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Journal Key:

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

1/26/06 (Thursday)

Cara was cranky again this morning. It's very cold this A.M., just as it should be, and Cara goes around the block only once. I can see that her little face, the only unprotected part of her is getting chilled. The rest of her is nice and warm in 2 sleepers and her pink bunny suit that she'll soon grow out of.

I give her some of the new finger food modules that Evie wrote about yesterday and Cara got two of them into her mouth! The rest stuck to her fingers or ended up on the floor. In the spirit of 'new foods for Cara' I followed a recipe in a baby food book that Evie got and tried to feed Cara an egg yolk and formula concoction--but she would have none of it, none at all. Even when I smeared some on her lips and her tongue cleaned it up, so I knew she tasted it, she still wanted no part of it.

I'm disappointed about the egg yolk, because I thought that it sounded cool. However, I had lots of success today. Cara seems to be getting better at feeding herself. I put out lots of little puffs, and I retrieved only a small percentage from the floor, the chair, and her outfit. Her strategy seems to be to get as many as possible into her hand and then stick it into her mouth as far as possible and hope for the best. Steve was holding her while she went after a handful on the table, and I noticed that he was quite impressed at how many she could hold! His words were something like, "No, don't go back for the last one, too!" He probably just didn't think she should show off.

I gave her a teething biscuit, while I was making dinner. She enjoyed, predictably, waving it gently through the air and gnawing on it. Eventually, it wound up in two pieces on the floor. I also gave Cara a couple of pieces of tofu, which she ate, and a taste of acorn squash. She seems to be willing to try anything I hold out to her in my fingers.

Really, the child has managed to become absolutely disgusting. Her face is covered in food; we had to take her shirt off and put it in the laundry, and her sleeper is sticky, so it will be heading the same way. She has crumbs in her hair. She is also quite affectionate, so my clothes have sticky patches, and Steve's nice shirt that he wore to work is not unaffected.

At the gym today Cara found a set of baby keys, which she was holding when I came to retrieve her. She had been holding them for some time, and though I could have taken them home, washed them, and returned them, I felt that it would be better not to encourage the idea that they were ours. Besides, I couldn't put her coat on her with them in her hand! After great effort, we separated baby from toy. Neither of them cried.

When we got home from the gym, Cara and I went up to her room. She played on the floor while I read and occasionally smiled at her. At one point she tried to stand up using her dresser drawer. She of course opened the drawer. This was exciting! She tried to stand up using it, but she was distracted by its contents. She took out her bathing suit, waved it around, and then closed the drawer gently on her fingers. She didn't like that at all.

Now Cara has just had a bottle and is playing on the living room floor. Steve is playing with his video game, and I am battling that voice in my head that says that I really hate that the baby is watching this horribly violent thing that he is making happen on the TV.

It probably didn't help that once or twice I turned to the baby and said, "I sure beat that guy up, didn't I?!"

The other really cool thing that happened today was after Cara's bath. I was drying her off on her changing table and she was making her usual sounds (Mahh, Bahh). I decided to try something new: "Pahh, pahh!" I said. "Can you go pahh?" And I'm pretty darn sure that she proceeded to attempt that noise. What she ended up doing was kind of going "ppuh" in a whisper, with no vocal, and she quickly went back to "Bahh," and Evie wasn't there to hear it, but I'm almost certain she tried to mimic me, which I think is the first time I've seen her try to do that.

1/27/06 (Friday)

Once in a while, I have an idea that just doesn't turn out to be a good one. My idea that turned out bad today was shortening date night. I suggested that Steve and I drive down to Middletown and have dinner and then bring baby home, thus giving my poor dad a break, getting to go to different restaurants, and freeing up our Saturday morning (sort of: we'll already have the baby, so we won't be worrying about getting her back (just about dealing with her)). This idea worked out well only for Daddy.

Steve, having driven home through traffic, got to get back into a car. I, having had a long day already, got to drive through traffic. It's harder to have a good time when you're worried about picking up the baby. We got to my folks' house after eight. Cara had had a wonderful time and was sleeping on my mother, who was also sleeping. After a while I tried tickling Cara's feet and picking up her legs, but it didn't wake her. My mom woke up, though I hadn't tickled her at all. Here's her account of the afternoon and evening.

In what has become almost a Friday afternoon routine, Great-grandma Emily stopped by to snuggle and cuddle. Cara, who had just had a bottle, thoroughly enjoyed the attention and snuggled right back. I'm not sure which of them had more fun.

It was during this Halcyon period that Cara became a little cranky. Tired perhaps? She had taken only half of the previous bottle, so I took her upstairs to the quiet, dim living room, where she eagerly drank more, even holding the bottle herself at the end. (To make this arrangement work it was necessary to tilt the baby onto her back, as she did not tilt the bottle.) Then I stood her on a chair in front of the gold fish. She seemed delighted and was talking to them with a big variety of happy sounds when she suddenly hunched over and looked distressed for a moment. Instantly I understood what had been making her cranky, and after a nice new diaper she was happy for the rest of her visit.

For the rest, she spent some time in her walker and she watched her video, as always with evident glee. I found that she thinks it is quite funny when I whistle. Actually, it is pretty funny; I don't whistle very well. George found that she likes Bobby Darrin and Frank Sinatra.

At about 8 PM George put her into her "office" while I fixed a new bottle. Even though she must have been both hungry and tired, she played nicely until the bottle appeared. She then sucked down half of it before zonking out in my lap. I fell asleep too, and George took the opportunity to get candid photos. When I opened my eyes, Cara's mommy was beside me, smiling at us both. We all sat and watched The Life of Birds until Cara peeped open her eyes and was peacefully carried away home, where I hope she will be just as good for her real parents as she was for us.

Cara had a great afternoon, but her late evening was bad. She went to sleep happily on her grandma, but then she got woken up and stuck into a car seat. She was very unhappy on the ride home. She made this quite clear. She hates to be woken up and then put back to sleep, so we were kind of glad she didn't fall back to sleep in the car. We brought her into the house and got her ready for bed, and then Steve got to give her her bottle. Now she's down again, poor little thing. It's awful for her to come home late at night.

On a side note, our cat Buster is fairly particular about showing affection. She doesn't like to be petted unless she has selected an appropriate time and place. While I was pregnant, we got into a routine. Every day, after school, I took a nap on the bed with Buster and, usually, Shelby. I put a blanket over myself, and Buster liked to stretch out between my legs. This was not, naturally, my idea. I think it's pretty silly-looking, but it seems to make her happy. It got so that she would jump on so fast that it was a challenge for me to get the blanket settled! I knew that it was kind of bad to spoil the cats like that, since after the baby came they wouldn't get that kind of attention.

They don't get that much attention. Buster has a routine that she follows most days, which consists of sleeping at certain times in different places in the house. The past few weeks, though, on Fridays, she has been very excited when I got home. She follows me around, rubbing against my ankles, and then hops onto the couch with me. Today, she was quite enthusiastic; I knew what she wanted. I barely had time to get settled. I grabbed a blanket and lay on the couch, but before I could pull the blanket up, there was Buster. When Steve got home, we were both asleep. (I was cold.)

I don't know how she knows I'm available, but Buster certainly has figured out when she should stop ignoring me! I just think that that's pretty smart.

It's been a long day, but now everything is as it should be. The baby is asleep upstairs. The cats are closed up in the basement to do whatever it is they do down there all night. The grownups are finally going to settle their brains for a long Winter's nap.

1/28/06 (Saturday)

Today was a long and good day. Cara slept until 8:30, and then we went to the gym. When we got home, Steve's folks were already here! Together, we got a lot accomplished. Our house now has a storage area under the basement stairs for things baby has outgrown, like her infant car seat and her bouncer. We also have baby gates at the tops of the stairs. They are white metal gates that Cara won't be able to climb, and we can open and shut them one-handed. Grandpa Jim deserves a lot of credit for installing them, because the one on the main level had to span an opening that doesn't have a wall on one side. He bolted two boards to the wrought-iron railing of the stairs and installed the hardware to them. I have no idea how we would have handled that without him!

Cara refused to take her nap until four in the afternoon. We tried putting her in her crib and leaving her there, and she just cried. We tried to snuggle her to sleep, and it didn't work. She even wouldn't go to sleep with her bottle. Janet suggested something I hadn't even thought of: she is excited with everybody is around, and she doesn't want to miss anything! I like that idea.

Cara and I played with Grandma Janet. We all went to the park, because it was an absolutely ridiculously beautiful day out. Cara had a great time in the swing; the only problem was that the other kids were okaying behind her, so she spent some time trying to turn around. When we got home, Cara cruised around her saucer three times, eating Cheerios. She's getting better at getting them into her mouth, although I hope that soon she'll be able to do it without putting half of her hand in, too. Cara also played in her walker and enthusiastically ate some applesauce with tofu.

In the morning, I brought Cara downstairs and put her in her high chair. I noticed that her left thumb and index finger were brown with blood! There was blood smeared on my arm, as well. I thought she had cut her finger somehow, and we were trying to figure out how she'd done it, but then someone noticed that it was actually her ear that was cut. She rubs them sometimes, and she must have a sharp nail on her left hand that she got caught in the folds of her ear. It's her first cut that really bled at all. This evening, I washed it out in her bath. I tried to cut her nails, but she really wouldn't let me. I'll have to give it another shot tomorrow, possibly while she's asleep.

This evening Cara did some more cruising, effectively crossing the living room. She climbed around and crawled around and treated us all like jungle gyms. When she got tired and cranky, I brought her upstairs. I put her down in the hallway, near the stairs (which are now protected by the baby gate), while I went to run her bath. She was looking at me, so I called her and showed her her bath toys. With a few brief stops for rest, Cara crawled into the bathroom.

I was pretty excited about that, and so was Cara. Unfortunately, she kept trying to crawl while she was in her bath, which was not quite such a good idea.

1/29/06 (Sunday)

A lazy Sunday; Cara visited no one. However, she did do some more crawling, and I came to the happy realization that she is actually going to crawl--maybe not very well, but it's happening, and she's sure to improve. I think that maybe we haven't really given her too much incentive to crawl.

Cara woke up at 7:30 and Evie took her to our bedroom where I was still in bed. That was interesting. We got up and after her first bottle Cara came down with us and stayed in her walker in the kitchen while we had breakfast. We tried to get her to go down for her nap with her next bottle, but somehow it didn't work. She got hold of some pamphlets and paper and damaged them badly with her mouth--they were expendable, and were thrown out. She crawled out of the office into the hallway at my urging. Eventually some time after noon I stuck Cara in her crib and turned on her musical worm and stuck a popper in her mouth and went away, and this convinced her to nap (she was tired anyway). We had lunch, and then lounged around a bit, reading silently. Then Cara woke up and we took her to the grocery store.

Cara had a great time at the supermarket. Usually when we take her out places she is fairly quiet, sitting and looking at people. Of course Cara did her sitting and looking this time as well--she stares at everyone who goes by, and she spent a lot of time turned around in the shopping cart, looking over her shoulder, until I was sure she would hurt her neck. She wanted to see where we were going, and she wanted to get at the stuff we were putting in the cart, especially the white bread for some reason (possibly because it was in a shiny plastic wrapper or possibly because I had unintentionally taunted her with the cinnamon bread before putting it in the cart, and so all bread was no attractive to her). When we came up an aisle she could see the shiny floating balloons hanging from the checkout lines, and she really liked them; there was one blue dog head that she actually laughed at.

As for being quiet, Cara decided about halfway through that there was no reason for her not to use the same voice she uses at home, and so it was "aaaa--AAAhh!!" off and on. She seems to have decided to just kind of go "AAahh!!" She was doing it yesterday and continued with gusto today. It's not an unhappy noise, it's sort of enthusiastically conversational, but she doesn't necessarily wait for there to be people around to do it. She was doing it almost continuously in the back seat of the car on the way home.

Anyway, a nice lady (possibly the store manager) opened up a new checkout lane for us and said nice things about our baby, and we made it into the parking lot, which baby also likes very much because it is a nice bumpy ride.

Then we got home. Around 5:30 we were thinking about baby's next bottle, and Evelyn decided that we should try to feed her solid food instead and skip the bottle (we really do need to cut down on the formula). What followed was an extended feeding period of at least half an hour, which was productive--mainly in getting food on the kitchen floor, but it also got enough food into baby to tide her over until her night time bottle. We tried chicken on her, and baby became a carnivore for the first time. It put a crazy little gleam in her eye. I thought the entire idea of meat having been mushed up into almost liquid form was quite disgusting, but the chicken and pasta thing that we gave her actually was very tasty--like a hearty chicken soup. The pasta was little round pellets of pasta. She ate quite a bit of it, though not much with her spoon.

I think we've decided actually that Cara really doesn't like us to stick a spoon at her. She likes the spoon itself if you just give it to her, but forcing it into her mouth does not please her, and is really what ruins most of our feeding attempts. We found that if we put food on our fingers and stuck that in her mouth, it worked fine. The only problem is you can't get a lot of food on your finger. We still have a lot of work ahead of us in the feeding department.

The other things we gave Cara along with the chicken were Cheerios (of course--they're quickly becoming the old standby) and chunks of cheese sticks that Evie bought and cut up (this idea coming from Em and Ron). The cheese stick chunks were strangely slippery and kept falling out of Cara's mouth--this combined with her usual fumbling caused showers of Cheerios and cheese chunks to rain down on the kitchen floor. As fast as I picked them out of her lap and put them back on her tray, they were down again. When I finally took her out of the high chair, there were still a couple of pieces of cheese in her lap and at least half a dozen Cheerios in her chair. Later, when I went to change her diaper, I discovered a pellet of pasta from the chicken had somehow found its way inside her outfit and down to the top rim of her diaper! (Chicken also had to be removed from several sections of her hair.)

After that it was time for our dinner, for which Cara amused herself in her walker with even more Cheerios (in her walker, she leaves a little breadcrumb trail of Cheerios behind her wherever she goes). She was curious about what was on the table and kept coming over and trying to pull herself up on the table edge.

In the evening, I played video games and basically ignored the baby. She happily kept herself busy cruising on the saucer, the coffee table, the couch, and even the side table, and did some crawling, and then Evie helped her ride on her little car for a while. She also enjoyed finally getting a hold of a rattly mouse-shaped cat toy, which we took away from her after a few humorous minutes of observation. Cara was very independent and had a good time, and was very mobile.

Eventually a bit past 8:30 I decided it was time to put baby away--having ignored her for most of the evening, it was my turn to do her night time bottle, and I did. Now I have done the journal, and it's time to put me down.

In an interesting addendum, the cats have just escaped from the basement--turns out I'm not the only one who sometimes can't manage to close the door all the way...

Incidentally, I have noticed that almost inevitably whoever is writing the journal entry becomes the person who seems to have done everything with the baby that day. This is a seemingly unavoidable misconstruction of the truth. It may sound as if I was the instigator of most things today, but in actual fact Evie did the majority of baby-wrangling. For the record.

1/30/06 (Monday)

I've been away from Cara for two days now and I ask myself: has Cara grown since Friday? She seems bigger. But a more important change is that Cara can crawl! She can crawl across her bedroom. She can crawl across the living room--I'm amazed, the baby gates are up just in time.

I wake Cara up at about 8:30. We have our walk around the block and then come and play. This time the music is not Burl Ives, it's Paul Simon's Graceland. Cara seems very interested in a few of her books, tossing them around, trying to turn the pages. In the high chair at 9:30, she has no interest in food. She tries to drink from her water cup but ends up waving it around. Just in time for her nap at 10, Cara starts to get cranky and rubs her eyes. I put her into her crib and after a few episodes of fussing, she's asleep.

Cara was taking a nap when I got home, but she woke up before I even got to change my clothes. We went out for a long walk and then played for the rest of the afternoon. I set her down in the living room and sat down at the computer. Soon I felt something on my leg and looked down; Cara had come over and was standing at the side of my chair.

She really is a crawler now. Almost overnight, she has become a mobile baby. She crawls wherever she wants to go and then stands up on things. We spend most of our time in the living room and kitchen, and she seems to have a good time exploring.

Something very weird happened this afternoon. Cara and I dropped a Cheerio and it went under the couch. Buster, who recently discovered that Cheerios are fun to bat around, came over, got it out, and lost interest--just as I was resigning myself to having it under there forever!

This evening I found myself getting very sleepy, and I can only suppose it's because Cara got us up at 4:45. I don't remember it affecting me like this the other times I've lost sleep, but tonight I'm so tired that I'm a terrible journal writer. Good night!

1/31/06 (Tuesday)

Cara slept until 9:30 this morning. It's a day when changes are consolidated. Today, Cara is very confident of crawling. She crawled out of her room and toward the stairs where the baby gate stopped her. Cara's goal, I see, is not some toy or some interesting new thing on the other side of the room. Cara's goal is .... me! She wants me to pick her up and walk around with her. When she gets to me she's frustrated when I won't pick her up and when I don't walk with her. As a result, it's a day filled with crying.

But there's more going on. I think there's teething coming into play. It's not that she's chewing on things, it's just that she's crabbier than usual. There's also the change in sleep schedule that seems to be happening about now. She was up at 5:30 AM for a bottle and back in bed just after six. This morning, her crying and complaining seemed to indicate that she was also tired. I put her down for her nap at 11:30 A.M. and gave her some Tylenol. I haven't heard more than a peep or two since then and it's now 2:24 P.M. That's three hours sacked out in the middle of a cold and dreary day.

It's Tuesday, so Cara and I went to the gym. Dropping her off, I let the girl know that Cara could crawl. I came back 45 minutes later to find Cara happily sitting on the floor, taking some toys out of a turtle-shaped bin. "She can do more than crawl!" I was informed. Wanting to get to the exersaucer at the gym, Cara stood up unassisted, with nothing to grab onto, and took two steps to it. Her first steps! It's funny to have another big milestone just after her big leap into the world of crawling. I don't expect that Cara will really start walking any time soon, though. I remember that she rolled over once pretty early on and then didn't roll for months, so the walking may be like that, too! I'm not going to push her; she can figure it out at her own pace.

At home, Cara was a little bit crabby. She felt better after her daddy got home, though. The three of us spent the evening sitting on the floor; Cara crawled around and played with the cat toys that we were willing to let her have. We tossed the other ones into the basement. At one point, I think Shelby showed up because she heard her jingle ball, but it was just Cara waving it.

Cara had what has become her usual dinner: Cheerios and cheese. Steve tried some food on her with her dipper, but she wasn't interested. She's getting far more reliable with finger foods; she can often get them into her mouth. Now we have another problem. She doesn't know when to stop putting things into her mouth. Steve has noticed that she will be sitting there with a mouthful of cheese, grabbing more cheese to cram in. It is very unfortunate.

Cara likes to hold things for a long time. Sometimes she holds things while she has her bottle. Tonight, she held her purple jingly hippo, a longtime favorite. She fell asleep and I put her in her crib. She sometimes moves around in her sleep. Her hippo jingles when it is moved. I think that this is a very interesting problem.

2/1/06 (Wednesday)

The problem of the jingle hippo apparently resolved itself, as Cara slept through the night. We had a fun day. Cara and I went to the mall briefly, and she had a good time riding around in her stroller, watching people. She gets lots of people to say "Hi" to her, and she swivels her little head around to watch them. Sometimes she has to turn around in her seat to see where people go. It's hard work. Sometimes she gives people real smiles, showing them her little fangs. (I like to call her teeth her fangs, even though they're on the bottom. Imagine if people got their top two teeth first! Then we'd really get fangs, and we probably wouldn't think of fangs the same way at all.)

Cara likes to hang out in the kitchen. She crawls around and plays with her toys and whatever else she finds. The cats are often there, too, which is an added benefit. It's very funny when Cara goes after the cats. It reminds me of old horror movies, in which a monster would be moving very slowly toward someone who would stand there and scream until the monster finally got close enough to eat him or her. The cats, particularly Shelby, just sit there looking upset when Cara starts off toward them, but at the last moment they do get up and leave. I think Buster was taunting Cara this afternoon. She was being very friendly to me while Cara and I were sitting in the kitchen, and then she got up onto not her usual chair, but the one closest to the baby, as if to say, "Here I am, but you still can't get me!"

For dinner tonight, Cara had some cheese and Cheerios, but we also got her to eat some actual baby food. We finished up the chicken and pasta; it was a two-spoon, single-dipper, two-parent effort. I think I'm not going to purchase more baby food. When we run out, I'll be glad! She just doesn't like to eat off of a spoon. We'll keep trying with what we have, but I think we'll be much more successful feeding her little pieces of real food. For instance, Grandpa gave Cara a slice of banana today. No one has yet found it, so we are pretty confident that she ate it.

Wednesday is play-date night, so PJ came over. They both like to stand up and hit the top of our coffee table, and PJ likes to lick it, too. Cara and PJ also both like the exersaucer, and Cara seemed to get mad when PJ played with her toys! She took her flowers away from him. Cara is getting pretty good at riding on her car, when she doesn't put her feet up (actually, she doesn't exactly fall off even when she does that), so we were curious about her PJ would do on it. He defied us all; he didn't fall off, but he didn't stay on, either. He got off and cruised away. The cutest part of the evening, I thought, was when PJ's dad was holding Cara. PJ went right over, to tell his daddy that he was his baby.

It was bath night. I let Cara crawl around in the bath now, and she has a good time. I think she knows that she can get the water to move by moving herself in it. Last time, she crawled over and pulled the plug. No such luck this time. However, she did manage to stand up against the side of the tub. Fortunately, she was easy to trick into sitting back down!

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