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Journal Key:

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

2/16/06 (Thursday)

This morning Cara once again woke up before I left for work, but this time I did not go up to see her and by the time George came in and quickly made her bottle, she seemed to have quieted again. I think she stayed down for another twenty minutes or so. I prefer this behavior to her getting up in the middle of the night, but I would prefer even more if she would sleep until 8:30.

Tonight she was active but a little bit clingy. She had some chicken dinner and some peach cobbler and then we hung around the living room for a while. Cara has discovered how to put her stacking cups inside of each other! Even though this clearly violates one of the fundamental baby rules, she seems willing to bend it. She is really good at walking along if I hold her up under her arms--I even walked backward in front of her like this, and she seemed to go even faster. Given what we've seen of PJ though, Cara has a long way to go before she'll be walking unassisted.

It was bath night so baby went in the tub. Tonight she decided to do a lot of standing in her tub, which meant I got to wash her legs pretty good. There she was standing up on the side of the tub, her hair mussed up and wet, covered with suds, making her little meanie face. It was very funny. I got some quite cute pictures of her afterwards, having escaped her keepers and going on the rampage on her playground with only her hood towel on.

Baby was a bit tough going down, but hopefully she is down for the night now. Evie has Friday off, so this is the beginning of a long vacation for her. She and Cara will go to see Great-grandma Emily tomorrow.

2/17/06 (Friday)

Today was a busy day. Cara was up at about 7:20, as has become her routine. She had a nice bottle and then watched me have breakfast. When I had cleaned up, it was time for Cara's solid breakfast. We finished up two bowls of baby food that were sitting in the fridge, and then I poured a little yogurt into one. Cara finished it. I poured more in; she finished more. Then more. She was quite happy. At one point she grabbed the spoon. I got her dipper out, to try to get her to feed herself. No luck; as soon as I got the dipper dipped, she obediently opened her mouth!

Cara's hands were sticky, and we had some time on our hands, so I decided to give her a bath, mostly for fun. Cara crawled right into the bathroom, so I undressed her there. She had a great time crawling around in the bath. Cara can stand up in the bath, too, and I think she was playing. She kept standing up and then dropping back into the water; I think she liked how that felt.

After the bath, we went out. We bought bagels, and Cara got to meet everyone at the bagel place. It was very gusty outside, and there were little flags hung up which Cara enjoyed. Then we went to the gym, and Cara was entertained by two little girls. There was a nine-month-old boy there who was also the subject of their attentions, and Cara was clearly much more responsive.

Finally, we headed for LabCorp. When Cara went to the doctor for her last checkup, she came home with orders for a blood test to be done before she went back around her birthday. Since I'm off today, this was the best time. Of course, there was a crowd. Cara sat in her stroller, pulled off her sock, and happily waved it around. After that was good and wet, she spent her time watching the other children. There were about five little kids there, all Spanish-speaking. Eventually I put Cara down, and she played with two little girls, sisters, one of whom had to be only perhaps six months older than Cara. They had a good time.

It hadn't occurred to me to be too nervous about the actual needle. I was surprised that they took the blood from her arm (just like a big girl!). I held her in my lap and held back her right arm, while a man held her left steady and a woman took her blood. They only had to take one vial, thank goodness! She cried, but when it was over she was okay.

On the way back to the house, Cara fell asleep. I decided to head right down to my grandma's house. During our visit, Cara was very good. She didn't take more than about half of her bottle, because she had to be upright and pay attention to everything her great-grandma did. While we had lunch, she ate Cheerios and puffs from her snack trap cup; it has a lid that is slit so the her hand can reach through for treats but they can't fall out easily. She explored the house and didn't destroy anything. She clearly loves her great-grandma's attention and cuddling.

When I told grandma that Cara liked it, she got out a cup of strawberry yogurt. I didn't think Cara would take much, but she polished off half of it, at least four ounces! She was quite enthusiastic.

When Cara plays with her mirror toy, she's started doing something new. While it lies on the floor, she bends over and puts her face right down against the mirror and peers into it. Today, she has extended this to other reflective surfaces. In our kitchen, Cara was exploring the shiny cabinet knobs. She fogged the silver surface with her breath. In my grandma's house, Cara crawled into the kitchen and stood up against the stove. Looking at her own reflection in the dark, shiny door, she leaned against it and breathed, openmouthed. Grandma said that she was kissing herself, but it looked more like mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to me. At my mother's house, there is a mirrored sliding closet door. Cara stood against it and spent a while fogging it up, too.

Cara and I got home around 6:30, and Cara had some Cheerios and refused to have much baby food. She had a little bottle and then played with her daddy for a couple of hours before bed.

I would like to propose the following for debate. I believe that Cara may know these words: Cara, no, kitty, and Shelby.

2/18/06 (Saturday)

Cara had a lovely day today. In the morning she got to come to the store with her mommy and daddy and help with the groceries. We got lots of puffs, including a flavor we've never tried before, cherry! Cara ate a lot of yogurt and, for lunch, an entire (medium-sized) jar of apples and pears. She played all afternoon and helped out around the house. She helped me clean the bathroom. She helped by pulling a whole lot of paper towels off of the roll. I appreciate that. While I dusted the living room, Cara investigated. The CD player was on, so she could see the CD spinning behind the glass door. As she did yesterday, Cara enjoyed breathing on the glass. She also got to see inside the storage ottoman where we keep our movies. She saw her Baby Einstein Christmas movie, and she got very excited about the picture. I'm not sure how to interpret that, but it doesn't usually happen.

I went out to Walmart (because we got pictures printed, not just for fun) and bought Cara a silly toy. It was silly in a number of ways. It was silly of me to buy her another toy when she doesn't really need one, but it was fun and it wasn't expensive. It was also a silly toy in and of itself. It is a complicated-looking contraption with tubes that five balls roll through. When it's on, it spits the balls up in the air and then catches them and drops them back into the tubes to begin again. It's silly because, when it's not on, you really can't do much with it. It's also silly because it's not terribly interactive. In fact, I'm not precisely sure what the baby is supposed to do at all. Another reason it's silly is that we don't really need another five balls to chase and lose under the couch. I knew how silly it was when I was buying it, but it's still kind of cool. We haven't actually turned it on yet, because we don't have the right batteries. It could turn out to be a big hit! I think it may scare Shelby.

This evening, we had company. Steve's piano teacher, our former neighbor Wayne, came to dinner. Cara usually ignores people, but she went over to the sofa and stood up to look at him. They continued to interact throughout the evening, which was really nice.

After her bath, I got to get Cara dressed. It was tough for two reasons. One is that she was ready to go off and play. Another is that she seems to have suddenly outgrown many of her sleepers. We had trouble getting her dressed in the morning, too, because her overalls were too small. We really need to sort out her clothes again and see what she needs!

2/19/06 (Sunday)

Today Cara went to visit her grandparents in Middletown and had a good time. She enjoyed various pastimes, such as staring at herself in the full-length mirrors on the doors of the coat closet, slapping tabletops, sucking on toys, having books read to her by Grandma Janet, and sometimes eating magazines (which we generally discouraged). I had little success in the morning with solid food, but Evelyn seems to have had the magic passed onto her, because Cara had lots of fruit and yogurt dishes from Evie. She consumed piles of Cheerios over the course of the day--and most likely left them in interesting places.

We finally got batteries in her ball toy today and I turned it on. Not having seen the demonstration in the store, I expected a self-maintaining machine, with slick efficiency. Instead, I quickly found myself jumping to catch the balls which were flying all over the living room, propelled by the wild air power of the toy. This will most likely be more fun for baby to watch than what I had been imagining, and as long as we place the toy in the right environment before turning it on (like, in a place where there aren't so many tables and furniture for the balls to roll under), it should be a nice spectacle. Baby was tired after a long day and had just been awakened from a nap, so was not in the mood to fully enjoy the toy (I'll have to figure out its name!), but I look forward to sitting back and watching her crawl around collecting the balls.

Cara will see her other grandparents tomorrow. Oh, and by the way, we had a long night last night. I had cleverly drunk two big cups of coffee before going to bed, and for various other reasons (including a kitty uprising out of the basement) did not get a lot of sleep--and then the baby woke up around 4:30 or so and kept Evie up for almost two hours. I didn't drop immediately back to sleep either, even though I was not the one who got baby down, so that may be the reason why I feel so incredibly tired right now. Good night!

2/20/06 (Monday)

I have to explain that the ball popper that Walmart had on display had a plastic dome over it, so the balls couldn't get away. In a way, I think it's good that the balls fly all over, because otherwise there would be nothing for the baby to do. The toy seems to be a little bit much for Cara. PJ got into it, grabbing balls and sticking them backwards into the tube. This morning, I figured I'd either return the toy or give it to PJ. In the afternoon, though, Cara tried it again and got into it a little bit more. I think that it may work out. The fun thing to do seems to be to try to get the balls to go down the tube instead of up it. I have put the thing down in the dining room, where there's little furniture for the balls to go under.

Yesterday, Cara started playing a fun game with her grandma. While Cara was having her bottle, she would stick her finger into my mother's mouth. She thought that this was very funny. So did we. Today, she started to do this with me, too. I grab her finger between my lips and shake my head very fast, and she thinks it's hysterical. While this is not really a good thing when I'm trying to put her to sleep with her bottle, it's pretty cool.

Jim and Janet came up today, and we had a good day. Janet and I got to go through Cara's clothes, and we have found out that she definitely needs sleepers but definitely does not need any short-sleeved onesies. She needs pants. Grandpa Jim gave Cara a bottle, and she fell asleep nestled in his lap. Everyone got to see her little meanie face.

I bought diapers yesterday, so we had a big box sitting around. I left it out for Cara to play with, but she didn't seem to get into it. Her grandma and grandpa fixed that; we played by tossing her ball into it and getting it back out, by cruising around the box, and by banging on it (a lot). Cara had a great time. There was a slit in the box, and Janet stuck her finger up through it. Cara was very determined to catch that waggling finger! I talked to her through the slit, and that confused her very much.

We bought Cara a couple of cups with straws in the lids, and we tried one this afternoon. We put apple juice in it, and she certainly spent a lot of time with the straw in her mouth. I believe that, though it is harder to suck than I would have expected, she got some juice out of it.

Cara was up around two in the morning, and Steve got her back to sleep without giving her a bottle. She was then up again at about 6:20, when I gave her a bottle and hoped vainly that she would go back to sleep. She then had about an hour-long nap in the afternoon, and that's been it. She's kind of cranky now (it's 7:30), and I think she's probably tired! We asked today, and PJ takes twice the naps that Cara does!

A brief addition at 9:20:

Cara was cranky. Steve made himself popcorn. I picked Cara up, and I ate some. She leaned toward it desperately. What the heck, I said to myself. I took a nice big kernel and bit off all the parts with any hull in them. I offered Cara the white ball that was left. She didn't open her mouth, but she took it in her hand. Soon she ate it. Then she wanted another and another and another and another. She cried in between. It was hard to find good kernels for her! We both, Steve and I, worked on making her innocuous little popcorn balls, and I gave them to her. She apparently decided to alternate: one she would take in her hand, and the next she would pick out of my hand with her little mouth. I really appreciated that.

Then I took her upstairs. She was the kind of cranky that cries when you put it down, except if you put it down in the upstairs hallway and let it crawl into the bathroom. I ran her a nice bath, and she helped by putting her bath toys in. For the first time, I mistook Cara for Shelby when she came crawling into her room after me. She enjoyed her bath, and then her daddy read her Goodnight Moon twice and I gave her a bottle that put her to sleep.

2/21/06 (Tuesday)

That good baby slept through the night. When I got home, it seemed that that was the best thing she'd done. According to my father, the highlight of the day was having a banana. Aside from that, it was crankiness in general. Of course, she also went down for her nap before ten, and he got her up after one. (She wasn't asleep when he went in, but was playing happily in her crib.) My dad asked whether she sleeps at all on weekends. No, I told him.

My afternoon was filled with crankiness, too. The highlight of the afternoon was that Cara, who of course likes to hang out in the bathroom, flushed the toilet for the first time. Since we have always had the lid down, I don't think she even knows that there's water in there. I was very amused when she flushed it, but Cara had no reaction at all.

I took her to the gym and she was cranky there, too. Somehow, though, things just turned around in the evening. Maybe it was because her daddy was there. We put on the Curious Buddies DVD, mainly because I wanted to see the hayride. Cara loved it and cruised around the living room; she kept going up to the TV and peering into it. We danced and swung her around and she played with her toys.

I gave her some yogurt while we were both sitting on the floor. She does love her yogurt, but it is runny and it gets all over her face. I've mentioned that she sems to turn her head to wipe her mouth on my sleeve while she's taking a bottle; there was a similar situation a couple of days ago when I was also giving her yogurt on the floor. She took a break and lunged into my lap to wipe her face on my knee. Then we had more yogurt, and she helpfully got the other knee.

Since Cara's birthday is coming up, I made a wish list on Amazon for her under my name. It has lots of toys and DVDs that Steve and I think would be great gifts. Cara also really needs clothes, but those are hard to register for. Basically, she's pretty tall and probably will be too big for things labeled 12 months pretty soon. Eighteen month stuff seems to be too big right now, though, so we seem to need in-between stuff.

Somehow, I got Steve's job tonight and wound up getting Cara ready for bed. I brought her upstairs and let her crawl around for a while because she was so happy and enthusiastic, and gradually I undressed her. Her diaper was very heavy, so it started sagging off. There she was, onesie unsnapped at the bottom, diaper sagging off, gleefully playing at her playground! I stripped her and got a new diaper on, and then I had to let her loose. I tracked her down to give her her drops (she gets two droppers every night, one of vitamins and one of fluoride), and she opened her mouth obediently. Finally I had to catch her and wrestle her into her sleeper and her sack. She protested mightily. Actually, she didn't cry or anything, she just rolled over.

Now Steve is reading Goodnight Moon and bottling her to bed.

2/22/06 (Wednesday)

Cara had two naps today! One was her usual morning nap but the second was worth recording: today I put Cara into our new jogging stroller. What a machine--it has shock absorbers, a very comfy seat for baby, and a large clear plastic shroud that protects the baby from the elements. Today we went for a nice walk in the afternoon; I met a friend and he and I shot the breeze for a while with Cara safely tucked into the stroller under the shroud. I knew it was time to go when Cara started acting up. So in the ten minutes it took me to get home at 2:30, Cara fell sound asleep. I parked the stroller in the game room and left Cara in her bunny suit and hat. She stayed asleep until 4 P.M. when I took her out from under the shroud and gave her her afternoon bottle.

I hear baby was a bit crabby in the afternoon. She was a bit when I came home--I found her in the dining room playing with her Mommy and the cats. Her Curious Buddies DVD was on upstairs, but it was quickly switched to men's curling (we lost!! but we may still get the bronze medal) and baby went into her walker and sprayed Cheerios over the floor while we ate. I think that sometimes a Cheerio will get stuck in the wheel of her walker, and it freezes up like a bad shopping cart.

After our dinner I got Cara in her high chair and pounded a good bit of yogurt and apricots into her. Then she wandered about the living room a bit and then we were off to PJ's house. PJ was having a big walking night--he's still not what you could call a toddler, but he was taking a lot of unassisted steps: a few here, a few there. Cara and PJ played individually for most of the time, but had some few interactions. Once they both tried to use PJ's walker toy at the same time, and ended up sharing it for a while before one of them fell off. They also had a fight over PJ's glow-worm toy, and he growled at her in defense. They don't really fight, though, and at one point Cara was watching PJ growl and seemed to smile and then try to imitate it. PJ has a nice deep growl though. It will take some practice for Cara to match it.

Babies played well into the evening and we didn't leave until after 9 pm. Evie was hoping to get Cara fed a lot and work her hard tonight, to try to get her tired for this evening's bedding. Two naps are not Cara's usual custom, and Evie's fear seems to have been well-placed, as she had some difficulty getting baby down. However on the second attempt it seems fairly quiet up there, so once I'm done typing I will cross my fingers and wait.

No good! She's off again.

OK, I think that she's down now. Yesterday when I was not here, Cara took a trip to my nightstand, destroyed some magazines that were laying there, and knocked my glasses cases around. She also moved my alarm clock. I checked carefully to see that the time was correct and my alarm was still set right, but what it did not occur to me to check was the volume knob. Sure enough, this morning when my alarm went off it blasted out at near maximum level. Fortunately it did not wake up the baby who caused all the racket--she slept through the night and didn't wake up until after I'd left for work.

Oh and also, both Cara and PJ enjoyed chasing around Ron and Em's cat. He tried to spend the playdate lying in a comfy chair, but the babies kept coming over to mess with him and the drawstring to the jacket he was on top of. He eventually had to retreat to the very top of the chair back, from which height he looked down at all of us poor fools with a disapproving expression.

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