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Journal Key:

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

2/9/06 (Thursday)

Cara was up in the night. Steve rocked her back to sleep and put her down, and she was crying by the time he got back to bed. I gave her a bottle and put her back down, and she was crying by the time I got back to bed. Eventually, she stopped. I realized that a phenomenon had occurred which I have yet to witness: Cara had probably sat up to cry, and that meant that she must have laid herself back down to go to sleep. I've never seen her lie down to go to sleep; I've always helped out in that department. It is, however, a skill which I am eager for her to develop.

Cara and I went to the gym. When I sat her down to take her jacket off, she got my car keys! I tried to take them back from her, but she's mastered the art of passing things from hand to hand. As soon as I had one detached, the other was in operation. I had no trouble getting her coat off, but I had no keys. I told the girl that Cara had them and that if Cara chose to drop them somewhere and they were lost we would never leave but would remain to plague her for all of her days. When I returned, however, Cara still had them. With great difficulty I removed them from her and used them to drive home.

This evening Cara ate lots of food, cruised the living room, crawled all over her parents, and almost caught Shelby. She had a nice bath and a big bottle and is asleep.

When Steve was getting ready for bed, I had to amuse Cara. She took my glasses, which made her very happy. I thought I could give her a thrill, so I got her hippo and shook him over her head. A few months ago, this would have been wonderful. Today, she rolled over and crawled away, not a baby anymore.

2/10/06 (Friday)

Twice today I woke Cara up from a sound sleep and boy, was she cranky about it. This morning I woke Cara up at about 8:20. She wiped her little eyes, and then settled down with her bottle. The same thing happened in the afternoon. Usually I let her wake herself up but at 1 P.M., I thought she needed waking. We went through the same routine--Cara settling down with her bottle.

Cara is much better with cheerios, eating what had to be twenty before she tired.

This afternoon I'm taking her down to Middletown for another sleep over. It should be fun for the little one--all those people cooing and smiling at her!

I'll just mention here that Cara once again awoke in the middle of the night. I suggested to Evelyn that we ignore her, but I ended up going downstairs anyway to make a bottle--by the time it was ready, all was silence upstairs. I put the bottle in the fridge and went back to sleep, but within minutes we were all awake again to the sound of Cara's crying. Evie went down and got the bottle and gave it to her, but as with the previous night, the bottle did not get her back to sleep--an alarming trend. However, we gave up at this point and went to bed and it didn't seem like too much later that Cara gave up too and we all went to sleep.

Evie suggests that since the bottle does not make her go back to sleep, Cara is not waking up because she is hungry. This seems logical, but I find it hard to come up with an alternate reason for her waking up--maybe some teething. Anyway, here are some entertaining details of Cara's night without us:

Today Cara is making a lot of raspberry sounds, and she has been crawling industriously throughout the house; when she does both at once it creates the hilarious effect that she is producing truck engine sounds to accompany her motion. She has grown to be very skillful at pulling herself up to stand and at getting back down to the floor again, which gives her great range to explore. She can crawl to a low table or to her "office," pull herself up to play, and then return to the floor to crawl to another spot.

As always, her happiest moments have been those when the Schmutz is in sight, and she attains her greatest speed when in pursuit of him. She actually made contact once or twice tonight, and the Schmutz seems more tolerant than he did last week, when he sought refuge in a tree.

Of course, Cara has also had another wonderful interlude of pure love from Great-grandma Emily, who greatly admired all of her teeth, and she has spent some time in the loving arms of her Aunt Claire, who held her while they watched the Baby Einstein video together. She and I have shared a few dances to the music produced by her "office" and she has enjoyed another bath in our tub. This time she managed to get hold of those elusive round parts of the caterpillar toy. The bath was fine until she tried to climb the side of the tub. The resultant slide and splash upset her, but there was a compensating moment when I held her, wrapped only in her towel (boy, am I lucky she didn't pee on me!) and she rested her little head peacefully against my shoulder. Surprisingly, she is much happier to lie down and be changed or dressed than she was just a couple of weeks ago. [This is very surprising, since she is still as unhappy as ever to be changed or dressed with us!]

It's almost 9 pm. She has been bathed and dressed in her sleeper, and offered a bottle, of which she took about half. We think she will soon be tired; perhaps we are ridiculous optimists. In the meantime, George is watching the Nets and the baby is happily blowing raspberries.

2/11/06 (Saturday)

George got Cara to sleep last night by 10 pm; his strategy was to lie down beside her on the sofa until she fell sound asleep, then carefully transfer her to the pack'n play.

Around 2:20 in the morning I woke and heard her voice. Sleepily I first thought she was singing loudly, then realized she was crying, so I hurried downstairs and picked her up. She calmed down pretty quickly, so I set her down with a toy and fixed a bottle. She took the bottle hungrily, but did not fall asleep with it. One thing I've noticed, though: she likes to play with her own hair while she nurses, if she doesn't have a toy in her hands.Ê Her little arm goes straight up and back so she can reach the top of her own head. Evelyn used to do something similar as an infant; when she slept on her tummy, as was the custom then, with her head turned to one side, the other hand would reach up and she would stroke her own head.

Anyway, I lay down on the sofa with Cara on top of me, and she sweetly snuggled down to sleep. When I shifted my weight her little arm stretched out to embrace my neck. It was sweet to be there, but I thought my old bones would be better off in bed, so I stood up and the motion woke her. By then she was completely refreshed - she'd had a bottle and a nap - and ready to play. I changed her wet diaper and tried to lie down with her again, but no dice; she was climbing over me to make a break for freedom. At about 3:40 George came downstairs and took over. I think he got her back to sleep after about half an hour.

This morning I was awake long before Cara. By the time her eyes opened I had fixed a bottle, had my coffee and toast, and finished both the Sudoku and the Cryptogram. It was after 8 o'clock and George was already eating breakfast when I tiptoed downstairs and found the baby just opening her eyes. She was in my arms before she ever had a chance to cry. This morning she was a happy little girl. She had a clean diaper and drank half her bottle before we went upstairs. Whenever she sees her Grandpapa George she lights up and her little legs start kicking. We sat down and had some Cheerios while he finished his coffee. The Schmutz put in another appearance. Cara will walk her little feet all the way across the living room and the dining room to reach him. Again he allowed her to touch him and did not make much objection, although he did move away.

Pretty soon we were dressing Cara in her daytime clothes; she seemed to enjoy this process as well. And then Claire and I were kissing her good-by as George carried her away to her real home.

Cara had a nice day with her Mommy and Daddy. We just read an article about weaning babies from their bottles, and it has inspired us to purchase a variety of new sippy cups to experiment with. Tomorrow I plan to try putting her formula in one of them rather than in a bottle.

The funniest thing that happened today was when we tried letting Cara drink some water out of a regular glass. PJ has mastered this skill, which is what inspired us to try it. I didn't think she would be interested, but she certainly was! She opens her mouth and goes right for it, but then the water came right back out; she wound up with a wet shirt, wet jeans, and wet socks. This did not dampen her enthusiasm.

In the New Skills department, Cara seems to have figured out that her crawling will go better if she moves objects out of her way. She does this a little bit forcefully at times, but it is quite effective.

Before we put Cara to bed tonight, the three of us were up in her room. She crawled out the door, then turned around, laughed, and came back in to knock down the tower I had built of her stacking cups. Then she crawled out the door and came back in again. Apparently she thought it was very funny; so did we.

For three nights in a row, Cara has been up between two and three. Bottles have not put her back to sleep. We'll see how tonight goes.

2/12/06 (Sunday)

First big news: Cara slept through the night!! She even slept through a wrong number we got at 1:30 in the morning! In fact, she slept so late that we were able to have a very thorough breakfast and then walked upstairs to get her of our own accord. If only every day could be like that (though not with the wrong number in the middle of the night)...

Today, as many in New Jersey know, we had a nice big blizzard. A good deal more than a foot of snow fell around the house, and we were all ready to take Cara out and plop her in it. We suited her up and took her out, but she didn't seem to have much of a reaction. She was a bit crabby at the time, which may have affected her experience. After we took her back in and sat her in the game room, she did pick up some of the snow that had fallen off of her, but somehow did not think to put it in her mouth.

As usual on a weekend, Cara decided not to really take a nap for most of the day. Meanwhile, we spent some time pumping solid food into her. She had two helpings of pears with rice cereal (a stage three food--we have acquired quite a few varieties of baby food from someone Evelyn works with), once in the morning and one around lunch time, and then in the evening she had some cinnamon granola stuff that she likes a lot. She ate all of that stuff well. For one of her pear servings, I tried to sneak in some macaroni and cheese by switching it up halfway through. This had worked in the past when we wanted to get Cara to eat some veggies, but this time she was not having it. As soon as I held the spoon up she looked at it very doubtfully: "Hey, you can't fool me buddy--this is not pears." I just don't understand how she can not like the mac and cheese--I have tasted a lot of baby foods lately and frankly I enjoy almost all of them, the mac and cheese not least.

Anyway, in the late afternoon we got Cara down for a nap and went outside to do some more shoveling. We had already done some major shoveling earlier to get the cars unburied, but we had to do some touch-up work since the snow had continued falling into the afternoon. Also, as it turned out, a tree weighted with snow had collapsed from the side of our neighbor's backyard into ours, and we had to cut it the rest of the way down and break it up a bit. That was very interesting!

Evie went back in before me, and when I got in Cara was awake again, and unhappy. Evie was determined to extend the nap, which she eventually did the only way she could--by napping with the baby. When they came down into the living room a while later, baby was unhappy. She continued very unhappy for quite a while after that. There just didn't seem to be anything we could do for her. Eventually, in lieu of giving her yet another dose of Tylenol (which we've been using during her late night wake-ups), I decided she seemed gassy and we gave her some Mylicon. This seemed to work very very well, or something did, because for the last couple hours of the evening baby was in the best mood I have seen her in in a long time. Everything was funny, every toy was great, and she was babbling and crawling and laughing away.

Developmentally, Cara continues to advance--when she makes her raspberry noise, she now uses her tongue, which she sticks out between her lips just like Mommy and Daddy. She had a nice bath tonight and when I tried to get her into her night time clothes, she stood up in the crib and picked up her sleeper and waved it around, giggling. She bounced up and down in the crib and waved one of the fish from her mobile around, dangling it over the side as far as she could, but also swinging it around viciously. She has a wonderful scrunched up face she makes when she bats things around, with a big open-mouth grin--she looks like she's a little demon and she knows it.

With this kind of energy, Evie obviously had quite a time getting her down. In fact she left Cara wide awake, baby having rolled over in her crib as she seems to enjoy doing these days (another reason it's very hard to change her clothes). Another thing I should mention is that she seems to have finally understood a little about her drops, because even though she really doesn't want them or like them, when she sees that she's going to get them nonetheless, she opens up her mouth and allows me to squirt them in. I appreciate this very much, because it may mean less splattering of vitamins on the crib sheets.

2/13/06 (Monday)

I agree with Steve about the drops; I have experienced the same thing when giving Cara Tylenol. She was up in the night, and I just kind of snuggled her back to sleep. She is really cute lately; she's started sleeping on her tummy, so she rolls over onto it as soon as I put her down on her back. She snuggles up under her blanket like a little bunny, and when she wakes up half of her face is red from being slept on. She moves around in her sleep, and sometimes she takes her blanket with her somehow. Other times, she leaves it behind and crawls out from under it. She still refuses to take her nap at naptime for me and Steve, but she will take a nap after her third bottle of the day. She woke up about 45 minutes into her nap, but she really didn't want to be up. I sat down with her in the glider, like yesterday, and she just took her popper and snuggled herself to sleep. When I put her down, she just cuddled up with her blanket and was out for another hour or so.

Yesterday, something funny happened. Cara has a basket of toys in the living room. I spend half of my life picking up her toys and putting them back in, and she spends half of her life dumping them out, trying to follow her baby rules. As you may remember, Cara's baby rules state that nothing can be in or on anything else. Yesterday afternoon, Cara was cruising the living room. I noticed before she did that her foot was in the basket. This of course violates her rules. When Cara noticed, and immediately tried to pick up the basket to dump her own foot out. It didn't go well. Today, she tried to pick up one of her books while standing on it.

Since there are more than 15 inches of snow outside, Steve and I both stayed home today. Cara mostly had a very good day. She is crawling all over the house, seeming to really like going into the bathroom and looking into the tub. She stands up and laughs at it, banging her hands on the rim. She goes fastest, though, and with the most determination, when she is chasing a cat.

We've found a kind of routine for feeding Cara. When she wakes up, she gets a bottle. An hour or so after her bottle, she gets some food. A few hours later, she gets another bottle. After that, she gets some food. We've actually been giving her three meals a day, which I hope she will continue to take. Steve is really the one who feeds her, so he gets all the credit. Cara loves her cinnamon raisin granola and her pears, but he got her to take some turkey for lunch today! We gave her "peach cobbler" for dessert, because she was so good. Steve samples all of the baby food, and he seems to be enjoying it immensely. A few times, we've let her sit on the floor to be fed. It works okay, as long as she doesn't get away. This evening, I was sitting nearby. Between bites, Cara would lean over to me, arms out. She either wanted a hug or wanted to wipe her face on my shirt. Possibly it was both. Every day, Cara also eats handful upon handful of Cheerios. She's consuming a huge amount!

Cara makes many sounds now. One that we've been working on is "pa." I can say it very well, and she tried to imitate me. She can say it, but only very, very softly. It's barely audible, but if you watch, you can see her saying, "pa."

She loves her car toy that she got for Christmas, and I've been helping Cara ride it. I sit her on it and then kind of crawl behind it and hold her up. Only I haven't been holding her up, lately. Today, I was talking to Steve, and she just rode away from me! She can now ride on her ride-on toy by herself. She can get off it, too, but she can't get on it by herself yet. It only goes straight, but that's really all she's up for at this point.

Cara is also very adept in her walker. She runs around the kitchen in it, eating Cheerios and talking. She is exploring the house, discovering the furniture and our things. She climbs on us and on anything else in her way. While it is draining, being with her and stuck in the house so long, she is also an absolute joy to be with. She is full of smiles and laughter, and I wish I had a better way to share this experience with everyone.

2/14/06 (Tuesday)

Cara wishes everyone a Happy Valentine's Day!

On the topic of sleeping and naps: Cara woke promptly at 8 A.M. and played nicely until 9:55 when she broke out into crying and eye rubbing. However, she was not pleased to be put into her crib and cried until 10:15 when she went to sleep. At 10:45 she woke up and cried a little bit but then went back down to sleep. She's still asleep at 11:45, as I write this.

For Valentine's Day, I stopped off at the mall on the way home to get a takeout dinner, so I didn't get to see baby until nearly 7. She was busy messing around in the kitchen with her Mommy. She had many handfuls of veggie puffs which she proceeded to plaster all over herself, creating a new flower pattern on her shirt. When we had had some dinner, I gave Cara a nice dinner of turkey with vegetables, followed by a nice helping of peach cobbler for dessert. Later I made what may have been the horrible mistake of giving Cara several tastes of the melted Hershey's chocolate we were dipping strawberries in for our dessert--she liked it immediately, but it's too early to start her on sweets like that!

Cara had a great time playing with her truck and car--she rammed her truck into her car and managed to lock them together so that when she moved her truck, her car moved. This was very amusing. Cara has a very funny thing she does where she tilts her head to the side, almost as if she's trying to turn it upside down. It's somewhat unclear why she does this. There are some instances, such as when she wants to look around something, when it might be useful, but sometimes she just seems to bend her head over. Regardless it's cute.

It was bath night tonight and Cara had a nice bath with her Mommy--they particularly enjoyed playing with her stacking cups, which have holes in the bottom that drain the water out in little streams which the baby tries to grab hold of. Then baby went to bed.

Cara convinced her grandfather to take her to the store today so that she could get her Mommy and Daddy a Valentine. She scraped together her allowance money! It was nice.

I think Cara thinks it's funny when she tips her head over. She smiles like it's a joke, and I know that I tend to tip my own head over in return. I'm not sure whether Steve does; it's hard for me to tell, since my head is tipped over.

She is quite independent now. She spent the afternoon and evening crawling around and getting into things. She likes to look into the bathtub, and she likes to find her toys. Here's a problem we've been predicting for weeks that has just started to happen today: her changing table has open shelves that Cara has been cruising on. She started reaching through the slats on the side and pulling her diapers out today, and she had a wonderful time waving them around and hitting things with them. I say "them" because after I took the first one away, she obligingly took another.

I also would like to thank Grandpa George for taking Cara card shopping and, no doubt, helping her a little bit with the spelling of her message.

2/15/06 (Wednesday)

Landmark of the day: When Cara and I were getting ready to go out to the gym, I got out her coat to put on her. I put it around her shoulders, and she stuck her hands into the sleeves herself! I hope it wasn't a coincidence.

My dad and I have both been spending a lot of time building castles for Cara to knock down. I have found myself making "ah-ah-ah" noises to tell her "no" when she wants to knock my castle down before it's ready. Dad says that he tells her "no." He says that she knows it's ready to be knocked down when he puts a creative finishing touch, like a ball or a rubber duckie, on top. I have found that, once I've stopped her, it's rather difficult to communicate that it's okay to go on. She may know "no," but "yes" will need some work.

Cara has a new face that she makes a lot. She kind of scrunches up her nose and eyes and smiles; she looks like a little gremlin or demon of some sort. It's a happy face.

PJ came over tonight. It was, as usual, great to see him. Cara is a pretty good crawler, but seeing him go makes her look awfully slow (I was going to say, "like she was crawling"). They played chase for a little bit, and everyone she has ever met is faster than Cara! Another reason she didn't win at chase was that she stopped whenever he stopped. She clearly needs some coaching and strategy work.

I tried to get PJ to ride on Cara's car, but he would have none of it. He just gets right off. Cara did show off and ride on her car a little. They both played with Cara's playground. Everyone likes the balls. The babies really don't interact much, but there was one moment in which they did. Both were standing, and they happened to look into each other's faces. Cara made her little demon face. PJ had his tongue out, and he put out his hand to stick his finger in her mouth or at least grab her head. Then one of them got distracted, and the moment was over. PJ did take the time to feel Cara's skull a little bit; he's an amateur phrenologist.

Before bed, Steve read a few books to Cara. He is a wonderful reader, and he has come up with sound effects for all of Cara's books. It's gotten so that I'm ashamed to read most of them to her, because it's not nearly as good as when Daddy does it!

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