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Journal Key:

Green = Steve | George = navy | Janet = Purple | Evelyn = Black

12/29/05 (Thursday)

Our theory about leaving the heat on is failing us utterly. Cara was up around two, and I think she's teething. She seemed to be in pain; she was crying and arching her little back. I guess that sounds more like indigestion of some sort; I don't know. I just know she was quite unhappy and had a hard time going back to sleep.

She slept until about 8:30 and we had a nice morning. Steve put her down for a nap a little bit after noon, and she slept until almost four! I was surprised. We all were; my family was up to celebrate Hanukkah. Cara was a good girl. We dressed her up in cute pink pants and put her poncho on her and she looked adorable. She enjoyed sucking on the fringe. She watched us making potato latkes. She played with all of her toys and worked on pulling herself up and around. Her grandma fed her a big bowl of applesauce. Cara was very tired, though, and she fell asleep very quickly tonight when I gave her her bedtime bottle. I hope it really takes!

12/30/05 (Friday)

Cara and I were home alone today, since Steve had to go to work. When Cara woke up and I took her out of her sack, I sat her up on her changing table. She very casually reached over to her left, grabbed the window sill, and stood up in one smooth motion, as if she did it every day! I think it just happened to be the right height. She tries to stand up on everything. Later, I left her alone for a few minutes with her new car. She was sitting near the hood, playing with the shape sorter. When I came back, she was on her face and so was the car. She had tried to use it to stand, and it really is not designed for that. It will be great once she can walk a little, but for right now the wheels just present a hazard. (Except that they mean that she can pull the car to her to play with.)

Since she can't find anything good to stand up on in the house, beside the window that puts her in such a precarious position that it doesn't count at all, I decided to look around and find her something to stand up with. Cara's great grandparents in New Mexico sent her a gift card to Target, so I went online and looked at Target's web site at learning tables. These are stationary play sets that babies can hang on to and play with. Steve and I studied our options, went to Target, saw that they had nothing there, and ordered one online. We got the play set rather than the play table; it looks interesting and less musical. We don't think we need more music in the house. When it gets here, two things will happen. Cara will officially be a Very Spoiled Baby or at least a Specially Indulged Baby, and I will figure out more about it and describe the thing.

Cara and I went out and did a lot of errands this morning. She hates being put into or taken out of her car seat. She is fine in it and fine out of it, but just hates it whenever I try to mess with her straps! However, she was very good. We came home and I gave her a bottle and she took a short nap while I ate lunch. In the afternoon she played in her jumper and in her room and we had a good time.

I read something about babies learning to use their sippy cups, so I took its advice, put some water in the cup, and handed it over. Cara is very interested and had a great time waving the cup around. She put lots of parts of it into her mouth, sometimes including the business end. I showed her what to do and held it for her to drink, and I think she needs to think about it a little bit; she's never had water to drink before. In any case, I think we will try to keep giving it to her regularly so she figures it out. Water makes sense as a beverage while she plays, since she did get it all over the place.

Cara has been a little bit crabby this evening. It's weird, she plays and it just fine, but then she gets very upset. She's been like this for hours. She was like that while I was making dinner, and I was very relieved when Steve got home early and took her off my hands. It's getting late, now, and I think we're going to go lower her crib, bathe her, and pack her off to bed!

My new theory on her waking up in the night: Grandpa George gives her her nap every day at ten. Mommy and Daddy put her down much later. Her sleep schedule is somehow disrupted. Perhaps this is why I've spent two hours every night in the glider. This theory gives me hope, because Grandpa George comes back next week.

1/1/06 (Sunday)

It's a new year. Baby had an interesting experience to ring in her new year. My brother was having a moviefest and watching all of the Star Wars movies (plus some extras), so I left home early to get some good movie watching in. Meanwhile, Evie and Cara stayed behind and awaited the arrival of Aunt Claire, and then they packed up numerous baby toys and machinery and went off to my parents' house. There baby was dropped off and Claire and Ev proceeded to the movies at Jim's house. My parents watched baby for a while, then Ev and Claire returned to help them out and I stayed on, watching movies. Basically my New Year's Eve was babyless. I left Jim's place at a little after midnight and arrived at the parents' house just in time to watch Evelyn carefully lowering a sleepy Cara into the Pack 'n' Play. Cara had stayed up, wide-eyed and happy, to watch the ball drop. Finally a bottle got her down. It was a new and strange place for Cara to spend the night in.

In the morning, Cara woke up at her usual time--meaning she had missed a few hours of sleep. She watched her zebra movie while we had breakfast, then played around a bit while we packed up all of her stuff. Claire and Ev again took baby in their car while I set off alone. Cara probably had a little bit more sleep in the car, but she did not go down for a nap in the early afternoon with her next bottle. We hung around the house with her. I kept Cara somewhat entertained while Evelyn did some cooking, and while Claire and Evelyn took down our Christmas decorations. We all watched some TV, then baby had a bottle and finally went down for a nap in the early evening. We watched some more TV, then baby woke up and had some stage 2 food (pineapples and pears mixed together, I think; she's already had a bit of it, and it seems to be going okay), and Claire left. Then we kept baby entertained a bit longer until it was time for her bath and night time bottle, which is being administered now.

Today Cara progressed a bit more in her great journey towards movement (that's a rather ironic way of putting it, I now realize, but we'll let it stand--no pun intended!!). While Evelyn was holding her near the coffee table, Cara pulled herself up to a standing position and was kind of "cruising" while holding onto the table edge. Cara also managed to get to a sitting position from being flat on the floor. Much later in the evening, as she has done before, Cara grabbed hold of her crib aquarium toy and stood up--while in her sack!--then reached over and kind of got herself over to the ledge of the crib (we may have to lower it another peg). She was, as usual, squirmy in the tub. She does enjoy wrassling with her Daddy in the tub.

Tomorrow, in a strange turn of events, Evelyn goes back to work and my office is closed! This means I get to watch the baby. Wacky hijinks are sure to ensue.

I'd just like to put in a little bit about New Year's myself. Cara was a good girl for her grandparents; she played in her jumper and took a nap in her play yard and played with her toys and chased the dog. When I got there in the evening I tried to put her down, but she would have none of it. She took a bottle around nine and then I thought she was tired and sleepy. I try not to make eye contact with her when I'm trying to send her to sleep, so I wasn't looking directly at her. She seemed sleepy, but her hand groped around in front of me until she found her foot, which she proceeded to energetically wave in my line of vision. I gave up and brought her back upstairs.

Cara spent the next few hours having a good time. She finally got to see all the fun grownups have after babies go to bed! Her grandpa flew her like an airplane--very exciting! She spent most of the time sitting on the couch between me and her grandma, while she waved her bug around and tried to climb up people periodically and we all watched the Giants. She was definitely tired, but she really didn't want to miss anything.

Finally the ball dropped and I went off to give Cara another bottle, it having been three hours since her last. She fell asleep, and I realized that I was quite lucky. If she had been awake when her daddy got back, she'd have gotten excited all over again! Fortunately, she was sound asleep when he got back. As he said, he was just in time to see me lower her into her play yard for the night.

1/2/06 (Monday)

I was a bit surprised to have a fairly easy day with baby today. I requested that Evie wake me up when she was ready to leave in the morning, which is pretty close to when I usually get up for work--I had a very hard time of it, but I managed to stumble out of bed so that I could shower and be ready for baby whenever she woke up. Cara had done her now-usual waking in the middle of the night last night, but Evie had been able to just give her the popper and put her back to sleep that way. This meant there was a whole extra bottle which I had made last night in the fridge (though I didn't realize this or notice the bottle until well into the morning).

I was able to have a nice comfy breakfast and hang around until about 8:30, when baby decided to get up. We had a nice morning bottle, then did a lot of play time for the next three hours (while in between I managed to sneak in a few chores, like laundry). I showed Cara a lot of books. She has these books with paper flaps in them, and you lift them and there's something underneath. Cara loves them, but for a long time she used to grab the flaps and twist them and try to put them in her mouth. Lately, she seems to have realized that this is not the way one enjoys the books, and sits back and watches while we read them to her. I'm very glad that I've gotten back into the habit of showing her books, because I want reading to be a big part of Cara's childhood.

There are plenty of other toys to play with, though. We played with her car, and her saucer, and her radio, and so on until Cara seemed to be getting crabby, so I pulled out the fridge bottle and gave it to her, and she very nicely fell asleep and had a 2-and-a-half-hour nap. I got to eat lunch and read some nice comic books, and even part of a DVD. When she woke up, I dressed her in a nice set of pink overalls and put on her jacket and even though it was raining we ventured out to the mall. It was really crowded! I realize today is a holiday for most people, but I really didn't expect to see them all at the mall at 3:30 in the afternoon so soon after the holiday shopping season. I even had to wait in line to have my watch battery replaced. It so happened that the watch repair section of Macy's is right next to the elevator, so everybody with strollers was going by and Cara got to stare at a lot of babies. The man in front of us in line waved at Cara and said, "He's so good!" proving that Cara is still being mistaken for a boy (her jacket was covering the pink overalls)--she's really got to grow out some curls, or something!

It was interesting taking Cara out in the rain, but not something I plan on doing very often. I had had more errands planned, but it was wet and it was getting to be the time when Evie was going to get back from school, so we went back home and were in time to meet Mommy as she came in the door. Then Cara got another bottle, this time from her Mommy, and then after a short high chair session (during which I snapped some pictures of Cara in the cute outfit I had put her in all by myself), I watched her and watched TV while Evie made dinner.

Cara watched her movie while we ate, then after some pineapples and pears had a long jumper session. Eventually after a lot of crabbiness on Cara's part (even while Evie was reading nice fairy tales to her out of a big picture book) we realized it had been hours since her last bottle. It was around 8:15, a little early for her bed time, but we went for it anyway. Evie has been fighting with her for a while now, and now it is Cara's normal bed time, so I guess things just work out.

I actually had a very easy and pretty uneventful day, though I managed to go on about it for quite a while. Cara was a good girl, and tomorrow after a long break she gets to see her Grandpa George again.

As a brief addendum, Cara's moving is proceeding apace. Today she did a lot of trying to stand up, including using her laying-down Daddy as a tool for this purpose. She crept backwards quite efficiently (though, since she wanted to go forwards, she did it very frustratedly). She rolled around and generally tried very hard to get places. I remember when "tummy time" was this chore that we used to have to force Cara to do, and none of us wanted to do it. Now Cara is constantly self-enforcing her tummy time. I now fully believe that she will crawl very soon. By the way, I ordered some squishy bumper things for our living room tables today, for when Cara gets up and starts slamming into everything that she can slam into.

1/3/06 (Tuesday)

I haven't been with Cara for over a week and a couple of observations: Cara is bigger! She barely fits on the changing table. Also, I think Cara bit me today. We were on the couch in the living room and I allowed her to gently pitch forward so her face was at my left knee: then I felt the unmistakable feeling of tiny teeth digging into my skin. What a wonderful milestone. Also, I left Cara sitting on the floor in her room and left her for five minutes. When I returned, she was crying and I thought she'd fallen down to a lying down position--but no, she was still sitting up but she'd moved a good eighteen inches toward the door. Mobility is coming.

Cara was up at 8:30 and quite crabby in the A.M. She had some good playtime in the exersaucer but didn't want to do any other thing but be held by her grandpapa. I put her in for her nap at about 11 A.M. and she's been quiet since.

Today we'll have an expedition to B.J.'s even though the forecast is for more and more rain. Cara is tough--she can take the rain!

Last night Cara spent a lot of time in her jumper, and she did something I had not seen her do. She seemed interested in the source of the jumper, and kept bending back to look directly up the rope to the door frame. She leaned her little head as far back as it went, and she wound up spinning around! It was very funny, and she did it several times.

Today I was a Bad Mother and spent most of my time with Cara reading a book. Another way of looking at this is that I was encouraging Cara to explore her resources and entertain herself. She did okay. We played in her room for a long time and then went down to the living room. Eventually I took pity on her and decided to actually pay her some attention. I put Cara on her car, which she enjoyed. She sat on the seat nicely, though she did persist in putting her feet up. She kept trying to dive off the side toward the shiny hardwood floor, which seemed strange. Perhaps, I thought, she's going after the shadows. I had my hands around her and she couldn't fall, but eventually I lowered her down to show her that she didn't really want to go there. She was perfectly happy, of course. She scooted around on her tummy for several minutes, dropping her popper and going after it, batting it farther away with her scrabbling hands and pursuing it. She really can scoot backwards. I had heard that babies did that, but I had somehow assumed that they did it more deliberately and with more purpose. Cara just seems to happen to scoot that way. She certainly can turn deliberately. She was all over the place!

While she watched her movie and Steve and I ate dinner, she was still all over the place. I looked up and she was halfway out of the living room, so I put her back. Next, we could see her exersaucer shaking as she tried to stand up on it.

The only other events of the evening centered around Cara's bath. Somehow, for the first time, she managed to pee as soon as Steve picked her up. It was still on her changing table, but it was still pretty funny. She peed standing up and got her old diaper and a popper as well as the changing table. She didn't get Steve. The bath, unfortunately, had to be terminated early when Cara apparently snorted some water. She then proceeded to "exhale sharply" just when Steve was giving her her vitamins, so those wound up all over her sleeper, her sleep sack, and her crib sheet. All of those events had to do with liquids being where they oughtn't. I hope that those three events are it for today!

1/4/06 (Wednesday)

Two other observations after my ten days of separation from Cara: she makes discrete sounds 'ba ba ba' and others. Sounds from her mouth are not a long string of babble, rather she's making separate sounds which taken as a whole are still babble but a more advanced babble. I think that she moves in time to music. She is in her seated position and when today's CD comes on (Cindy Lauper's Girls Just Want To Have Fun), I would swear that she moves herself in rhythm.

Otherwise, today was normal. Cara is teething. Once when she was crying out, I could see the little pearls at the front of her mouth. We went for a long walk in the afternoon, then she downed a fair sized bowl of bananas at about 3 P.M.

George is so right about the babbling, I'm glad he mentioned that. Lately sometimes Cara will just start going "Bwahh bwahh bwahh bahh bahh bwahhh bahh," and it's just fantastic. In fact, she's doing it right now, but it's not so great because she should really be asleep!

Tonight when I came home Cara was actually asleep, having gone down for a spontaneous nap at her last feeding. Evie made dinner and we ate without the sounds of zebra puppets for company. Meanwhile, our neighbors from up the street called and said they would pay us a visit in the evening with their slightly older boy, PJ. It so happened that we'd gotten the toy we ordered from Target in the mail today, so Ev and I snapped it together and it was ready to go when PJ arrived.

Cara probably needs a little while before she can really use the toy. It's a stand-up console type of thing, with all kinds of doo-dads and noises and buttons--my favorite feature is a ball chute with three colored balls you can run down the thing and into a catch basin at the bottom (there are some pictures up on the latest photo page). It's not exactly the standing-up aid that we'd hoped for, but it's a great toy, and PJ absolutely loved it. He grasped the purpose of it immediately and, being better at standing up and crawling around, had it going quite well.

Of course, Cara is interested in it as well, and she can sort of lean against it and stand, as long as someone is supporting one side (otherwise her weight tends to make it slide along the ground). She and PJ had a slightly odd interaction, in that they were both there, very near each other, but somehow didn't really do anything with each other. I think that with time the shyness will end and they'll be the best of friends. For now, they kind of looked at each other a little bit, and brushed against each other, and once PJ grabbed some of Cara's hair. I was surprised to see that PJ became more comfortable seemingly in a quicker amount of time, and was soon babbling happily and amusing himself by banging open our front door over and over again. He menaced the kitties--mainly Buster, who was too curious to hide like Shelby did--and even climbed up the stairs. Em and Ron have more experience with baby-proofing since PJ can clearly get himself into more trouble, so they may be able to give us some advice in that area. Cara never overcame her shyness enough to really make any noise, but she is still a bit taller than PJ. She has that, anyway.

Cara got another new toy tonight: a chatter phone! It's a brand new model, but I was surprised to find it almost exactly identical to the older one my Mom has--right down to the rotary dial! Cara likes the one in South Jersey, so this is sure to be a nice addition to her toy collection.

It's interesting to compare parenting styles. Ron for instance seems more concerned than I might be about PJ playing with Cara's toys, whereas he is less concerned than I would be about being right on top of the kids every single moment. He says that he and his wife agreed that, when PJ was in a fairly safe environment, they would let him fall over so that he would learn to stay up for himself. This is definitely a good idea and it seems to have served PJ well--but I don't see myself allowing Cara to fall very much.

By the time PJ took off, it was time for Cara to go to bed, so this "playdate" used up our evening very nicely. I hope to have more of them in the future. However, it may have left Cara a tad over-stimulated, as Ev has had a heck of a time getting her down. I haven't heard anything up there in a while though, so maybe we're good.

As for sleeping, Cara has still been getting up once in the night pretty consistently. There was one night when Ev put a blanket on her and she slept through the night, but last night she woke up not too long after going down, at around 11:30. I was absolutely convinced that it was 4 in the morning, and was very groggy. Ev has been totally taking over the nighttime stuff, which makes me feel guilty, but apparently not guilty enough to do it for her. I was just re-reading some early journal entries from the first month or so, when Ev was constantly sacrificing herself by staying up hour after hour at night and keeping the baby quiet. Back then it made a bit more sense, since we were still in the all-breast-feeding mode; but back then it was also more draining. Now, Evie can fall asleep in the glider.

Reading the old journal entries reminded me of my silly fantasy in which Cara was going to become a member of the Baby Space Program. I may resurrect that concept...

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