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Journal Key:

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

1/12/06 (Thursday)

This will have to be a quick one, I think. Cara sort of slept through the night again last night, after having slept through the night before. Technically she woke up around 11 somewhere, but I don't consider that to count since she didn't wake up in the middle of the night. So I got up and went in there and almost as soon as I sat down with her in the glider she was falling back asleep. Then she slept through the night.

I got home and Cara was getting ready to watch her movie. We had dinner and she seemed to make herself upset somehow--it's possible she squished her finger in the hood of her car toy--but she was a little crabby for the second half of her movie. After dinner I gave her a bottle which, contrary to our expectations, did not put her to sleep. This was just as well, since it was a little after 7 at that point, and we didn't want her to go down that early. So she had some time grabbing onto us and grabbing onto her playground toy. I know that I knew this before, but for some reason it struck me this evening how deliberately and purposefully Cara can empty her shape sorter barrel. Whenever she saw that I had put something in it, she grabbed the bottom edge and up-ended it, and everything came out. It really shows that she's thinking and figuring things out.

Then we decided it was bed time and baby got into the glider with Mommy. They were up there for a long time while I was messing around down here with bills and photos, and I swear I heard an owl hooting outside. It's amazing because I don't think I've ever really heard that in person before--turns out the book we have for Cara where it asks "Who says Whooo?" is really right! Anyway unfortunately Cara woke up around 10 when Evie regained consciousness enough to put her in the crib, so Evie took a short break and is now bravely back in there, and it has gotten quiet again, so hopefully we will all go to sleep soon.

1/13/06 (Friday)

Last night Cara took a very, very long time going down. I was wrong that we were going to sleep soon at the end of my last entry. She woke up again. Evie went to bed and I decided to go with her, thinking that maybe Cara was going to realize she really wanted to go to sleep and stop crying. Well, after ten minutes of her not going to sleep, I got up and went in. I checked her diaper--nothing--and gave her some Tylenol. As I held her in the glider with her popper, she seemed to be in a bit of pain, and was not so interested in her popper, so I got the idea that she might be feeling some teething pains (below, Janet has a similar theory, due to Cara's drooling). Eventually she went to sleep enough and I carefully put her down and went away, and we had another solid night without any disturbances. Then Ev and I went off to work and baby went off to Middletown for date night:

It's so strange to think that, instead of reading the Baby Blog, I am writing it.

Cara seems much more mobile than she was a week or two ago. While sitting on the floor she leans forward into a crawling position when she wants to reach a toy, and twice this afternoon I saw her complete a true crawling motion. She rolls onto her back and then over onto her side. Trying to crawl, she may back up onto her hip and roll back to a sitting position. If I hold her upright, she walks her little feet across the floor.

A few weeks ago we could let her sit in the Pack 'n Play in its upper position so she could watch the fish. This evening when we did the same thing I had to remain right beside her, as she could pull herself up to kneel and even stand. George has switched the Pack 'n Play to its lower position so she will be able to sleep safely in it tonight.

This has been a happy evening for Cara. I found I could make her laugh by making a toy dog run up her body to her face while saying "woof, woof, woof." She has spent considerable time playing in the magnificent toy I have come to think of as her "office." She also spent some time playing around its outer perimeter while I supported her. Briefly the cat passed by so close she could run her hand along his back as he walked by, although most of the time he managed to evade her. She enjoyed her Baby Einstein video once again, and rediscovered some of her Middletown toys. That elephant sure has a good tag! She seems more intentional now about pulling them out of the basket so she can play with them, as opposed to just pulling them out of the basket.

Drooling has been copious today. I am tempted to feel for an upper tooth, but don't want to distress her.

At 9:50 Cara is sound asleep in her Pack 'n Play, her purple hippo by her side.

1/14/06 (Saturday)

When Cara went to sleep Friday night, I actually said, "That was too easy."

Sure enough, we didn't make it through the night. Around 2:30 the cat wanted to be fed; in the future, when Cara sleeps over, I will bring his food into the kitchen. I thought I could sneak into the downstairs room, but the kitchen door squeaked like the door to the inner sanctum on the radio, and the baby woke up. Or perhaps she was on the verge of waking anyway, or maybe the storm woke her.

In any event, I made her a small bottle - 6 ounces - figuring she couldn't be terribly hungry in the middle of the night. She slugged it down, not sleepy at all, and cried for more. So I fixed a second small bottle. Midway through that one, she turned towards me, closed her eyes, made some comfortable little humming sounds, and fell to sleep. Just at that moment the rain rattled hard against the window, and the poor baby was startled wide awake. She tried to sleep again, but the storm wouldn't let her. I thought music might help mask the storm noises, but i can't work our system, so I woke George, who gallantly took over baby duty and remained with her for nearly two hours, until she was peacefully asleep again.

After all that, I thought she might sleep late this morning, but she was up at 7:30. When she wakes up here, she does not seem at all distressed to find herself away from home; instead she seems interested in her surroundings and keeps swiveling to look all around her (especially if the cat is in sight!). I fixed another bottle but, unsurprisingly, she wasn't hungry and took only an ounce or two. She played happily for a while, and then Grandpa George drove her home to her own mommy and daddy.

When I plugged in Janet's entry last night, I thought they had had an easy night of it--no such luck, it appears! Still, I hear tell that Janet is still thrilled about getting Cara overnight, so even Friday night into Saturday morning did not dampen her enthusiasm, and Date Night shall go on.

This morning Ev and I puttered about the house until Cara arrived (nicely delivered to us by George), then Cara and Ev popped out to do some shopping and I got to finish vacuuming the house--and then I got to mess around on the computer for a while before they came back. Cara got her second bottle of the day when they came back and went down for a nap. It was a good long one; we managed to have lunch and then Ev took off to go to her parents' house for the afternoon, and I had some more time alone. She went down around 11:30 am and I didn't go into her room until around 2:30 pm!

From here on out, our afternoon together was basically an inventory of her toys. We did some of the toys in her nursery, and eventually had a nice session on her Playground. Cara is still working out how to move, and is also still figuring out how much different things hurt. Right now, if she hurts any part of herself the least bit, she gets very upset. However, I think she is already learning that there are sometimes when she plops down on her butt when it doesn't actually hurt that much and she doesn't have to cry. She did some grabbing onto me and I tried to convince her that if she reached her hand around and grabbed onto the Playground, she could actually turn around while standing up.

Downstairs in the living room, we played with Cara's flowers, her car, her exersaucer, and her bouncy horse toy, which is on loan from Em and Ron down the street. It seems like this would be a sure winner for Cara, because it's a toy that you sit in and when you rock it, it bounces on springs. I would have thought it was close enough to her jumper toy to bring her much happiness, but so far, it hasn't done anything for her. Maybe she just hasn't been in the right mood the few times I've stuck her in it.

Lower downstairs in the dining room, we sampled the keyboard. Of all the times I've sat with her at the keyboard, I have never seen her so purposefully mash the keys with her hands like she did today. Usually she is really more interested in all the switches and buttons above the keys, but today there was a protracted period during which she slapped her hand down on the keys a bunch of times. It was edifying.

At 4 pm we had our bottle, and quickly went back to work with the toys. At 5 pm Ev called to say she was on her way home. By that time, I was watching TV with baby while she was in her saucer or her horse (we tried both until she got tired of them). By the time Ev got home at around 6, I was out of ideas and was simply holding her. Cara was fairly limp by this time, and it seemed that even with her three hour nap she had tired herself out.

Ev had brought dinner home so we ate while baby watched her movie. She got a bit crabby near the end, probably because she had had a "special event," and maybe also because she was starting to get hungry again. We changed her and for the second time that day I tried sweet potatoes on her.

The first time I tried the sweet potatoes on her, at around 3:30 in the afternoon, was an interesting event. I put the dish in the microwave to heat up and grabbed her to put her in the high chair. The spoon I had been using to mix the food was still in my hand. Cara was interested, so I gave it to her and she actually put the right end in her mouth. I stuck her in the chair, put the tray on, put her bib on, got all ready to give her the food, and realized that there was no way I could take the spoon away from her without getting her upset. So I went and got one of the dippers. By the time I was ready to try the dipper on her, she had dropped the spoon on the kitchen floor. I was hoping she wouldn't want to grab the dipper, but she did, so I figured what the heck and let her grab it. Over the next few minutes, I tried very hard to make her grab the correct end of the dipper (which, just to be clear, is the end without the glob of sweet potatoes on it!), and utterly failed. She managed to get sweet potatoes on her hands, on the tray, on her face, on the toys connected to the tray, on the floor, on the wall, on her bib, and on her sleeper--and it's just possible that by accident she got some into her mouth.

Anyway, the second time I tried was not nearly as interesting, because I decided (even though the first time had been very interesting, and I do want her to have a chance to try to deal with eating implements) not to let her grab the spoon, and she decided that she did not want to have anything like sweet potatoes in her mouth. So instead of that we gave her a small bottle (this was around 7). The bottle put her to sleep--hard. Evie brought her down into the living room asleep in her arms, and showed her to me, and then proceeded to sit on the couch with the sleeping baby in her arms for fifteen minutes or so while she read a book. Baby really should not have been sleeping so close to her bed time, though, so eventually we "allowed" her to wake back up.

Then Evie showed me what she does in the early evenings on weeknights. I have been coming home to find dinner almost ready and baby playing with toys on the kitchen floor. Evie set Cara up with some good toys in the kitchen and started messing with some grapefruit. I stayed on the floor with Cara and supervised her play (even though I got the picture that this was really supposed to be time for Cara to be independent).

It was fascinating, because throughout the day Cara had clearly wanted to move as always, but seemed frustrated in most of her attempts, and rather crabby about the whole process. But on the kitchen floor, which is slidey and slippery for her and different than the carpeting in most of the other rooms in the house, she seemed much less worried about falling and much more free and ambitious in her movements. First we played a bit with her bouncy ball, and at one point it went off behind the kitchen table, and I said jokingly, "Go and get that, Cara"--which she proceeded to attempt to do, and almost did. She tried to pull herself up on the kitchen chairs, and even got directly under the kitchen table and tried to pull herself up on its center pillar. She slid herself over by the refrigerator and pulled out a folding little wire table that we keep stored there (it's the kind of little half table you would use to give someone breakfast in bed--I'm sure it has a name, but I don't know what it is). I set it up for her and, after pushing and pulling it across the kitchen floor like she was on a rowing machine, and swirling her butt around, she used it as a platform to stand herself halfway up--and then stood all the way up by reaching over to the kitchen chair nearby. It was all very impressive, and she seemed to enjoy most of it, and wasn't bothered at all when she accidentally sat down once or twice.

Eventually, though, babies tire of all things, and when she did it was on to the jumper, where she jumped excitedly for a while. Ev convinced Cara to jump toward her and touch Mommy's hand, which was cool. Eventually Mommy went and drew Cara's bath. This time when Cara went into the tub, she almost immediately bent her head over and was once again amazed to discover that there was a bunch of water down there, which she promptly sucked up into her mouth and nose. The other times she's done this, it's meant the end of the bath, but I was proud of her, because this time she got over it and we were able to wash her (I held her and Ev washed her, which is getting to be SOP--this time Cara barely squirmed, I think because she was still recovering a bit from having gotten her face full of water).

Then of course it was off to bed--or at least off to the glider. For us, Cara has been very hard to get down these past few nights. I've surmised that it's because she is getting used to the concept that we are leaving her alone through the night, even if she wakes up, so she's decided to really fight us at the beginning to get it all out of the way then. Or something. It's been pretty quiet up there so far.

One last thing (I know, I know, I do go on, but it's rare that we have a whole day with the kid really). We did some mild babyproofing to our coffee table in the living room today. It has a lower shelf which Cara has already managed to bump her head against, so Evie had the idea of wrapping it with some tasteful blankets. I think it's a good idea and it looks nice--but the unexpected result is that we have inadvertently made a cat bed. Buster usually spends her afternoons curled up on the seat of a kitchen chair, but soon after we set up the coffee table for her she was safely ensconced there and barely left her spot until it was time for the kitties to go down in the basement for the night.

1/15/06 (Sunday)

Wrapping the lower shelf of the coffee table has worked out nicely, and tomorrow we plan to put the pads we bought onto the upper corners. However, the plot thickens. We had PJ over today, and he is of course far more mobile than Cara. Buster was curled up on the nice cushy shelf, and he went after her. He's about as excited about cats as Cara is, and he's much more successful. Buster was horrified, but she did not leave quickly, which is what I had assumed she would do. She seemed to feel that looking horrified would express her reaction to the baby, which would respond by refraining from grabbing chunks of her. I'm sure that she will learn better soon. However, PJ got at least two good chances to grab Buster, and, both times, he then whacked his poor little head on the underside of the table, which we had not even considered babyproofing and which now seems perfectly obvious. I have some ideas for how to deal with it, but frankly the most reasonable thing seems to be to get Cara a nice helmet to wear and one or two to have around for guests.

I'm very happy Steve saw how well Cara does on the kitchen floor. We've been letting her spend plenty of time there. This afternoon we had a nice snack while Cara sat on my foot and pulled at Steve's shoelaces. She also is continuing to make progress in standing. During her movie she scooted over to the computer desk and managed to stand up by grabbing the chair. It's the first time, I think, that she's managed to stand up using one of our kitchen chairs. I've been realizing how bad they are for the purpose; their legs slant in under the seat, so Cara's banged her head a lot. She took a tumble and started to cry, but by the time Steve got there she was okay. This is really good, because it's one of my many next goals for her to not cry every time she gets a little bit hurt. She then went over to pull herself up using her exersaucer. This evening and pulled herself to a standing position using her car and then transferred herself over to the saucer. Neither of those is particularly steady, so this was an impressive feat.

I made banana nut muffins this morning, and Cara sat on the floor and helped. She helped as she always has, by lending moral support. I had to mash some bananas and I did it in my heavy pyrex measuring cup. I sat down near Cara, and she was very interested; she could smell the banana! She kept lunging for the cup, which if course I couldn't let her get. I decided this was a great time to try giving her a little chunk of food. Dr. Spock says to introduce chunks, and I have a feeling we're behind in that department. So I gave her a little chunk of banana. She was horrified and I'm sure she was certain that she was going to choke to death! Unfortunately, to exacerbate her distress, she lunged for the cup of banana while she was coughing and hit her little head on it! There was great distress in babyville. I got out her dipper, then, and dipped it. It stayed chunk-free, and I gave it to her. She managed to get the right end into her mouth. After a while, I re-dipped it for her. We had a nice time.

My favorite moment of the day was the end of Cara's nap. I heard her making noise, so I opened the door and looked in. She was on her tummy in the crib, looking up at me between the slats! I just wonder whether she turned over before or after waking up. My other favorite part of the day was watching Cara watching PJ. She finds him fascinating, though not so distracting that she won't play with toys. There were a couple of moments in which she seemed to be interested in playing with the toys he had, though she wasn't trying to take anything away from him. I've been thinking about how he tried to take his things away from Cara, and I think it's actually really cool. It means that he has a sense of himself as a person and understands that things belong to him. Cara hasn't gotten there yet.

Cara is still babbling away. Now she says "ma" an awful lot and doesn't spend much time on "ba." I attribute this to our all being more excited about "ma" and responding more to it. One very funny thing she's doing is making a kind of lip-smacking noise a lot. Steve thinks she's sucking her lower lip in over her two little teeth and then popping it out. No new teeth have shown up yet, but we keep checking. She really hates to have her diaper changed, so she yells on the changing table. As soon as she opens her mouth, Steve and I both bend over to look for new dental developments!

I just don't know about the whole crawling thing. I read tonight that babies who aren't good crawlers tend not to be good at science or math later on in life. We're guessing that Cara will be another English major.

1/16/06 (Monday)

Cara celebrated her first Martin Luther King Day by skipping her nap. Steve and I both had off, and his parents came up. Around noon I gave her her first bottle, and I assumed she would go down for her nap. She was not interested. I left her, and she cried. We eventually let her get up. She was really pretty good for most of the day, but she got tired. Steve got her down around five and she slept until six, but then she had a majorly cranky session for at least half an hour. She was just crying and crying, and there was nothing we could do. She cheered up eventually. Steve was very patient with her. I'm just hoping that she tuckered herself out enough to make her sleep through the night! I just put her down, and she was out cold.

Claire got to play with Cara today. They played in Cara's room with her blocks. Claire built Cara a few towers, and Cara decided to crawl over and knock them down. Claire was very amused that Cara wound up going backwards and only managed to get herself about eight feet farther away.

Tomorrow is Cara's nine-month checkup, so we'll be able to find out how big she really is! Her lucky Grandpa George gets to take her, since the rest of us will all be at work. Tonight was bath night, but we decided to skip it because we had company; I hope the doctor doesn't notice!

1/17/06 (Tuesday)

Cara had an eventful visit to Dr. Chen this morning. Cara weighs 20 lbs., 1 oz. (in the 70th percentile). She is 28 inches and a half inches tall (the 90th percentile). She's strong and cute. Our visit was eventful in that during the 30 seconds that Cara was naked, she managed to pee all over everything. I brought a change of clothes for her and I should have brought one for me!

However, Dr. Chen was very pleased with Cara. 'She's eating the perfect amount of formula.' But we'll start giving her Cheerios and then whole milk. Soon she'll be eating what the grownups eat.

Interesting also is that Edison does not add flouride to the drinking water. So we have a prescription for flouride which Cara will take until she's ten years old!

Cara was very happy because she got no needles, no shots, and the poking and prodding was kept to minimum.

When she awoke later from her nap, she was standing up in the crib and smiling at me. She's cute and smart too. This afternoon we drove down to A&P to get her prescription and some Cheerios. When we got home I put her in her chair and doled out ten. Then, when I returned a few minutes later, I was very happy to see only eight in front of her! But no, then I found two on the floor. This finger food thing is going to take a while.

I think Ev and I were both glad to hear from the doctor that Cara's eating habits are OK, but also that we were right to start moving things along with solids. On Monday Evie started the day by giving Cara some fruit and cereal, which may be something we'll want to start doing in order to get Cara ready for regular meal times and--gasp--fewer meals. Tonight I followed my mother's advice and fed Cara two different types of solid food. We had commented how Cara really seems to hate her vegetables, and Mom said we should just get a bowl of fruit (which she likes) and switch back and forth between. This went really well, and Cara pretty much polished off both bowls before starting to make her little gagging face at the veggies. She also had fun with her dipper, which she smeared all over with food and very much enjoyed banging loudly against her high chair tray (it was hard not to imagine her chanting "We want food! We want food!"). Meanwhile, Evie had given her a pair of Cheerios before we even put her in the chair, and she had them clasped in one of her sweaty hands for so long I'd forgotten about them, and then partway through the food she opened her hand and tried to shake them off. The thing is, the Cheerios get moist and sticky and they're hard to get off. But she's really quite good at picking them up, which kind of surprises me since they're so small.

Cara was working heavily on her psuedo-raspberry noise that she makes, and spit was flying. A couple of times today she was standing up and kind of sat down suddenly or tipped over, and it doesn't bother her as much as it used to. Before going to bed she stood herself up in the crib again and was reaching around. She was watching her movie tonight and actually grabbed hold of the chair by our computer desk and was dragging it along--eventually it ended up in front of the TV, and Cara ended up lying on her back underneath it. It was very interesting because from the kitchen we could only really see the top half of the chair, sliding along.

1/18/06 (Wednesday)

A semi-rough morning. The weather is rainy, windy. We can't go for our walk around the block so we're stuck in the house. Playing little games soon palls. Cara is trying hard for mobility but can't manage it yet, so she's frustrated and crabby.

This morning I gave her ten Cheerios and now after putting her in for her nap, I can only find five. Does that mean she's eaten the other five? I don't know. She did not do well with her vegetables this A.M. She goes down reluctantly for her nap. The afternoon will be better.

In the afternoon, during a break in the storm we run our errand at BJs. Cara is happy to get out of the house. Back at home, I give her another ten Cheerios; hours later, I find nine. Is it possible that one ended up in her mouth? I don't think so. She did do well with her Stage 2 fruit however. At four she goes in for another nap, this time without complaint.

This evening we did not manage to try any new and interesting foods on Cara--we ate dinner and cleaned up and then it was time for her weekly playdate with PJ. He came over and they messed around in the living room for a while. At one point they were both hanging around the outside rim of the exersaucer, sort of fighting over the rolling cylinder on the thing that has a dog in the middle and little rattly shapes that roll around inside when you spin it. They each wanted to use it and almost started shoving each other out of the way to get to it. Cara showed off her cruising abilities a little, and we decided that she is definitely noticeably taller than PJ. PJ can wave bye-bye and makes some good growling noises, and when we bounced Cara's ball toy up and down in front of him, he clapped with glee. After PJ left, we did some keyboard time and then some jumper time (during which I showed her her Hippos Go Berserk book) and then baby got in the crib.

One dropper of vitamins was bad enough, but Cara strongly objects to being force-fed an additional dropper (this one with her flouride in it). She's just going to have to adjust--I hope.

Last night Cara woke up and cried a little in the middle of the night, but we again ignored it (Evelyn very effectively ignored it, since she barely remembered it when I mentioned it today), and she again tuckered out and went back to sleep. I'm not sure how long it took her this time because I was in and out myself. Hopefully tonight she will do a full night--if I remember correctly, she's sort of alternating lately.

I wonder if the kitties are eating the Cheerios?

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