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9/8/05

To begin this new week, this is Steve filling in as guest journalist! So settle in. If we get our acts together, I may either show George how to write up the entries in these files himself, or just ask for email reports (though this may be more work than we have any right to expect from him). Evelyn has had a tough week adjusting back into the working world. She's been off a long time! We are both very glad that when we are off at work, we don't have to worry about baby, as she is in good hands. Evelyn going back to work has made me realize just how little time I spend with Cara on a weekday: in the morning she is generally asleep when I leave, and in the evening if I get home at 6 (which is a very early time for me), I only get to see her for at most four hours before it is time to shuttle her off to bed (which is what is happening right now). There is always the weekends, but hopefully I will find some way of getting more baby time into my schedule.

The last few days have started a new routine that is working nicely for me. I somehow manage to get up feeling a little more awake than my usual zombie-like drowsiness, and I get ready with enough time left over to make coffee and eat breakfast (something I used to do at work). George arrives (Evelyn having left usually while I am showering), and we have a little chat before I go up to see Cara (who is generally writhing around in her About to Wake Up stage) and then take off. I have some very good pictures of Cara on my desk at work which make me look forward to coming home. Baby is getting so much better on her tummy; tonight she lay on her tummy for a good fifteen minutes, legs kicking, head held high. I keep waiting for her legs to find purchase and her little baby body to zoom off across the carpet. I guess it won't be quite so sudden, though... I am also patiently enjoying her wonderful babbling (though we don't seem to have gotten her to recognize her name yet), and the way she seems so willing to grin at the very silly things mommy and daddy do for her benefit.

Let's see. Last night baby was up and down before she finally got herself to sleep, which may have been as late as 10:45. But as usual she slept through the night like a champion and (as I said earlier) was still basically out when I left for work this morning. Evie told me that when she came home baby was tuckered from a long, active day, and then did some hard napping. Evelyn tossed her in the car and rode off to Office Depot (word of advice from Evelyn: don't go to Office Depot on the first day of school!!!), and got back a little after I got home with a sleepy baby in the car seat. I then cleverly started banging dishes around and woke baby up, so she bounced and kicked enthusiastically in her bouncer while we ate dinner--then I put her in front of her Beethoven movie, and then baby and I watched some tennis (U.S. Open!). Baby is really filling out her bouncer, and lately she has been lifting her legs up and hooking her feet on the toy arch, so that both her hands and feet are actively playing with the toys. It's great how much use she has gotten out of that thing, but I'm beginning to worry that she's reaching the weight limit on it!

This evening baby had a typical splashy, happy bath as well. Evie is very tired, and aside from her one nap I don't know how much sleeping Cara has done, so hopefully we will all be drifting off soon. One thing that has surprised me is how much my own sleeping pattern has changed lately. Sure, I was prepared for some somewhat sleepless nights in the beginning, but even now that baby is sleeping through the night, I find that I have trouble going back to sleep once I've woken up, when I have never had trouble like that before. I sleep lighter, and wake earlier. I think that somehow being a father has made me so aware of my new responsibilities when I'm awake that as soon as I'm even a little bit conscious of the real world, I start thinking about all the stuff I have to do, and then there's no going back.

Evie has changed the lights in the nursery, fed the baby, sacked her, given her the baby vitamins, but had a difficult time turning on the sleepy music because she had to bend down to reach the stereo while keeping her other hand up by the baby, who was busy sucking Very Hard on mommy's finger. But baby seems to be down now, so this will very fortunately cut short my mammoth entry. Good night, all!

9/9/05

I just thought that finger thing was very funny because I had no idea that I could reach the stereo while my finger was in her mouth. Anyhow, now I feel guilty because my entries are not likely to be as long as Steve's. I'm just tuckered out, frankly. I get up at 5:19 (my alarm would go off at 5:20), hustle through showering and dressing, feed the baby if she gets up, then get off to school. At school, I just find that I have no free time at all so far; even lunch is during a meeting. When it ends, I have to hurry home because, until I get there, my poor daddy can't go home either. I thought I was leaving early yesterday, but it turned out to be four o'clock. Today I did it, though, and got home a little bit after 3:30.

Cara was up at six this morning, and she really is awfully good in her bouncer while I eat my cereal and pack my lunch. I'm proud of her for being so cheerful and self-sufficient. When I got home this afternoon, Dad was giving her a bottle. She was napping. She had taken about two ounces in half an hour. He quit and I took her. Of course, she stayed awake for the next four hours. Before Dad left, though, he showed me the game he's been playing with Cara in which he waves a receiving blanket over her face. She loved it.

Cara and I hung around for a couple of hours until Steve came home. While she was lying in my arms in the glider, I blew a raspberry at her. I've been doing this fairly frequently, in addition to sticking my tongue out and making kissy noises, my other two hobbies. The big news is, Cara was really trying to blow one back. She stuck out her tongue and was blowing out through her mouth at the same time. She tried it a few times, and later she did it again. She hasn't quite gotten it right yet; she sounds like me when I try to do this thing my mom can do with her lips. (Actually, I can do it right, as long as I get warmed up a little.) This is really exciting, because Cara has never really shown that she is imitating anything before.

We also had some really nice tummy time; Dad says he's been doing tummy time, too, so she's been on her tummy for a lot of time the past few days! Cara and I read two books while she was on her tummy.

When Steve got home, he and I took turns scrounging for dinner. Around 7:45 Cara seemed hungry, so I took her up and fed her. She fell asleep and around nine I got up. I found Steve, who spread out Cara's sleep sack. I put her down on it, and her eyes opened a little. We gave her a popper, and I was able to put her arms through the holes and zip her up for the night. If only it were that easy for me to get ready for bed!

9/10/05

Having gone to sleep around eight o'clock, Cara did not make it through the night. I woke up around 1:30 to find Steve changing the baby--I'm not sure why, but most of the times when she wakes in the night he wakes first and gets up before I'm even aware of it. I fed her, and she stayed quite awake, convinced that it was playtime. Eventually I gave her her popper, put her back in bed, and turned on her fish. Her sleepy CD was already on. She was wide awake. I really wanted a drink, but I was afraid to go downstairs; that would confirm her belief that it was time to get up! I went back to bed and kept half an eye open for a little while, but Cara apparently decided that she might as well sleep some more, as nothing interesting was going on.

Jim and Janet came up today, arriving while Cara was in her bath. They missed the best part, however, because she had already splashed most of the water out. Cara was a good girl for her grandparents; she got carried around and played with and even recorded. She took a bottle from her grandpa, but she was very distracted by everyone talking and walking around; she had to watch everything. Her grandparents put Cara in her exersaucer, and she played for quite a while. She even played with her spinny puppy, which usually scares her.

At some point, Cara managed to spit up very fragrantly on her grandma, giving her something as a souvenir of the day.

The biggest baby event of the day was our walk to the park, where we put Cara in a baby swing. We got there and looked at them, and they looked awfully big. We put Cara in with her legs through the little holes, and she leaned back and looked very comfortable. She got to swing for a few minutes before we took her out. We got some cute pictures, though, including my favorite picture of the three of us so far.

Later, I went out to wash my car. It was a smart move, because everyone else came out to help and did a better job, of course, than I would have done, left to my own devices. Cara came out to watch with her grandma and grandpa to hold her, and we all had a good time.

Cara just took a 7- or 8-ounce bottle. She was quite distracted at first, and got fussy, but after I warmed it up some more she managed to finish it. She is now yelling for more.

9/11/05

Steve back again for Sunday's edition. Today was a fairly uneventful day in that we did not go visiting anywhere, and no one came to visit us. The family got going around 7:30 in the morning; having discovered we had no pancake mix, I made french toast for breakfast, and baby had fun in her bouncer. Boy does she gallop in that thing (that's what I call it when she kicks out with both her legs over and over). After breakfast, we got ourselves showered and went food shopping. We are at a loss as to how we are going to deal with the baby in these kinds of situations in the next few months, because she is really reaching the limits of the infant carrier's capacity. She fills the thing out now in a way I couldn't have imagined a few months ago, and once that's gone, the next step is actually sitting baby in the shopping cart, which we're not sure she can really handle yet (sitting up is still a developing skill for her--though I think I've seen her almost doing it when she is reaching for her bottle while laying in my lap).

I have also been worried lately that baby is reaching her weight limit on the bouncer, but a check of the instruction manual (which I found carefully filed under "furniture" in my filing system--but I remembered that that's where it was!) informed me that baby will only part from her bouncer when she learns how to sit up unassisted. I think the bouncer will enjoy a few more good weeks of enthusiastic use.

We had a successful food shopping trip, had a nice lunch with more bouncer time, and then we took baby out for another stroll to the park, where she had another fun ride on the swing. Baby has been so very happy lately--she smiles a lot and laughs a lot, and seems to assume that most of the things we say and do to her are going to be funny. Her raspberry noise is going strong--I think grandpa George is going to be very confused when he sees her on Monday and finds that she has learned how to make very silly noises. She makes lots of bubbles and pushes out drool, but in between her raspberries she babbles nicely as well.

After our trip to the park, we had another outing, this time to Target, where we wandered around looking at baby things and bought a set of baby overalls to go with the cute overalls my mother gave us on Saturday. We had a look at toys and started to wonder what kind of toys baby will enjoy as she grows--I am keen on getting her a nice jigsaw map of the United States that we saw there, so she knows her geography a little. I hope that she will like Transformers or action figures of some kind, so I can enjoy her toys also.

Later in the afternoon, daddy watched the US Open mens' singles final match (Federer beat Agassi--shucks!), and baby gurgled and giggled nearby. As the evening has worn on, however, baby has worn down and got rather cranky when we tried to watch the Simpsons, so she is now with her mommy for some special time which I'm sure will culminate in the bedtime routine. It's been a good weekend for the family, I think (baby had some nice bottles and some spirited tummy time), and I'm glad I got some good baby time in before going off to work for another week. I'm also glad I got some nice lengthy journal entries in here!

9/12/05

My mother likes to tell the story of a woman she once knew who claimed that she had taught her son how to walk, as if he would never have figured it out for himself. I am very tickled to be able to announce that, upstairs, my husband is showing our daughter how to creep across the floor. He tells her babies have to climb and then he moves her little arms and legs and scoots her a few inches. It kind of also reminds me of Batman and Robin doing the "batcrawl" in the old TV series.

When I got home today (after four, because we have faculty meetings on Mondays), Daddy told me that Cara had had a tough day. She had cried all the way to the park. She had, however, had a few naps and was playing the piano happily when I got home. He handed her over and left. I have to agree that Cara had a tough day. She did some fussing and generally seemed unhappy some of the time. She has taken to sticking her arm up the sleeve of my T-shirt and sticking her balled-up fist in her mouth, which effectively gets my shirt quite wet and prevents me from doing anything to make her more comfortable. Tylenol does seem to help, though.

Cara has displayed quite clearly that she prefers Baby Beethoven to Baby Bach. We had to stop our dinner to switch from the DVD to the tape. Steve thinks that she's too mature for Baby Bach, which is the slower-paced.

Now, unfortunately, it's 9:20 and I have to run and give baby a bath and put her to bed (and give her poor daddy a break!).

9/13/05

George here: today was the nicest day! Cara cried very little today, showing none of yesterday's crankiness. Our big adventure was a short car trip to Home Depot for supplies. The funniest thing was this: while listening to Oklahoma and lying on her playmat in her room, Cara managed a 180 degree turn--her head stayed still while her body rotated. First her feet were toward the wall with the dresser, and then at about the time of the ranchers and the farmers becoming friends, Cara's feet were toward the opposite wall, while her head stayed in place. Quite a feat!

Evelyn again: Yes, Cara has been an awfully good girl today. I thought that I noticed this yesterday, but it was more pronounced, I think, today. When I've come home, Cara and her grandpa have been playing the piano in the dining room. I walk over and say hello, and I'm pretty sure that Cara is either reaching for me or just moving toward me. That's really neat.

I have a feeling that it may be quite confusing to read this sometimes, because I refer to both Steve and my dad as Daddy. Sorry, it just can't be helped. It's confusing in real life, too, sometimes.

I had some schoolwork to do today, so Cara and I went into the office, where my computer is. She sat nicely in her play yard for quite a while while I got some work done. She played with her kitty-face wrist rattle and looked in her mirror toy while she slowly slumped down. She seemed quite pleased about it. Dad had said that Cara hadn't napped much, so a little bit before six I turned on her sleepy music and gave her a popper. She hadn't looked sleepy, but she'd been enthusiastic about putting things in her mouth, so I thought I had a shot. I tried putting her down in her crib, but that was not good enough. I rocked with her in the glider then, and she went off to sleep pretty fast. I put her down when Steve got home, and she slept through our dinner perfectly.

9/14/05

Boy, am I tired! There was a thump in the night (our little light over the kitchen sink fell down) that woke up both me and Steve but not Cara, thank goodness, and neither of us really got too much sleep after that. Then of course it was a long day at work. Cara has also had a long day at work. She's managed to have three (three!) Special Events today. That's never happened before. It's a good thing it's bath night!

Although I would have enjoyed it very much, Cara did not take a nap with me this afternoon. She did, I admit, fitfully doze in my arms, but I really couldn't sleep with her like that. There was a lot of thrashing and expulsion and reclaiming of the popper.

When I got home, Cara and her grandpa were playing the piano, as usual. Cara had mashed her hands on the keys in such a way as to turn on some sort of weird party beat. She did not make any movements toward me on my arrival, which was just as well because I had to go and get changed.

We gave her a bath after our dinner, and Cara really ought to have been hungry, I thought. However, she wasn't really interested in eating and is now playing nicely with her daddy. Soon, though, it's bedtime all around.

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