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8/4/05

Today was a nice day, but some of us were a little bit fussy at times. I'm working on having Cara be more independent, but it's not necessarily going well. She is happy to play by herself for long stretches of time on her changing table, for example, but I can't really leave her all alone up there--she could learn to roll over at any moment! She's pretty okay on the floor of her room, too, but she's not crazy about the play yard. I suppose she just needs to get used to it. We'll keep trying!

We went for a little walk this morning, but it was too sunny for Cara. She was unhappy, and I wound up just going around the block a couple of times. She fell asleep, and then she actually continued to nap when we got home! After that, though, she wanted attention. When I wanted to eat lunch, I had to put in her Baby Beethoven.

We went to BJ's, and I bought two more Baby videos (on DVD, this time). One, Baby Bach, will be good now, and the other, which is about baby animals, will be good later. I also bought diapers. It was really hard to choose, because they are all different sizes and types. I mean, you can't just buy Pampers, because there are different kinds of Pampers in the same size. I think I just went with the cheaper ones.

I gave Cara a bottle this afternoon, and I had a wonderful idea. I did it in the living room, with the tv on (It's a long, long time since I just watched tv. Thank goodness the lineup hasn't changed!), but I left her sitting in her bouncer. That way, I had a hand free. Cara seemed to enjoy it; she stared up at me the whole time. She took the entire bottle, leaving only foam.

Claire came up for dinner and she and I did some errands. We left Cara with her daddy, but she wasn't nice to him. She fussed. When I got home, I could get her quiet, but she didn't want to play with me, either. I decided it was because she was tired, so I started to get her ready for bed. Cara proceeded to spend half an hour (literally) playing by herself on her changing table. She pulled down her arch a few times, but I put it back up and she never got upset.

Finally it got late and I took her and fed her. She kept stopping to look up at me and smile and laugh. It was awfully friendly of her, and when she seemed done I put her down. In a few minutes she realized that she wasn't eating anymore, and she got very mad. Oh, well. I fed her again, and she was much more businesslike.

8/5/05

Today I was very lazy. I made dinner and did two loads of laundry, but I believe I accomplished nothing else whatsoever. Cara woke up around eight, and she and I spent the next three hours in the glider, snoozing, snuggling, and snacking. I also read a little. When we got up again, around eleven, I played with Cara and then left her with her Jungle Arches over her. She really enjoys having toys that dangle in arms' reach; she spent the next two hours happily playing with her monkey, parrot, and thing that we guess is a zebra. I didn't just abandon her; I was in and out and I spent some time sitting with her and reading. When she knocked her monkey down, I put him back up. I could tell that things were going okay, even when I was downstairs, because the zebra thing has a very loud rattle.

In the early afternoon, I gave Cara a bath. I put her tub in the big bathtub this time, so it didn't matter how much she splashed. She had a good time and splashed a lot. Then I fed her and we spent another few hours in the glider. Unfortunately, Cara must have had a nightmare, because she woke up screaming and screaming. She calmed down, though, and played with her Jungle Friends. We had a few hours of moderate struggle; she watched Baby Beethoven while we ate dinner, and eventually I decided she was tired and I would put in a popper and settle with her in the glider. It worked. Her eyes got heavy. Then, this jingling sound came up the hall. It was Shelby. She brought us her jingle ball. She usually just puts it on the carpet and leaves, but this time she thought hard. She looked like she might put it down on Cara's play mat with the baby toys, but then she had a better idea. She put it in Cara's plastic bathtub, dropping it several inches. She didn't leave. She proceeded to bat the ball around in there, basically making as much noise as she could. Did Cara notice? Yes, she noticed all of this. I had to call Steve to remove the fluffy disturbance.

After a while Cara woke up for real and got upset. We decided she was hungry, so we got her all ready for bed and I got back into the glider with her (that's at least seven hours today) and fed her and she went to sleep. Then I thought about all the things I would really like to be doing, like eating brownies and getting ready for bed, and I started to resent Steve for not coming to rescue me. Then, after about twenty minutes, I realized that I could just put the sleeping baby in her crib. I did that. I came downstairs. I wrote this. Now I get a brownie.

8/7/05 (10 A.M.)

It's Cara's four-month birthday! Right now her daddy is carrying her around, and she's very happy about it. They are doing all sorts of things together, like checking out what exactly Shelby has knocked over in her excitement about something no one but she can perceive.

I just had to interrupt my writing to go and deal with Cara's first-ever cat scratch. Poor Steve! Cara was looking at the cat, so he thought that perhaps she might touch it, also. Shelby, as I implied, is bananas this morning. Cara got a little scratch on her little hand. It didn't break the skin or bleed at all, and Cara didn't seem to notice it. She certainly wasn't upset. We washed it off, though.

Yesterday we trekked down to Jim and Sarah's condo for the day. It was nice, but Steve and I pretty much had to take turns holding Cara the whole time. I fed her a whole lot, and Steve got to play with her for quite a while, but it really is hard to interact normally with other adults while you have a baby. Oh, well.

In the car on the way home, Claire sat in the back with Cara. She didn't need to amuse her at all; for the first half of the ride, Cara was having some sort of party all by herself. She kept laughing and we're not sure at what. It may have been the mirror in the back of the car. After a lot of fun, she fell asleep.

(Steve takes over here:)

Yes, well, Cara had a very nice morning this morning laughing at her mommy, playing with her jungle friends, having some short time in her play yard, and getting carried around a lot. But she decided in the middle of being held that she was very unhappy, and Daddy tried many things including a diaper change, but nothing was sticking, so baby is now in the glider with Mommy, and she has a popper in her mouth (baby, not Mommy). Anyways, speaking of being upset, baby was getting that way on the way home, but we decided to risk a quick side-trip to the Home Depot to look at some of their shelving and related hardware (this is connected to our plan to babyproof our CD collection by putting it on very high shelves). Unfortunately, once we got baby into her stroller and rolled her into Home Depot, we realized she really, really didn't want to be in her stroller in Home Depot, so we rolled right back out and sped home, where baby was quickly changed and fed. Then baby was passed to Daddy, who after much baby-wrangling and having to pick the spat-out popper up off the floor, was able to discover the way baby wanted to be held so that she would get sleepy. When baby got heavy, Daddy very cleverly rested his arm on the top of the crib for a while, until he was pretty sure baby was really asleep, then he very gently lowered her into the crib and walked away. Then Claire, Evelyn and I sat around on the floor of the living room and looked at Claire's very complex book of published papers from the design conference she went to in California, and then Claire left when it became clear we weren't going to do anything more interesting, and then we went to sleep. Then baby woke up and started crying, we started her classical CD over again, and then we all went to sleep again, and baby slept through until around 9 am or so. And now here I am finishing up Evie's journal while she wrangles the baby.

We are both still trying to work out how to split up our baby-wrangling time. I realized yesterday that Evie spends so much time now with the baby that I only ever feel like I'm substituting for her when I handle the baby. This is not particularly healthy, as I'm sure we both feel that we should be equally sharing the baby responsibility. I also hate the feeling I get when I have to give up on a crying baby and hand her over to Evie to make quiet--this is a bad pattern for the baby to get in, plus it makes me feel like I did a bad job (which isn't always true). However, I did have some time yesterday and this morning when baby was very happy with the way I was playing with her, and that is always good to boost the spirits. Pretty soon, also, Evie will be going back to work, and we will be forced into a situation where we will both be spending about equal time with the baby during the day (though, since she gets home before me, Ev will still have the edge on me a bit). This will create new realms of baby time-sharing, since Evie will have to turn Cara over to Grandpa George every day, and deal with the ensuing feelings of worry and guilt. One thing I've learned about being a human being, though, is that one can adjust to just about anything, especially if it isn't anything that traumatizing.

As usual, I have made this entry far too long for casual readers. And I see I've spent more time talking about the parents than about the baby! The baby was very active in my arms, wriggling everywhere, and I'm sure that if we felt better about putting her on her tummy, we could really make some progress towards creeping and crawling. She looks at everything with a very sharp sense of perception, and I do think she is starting to notice the cats (though clearly I have to be more careful about introducing them to each other--yeesh). We'll see if Evie wants to add anything else later, but I think it's time to sign off. We plan on trying to clean the house today. We'll see how baby feels about it.

8:30 P.M.

It's Evelyn again. We all had a very nice day. Cara had a wonderful bath with her tub in the big tub, where splashing is encouraged and enjoyed by all. After that, I fed her and she took a nap on the floor. When she woke up, we went out to the pet store and the grocery store. Steve and Cara had a good time in the grocery store smiling at each other, but Cara got mad when we got back in the car to come home.

She was happy to get out of the car, though, and Steve carried her around for a while. I fed her and then Steve played with her while I cleaned the house. Everyone was happy with that arrangement. Steve has decided, and I certainly agree, that Cara is easier to deal with during the day and then gets a little bit more difficult at night. It's true that, during the day, now, she is fairly able to amuse herself. In the evenings she needs more attention.

Just now I put her in the bouncer and brought her over by the computer so that I could keep half an eye on her while I typed this. However, the computer is near the TV, which is on, because I still like to watch The Simpsons every Sunday. Cara was happy in her bouncer with her toys, but then she started watching the TV. I don't really like that! I mean, there's violence and all. So Steve turned her away from it. I don't know whether that's the reason or not, but she started screaming! Now, though, Cara is happy in his arms. Soon it'll be nine o'clock and I'll head her toward bed.

8/8/05

It's late! It's about 10:20; I just put Cara down. We had a semi-eventful day. Cara played for most of the morning, then took a nap and I had lunch. In the afternoon, Claire and I took the cats to the vet. There we were, all five of us in the car, and everyone except Claire (and me) was crying as I pulled out of the driveway! Actually, Cara quieted down, and Buster didn't cry at all, we think. Shelby did. She wasn't really bad, but she WAS scared. At the vet, Claire carried the two cat boxes and I carried the baby. We were quite a procession. I brought Cara a bottle and used that and her toys to keep her quiet and happy while the kitties got their shots.

Afterwards, I went out to get supplies so that Claire and I could make dinner. Claire got to baby-sit, and she even got to change a diaper by herself for the first time, I think. Claire wound up doing most of the cooking, too, because I had to feed the baby at an opportune time! Cara sat in her bouncer, then, and helped us cook, and she watched her video while we ate.

This evening we watched Star Wars because something in a TV commercial reminded me of it, and Cara watched some with us. I put her on her tummy on the couch, actually, and she stayed that way for a full five minutes, sucking on her hand, drooling, and looking at the TV. I hope that's not any sort of portent about her future! Then she took a nap on my lap very nicely.

We started putting her to bed at about 9:20, I think, and it seems that she's finally really asleep. Now it's time for me to go emulate her.

8/9/05

Cara and I had a nice day today. She woke up at eight, as usual, and then we stayed in the glider until about eleven thirty, nursing and napping. It was nice. When we got up I changed her and then fed her again, because I always feed her after changing her. Cara was very happy afterwards, playing with her jungle friends. Unfortunately, I decided to give her a bath. She had a really good time splashing--I'm wondering whether she knows she's doing it--but then of course I had to take her out, and when I got a diaper on her and dressed her she got upset. I wound up feeding her again around one, which was kind of ridiculous. Then she was in a slightly cranky mood, so we went for a walk.

We spent some more time in the glider later in the afternoon, just napping this time, Cara with her popper and me with my book. She's been awake most of the evening, although she did take a little nap on Steve after her bottle. The bottle somehow spilled all over both of them, but I refuse to accept a verdict of human error (mine) or mechanical error on the part of the bottle. I think it was just some sort of miracle, but a bad one. Anyway, Cara got to watch us fold laundry on our bed earlier, and she kept herself busy by working her way from the sitting position I put her in against the pillows to a prone position by arching her back. Then Steve and I put on some musical theater, in which the audience got to participate by bouncing on her daddy's knee, opening her mouth for the rattling animals, and drooling at the puppets.

8/10/05

Today was a long day. Cara and I had a good morning, playing and smiling a lot, and then we went out and did a couple of errands. This afternoon, though, we went to the pediatrician for our four-month checkup. Her grandparents came along to help, because the poor baby had to get lots of shots.

We saw a different doctor this time, Dr. Diemer. He was very nice. We had a few issues to talk with him about. As far as starting solid foods goes, he says that we can start it if Cara seems to be wanting to eat awfully frequently, but it's really just more work and breast milk and formula will provide all of her nutritional needs anyway. We may try some cereal one of these days, just to see what happens. I'm not in a hurry.

Cara is growing nicely. She weighs 14 pounds and 3 ounces and is about 25 inches long. Both measurements put her at about the 75th percentile, I believe.

One thing I had the doctor look at was her little backside. Cara has what is called a pilonidal dimple. (I had the doctor write it down, because I would not have spelled it that way!) It is a little hole in the crack between her buttocks, basically. It is a fairly common thing, but Cara's is pretty deep, so Dr. Diemer is sending us to get some x-rays done just to rule out any vertebral anomalies. We're going tomorrow.

Cara got four shots, two in one thigh, one in the other, and one in her tush. She cried, but then she was happy again. Se smiled at her grandma on the way home, and then she took a nice nap on her grandpa. She took a whole six-ounce bottle, even sort of holding it by herself for a bit (she took it out of her mouth and got mad because it was gone).

We watched some home movies of Cara, and she looked at them. She may have responded to hearing my voice coming from the TV, but, then again, she may not. We all ate dinner, and Cara watched her Baby Beethoven. She was very smiley afterwards, but then she got awfully upset. I made her a bottle, but she would have none of it. I took her upstairs to feed her, and she ate, but then she got quite hysterical. I gave her come Tylenol, and in a little bit, with a lot of snuggling, I got her calmed down. She fell asleep in my arms, still snuffling.

She slept in my lap for over an hour, and then I put her down. Now she's still asleep, and her daddy and I are hoping she doesn't consider herself down for the night. She didn't eat that much, and I'll bet she has me up in the middle of the night!

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