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| Previous Week | Back Home | Next Week | Journal Key: Green = Steve | George = navy | Janet = Purple | Evelyn = Black 12/22/05 (Thursday) Last night, Cara--and, by association, us--had a rough night. She woke up again after having gone to sleep at around 10:30, at which time I went in and tried to popper her back to sleep. She was clearly in a little bit of discomfort, but I foolishly declined to use Tylenol on her because she seemed to be calming down. The result was that I got her sleepy and tried to put her down, but she wouldn't have it. So I gave her Tylenol and we sat in the glider for a while longer and then I was able to put her down. This took, all in all, about an hour, so it was 11:30 when I went back to bed. Baby woke up again at 2 am. I made her a bottle, gave it to Evie, Evie gave it to Cara, and they both slept in the glider until Evie woke up and put baby down and came back to bed. Well. I don't think Cara's quite over her cold, though she's better than she was. Part of her discomfort (or all) is probably due to a bit of teething--which, we now know, actually is happening! But when I came home tonight she was a good baby. Actually, when I came home, a bit after 6:30, she was asleep. She went down for a nap at around 5:30. This allowed us (Evie, Claire and myself) to have dinner, and a little after 7 Evie decided it was time to go up and get the baby. I took baby and we played around for the evening. We spent some time in front of the TV, but I decided I didn't want to get too much in the habit of doing that, so we went up to her room and played with some of her toys. It was nice to just play with her toys a little. My mother got Cara a squeaky ball which we had a nice time with--it rolls and it squeaks. I tried to show her some books. Cara doesn't really know what to do with books. She desperately wants them, but when she gets them she just kind of waves them around, closes them, and throws them away, or she tries to put them in her mouth with the book oriented in such a way that she would have to have the bite radius of a great white shark to fit the book inside. However, lately Cara is really trying to do things to things with other things. By which I mean, she will take a shape from her shape sorter toy and deliberately try to use it on something else--I really think this is planned on her part, although admittedly sometimes she just tries to use her hand as usual without seeming to realize there is something already in it. But I think she is becoming aware of our ability to use tools. I am waiting for the day when she really figures out how to correctly use her shape sorter. While we were messing around in her room, she kind of leaned over onto my leg and pushed out with her legs in such a way that she was almost able to stand up--but she didn't. We also did the keyboard, and spent lots of time looking at cats and yelling at cats and reaching for cats. While in her jumper, Cara watched while I attempted to coax Shelby under a laundry basket and trap her there. During this evening, both Cara and Shelby have taken rides in a laundry basket--both seemed rather ambivalent to the whole experience. Baby's first holidays are coming so close! We will have to dress her up in pretty dresses and take pictures of her (something which we've been a bit lax at lately). Someone at work suggested to me today that what the baby will really want to play with when we unwrap her new toys will not be the beautiful toys themselves but the boxes they came in. Tomorrow Evelyn plans on the courageous (or foolhardy) step of taking baby over to the mall--not to shop, but to get dinner. Well, possibly also to shop--I am not a party to all of her schemes. I have an unspoken plan to take Cara over to a new store called The Puppy Shoppe which has opened near us--they actually do have puppies. I think she's young enough that she will allow us to leave the store without having to buy a puppy, and old enough that she might enjoy looking at the puppies. I very much like baby's hair. It's a nice blondish color. It will probably turn dark brown, as her mother's did, and her eyes may still get dark brown instead of the lighter olive color they are now. Evie has been up with baby for a while now trying to get her down for the night. It's quiet, so I am thinking they may both have fallen asleep. 12/23/05 (Friday) It turned out that neither Evie nor baby were asleep, at least not when she finally came out of the nursery last night; baby was wide awake. However, she was quiet, so we left her and she must have drifted off. Of course, as usual, she was back up again in the night and Evie bravely got up and made a bottle to give to her. This did not keep me up very much, but some time after 3 I was awakened by the patter of little cat feet on the bed near my legs. We usually shut the cats up in the basement at night, but as it turns out I had not shut the door as completely as I could have and the kitties very quickly discovered that by leaning on it they could open it. I took Shelby (our visitor) back down to the basement and collected Buster on the way. After that I couldn't really get back to sleep, and the cats escaped again (another bad door-closing on my part--I was convinced that the door was faulty, and actually resorted to putting a trunk in front of the door as a barricade to keep the cats from getting out, not realizing until much later this afternoon how simply I could have solved the problem), so I stayed up until Evie got up for work. However, baby slept through this excitement and into the morning as usual. I had a half day at work today, but by the time I got home a bit after 2, Evie had already taken Cara off to the mall (giving me the chance to wrap most of my wife's presents). I have to now qualify my statement from yesterday by saying that Evie was actually at the mall in order to do some shopping; though she did end up getting food for us to eat, which was nice. We ate while Cara watched her movie, and then we all packed ourselves back into the car to go grocery shopping. Cara is a real star at the grocery store: she stares at everyone and people say hello to her and say that she's a pretty baby. She handed out a few winning smiles, and even the seemingly surly cashier called to his co-workers to witness our lovely baby. She has a most adorable way of holding onto the shopping cart handle with both hands and craning her head around me to see the people standing nearby. Baby was very good strapped into her cart for a long time while we puttered around, which was all the more impressive because it got to be quite a bit past her normal bottle time. Eventually, near the very end of our outing, she reached her shopping cart limit and I carried her to the checkout lane and bounced her around there in my arms. She noticed the balloons hanging from the impulse item racks at the checkout lanes and spent some time craning her head up to the ceiling to watch them. At the store Evie bought some stage 2 and I think even some stage 3 baby foods. These are more complex flavors, mixes of things, possibly chunkier, and in larger bottles. We also got some juice. It will be interesting to see how Cara fares on this stuff. Once home, I took baby up for a bottle and then we played with her toys in her room, for which Evie joined us. After that it was time for the jumper. Somewhere in there I finally got the digital camcorder out again and taped baby doing some things, like playing with a ribbon and standing against the rim of her crib, and playing with her aquatic toy in the crib. I will have to remember to show these movies off at Christmas. I suppose I shouldn't have expected Cara's teeth to simply appear fully fledged and ready for chewing, but I still find it odd somehow that all I can see of her first two teeth are these little white slivers, just poking up from her gums. They're so hard to see that I even wondered anxiously yesterday whether they might not have just peeked out and then gone back in! This evening there was a Nets game so we took Cara down into the living room and tried to keep her entertained with various toys while we tried to watch basketball and eat popcorn. This worked reasonably well for us all. Cara really does enjoy wriggling around, and seemed to have a fine time with me on the couch rolling over and bending backwards and kicking her legs. I propped her on her belly at an upward slant with her upper body against one of the pillows and she looked ready to climb or possibly stand. I've definitely noticed a tendency in her to want to stick her legs out and rise up. You never know, she may stand and toddle before she crawls. At one point Cara enjoyed some two-fisted rattling, with a doggie rattle in one hand and a bear rattle in the other. It was very exciting. But all things must end, so baby went and had her bath (to avoid soaking another shirt, I went topless for this procedure--Cara is getting very hard to keep still in the tub!!) and now Evie is once again doing the nighttime duties, which she claims to enjoy. Sorry for another lengthy, lengthy entry! I just feel like Cara is doing so much and on the verge of so many things, and that I have to try to capture them all. I still don't feel that I've succeeded. I'll try to take lots of pictures and movies tomorrow, maybe that will help. (Anyway, we'll probably all be too tired after the next couple of days to do any long journal entries like this.) 12/24/05 (Saturday) Steve's quite right; we're much too tired to do any long journal entries like that. Steve has explained to Cara that Santa won't come if she wakes up in the night, but, given her record in the past few weeks, I'm not terribly hopeful. She had another nice nighttime bottle last night. This morning Steve and Cara went out to do some errands, and I believe Cara was quite well-behaved and got to ride in a shopping cart again. Cara napped from noon until two, and Steve and I were able to have lunch and, having finished all of our chores, to watch a dvd that Steve got some months ago that we had not yet seen. My family has always celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve, so we headed down to Middletown this afternoon. Cara wore her jeans and her candy cane shirt, which says that good things come in small packages. I brought her fancy dress to change her into later, but I never wound up doing it. Tomorrow, though, we'll pull out all the stops. At first she had a sleeper on under her outfit, which gives her feet some covering and keeps her shirt from riding up in addition to covering her belly when it inevitably does. However, at some point we took the sleeper off and she got to enjoy playing with her naked feet. Her shirt rode way up all the time, and her pants rode down, which was all pretty funny, frankly. It was great to see her little round belly sticking out as her grandma helped her chase the cat across the kitchen, hopping all the way (Cara, not my mom). We only got a few pictures, but I have hopes that they'll be pretty cute. We got Cara sitting in front of the tree, trying to mangle some packages, and I got one of Steve holding her at the dinner table while she plays with a candy cane. All in all, it has been a great Christmas so far. Cara has not yet destroyed or swallowed anything that she oughtn't, and now we all are going to sleep to let Santa work his magic. 12/25/05 (Sunday) Santa was merciful, and even though Cara was up in the middle of the night and Evie had to give her a bottle, he still came. Cara had a very nice Christmas. She slept in a bit and let us open our gifts and have some breakfast, as well as watch a little bit of a DVD that Evie got me. Then it was time for the morning bottle, which I tried to give Cara, but she was too excited to drink much of it (this was to happen again later in the day, though she did eventually get a good whole bottle or two into her). Instead we spent some time playing with toys. She was a bit crabby, as she can sometimes be in the morning, but we kept her occupied, had our showers, and packed her into the car. Down to South Jersey, as I read A Christmas Carol in the car. We arrived early, so as not to miss any of the mountains of food. Cara in what is probably the beginning of a long chain of indulgences was allowed to open her presents first. She got lots of pretty outfits (including a fantastic hat which she wore for quite a while, making for some nice pictures), some very nice books (including an absolutely beautiful pop-up book which we won't allow her to touch for several years), some rattly toys, and some nice electronic toys. My favorite is her car, which she can sit on and ride or stand up and push as a kind of walker, depending on how you set it up. It has a steering wheel and car controls, and also a shape sorter toy in the hood! Cara has already managed to ride forwards and in reverse in her car. She liked all of her toys and played with them when we eventually got her home as well. While we ate, which took quite a while, Cara sat on the floor and watched a Baby Einstein movie which my wife was clever enough to bring with us. Cara watched that movie three or four times while we were there, and she liked it every time. Which was a very good thing. Generally when we put Cara in front of a movie, we can only see the back of her head; but today, from the dining room table, we could see her face as she watched, and were amazed to see just how much she enjoyed watching the little zebra puppets cavort about on the screen. For several scenes she had her mouth wide open with glee. She had an interesting time with Rusty the dog, who seemed somewhat afraid of her--or at least afraid of her car toy. Cara also has a radio toy which some little buttons and switches which she was able to operate this evening. This was after a long ride home, most of which she was very quiet for (I assume she was asleep). As I brought things in from the car, Cara revved back up after the quiet car ride with a nice little session in her jumper. Then I stayed with her and watched her play with toys in the living room while Evie assumed the mammoth task of putting away all of our gifts--which she did! Then baby went in the tub with some of her new bath toys (which she liked, and put in her mouth). They have plastic bubbles on top that fill with water that then drains out the bottom. Very enjoyable. Then it was into her sleeper and she got a bottle from her Mommy. I've heard that Cara was still awake when Evie left, but she has been quiet for a while now by herself, and I think we can hope that she has put herself to sleep. I have lots of pictures from today, some that we took and some that my Dad took, which I will wait until tomorrow to put up on the site. If I am very energetic I may even put some movies up. Merry Christmas to all! 12/26/05 (Monday) Last night--miracle of miracles--Cara slept through the night. We may have discovered the cause of this, as it's possible there's a correlation to Cara not waking up and us forgetting to turn the heat down during the night. Hmmm. More research is needed. Anyhoo, baby got up in the morning and had her bottle, and then we toyed around with her for a bit (literally--she played with her toys) and then we took Cara on an amazing adventure. We went to the Home Depot, rented a truck, and tried to load some cabinets that we bought at the store into the flatbed. The truck was parked within sight of our car, where baby was sitting strapped in her carseat while Evelyn and I struggled in vain to get the boxes up onto the high truck bed. Evie is convinced that the baby found this immensely amusing. The eventual resolution occurred when Evie went back into the store and brought out a man who helped me tip the boxes up into the truck. Then Ev and baby went home in the car while I had my first experience driving a large truck. It took Evelyn's skill at reverse driving to back the truck into the driveway while I held the baby. Then we tried to keep baby occupied with some toys on the dining room floor while we slowly dismantled the contents of the boxes and brought the cabinets into the house piece by piece. Baby was not really having it, as she had been driven around and somewhat ignored for a while and was badly in need of a second bottle. We struggled on however until I decided to unload the last cabinet myself while Evie held baby. Then it was back to Home Depot for us all, so I could return the truck. Then, the whole family back in their own car together, we went home and I administered the second bottle of the day to baby. We had high hopes that a nap would ensue, but baby was still awake and moving on completion of her bottle. I was ready to bring baby downstairs and stick her in front of a movie so Ev and I could eat lunch, but Evie convinced me to put her in her crib with her blanket. I turned on her little aquarium toy as well, and gave her a popper, and left her. There were some slight noises from upstairs as we began to eat lunch (this was at around 12:30), but they weren't very plaintive--more playful types of noises. Eventually all was quiet. This went on for several hours. Ev and I sat and read after our lunch, and Evie also had time for a bit of tidying and cleaning. At one point she went up and baby was kind of awake, but resettled herself. I went up at around 2:30 or so, but baby was totally out. At around 3:30 (after almost three solid hours of nap time!!) we both went up and started moving around and talking, and she awoke, just in time to be popped into a car and taken down to her grandparents for a date night. We arrived at the Smuga house at around 4 and hung around with a happy baby (who was wearing her great pink frizzy hat which you can see on the latest photos page) for a while before deciding that we really could leave for our dinner and a movie. Here, for your consideration, is Janet's description of baby's night out: Around 4:30 we offered Cara a bottle. She seemed eager to have it, but lost interest before she was halfway done. She spent some time playing very happily in our local version of the exersaucer (perhaps we should call it her office?), and sitting on the floor pulling toys out of the basket. She especially liked the fluffy blanket that is in there, and later I flapped it over her to good effect. About the time the Nets came on, Cara seemed tired, but not sleepy. We put her in the tub, where she happily sucked on her washcloth and chewed the heads of rubber duckies until the water get cool. Then we lifted her out into a hooded bath towel. Wearing only her diaper and her hooded towel, she rose to her feet (with some help, of course) - Superbaby! Claire and I demonstrated great teamwork in wrangling Superbaby into her jammies, after which she had another bottle and drifted off peacefully to sleep in Grandpa's lap. And then - what a wonderful surprise - her mommy and daddy came to take her home again! The original plan was for baby to sleep over. This is how Date Night was originally envisioned. We have now had three date nights, and the sleep over thing has only happened once. This is really our fault, as we feel a double guilt usually for staying away from Cara so long and for making other people get her to sleep and have to deal with her if she wakes up in the middle of the night (also we had wanted to go to a coffee shop but found it was no longer in business, so we went back to the house for hot chocolate). Anyways, we got to see baby sleeping prettily in her Grandpa's lap during a Nets game, and then she woke up and got held by a few people, and then we decided it was time to get her home and stick her in bed. That is what Evie is attempting to do now. By the way, a final comment related to my having changed since being settled with the mantle of fatherhood: we watched the movie Chronicles of Narnia tonight, and I found that my main reaction to the film was that I thought the little girl who was one of the four main characters was adorable, and that I hoped Cara would grow up to be so cute in a couple of years. 12/27/05 (Tuesday) We left the heat on last night and baby once again slept through the night. Evie and I had our morning with baby: she played with her new toys, not least of all her car, which she really does like very much. I forgot to mention before that in the ride-on mode, baby is supposed to straddle the car and sit on it that way; but what Cara does is get her legs up and quite often ends up hitting most of the controls with her feet (especially the horn, which seems to be her favorite part). She can also sit on the floor facing the front of the car and play with the shape sorter toy that's in the hood--though she hasn't yet gotten down exactly how to lift the hood by herself. Around 11:30, Evie went off on a lunch date and I was left alone with baby. This was not nearly as hard as it could have been, however, because at high noon baby got her second bottle and went nicely down for a nap for the two hours and change until Evie came back (giving me the chance to eat lunch, copy some DVDs, and watch a DVD). When Ev returned I went and woke the baby up. At this point Evie needed to rest and nap, so I took baby off in the car. First we went to the post office, where she once again had her usual experience of meeting a bunch of strangers who smiled at her and told her how cute she was (though it's possible that some of them still mistook her for a boy). Then, as I predicted in an earlier journal entry, it was off to the Puppy Shoppe which opened near our house just recently. I realized afterwards that this is one of the very few places I can bring Cara where people will not make a fuss over her or tell her that she's cute--they're all too busy doing that with the puppies! There were lots of puppies in cages, but also there were people who got to snuggle puppies on request on couches, and there were too big walled-off pens in the middle of the store where dogs could run around free for a while. One nice white fellow was doing just that while Cara and I were there, and Cara just loved him: she watched him run around and grinned at him and actually laughed quite a few times. It was nice--and a preview of what would happen later in the evening. Back home, where I tried to keep Cara occupied with some toys while I cut up boxes in the game room. This did not work so well, and I realized it was time for Cara to have another bottle, so Evie did that. Strangely enough, though it had been hours since her last one, Cara was not all that interested and only drank about half. Then we did some toy playing, and then a bit later when Cara was cranky (and I was eating dinner) Evie gave her the rest of the bottle. A bit later than that, I gave her a nice bowl of Stage 3 apple sauce, which after getting accustomed to it for the first few spoonfuls, Cara wolfed down with relish. While Cara was eating, Evie was lighting menorah candles, which the baby found fascinating. Soon it was time for us to go off to a little holiday party with some of Ev's work friends. We dressed baby up in some nice overalls, then she had a special event (fortunately before we left), and then we put Cara in a different outfit which was prettier and more formal. We also did not forget her frizzy pink hat, which once again got a lot of positive comments when we arrived. Cara seems to put on her best show when she is around new people. At first she was very quiet and rather shy, but eventually she was bouncing around in our arms, laughing and screaming. She got held by quite a few people and did very well with all the new faces; she took off her sock and wriggled around on the floor, and everyone was charmed. There was also a dog there. He was a small-size dog, the first animal Cara has met who is about the same size as her and was not afraid of her. They got along very well. His name is Asbury [Park], and he was very friendly. He actually jumped up on her and managed to lick her face--and would have done this a few more times if we'd let him. Cara loved the dog, and would bounce and laugh and grin whenever he was in sight: in fact, at one point when the dog left the room, she started crying! Asbury had to be brought back in. It was cute. Someone at the party remarked that they had a niece who was 18 months old and was almost the same exact size as our 8-and-a-half-month-old. This may have been more a reflection of the tininess of the other baby than the largeness of ours, but still, Cara is fairly long for her age. There was an 8-months-pregnant woman at the party who brought both Evie and I memories of when we were in a similar situation--although in our case, the baby was pretty much already born at that point! Eventually it got to be almost 9, which is generally Cara's going-to-bed time, so we whisked her away back to Edison. Evie got her down with a bottle just now, but it was deceptively easy, because Cara started crying soon after, and now Evie is back in there trying to get her to go to sleep for good. Cara no longer spends any time just sitting down in one place, unless she's very unsure of her surroundings: most of the time as soon as you put her down she's tipping over onto her hands and knees, rocking, turning, rolling over, creeping backwards, scooting, or trying to climb up into a standing position. This baby wants to move. She has dogs to chase. By the way, don't expect incredibly lengthy entries like this once the holidays are over! 12/28/05 (Wednesday) I was so proud of Cara last night! It was great to take her out and have people see her and for her to behave so well in a strange place. My favorite baby moment was certainly when her whole little face crumpled up when Asbury left the room. Later on, while I was giving her her bottle, I started to think about what it would have been like if she could walk or crawl. That living room would have been like a minefield; where was not a surface that would not pose a hazard or to which, rather, Cara would not have posed a hazard. We'd have had to discipline her! We will have to discipline her. That was a really scary thought, and I had always figured that it would be much easier for me than for Steve, given my profession. Cara was up around four this morning, and I gave her a nice bottle and she proceeded to sleep until ten. This of course confused us to no end, although it certainly does seem reasonable. My in-laws were up, and Janet and played with Cara for a while, but she was cranky. Finally, around noon, I lay her down in the crib, inserted a popper, and put her blanket over her. We left the room. In a wonderful vindication of the Grandpa George theory of baby-minding, Cara went to sleep for the next three hours! She managed to work her head into the corner of the crib, somehow taking the blanket with her, and pull her sleep sack over her face. The big accomplishment for the day was Cara pulling herself to a standing position on Grandma's leg. Her Daddy was in the basement, and she could hear him but not see where he was, so she had to investigate. She is really working hard on pulling herself up on things, and the crawling is sort of coming along, too. She can scoot backwards, and I think now that she does know she's doing it. I'm not sure what her reaction is, precisely, but she seems to look behind her. This evening we went out to do some errands; twice the checkout people thought Cara was adorable. She was sitting in her stroller in her usual posture, slumped over a little, with one foot up. She looks very casual and relaxed. She was chewing on her hat, watching the world go by. I keep letting Steve give Cara her bath. It's awfully lazy of me, especially since it seems to be getting harder. She just is not interested in sitting still! She is on the move every second, and I'm sure that soap only makes it more difficult! Now he's also giving her her bedtime bottle. I guess my doing the middle-of-the-night ones helps to make up for any laziness I get away with during the day! I never thought what a valuable quality my ability to sleep anywhere at any time would turn out to be. When she was all ready for bed and Steve was getting ready to give her her bottle, I was hanging out with Cara. The room was dimmed for the night, and she was sitting in her crib with her fishie glowing in the mobile. I left for a minute, and when I came back things were very funny. Cara was clinging to the base of the mobile, having gotten her littel tushie about three inches off the mattress. It was glowing with changing colors while music played. Once I got my hands around her, she was able to let go and plop back down. Tomorrow we certainly get to lower the mattress in the crib. | Previous Week | Back Home | Next Week | |