appreciate the nice scenery.

After the park it was back to the homestead, but I almost immediately went off to the grocery store (again!!). When I came back I found that Evie had tried an experiment while I was gone and used her breast pump for the first time--she had expressed enough to modestly fill one of the containers. I made dinner.

You've probably seen a movie or a TV show where there was a very drunk guy who was so drunk that he couldn't aim correctly and instead of pouring a shot into his glass, he spills it all over the table and the floor. I witnessed Evelyn do this very thing with her cran-raspberry juice, and she wasn't even drunk. She just calmly poured her juice out onto the table, her seat cushion, and the floor of the kitchen. Whoops! I guess the pregnancy clumsiness hasn't left her just yet--either that or she's developing a dangerous "drinking problem."

Meanwhile in a milestone event, we figured out how to attach a nipple to the top of our expressed milk container and I fed the baby for the first time with the bottle. Evie documented this with multiple photos, and for some of them she used the flash, so I'll be putting those up on the site. Then I also got to try to burp the baby. I was nervous, but almost as soon as the baby was hanging on my shoulder she let out a huge belch. Then she lay back for a while to bask in the afterglow. Eventually while Evie washed the dishes Cara slurped up the rest of the bottle. We hope this is the beginning of things to come, and that it means Evie can sleep for extended periods and let me feed the baby during the night every once in a while. It also means it will be easier for us to have a night out if we so wish. Hopefully the baby will not develop any "nipple confusion," as it's called, and will be able to feed from the bottle or the breast alternately.

I guess that pretty much covers our afternoon and evening, which was fairly eventful. As I write this I am watching game 2 of the Nets/Heat playoff series--right now it's in halftime with the Nets unfortunately down by 9. Could be worse! Looks like I'll be going into work on Friday to get information and software for the work I'll be doing for them from home. Tomorrow our big event is Evie's visit to her gastroenterologist.

4/27/05

Here we are at the last day of week three. Last night was much like the night before, with me downstairs watching Cartoon Network (after the Nets got crushed--doh!) with the baby and Ev sleeping upstairs. Nothing particularly special happened, she just slept for a while and then got hungry and Ev fed her. Then around 1 or possibly earlier, I went off to bed and remember nothing more. This morning I enjoyed a bowl of Lilo and Stitch cereal, which I bought for some reason at the grocery store yesterday (probably because it's a lot like Count Chocula). These are just the kind of sweet, not particularly wholesome foods that we probably won't let Cara eat. Ha! Right now Ev is out for her doctor's appointment (and a few other errands) and I am watching the baby. Earlier this morning Cara was nicely alert and awake, so I tried her on her jungle gym mat thing for a bit, then put her (carefully) on her belly in the play yard. She didn't enjoy it one bit, but she did manage in her distress to lift and turn her head quite well, which is the main point of the exercise. She got hungry multiple times and was fed multiple times before Ev left, but still seemed hungry for a little while there; but I finally have her sleeping in the Kick & Play bouncer. The pacifier that was in her mouth fell out, but the "calming vibrations" are still going. I worry a bit that her little frame will get joggled by having the vibrations on too long--but then again she is very quiet right now.

Perhaps it's because she's awake for longer periods now, but I notice that Cara's eye gunk problem has decreased sharply of late. This is good. Looks like baby is waking up again, so I'm off!

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