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Journal Key:

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

1/19/06 (Thursday)

Cara oh for twenty on the cheerios today. Had a nice little ride through the Johnson Park Zoo. Cara seemed happy with things today.

Tonight I came home to a babbling baby. Lately she had been replacing her earlier "Bah," "Buh," or "Bwah" babbling noise with more "Maahh" or "Muhh" sounds. Tonight she was back with the "Bah"s with a vengeance. She went on and on, not letting us get a word in edgewise. It was very adorable--it happens to be one of my favorite things that she does.

Otherwise, she was a tad "clingy," as Evie put it. We also gave her a bunch of Cheerios, some of which she came very, very close to putting in her mouth, but they didn't quite get in. (We do not count the Cheerios or keep score of them, but I'm glad somebody is doing it!) We tried some carrots mixed with pears on her, but it was directly after a bottle, which I have now decided is just a little too soon to try more food on her. She did have her bath, though, and she did spend some time on her playground toy.

In the Spock book there is a passage we read a while ago about when babies are first learning to stand and have not yet learned how to sit. Well, this is where Cara is now. Since I've been watching for it, I have noticed her getting very upset when she is stuck in a standing position and is too afraid of falling to sit down. It's very hard to watch (if you're us), because you want to just show her how to sit down, but if you do that she won't learn. Well, she'll figure it out eventually.

Evie has mentioned lately that she's very happy to see Cara starting to look down at the bottom of the Playground, especially when her balls have gone down the chute--it shows she's figuring things out and wants to go after the balls. Of course, she hasn't yet mastered the dexterity necessary for that task.

1/20/06 (Friday)

It's date night! So we have nothing to report on the baby front for today. However I would like to report something that happened early this morning. I woke up in the night for no good reason and couldn't get back to sleep right away, but I was creeping back up to bed at around 3 am when I heard the baby making some moans in the bedroom. I decided to ignore her and hope for the best and got into bed. For the next twenty minutes I could hear her in there, but she wasn't crying; she was "Bah, bah, bah"-ing to herself!

It was such a pleasant afternoon, when I got home George took Cara out to the swings, where she had a great time. She came in for a bottle at about 4, and then great-grandma Emily stopped by to hold her, nuzzle her and play with her for about an hour. When Emily left the time for Cara's nap, if any, had come and gone. She seemed tired but over-stimulated, so we put on her sleepy music and turned off the lights downstairs and I held her in the darkened room, illuminated only by the two fishtanks. In this environment Cara calmed down to a happy alert state. She thoroughly enjoyed her Baby Einstein video, played happily in her "office," and spent considerable effort whacking the coffee table with toys. We managed to get her bath water just right this time, and I managed to get the wash cloth away from her before she slurped up too much of it!Ê Ê

The bath was fine (I didn't wash her hair) but getting dressed afterwards was no fun at all. Luckily, we had a bottle all ready for her, and after her long day I think she may soon fall sleep.

1/21/06 (Saturday)

Last week I made Cara laugh; last night she made me laugh. She played what may be her first joke.

We were cuddling in the rocking recliner, in the dim light, trying to get ready for sleep. Well, I was trying, but she was wide awake and relaxed in my lap. She had her favorite blue elephant in her hand, and she carefully inserted one of his flat round feet into my mouth. I held it between my lips, made "um-um-um" sounds and pulled on it a little. She yanked it back and grinned. Then she did it again, and again, each time flashing me a grin as if to say, "Ha ha! Wasn't that a good one!" She would rest for a while, and then repeat the game several times in succession; in all, we must have repeated this routine about 3 dozen times. She clearly was doing this to be funny, and clearly wanted to share the humor with me as she looked directly into my eyes at the end of each repetition. Ê

After a while I acknowledged that she wasn't about to fall asleep, and we went upstairs to the living room where she played contentedly until Grandpa took her back downstairs for another cuddle in the dark and she finally conked out at about 11.

She was up at about 7:15, and took most of an 8-ounce bottle.

Steve and I went and picked Cara up around 9:30. We had fun at Grandma's house; I tossed Cara up in the air and spun around and around with her and she loved it. On the way home Cara fell asleep. It's not good when she naps like that in the car on short trips, because it messes up her normal nap pattern. We got her into the house and gave her a bottle, but she wasn't going to sleep.

Steve went out, and Cara and I played. My mom had said that she had put a Cheerio into Cara's mouth and could only assume that Cara had swallowed it. Given my experience with that banana chunk, I expected Cara's first Cheerio to be traumatic or at least dramatic, but I decided to give it a shot, too. I got out a whole bunch of Cheerios. Cara was standing at her exersaucer, hanging on and cruising around. I put a Cheerio in her mouth. She was quite happy and eagerly opened up for another! I put the Cheerios on the saucer, and she happily picked up a handful. She wants very much to feed herself, but it's tough when you can't get things out of your hand after you pick them up! She ate lots of them, though, between me feeding her and her own successes. We continued throughout the day, snacking away. I guess she was just ready!

Cara is getting more and more mobile. She rolls over much more readily, demonstrating this today in her crib, on my bed, and on the floor. I decided to try changing her on the floor, because she just hates lying down on her changing table. The floor is much more acceptable, apparently. Things were going very well, and I was just getting her clean diaper onto her, when she cheerfully rolled over. My mother, who was a witness to this episode, says that I used to do the same thing, so it's cosmic justice. Really, I suppose all babies are prone to seize a chance to stick their naked little tushies in the air.

1/22/06 (Sunday)

When we got home from the gym today, Cara found a nice cat toy on the floor. Of course, she wanted to put it into her mouth. I took it from her, tossed it a few feet, and told her that she could have it if she crawled to it. She immediately crawled to it, just as if she were an expert crawler who had been doing things like that for weeks. We both stared. Visions of baby gates flashed through my head. "Holy s***!" said Steve.

Since she had crawled to it, I had to let her have the cat toy. I never said, though, how long she could have it. Her prize was soon taken away. Steve and I then spent the next fifteen minutes trying to get her to crawl again. We called her and shook toys and held out our arms to her. We were very appealing; Shelby turned right up. Even the attraction of the cat proved insufficient. Cara just seems to have too many legs or something; she gets all tangled up when she tries to crawl. She sometimes tries straightening her legs out completely, thus sticking her tush right up in the air. Other times, she gets one leg out in back and is down on one knee. She looks like a sprinter at the starting line, as if, were we to shoot a gun, she would suddenly be off. That one success seems to have been a fluke, for Cara has not crawled again all day.

Cara had a good lunch. We gave her some pears, her favorite baby food; lots of Cheerios, some from her own hand and some from ours; and a nice bottle. We want to try to get her eating more regular meals and more solid meals. Later today, the experimentation continued. I gave Cara a tiny piece of cheese. She ate it, but she wasn't too sure she liked it. She had the same reaction to a tiny piece of cantaloupe.

This afternoon we went down to see Grandma Janet and Grandpa Jim, and Aunt Sarah and Uncle Jim came over, too. Cara was amazingly good. She cruised around a little bit, played nicely with everyone who wanted to play with her, sat very very nicely by herself for long periods of time, and reacted very funnily to the dog. Rusty was very excited when we came in, and of course he only wanted to see the baby. He barely smelled me or Steve! He did a little bit of barking, and Cara barked back. She kind of yipped at him; it's a noise she's made before at the cats, but it was quite funny in this context. Everyone was working hard on keeping him away from Cara, but she was leaning forward to get at him! Later, when he had calmed down and she was on the floor, they had some closer interactions. He did get a few chances to lick her ears, which she didn't seem to notice, and she got to chase him. When they were face to face, which happened on several occasions, Rusty probably wanted to lick her face. We're not sure what exactly Cara thought she was going to do, but she leaned toward him with her mouth open.

In watching Cara play with the toys Grandma Janet has for her and in reflecting on her behaviors at home, I have formulated two baby rules:

1. Nothing must be on top of anything else.

2. Nothing must be inside of anything else.

Cara definitely follows these policies to the letter, actively knocking down stacks and dumping buckets and barrels.

One of the toys Cara plays with in South Jersey is a classic; it's a plastic spike that several plastic rings of graduated sizes and different colors fit over. Of course it's great fun to take them all off. It's also great to wave the spike in the air and to stick the rings in your mouth. Today, though, Cara may have been trying to put some of the rings back on. This indicates great leaps in both mental and physical development upon which I think I need not elaborate.

Now we're home and Cara is screaming and screaming upstairs because her daddy took away her shoe. It was not a shoe which she was wearing; it was a shoe which she was gnawing on. It was a pink shoe with a pineapple on it. If she can crawl to it, she can have it.

1/23/06 (Monday)

I haven't seen Cara for a whole day and yes, I can see advances. I gave her some cheerios and I do believe that she actually put one into her own mouth! I gave her one from my hand and she took it eagerly. But there's still a long way to go.

Cara has actually crawled but only for a step or two. She has her two arms properly coordinated and I think that one leg is raring to go but that other leg is recalcitrant. Once in a while, that leg acts properly but most of the time it gets tangled up and Cara goes nowhere or else she goes backwards.

It's a chilly, drizzly day and we're stuck inside the house for the morning. I try reading books and for a while Cara shows great interest. But mostly we're just lying around on the floor playing.

Cara ate a lot of Cheerios tonight. She was up in her room and Evie brought a big handful and let Cara grab at them. What she mainly seemed to want to do was take them out of Ev's hand and then let go of them (following the fundamental baby rules, nothing must be on top of or inside of anything else). But she also very much liked to eat them. What Ev was trying to do was to get Cara to feed herself, which she did successfully do many times. One method was to spread her arms wide and dive head first into the pile of Cheerios--this was the most successful of all, as she came up with her mouth full of them and with several more stuck to her lips. However, Ev was strict and tried to convince Cara to use her hands. We also fed her some from our hands.

Cara also had a little bit of corn mixed with sweet potatoes, but was not very enthused about it. We managed to hold her off of having a bottle all evening, however, which was an achievement. Ev got a couple of books about how to feed babies out of the library, and while we seem pretty ok for the amount of formula Cara gets in a day, it is just a tad high and we are working on the solids to replace them. We also have to start working on replacing her formula with whole milk--if nothing else, it will save us tons of money!

No crawling feats tonight, but plenty of motion. When Cara came out of the tub and was in her towel on the changing table, she managed to roll over, sit up, and tried to stand up and grab at the blinds, all the time with a towel on her head and nothing else on. Evie managed to give a solo bath tonight--very impressive.

1/24/06 (Tuesday)

Last night, Cara was up and screaming for what seemed like a very long time. Around three, I got up. She was standing in the corner of her crib, screaming. I picked her up and she quieted right away. I rubbed her back a little bit and explained to her very calmly that it was not time to get up. I put her down, put a blanket on her, gave her a popper, turned on her CD, and started her fishies rotating. She started screaming. I left. By the time I was out of the bathroom and heading back for bed, all was quiet once more. It made me think of Daddy's description of Cara's nap yesterday, in the middle of which the same events played out. When I told him about it this afternoon, he said it made him think of today's nap.

We have started Cara on whole milk, mixed into her bottle of formula. Daddy started out by making a 6-ounce bottle and adding about two ounces of milk, so I've been doing the same. It makes sense and she seems to handle it well. I bought a lot of new foods for Cara; some of them are grown-up things like yogurt, and some are new baby foods.

Today was hectic. I got home, fed Cara a bowl of plums, started the laundry, and went to the gym. After the gym we went to the pharmacy and the grocery store, then came home. I brought in the groceries, moved the laundry, and picked up the bottles Cara knocked out of the recycling. I washed the grape jelly off of her. I made her a bottle. I changed her, which was awful. Her outfit was complicated, and she was unhappy. Then Steve got home. He gave her the bottle while I made dinner.

PJ is exactly six weeks older than Cara, and today is his eleven-month birthday. We went over for cupcakes and got to meet some of our other neighbors. PJ and Cara drove his car toy together, but mostly they just individually tried to play with what they were interested in, regardless of whether someone else was in the way, sitting on it, or currently using it. It was cute, and (but?) they didn't fight. Eventually we put PJ in his high chair and Cara in a booster seat and had cupcakes. We sang to PJ, and both babies got candles, which they both reached for helpfully. So Cara got to try her first cupcake. It did not seem to be a life-changing experience, but she liked it. She got frustrated trying to pick pieces up, but she's working on it.

Our next exciting change is the walker we're borrowing from PJ. We haven't tried Cara out in it, but it may be quite fun.

1/25/06 (Wednesday)

Today my Mom stayed with Baby during the day and was there to greet me when I got home from work. Cara was also there, playing with a good new toy of different colored stacking cups. They teach counting because they are numbered and have holes in the bottom to strain water out, so they can be bath toys too. I am told Cara did a tiny bit of crawling today, in an attempt to follow a kittie under our end table in the living room. Cara also tried some new "veggie puffs" today, which may be easier for her to eat than Cheerios because they are slightly larger (but also become very nasty very quickly when gripped in Cara's wet palm). She very much enjoyed some yogurt that Evie gave her in the evening. She also spent some time in her loaned walker--not much in the way of walking occurred, but she did seem to enjoy standing around in it. She seemed to be particularly amused by the mirror attached to the middle--I guess she thinks she has a funny face.

Cara had a nice little playdate this evening with PJ. They cordially ignored each other while playing with separate toys, and sometimes stood next to each other on the same toy. Once Cara held a block out of PJ's reach. PJ has a great trick he can do where Ron holds his hand and they can walk a few steps across a room together, but he's not quite ready to do it on his own. Cara watched this, and then Ron tried it with her, but she was really not ready for it, and fell flat on her face (carpeted floor--she was ok). Still, she is socializing and every new experience is good. Cara really liked an electronic frog toy PJ has which sings songs.

You can see when PJ is tired of standing, because he stands there for a while looking at you, and then his knees start to bend, and then he slowly sinks onto his butt and returns to crawling. It's cute.

Cara will quite often now turn to me if I am nearby her and grab for me. She seems to want to try to stand up on me, or crawl, or perhaps she wants to be picked up. Anyway, it's nice.

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