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Journal Key:

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

5/4/06 (Thursday)

Cara gave us a fun time last night, waking up some time past midnight and becoming downright hysterical. She had wet herself and even after having a bottle was very, very upset. Of course, this was the moment when we realized we were out of baby Tylenol! Not really, there was one dosage left, but even after taking that she seemed inconsolable. So we took her down into the living room and put on her zebra DVD. Of course, within 5 minutes she was laughing and walking around happily. She loved every scene in the movie. We stopped it a bit short to put her back to bed; she screamed for fifteen minutes and then went to sleep. I guess since there was apparently nothing really wrong with her, we should have been mad, but I think we were just very relieved when the movie perked her up.

Anyway, she was perfectly normal today and in the evening we took Cara out to see a carnival which has set up shop right across Route 1. She got to see lots of cute rides, all of which have height restrictions, most of which are several inches (or feet) out of her class. However there was one ride with flying elephants (perfectly tame) which we think we can take her on this weekend.

Here's hoping Cara goes back to sleeping through the night tonight! She's been very good about it for a long time. I've been thinking lately that there are lots of infant habits that I think some babies have trouble growing out of which Cara just seems to naturally grow out of. For instance, her popper: I've heard of some children really being attached to their pacifiers, and Cara used to really like hers, but she just doesn't care about it anymore. We still have to work on the bottle, but she has been successful at sleeping and eating people food and getting away from formula and learning to walk.

5/5/06 (Friday)

This must be brief, as we are beginning our bedtime routine. In fact, routine may be the theme of this message.

We have established a regular routine for Fridays now that the weather is fine and Cara is walking. We have a snack and a trip to the playground, where we wear ourselves out going up, down and through things. Then we return home to spend some time with great-grandma Emily, who loves to feed Cara her supper. After supper we have a video, bath and bedtime.

This week Cara is joyfully re-united with the poor trolls, who will surely soon show evidence of being truly loved by a child. They have been in the bath with her again, and remain firmly in her grip. She has eaten a lot of yogurt, some eggs and her first (I think) blackberries, which were good, but messy. We did get a photo.

In past baths I have always wimped out, but tonight I washed her hair; I don't think she even noticed.

5/6/06 (Saturday)

Cara woke up smiling today. She slept the whole night through, and when I went downstairs in the morning I found her sitting up and smiling at me. She was sound asleep last night before 9; after her bedtime bottle I laid her in the crib and she cried for barely two minutes before she conked out completely. The ice cream truck drove past a few minutes later, blaring music, and she uttered not a peep.

I think she has grown accustomed to her visits here. I also think Grandpapa George's familiar presence contributes greatly to her comfort level away from home.

Now that I have leisure, a few details from yesterday. I hadn't realized Cara was into funny faces until I watched her watch George apply sunscreen. Then I tried mugging at her, and she seemed to think it was the height of wit.

Cara definitely enjoys playmates. When we first went to the playground no other children were there. She wandered over to the soccer field and made friends with the coach while he waited for his players to show up. Then George returned from his run - oh joy, oh rapture! So we started home with him. Before we had gone too far, we heard the voices of other children; Cara turned to look in their direction, leaned that way, and parted from Grandpa to return to the playground. We found a 4-year-old girl who wanted a playmate and kept encouraging her to do more, so we really wore ourselves out! I noticed that, when the girl's mother said her name, Cara turned to look at her.

On the way home I gave my tired little girl one more turn in the baby swings. As the swing slowed down, she extended her index finger towards me, and we made a game of getting it into my mouth each time she swung forward.

A growth spurt may be in the offing. She had a good appetite yesterday, consumed some egg and toast this morning after her bottle, and then, I hear, had more to eat when she got home.

Yes, indeed, Cara had a bowl of yogurt and some Cheerios before we went out this morning. She also had some fruit snacks; it's a toddler food I found. If you've ever gotten astronaut ice cream or anything like that in a museum, it's basically the same thing. It's tiny fragments of dried-out banana and strawberry, so Cara looked like she'd killed someone and was still all bloody.

We returned our video and on the way home got distracted. We found a garage sale and, because I saw a high chair, I pulled over. I wound up buying Cara a high chair for her grandparents' house and a little activity table that looked okay.

Around eleven Jim and Janet showed up with Cara's great-grandparents! Cara had a great time playing in the living room with six adults watching her every move. It turns out that her activity table is great; it has music and colors (I know, they all do), and it also has this screen in the middle that moves if you push the gear shift knob by the steering wheel. It can go backward or forward through the alphabet, and it has a different picture for each letter. It will also tell what color the picture is or make a noise related to it. For I there's ice cream. It's pink ice cream. There's a licking noise.

Cara showed everyone her toys and sometimes gave them to us and sometimes appeared to be offering but really faked us out. She carried heavy objects around and occasionally by accident pulled one of her pull-toys instead of carrying it. She and her great-grandpa really enjoyed Cara's singing Easter bunny, which we got from my Aunt Theresa and Uncle John. Eventually the rest of us made them turn it off.

Possibly the funniest thing Cara did was to dance for us whenever her table played its "I'm changing pictures now" music. She waggled her little tushie, and we all laughed. She quickly discovered that this was a hit, so she continued. She got bored, though, as soon as her grandpa got his video camera out. I think he got some good footage, but there was no dancing.

In the late afternoon, when company had gone home, the three of us took a nap, Cara's almost unprecedented second nap of the day. After dinner, Steve picked up the banana from the floor while I put Cara's jacket on her. We went out to the carnival and I got to take Cara on the flying elephant! Steve stayed behind to take pictures, and he got some very good ones. Cara had fun before we took off, jiggling a handle behind the elephant's head. I held her as we flew into the air and went around and around. Cara spent the entire ride holding onto the side of the seat, looking backward! I had been a little bit afraid that she would panic, but she did no such thing. She was very calm and unexcited, actually. I guess she's too little to know how cool it is to be in a flying elephant. She was the most excited afterwards, when we got back to her daddy.

5/7/06 (Sunday)

Cara got to see her great-grandparents again today. We had another nice day together, Cara displaying her walking prowess for her Uncle Jim as well, and also chasing poor Rusty all about my parents' house. She would usually scream with delight when she came near, so Rusty was always warned in time--he spent some time hiding in corners or behind people. We had anticipated this would happen with the cats, but it was quite funny (sorry Rusty) to see the dog cowering away from her.

Cara still makes her "bee-yah bee-yah" noise (which I may have written differently the last time I mentioned it), but now has added a sort of "duppa duppa duppa" to her repertoire, and when she combines them it's easy to imagine that she's trying to imitate Fred Flinstone and say "Yabba dabba doo!" She wore her pretty dress today and was a cutie (as usual). She ate some of our lunch and in the evening very much enjoyed some mozzarella sticks that we gave her.

PJ paid us a surprise visit tonight! So they wandered around the living room a little, and Cara (who was probably getting tired at this point) got very upset to see PJ playing with her car toy! Even after PJ left she seemed very emotionally fragile, as she almost became hysterical when I tried to deny her a mozzarella stick. So we got her up to the tub, and for a change Evie did the washing (I was out on the injured list with a small cut to one finger). Now Cara seems to be safely asleep for the evening. She has had an exciting day and was good for her great-grandparents.

There are all kinds of little things that Cara does every day that seem to signal that she is starting to better understand the world around her and the way things work. She is catching on to cause and effect relationships. She is pressing buttons more than she used to. She is throwing objects with more dependability (unfortunately!). She is waving for people. I think that tonight she helped me take off her onesie. And there are other things that I can't think of right now.

5/8/06 (Monday)

This morning Cara slept through a power outage that lasted from 7:08 to 8:41 A.M. She slept all the way to 9 A.M. today. The day developed cool and dreary but in the afternoon Cara and I went to Johnson Park hoping for lots of little kids to run around with. Instead we were about the only ones there. But Cara amused herself for quite a while working on the great variety of tiny sticks and stones in the park. We swung on the swings for a long time and then we went for a great ride in the stroller.

First we went up to the emu, donkey and deer section and there, on our side of the wire, we saw five tiny green-tinged geese. These newly-hatched cuties were protected by their mother who hissed at us until we went away. In the goat enclosure, I saw at least ten newborn babies. Two more goats will give birth sometime this week, as well. Babies everywhere! Then we went on the main path and walked by the familiar pond, the one with the fountain in the middle. There, on our side, right next to us, we saw a mommy duck and her thirteen(!) baby ducklings, swimming along beside her, looking cute and curious, downy and ducking their heads in the murky water. Even Cara exclaimed at this!

When I got home, Cara and her grandpa were playing outside. Cara was in her car! It's one of those red cars with a yellow roof; there's a seat but no floor, so your feet are on the ground and that's how you move it. Cara had a great time opening and shutting the door and "driving" with the steering wheel. We've had it for a few weeks, but I hadn't taken the trouble to straighten out the wheels, since I figured Cara was too young. I'm glad my dad tried it! Cara can't really go forward by herself, but she did back up a little. She really enjoyed it anyway.

We did groceries and Cara played peek-a-boo with the young man ringing us up. I'm sure she couldn't imagine why he wouldn't just stop and play with her!

After her bath, I put Cara into a laundry basket. She stood up and bounced while I pushed her, and she knew to turn around when we got to the end of the hallway. Poor Shelby was up there, and we chased her. I felt a little bit like I was running one of those safari tour buses. Cara managed to corner the cat in the closet, but then the bus pulled away. I turned the whole outfit over to Steve, who took Cara out. He can't stop playing with her, either, because very soon they came back down the hall, Cara pushing her basket. On the next trip, Steve decided that Cara could give a few friends a ride. She pushed around her hippo, penguin, and rabbit in her basket. They had a great time.

5/9/06 (Tuesday)

Cara is upstairs in her crib at 3 P.M., crying her eyes out. She's angry for reasons I cannot fathom. She's clean, her diaper is dry, I just fed her a hearty yogurt snack, and we've just come back from an hour in Johnson Park. Perhaps she wants to be back at the park--but her crying started at the park. She's been kvetchy all afternoon. At 2:45, she rubbed her eyes and acted tired, so I took her shoes off and put her into the crib. Just wait until mommy comes home and finds her bawling child!

I came home at 3:25 and found my child bawling, as predicted. I took her out of her crib, changed her, and put on the Muppet Show. I kept it on all afternoon, as Cara played, watched, snuggled, and cried (not too much). I think she was very tired; sometimes she rested her little head on me as if she were going to sleep. Of course, she never quite did.

Cara can get her circles into her shape sorter! She was sticking them in reliably, and she gave the other shapes a shot, too. Those didn't work, so she took off the lid and put them in. A little later, Cara was amusing herself in her room for a few minutes. When I looked in, she had turned her sorter barrel over and left four shapes on top of it. She's starting to stack things! I see this as a herald of block castles to come.

She had a good dinner (I'm so happy when she likes my cooking!) and a good evening with Daddy. Somewhere along the line, Cara picked up two toys. They came with the highchair I bought last weekend, but Cara wouldn't let go of them on Sunday and we couldn't leave them with the chair, at her grandma's house. I read her a book before her bath, and she wasn't turning the pages. I realized after a moment or two that it was because her hands were full.

While we ran her bath, Steve lined up her toys on the edge of the tub. Cara could barely push them in, with her toys in her hands. Getting her undressed for her bath was a challenge. I was deeply concerned about one toy, a spinning clear globe with beads inside that rattle. If this went into the bath, it would be very difficult to get the water back out. I got it away from her for a few minutes, but she found it again, wandering about naked, crying, with her giant parrot-head toy in her other hand. She took them both into the bath.

After the bath, Cara cried as I held her globe, still in her hand, over the tub to drain. I read her Goodnight Moon twice--one advantage to her being very tired and having her hands full is that she'll sit still for lots of books!--and she got sleepy. She fell asleep on me, halfway through her bottle, like she used to do when she was a baby. It was nice. I waited until she dropped her toys and then put her in her crib.

5/10/06 (Wednesday)

Today, when I got home, my dad told me that Cara had had a runny nose and been congested all day. I saw that she was breathing through her mouth, and I agreed with him that another cold may be in the offing. However, when I talked to Em, she suggested that it may just be a symptom of teething. We agree that that's a little bit odd and that it really doesn't make much difference anyway. PJ is in the same state as Cara, so we canceled their playdate for the week. If we get lucky, we'll see each other anyway.

Cara and I went to the farmer's market and got lots of fruit. I got a watermelon and a honeydew because I know that Cara likes them. I thought I'd get her some plums, but they were rock-hard. I bought them for myself, because that's exactly how I like them. I got Cara some peaches. I also got a kiwi fruit, just to try out on her. I also got strawberries. I picked up two avocados, because Cara eats lots of my guacamole when we're out, so I don't see why she wouldn't like it homemade.

Cara had some watermelon while we waited for her daddy to get home. I learned some good parenting advice: never invite a child to hug you when it has watermelon in its hand. It's also all over my floors, which are now sticky. Her dinner was largely comprised of watermelon and strawberries. Besides those, we were mainly successful in feeding her croutons. She finished up quite sticky and her clothes finished up quite red.

The other thing we did while we waited for Steve, by the way, was to play in the bay window. Cara stood by the keyboard until I picked her up, and she stayed there for at least twenty minutes at a stretch. This makes Shelby very unhappy, because she likes to perch up there and she cannot, when Cara is up there, no matter how eagerly she is invited. Cara likes to walk around and look out the windows, bang on things, and play with her toys. She also liked to crouch and lean over and play with the keyboard upside-down. I spent this time anxiously standing on whichever side she walked to, ready to catch her when she fell. She never fell. This is a pastime which evolved from Cara's time playing music with her daddy. She was ambitious and climbed up, but now it's become a habit. Steve seems relaxed, but it makes me very nervous. However, it makes Cara very happy.

I voted for a lazy evening, and so we put on the Muppet Show. Cara walked around and played for most of the time while it was on, but I think she laughed at Rolf and she certainly laughed out loud the first time Fozzie appeared.

Not much else went on today. I got three roll-a-rounds and two shape sorter blocks out of her dinosaur before putting her to bed.

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