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Journal Key:

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

4/20/06 (Thursday)

Today, for Janet's birthday, we met Cara's Grandmom and Grandpop at the Adventure Aquarium in Camden. Among the four of us we were able to walk and carry Cara around the whole time, so we left the stroller at home. Cara got to see lots of fish and look at lots of people. In fact, while we ate, she spent most of her time twisted around in her high chair to watch everyone coming in and out of the cafe. She was quite happy. The aquarium is newly redone and is very cool.

Cara had a runny nose all day and was kind of sneezing, and I think she had a little fever this evening. We've given her some Tylenol and cooled her down, and we'll see how she is tomorrow.

We got extremely lucky this evening. It's Edison's Spring Clean-Up week, so people are throwing away large items, as I mentioned in my brief entry for Tuesday. Ron was out again, and he found us a house! It's a very nice one, with a door, shutters on the windows, and a fold-down table. I'll be cleaning it up tomorrow. He also threw in a little car. It's one of those red ones with a yellow roof; it has a seat and a hole in the floor for your feet to stick through to propel yourself. Now our house needs a garage!

I just wrote entries for five days, so I'm going to quit now. I have a cold, too, so I'm tuckered out!

4/21/06 (Friday)

The plan for today was for my dad to come and pick Cara up for an overnight at his house, but, for the first time in my life as a mother, I have a sick little chick! Cara was up at about 5:30 this morning, running a little fever. Steve and I clocked it at about 100.2. She was very very unhappy. I showered and ran out for more Tylenol, and then Steve showered. When he left, I was in the glider with Cara. Actually, we didn't know that he had gone at all; the time just passed away. We snoozed for a couple of hours, and Cara's fever went down. I kept hoping that she would be back to herself, but she wasn't.

I called the pediatrician and got to talk to Dr. Chen, the woman who first saw Cara a year ago. Cara and I were in the living room when she called back, and I barely heard the phone over the yelling. I had to go upstairs to be able to hear her. She says that this is the beginning of Cara's first cold; it will last longer, but by Monday she ought to be feeling better. She will be very needy and clingy all weekend, though. I've certainly experienced that! I didn't get to eat anything until about 12:30 today, and it was tough to get away to go to the bathroom.

All morning Cara was either asleep or crying. She calmed down a little bit, then, and was able to be awake without being in great distress. We watched a few of her movies, and she sat in my lap for some of them. I fed her some puffs; she let me put them into her mouth; she usually likes to take them herself, but not today. She didn't even walk anywhere until the afternoon.

I decided I had had enough of Cara's movies, so I compromised and put on the Muppet Show. Cara started to cry (unrelated), so I held her and she fell asleep on me as I lay on the floor. Two and a half hours later, we got up. Thank goodness it was a long DVD!

My mom came up for the evening, and as soon as she saw her grandma, Cara became more human. We all played together for a while. Cara played peek-a-boo with us from behind her rollaround dinosaur, which unfortunately is only about a foot tall. Then Steve and I went out for a couple of hours. I felt bad leaving her, but she was comfortable in her own house and I knew she'd be okay. Now we're back and she's asleep. We're going to head for bed ourselves and hope for the best.

4/22/06 (Saturday)

Cara woke up a bit early this morning (mostly due to my blowing my nose in the room next to hers), but seemed entirely back to normal, so much so that we considered making plans for the day. But we ended up just staying in and seeing nobody, and it was probably for the best. We are all, to varying degrees, a little sick, and Cara showed that she is still working through her cold by being rather crabby all day. She took a bit of a nap in the morning--but it was quickly spoiled by my sneezing loudly in the living room! Later in the afternoon, though, she went down for a good long one that lasted at least two hours. When she woke up from that she was unhappy, and I ended up having to rush out to the store to buy milk so that we could give her a bottle.

I guess the big milestone today is that Cara is now totally off of the formula, drinking nothing but milk in her bottles. From now on we will have to pay closer attention to the solid foods we give her. We are already giving her a varied and pretty full diet of solid foods off of our own plates. Probably because of her sickness she has not been eating much lately, but we kept at it today and she at least ate a good deal of Cheerios and puffs. Evie made chicken broth with carrots--Cara did not go for the carrots so much at first, but I think she did eventually eat a few. She also got the chance to wave some pasta around. Dropping things seemed to be high on Cara's agenda today.

She is also improving her ball-playing skills, and is progressing towards being able to toss and/or roll balls. She has been scaring the bejesus out of Shelby while learning to do this, and she and I had some good times today playing catch with her various ball-shaped toys.

We watched a lot of Muppet Show episodes today, and it was cool. Though now I'm sure Evelyn and I have the Muppet Show theme song in our head.

Tomorrow looks to be another cold, gloomy, wet day. Probably we will have to get ourselves outside at some point.

4/23/06 (Sunday)

That good baby slept well last night and got up around 8:20. She was a little cranky today, but I think it can all be attributed to boredom or hunger. We played with all of her toys today, and she walked around and announced things. One of her goals seems to be to carry heavy things while walking. All of her pull toys are fair game; she does well with her horse and rather poorly with her elephant, but she keeps trying.

I took Cara out with me to do some shopping, and I bought her a new toy. I figured that she needed something new to take with her outside the house, since she's pretty bored with both of her bugs, so I bought a little duck (with all kinds of bells and whistles) who has a ring on him that can be snapped around things. Unfortunately, I found when we arrived at the supermarket that I cannot open the ring. I still cannot open it. Steve can, and I have gotten him to leave it open for me.

When we came home we found a new toy kitchen set in the driveway, Ron's latest find. It has a microwave, an oven, lots of shelving, and a thing that I believe is a built-in seat for a baby doll. We are delighted. I spent over an hour outside cleaning the house, car, and kitchen. They look a lot better, and many spiders are finding new homes (I hope).

Steve has been playing his keyboard again, and Cara has been spending her time with him sitting in the bay window. She is delighted and is playing with her plastic Easter eggs and banging things. Steve is very pleased because Cara stood up today without hanging onto anything. He's been waiting for this development.

It's back to work tomorrow for me. Cara hasn't seen her Grandpa in a week! That ought to be exciting. I wish I could be here when he sees all of our new toys. I suppose that that would defeat the purpose, though.

4/24/06 (Monday)

After ten days away, I notice the obvious: there's a whole herd of outdoor toys at the side of the house; and Cara has grown a little in that the things that make her a person are more distinct. She's a more confident toddler, someone with clear opinions about things (pick me up? hurry up, pick me up!). She's getting over her cold. Her mommy tells me that she was up for forty-five minutes in the night being uncomfortable and disconsolate. But this morning she slept until 8:40 and after a normal morning (our walk to see the deer was fruitless--again!) she played for only about an hour and a half before she started rubbing her eyes and telling me she needed sleep.

So she slept for a few hours. In the afternoon we visited the Mall during which time she people-watched. She didn't sneeze or cough even once today.

This evening Cara had a pretty good dinner, consisting of stuff we were eating plus some Cheerios and honeydew melon. You can tell now when she's done eating, because she'll start throwing her food over the side.

We went out for a bit of a walk and tried to get Cara to walk with us, but she seemed mostly to want to go down people's driveways, not follow the sidewalk. However she had some time in her little outdoor toy house, and she seemed to very much enjoy it. She especially liked the shutters in the window, which she closed and opened very happily.

I don't know about Cara, but I very much enjoy giving her baths, because I love playing with her toys. Is that wrong? But she has all these little animals that squirt water. I love it. Cara prefers to just put them in her mouth, but I squirt them all over, and have assigned them all names, which are very silly (for instance: Doctor Shocktopus; Sergeant Crabs).

Cara is definitely a toddler now, but she doesn't seem to have any idea that things that are on the floor in front of her could obstruct her walking. She toddles on towards certain doom--but actually the great majority of the time, by some miracle, she does not fall over, even if she steps on lumpy toys or kicks a big thing out of the way. Cara has without seeming effort developed a way of falling on her bottom all the time, rather than forwards onto her face. This is good.

4/25/06 (Tuesday)

In yesterday's write-up I forgot to mention that I turned Cara over to Evie in sad shape: the area around her mouth and her hands had certain black marks on them caused by Cara's love of my black pen, which she wouldn't let go, and second, up in her room she tottered and fell at one moment so that her cheek hit the edge of the dresser. It caused her quite a shock; she had a big red mark on her cheek, along with a white mark where her cheek actually hit the furniture. This was upsetting for both of us!

Today, Cara awoke without any signs of yesterday's trauma. She had her one year pediatrician visit during which she got a couple of shots which was also upsetting but the good news is that she's wonderfully healthy. She remains in the 95th percentile for height (30 1/2 in.) and the 75th percentile for weight (22 lbs. 12 oz).

This morning Cara slept until 9 A.M.! We had an abbreviated walk to see the deer and then it was Cara in the car to see Doctor Wiener. We broke our iron rule of a nap two hours after waking. Instead, I put her in for her nap at 11:45. We'll see how long it lasts.

As far as I know, Cara had a nice nap. When I got home, she and my dad were outside and Cara was in her little toy house. She enjoys walking around in it (I took her out again later), looking out the windows and putting things on the table. The only problem is that there's a sill at the bottom of the door frame, and it keeps tripping her. I can see why it's there, though; it keeps the house from falling apart. Cara picked up two rocks from our shrubbery and carried them to her house. On the table was a sort of pan from her toy kitchen. She put the rocks into it.

Unfortunately, Cara spent the rest of the afternoon and evening being a little bit cranky and needy, just not her usual happy self. It reminds me of a few weeks ago, when, at school, a boy walked up to me and asked, "Mrs. Genzano, are you a mother? Can you feel if I have a fever?" The miracle is, a year ago I would not have been able to; this evening, though, I felt Cara and was pretty sure that she did. I checked her temperature and it was, indeed, somewhat elevated in response to her shots. It was only 99.9, so I'm not worried. By the way, Mark, at school, did feel warm. He confirmed that he had also asked the school nurse to feel his forehead in the hallway and she had said that he had a fever. Apparently he was asking all the women he could find, just for good measure.

I don't know that we've mentioned one of Cara's most heartfelt desires. After her bath, I take her to her bedroom to dry and diaper her. Steve drains the tub and tidies things up in the bathroom. In the space of time between her bath and bed, which is about fifteen minutes at the outside, Cara has one mission that she seems to believe very strongly in. She gets away from us in the bedroom and heads back for the tub. I don't think she wants to get back into it, though that is possible, but what she really wants is the bath mat, which is drying on the side of the tub. She likes to lean over and suck on it, getting as much of herself wet again as possible, which she probably doesn't notice. Stopping her may eventually get tedious, and we may someday find a better place to hang the mat. Right now, catching her is pretty funny.

4/26/06 (Wednesday)

This morning George handed Cara over to my parents, who took pictures of her and took her to the park. Then my wife got home and took Cara to the park. I got home--somehow we did not manage to get to the park. Evie and I both noticed that Cara was drooling rather copiously today--are more teeth on the way??

Tonight was PJ night, and he came over to our house. As usual, the kids played separately, but they did have some interactions, usually involving toy conflicts (PJ is banging two balls together, but Cara wants at least one, so she keeps lightly slapping his shoulder). Now that they can both walk it's more interesting, but there were few collisions. Cara seems happier with, and more trusting of, PJ than vice versa. Perhaps I'm imagining things or perhaps PJ in his daycare experiences is already learning that other kids are not always nice.

Cara is doing well. She did not do much toddling when I was first with her, but she toddled all over while PJ was there, and she seems over her cold, though she may have been a tad cranky today anyway (teething??). Tomorrow is a big day for poor Buster, who will finally get her cast off! This means a new family dynamic is about to be created. We are not sure how the cats will act with each other once they both have full range of the house again, and we don't know what Cara will do now that she will have access to the game room--and two cats!--again.

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