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Journal Key:

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

4/6/06 (Thursday)

Today Cara has been giving pretty much everybody a hard time. It all started at 4:30 this morning when Cara woke up and refused to go back to sleep! George had a tough day with her, and she was cranky with Evie as well. However, Evie took her back to the chocolate place they visited the other day and this time Cara got to try gelato. She was very shocked when the cold stuff went in her mouth! But she quickly got used to it and dribbled a lot of it on herself.

I got home and Cara was still cranky. We stopped dinner to give her a bottle, which helped a little, but really she wanted us to pay attention to her. I ate quickly and took her into the living room and showed her her book, Who's Peeking, which she did something interesting with: she tipped her face forward until she was nose to nose with the animals peeking out at her on the pages of the book--the same thing she does sometimes when looking in a mirror! Interesting.

Cara developed her walking skills tonight, because Evie spent a lot of time walking her around holding just one hand. This went very well; so well, in fact, that Cara decided she wanted to go up the stairs that way.

We tried to placate the baby in the evening with a little bath, which she kind of liked, but she did not fall asleep with her bottle tonight. She's a tough nut to crack! She's crying in her crib as I write this. We'll see if we can get her to sleep. Tomorrow is her birthday!

4/7/06 (Friday) Cara's First Birthday!

Cara is one year old! At this time it would be nice to make some kind of summing-up and talk about what it's been like living with Cara and watching her grow in one year (and how quickly it's gone by!), but we were so busy today getting ready for her party tomorrow that I just don't have the energy left.

We had a nice morning with Cara and Grandpa George, who came over to help us do some chores. Then we all went out to lunch at a Mexican place. Cara left a nice spray of tortilla chips around her high chair and was given a little bowl of ice cream by our nice waitress (also a mother), who very thoughtfully asked us whether we wanted the staff to sing to Cara or not (we all agreed not was better). Cara made some funny faces at her ice cream, seemed to like it okay, but lost interest less than halfway through. She seemed to prefer craning around to look at the big table of people behind her, or leaning way back to look at the lighting fixtures hanging from the ceiling.

We managed to get Cara down for a nap in the afternoon, but it was very short-lived (about half an hour). Then Aunt Claire came and helped us get ready some more. To be honest, the day is pretty much a blur. Cara had some Chinese food in the evening, but she had already had a long day and it was past her bedtime. She fell asleep very quickly with her nighttime bottle.

Hopefully after the party I will have time to do some reorganizing of the site and put up some pictures. And hopefully Cara will have had a nice party! In all likelihood, though, we will not have much time for journal-writing tomorrow!

4/8/06 (Saturday)

Well the party is over. It went better than I'd hoped. I was afraid Cara would get scared and cry when everyone sang happy birthday to her, but she did very well. In fact, she was very well behaved all day, and was pretty good about letting all the other kids play with her toys. Cara met a pair of twin girls who were a bit older than her, and one girl who was much older than her and could talk (but she was understandably very shy for most of the proceedings). And of course PJ was there as well. It was a rainy day, but we made the most of the indoors celebration. To all who came, thank you, and we hope you had a good time (even though you probably didn't know some of the other people there)! To those who were unable to come, we wish you could have, but pictures and movies will be available soon, so you won't feel too left out.

Cara did some good eating during the party: she put away a couple of pieces of bread, an entire mini-eggroll (which she snatched off of my plate before I could even think of offering it to her), and of course her birthday cupcake. She predictably smudged it all over her face, but her grandmothers and mother quickly stepped in and washed her down like some kind of baby pit crew, and she was clean again in a trice (and fortunately she was wearing a huge "first birthday" vinyl bib, so only her face and hands needed cleaning). We opened many lovely presents, but Cara's favorite of the day were some little clapping noisemaker things which Evie had bought to hand out to all the kids at the party--once Cara got them in her hands, they did not come out for a long time.

Somehow Cara's good behavior lasted until even after everyone but Ev's parents had left, and we got most of the cleaning up done. Then her Grandma gave her a bottle and she went down for a much-needed nap, and Ev and I looked at a DVD until she woke up again. When she awoke, she was very unhappy--it was either teething pains, or she missed all of the people who had been there to admire her! Eventually she was back to her usual self and enjoyed her good old zebra movie to its end. Then she went into the tub with a whole new array of wonderful bath toys.

This morning I had tried to put Cara in the tub. We hadn't given her a bath the night before because we'd been so busy and we figured we could put it off. Now, Cara never has a bath in the morning, so the timing was unusual. As soon as I swung her into the water she became very unhappy and made it clear she did not want to be in that water: nothing I could do would make it better, so out she came. I suppose I could have startled her with the way I suddenly plopped her in, but I think it was mainly that she is not used to having her bath in the morning--she probably associates it with bedtime, and was alarmed at the idea that it was already time to go back to bed!

Anyway, Cara was back to usual for this evening's bath and had a fine time. Her new bath toys are a collection of little squishy animals that each have a single little hole that can suck in and then spray out a stream of water. Of all the interesting animals floating in the water, her favorite was the clam. She gnawed on it with great intensity.

After her bath, it was time for the nighttime bottle. However as someone predicted earlier today, after her exciting party Cara was not interested in going to sleep. Evie is now making a second and, from the silence, seemingly successful attempt at putting baby down.

It's been a great first year. Looking back at the beginning, I am almost horrified at how difficult it was, not only because Cara was not used to a normal sleeping schedule but also because Ev and I had absolutely no frame of reference and would become freaked out at the least little abnormality in the baby's behavior. To me it just seems to have gotten easier and more enjoyable as it has gone along (George has certainly been a big part of it getting easier!). Cara is an amazing little girl, bright and cheerful and friendly and adorable and...well, you get the picture. I look forward to all the new developments that will occur in the coming years, and all the new adventures we'll face together.

I plan on adjusting the home page when I get the chance and putting all of her first year's worth of journal entries on a different page, and starting the new year on the home page. I'm not sure whether to continue counting up the week numbers, or start with a new Week One for year two. Probably I'll just keep counting up, because otherwise I'd technically be in week one of year two now!

The baby book that we own and have been putting pictures into ends at Cara's first birthday, but I see no reason for the journal to end there. Cara has to learn to run, talk, use the "potty," and an endless number of other things, and her childhood will continue for quite a few years yet. Someone said today that once your child gets to be about 11 or 12 the number of pictures you take of them decreases considerably, because they become self-aware and self-conscious and don't like you snapping photos. Maybe when that day comes the journal will stop. We'll see!

4/9/06 (Sunday)

Cara is a year and two days old and I haven't had a chance to say anything about it! I do have a few reflections to make about the year. One: I think that giving birth was pretty easy. I remember, afterward, saying that I'd never do it again, but I can't figure out why. Two: Giving birth was easy, but sitting down afterwards was not. Three: I really don't know anything about babies older than a year and two days, but I just can't imagine that there is another year of life that brings more change than the first one! It's incredible to think of all the development that has taken place in Cara in just these twelve months. I know that everybody says this, but it really does go awfully fast. She's not a baby anymore.

I know I'm going back a while, but I kind of had fun with Cara when she got up the other day at 4:30 in the morning. Of course, I'm not the one who got up with her; I dozed off and on until the alarm went off at 5:30. The fun part was how excited Cara was to be up with her parents in the morning. I think, and Steve agrees, that she knew that she was really supposed to be asleep and was thrilled to be witnessing a part of the day that was really just for grown-ups. It was sort of like being allowed to stay up late, but in reverse, I guess. Anyway, she had a great time. Steve's appreciation of this event may be somewhat skewed by the two hours of sleep that he lost.

Getting ready for the party was a lot of fun. We cleaned and decorated, of course, and I made cupcakes. Claire came up on Friday and helped. We frosted them with white icing, and then Claire cut stencils out of stiff plastic and I colored the icing and used the stencils to make colored flowers and turtles and duckies on the cupcakes. The flowers and the stencils were entirely my idea, but Claire totally created the animal shapes on her own and they were really adorable! The cupcakes, all together on a tray, looked really bright and colorful. I'm glad we got pictures.

The party itself was good, but it kind of reminded me how terrible I am at parties. I never know who to talk to or what to say! I like the organizing and the getting ready, but during a party I think I'd rather just be in the kitchen or something. Anyway, everybody came and I hope that people had a good time. It was great to see Steve's family and my family, and I was really glad to have some people from work over, too. My coworkers also provided the children at the party, except of course for PJ, since there aren't any other kids in the families. It was fun to see older kids play with Cara's toys, since they show us what she will be doing in a few months.

Cara got a lot of great gifts, including a lot of clothes (thank goodness!). As usual, the clothes are nicer than what I could probably have picked out myself. To give myself some credit, though, I did get to help select a few things. Cara now has an entire summer wardrobe; now we just need the summer! She also got quite a few good books. One has baby animals that pop out of the cover and then fit into circles on subsequent pages. At this point, Cara can remove but not replace them. She got a very sophisticated lift-the-flap book and a few books with actual paper pages.

Cara got several new toys, but she seems to currently be interested in two of them in particular. One is her wobble top. It has a button to press in the top that makes some colorful balls spin and the whole thing wobble, particularly if it's on hardwood. When we make it go, Cara crawls over and hits it, too. She is moderately successful. She also likes to pick it up and wave it, which makes me cringe, imagining it crashing to my floors. Her other favorite toy (this evening) is her new horse pull-toy. He is a little plush horse in wheels with a carrot at the end of his string. Cara really likes it if someone pulls him around her, but she also likes to operate him herself. She is very good now at walking while holding my fingers with one hand, so I try putting the carrot in the other. She doesn't pull her horse; she walks along, swinging him. She has also managed to take him up the stairs.

We decided to have an adventure today and take Cara to Jenkinson's Aquarium. She slept most of the way down, probably about half an hour (that's also the length of her nap yesterday). We parked a long way from the boardwalk, but Cara seemed to really love the ride along the strange sidewalks in her stroller. When we got to the boardwalk, it was full of parents with strollers and little kids! They were all waiting in line, and it turned out that there was an Easter egg hunt on the beach. It was an absolute mob scene; Cara and I got a good view of it during lunch, and it was just a sea of parents, almost shoulder-to-shoulder, staring down at their children. I think, in a few years, we may have our own, private hunt.

In the aquarium, we soon figured out that we didn't need the stroller. We parked it and went on on foot. Cara walked from exhibit to exhibit, exclaiming things loudly. She had a wonderful time; she loved looking at all of the people as much as at the fish. Sometimes I stood her up on the ledge outside the tanks so that she could look right up (or down) at the fish. It was then that something odd happened. Every time she was on the ledge, she put her foot, usually her left, up on the glass as if she thought she could walk up it. I can't imagine why. Cara saw sharks, penguins, frogs, lobsters, rays, turtles, parrots, starfish, anemones, and possibly (we're not sure whether she noticed) two tiny monkeys. She saw a whole bunch of other fish that I couldn't possibly pretend to list or identify. She crawled, walked, and was carried. She has started to walk up stairs holding my hands, and she climbed about eight or ten that way before crawling up the rest. She stuck her head through the hole in the seal painting that they have up as a photo opportunity. It was super.

Cara used up an incredible amount of energy and then spent the entire ride home wide awake, making loud speeches from her front-facing car seat in the back seat.

At one year old, Cara plays peek-a-boo with great enthusiasm. She likes to give people things, but she does expect to get them back. She can put balls into holes but not use her shape sorter. She can ride on her little car and push her walker. She can walk about ten steps in a row and climb stairs like a pro (a crawling pro). She can walk farther than ten steps, holding my fingers. Cara has six teeth. (We forgot to mention it, but number six poked through yesterday. My mother found it.) She seems to be saying the word "baby," and today she tried to repeat "balloon" both for me and for her daddy. She has not repeated her first word, "kitty," with much success. Cara hugs.

4/10/06 (Monday)

Today Cara awoke at 5 A.M. When I arrived at 7:15, she'd already had a bottle and a mess of Cheerios and was sitting happily watching her mommy and daddy get ready for the day. What a weekend the little girl had! I wonder how she reconciles our ordinary existence with the great weekend she's just experienced.

Today I aimed to make the day interesting, but first Cara had a two hour nap to make up for her early morning. After her scrambled egg and toast, we went to Johnson Park on this beautiful warm and clear afternoon. First I put the sunscreen on her and on me. When we arrived at the park we did the same old stuff, walked around and looked at the animals, swung on the swings, watched the other little boys and girls. And then we did something new: I took the stroller right to the banks of the old Raritan and took Cara out of the stroller. I sat on a convenient bench while she explored the immediate surroundings, using her newfound walking abilities. For her, this was a revelation! She could go anywhere she wanted if it wasn't too far away. She moved a few steps away and sat down, picking up rocks and dirt and watching me try to keep them out of her mouth. People came by and applauded the baby's sense of adventure. When it came time to leave, and I was putting her back into the stroller, she actually complained: she wanted to hang around some more so she could get her fill of exploring. So we hung around some more as Cara got dirtier and dirtier while having a great time.

Right now she's upstairs having a rare afternoon nap. Soon she'll be walking with confidence and then running around with all the other little kids. She's going to tire herself out even quicker!

I got home late, and Cara was asleep. Having settled myself, I went into her room. She was curled up in a corner of her crib, wearing a onesie and her socks, sound asleep, holding her sleep sack. Shelby and I sat down in the glider, but Cara awoke when I turned a page in my magazine. I was disappointed because she had been so cute, but it really was a good thing; I didn't want her to get too much sleep and be terrible to get down in the evening.

Instead of making dinner, I played with Cara for an hour and a half. Following my dad's lead, I took her outside. I let her explore the yard. We watched squirrels in the back, and in the front Cara visited the bushes. She walked an awful lot, holding my hands. She did some independent walking as well as some crawling. She pulled up some moss and scraped things out of the crack in the front walk, but she didn't get to eat things that she oughtn't. She really loves walking by holding my fingers. She went all the way up the driveway, across the street and back and then down to the house!

In the kitchen, we played with the little rubber ball that Cara got at the aquarium. It has an octopus in it; Steve picked it out. Cara chased it around the kitchen, talking to it. Shelby was also interested in the ball, and I believe that Cara tried a few times to throw it for her. Steve saw her doing something similar later.

I kept watch outside and, when Steve pulled up, we went out to greet him. Cara walked almost all the way up the driveway (holding my hands) to see her daddy.

After dinner we went upstairs to play with one of Cara's new toys, the twilight turtle. He is a plush turtle with a hard plastic shell that has tiny stars cut in it. When he is activated, colored lights shine from under his shell, projecting the stars onto the walls and ceiling. Cara, Shelby, Steve, and I were all in her room in the dark with the door closed; some of us had more fun than certain others. The twilight turtle is really neat and I'm sure it'll be fun for a long time.

4/11/06 (Tuesday)

Today George dropped Cara off at school and she hung out with Evie for a good long time. When they were home in the late afternoon, Evie took Cara to our nearby park in her red wagon and they had a grand time. Mommy and Cara went down the slides together and climbed all around, and Cara played with some dirt, and got to watch other kids playing on the playground while she was in her swing. On the way home, Cara met PJ! PJ shared a ride in the wagon, and then Cara got to go down PJ's very own little toy slide a few times. When Ev and Cara finally came home Cara met her Daddy, who was just a few minutes home from work.

Cara had had some cheese and other foods before her outing, but she seemed hungry when she got back, so we gave her some more to eat. She had a banana, some more corn, a little bit of chicken, and a few Cheerios. Her Mommy went to do some errands, and since she was gone, I gave Cara a little treat: one half of the very last cupcake left over from her birthday party! After all this food, Cara and her chair were covered in nasty bits of things, and eventually I filled up the bathroom sink with warm water and let her swish her hands around in it (as I've done in the past). I found a piece of corn in Cara's ear (!) and later Ev found a piece of corn when changing her diaper.

I've gotten ahead of myself a little here, though, because before her evening meal Cara did an incredible amount of walking. Evie thinks she was motivated by PJ, who is a skilled walker now. Of course Cara has been stepping around before tonight, but wow: tonight she just seemed to be prancing about everywhere. She actually nearly ran a little when in the living room (probably because she was in the middle of falling over and was trying to regain her balance). She walked from our bedroom to the office, and chased after the kitty on her feet, and got a big hug from Daddy when she walked over to me. (She seems to want to stand and walk up the stairs, though it's quite a stretch for her tiny legs, and she is trying to work on positioning herself at the top step for going down the stairs.) It's very cool to watch her doing this. I should really get out the darn camcorder, but somehow I can't make myself use the thing! I'm sure I'll be kicking myself for this later.

Also in the evening, I opened up a bubble kit that I think Em and Ron gave to us for Cara's birthday and blew some bubbles from a cool little wand. Cara looked at them, and tried a little to touch them once they landed on the carpet, but was not as interested as I would have expected. Maybe I should have been more excited--Cara bases her emotions somewhat on the perceived emotions of those around her, so that when I show that I am amused by something, it helps her to decide that it's amusing. Next time I'll have to giggle at the bubbles.

After all her playing outside and walking inside, it's not a big surprise that Cara got a bit crabby and tired as 8 pm rolled around (she was also, after her banana and cupcake, very thirsty--she sucked down a lot of water out of her straw cup). Her Mommy returned from a grocery expedition and then Cara had a very unhappy change into her pajamas from her Daddy, who doesn't let her wander off half-dressed like she wants to. Now no doubt she and her Mommy are both asleep in the glider.

4/12/06 (Wednesday)

More firsts for Cara today. It was her first Passover Seder. Ev had a half day (her Spring Break has begun) and she and Cara and George went to Middletown in the afternoon; I drove straight there from work to meet them for the meal. Cara tasted and very much enjoyed her first matzoh and gefilte fish. She even had a few drops of Manischewitz. She walked around her grandparents' house and chased the cat outside. She had napped earlier in the day but was tired and cranky as the meal wore on, so we ended up packing her in the car before dessert. I guess I didn't have a very long day with Cara, because I can't think what else to say. I was woken by her crying at around 3 in the morning, and sat up and started thinking about going to make her a bottle, but then she got quiet again and must have put herself back to sleep.

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