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Journal Key:

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

8/3/06 (Thursday)

This morning Cara and I waited until a little bit after nine and then went out to the bank. I sat Cara in the stroller and deposited my checks, and then, while I was dealing with the many rolls of coins that I have to deal with every year or so, Cara politely stood up to see what was going on. I held her up and continued with my business, and then, when I was free to chase her, I let her run around a bit. She visited several bank employees, all of whom seemed happy to see her. She wasn't rambunctious at all, and she didn't find any potted plants to unearth this time. From the bank we headed to Target, where we tried to exchange the two cracked bins that came with Cara's storage set. We had no luck, but Cara had a great time exploring the store. I felt like I owed her some free time outside the house, after she's been so cooped up the past couple of days. Later, of course, I called the number on the assembly instructions for the storage set, and it was astonishingly easy to have replacement bins sent out!

We read the First Thousand Words an awful lot today. Cara and I have a fundamental disagreement about the book. I like to look at the cover, which has a nice farmyard picture on it. It's the best place in the book for Cara to see a cow, for instance, and I am very concerned that Cara not fall behind on her cow-recognizing skills. Cara, however, wants to flip right past the cover and get into the meat of the book. Our only real development for the day, I think, is that Cara definitely knows what a clock looks like. She found the one in the picture of the kitchen, and then, unprompted, pointed out the little one in the margin, which I had never shown her. She can also find real clocks, which I think is good.

One of Cara's books ends with the ice cream man coming, and I decided we needed ice cream. In the freezer we have a slice of ice cream cake, and we found it easily. I unwrapped it while Cara closed the freezer door. We sat on the floor of the kitchen and fairly neatly and with great enthusiasm shared the bottom half of that cake, which was the chocolate part. Cara has certainly had ice cream before, but maybe she's never had chocolate ice cream! I find vanilla kind of boring, too. The cake is Steve's, so we wrapped it back up neatly and put it away; he'll never notice a thing.

Julianna gave Cara a wonderful cloth book that's full of animals and manipulatives, and that amused Cara through all of her car rides. She also gave her a few tops and a cute little dress that she said was for running through the sprinkler. In the afternoon, we put on our dress and headed over. Cara looked adorable in her dress, though it was somewhat impractical; she kept stepping on the hem. She had fun in the sprinkler, but she also spent a good deal of her time picking up bits of acorns. Everyone agreed that this was quite productive. I brought out Cara's watering can, which came in her beach set. I filled it for her a few times, and she played with it but she never really caught on to the purpose or noticed where the water was supposed to come out.

After dinner Daddy gave Cara a cookie, which he later blamed for her level of energy at bedtime. She enjoyed her cookie and looked for another, but Daddy wisely broke hers up so that she then had several. Cara was awfully cuddly with me this evening, going so far as to rest her little head on me while lying in my arms. When I put her in her crib and tried to put her pajamas on, she wouldn't let me. She was too busy hugging her blanket, cat, dog, and polar bear all at once, even trying to stand up with them. Being a responsible mother and good partner, I laughed at her until Steve showed up and then left him with all the work.

8/4/06 (Friday)

I really hate to write a non-cheerful journal entry, but I have to admit that today was not a particularly cheerful day for me and Cara. Perhaps I'm just worn out through being sick, but it was a tough day. I think that in the morning Cara was just tired, for whatever reason. She got an unsightly paper cut on her chin in a dispute with me about whether she was going to take the bookmark out of my book, and then we went downstairs and she managed to knock over one of her little chairs while climbing into it and fall. She was really fine, in both instances, but she was very upset.

We went out to the gym, where Cara played happily. On the way home I made a detour to the ten-minute oil change place, where, to my dismay, the oil change only took ten minutes. I hadn't been looking forward to empty time at home with nothing to do! Cara had a good time running around at the garage, though. She made friends with several men and hit many chairs. She carried around a bottle of motor oil but was not permitted to sample it. She investigated the bathroom, which, to my surprise, was not that scary, and she did not put her little people into the toilet. The daddy almost wound up in the trash can, but she decided that carrying the trash around was a much more fun idea. It didn't get far. The experience as a whole was perfectly pleasant.

We hung around the house for a while and then I gave Cara lunch. She ate some pretzels and grapes while she waited and then had half of a grilled cheese sandwich. I put her down for her nap, at which event she protested for about thirty seconds. She was asleep for three hours!

When Cara woke up she got to help me to put away the laundry. This was of course exciting and fun, and she sort of helped me push the basket of her clothes to her room. She also got buried in clean laundry and helped put towels in the basket. We went and read until Daddy got home. I have reached my limit on the First Thousand Words book, and I really worry about Cara playing with Oh, What a Busy Day!, because I don't want it damaged and it's delicate. I want to see whether I can find more books like that, that have big, busy illustrations. I'll have to look around.

When Steve got home we went out to the mall for an evening on the town. Cara got to run around a lot, which I hope was fun for her. We had dinner at Friendly's. Cara worked very, very hard to eat some mozzarella sticks. They are quite stretchy, you know. Each one took her quite a while. We looked at the carousel and rode on the little train. We also spent a few minutes in the Playmobil shop, where Steve chased Cara, Cara grabbed as many little people and animals as she could at one time, and I quietly purchased a few new toys. It was okay, because they were on sale! I got a grandma, a grandpa, a rocking chair, a cat, a man, a woman and horse, and a cow. The horse can be ridden. The cow is not meant to be. I am very anxious that Cara should learn about horses and cows. Unfortunately, Cara expressed her excitement, both positive and negative, through shrieking. This made our trip a little bit less fun than it might otherwise have been.

At home, we gave Cara some fruit. She ate some cantaloupe, but then she wanted to play in her high chair. She started slurping (it actually sounded kind of like spitting, but I don't want to think about that) at one of the small compartments on the tray, which turned out to have a little bit of water in it. We gave her her water to drink, but she just turned it over very deliberately and shook it to try to get more water into that compartment. Clever child! Actually, speaking of the high chair, Cara and I have been having an ongoing debate lately about whether I should put her in or she should climb in. Because she can't get more than two inches off the floor by standing on the bar, I've won every time. It is nice to see some enthusiasm, though.

Finally Cara had her bath, accompanied by several new little friends including the cat but not the horse or cow, and she has been trundled off to bed by her wonderful daddy.

8/5/06 (Saturday)

Today Cara went out for a few errands in the morning. First Mommy took her out for a quick trip to the grocery store, then I took her out for a quick trip to the library (where she managed not to scream too much), and then when I returned her Grandpa Jim was at the house! Very soon Grandpa and I went down into the basement to do some manly work, and Cara was left to play in her play room (the ex-dining room). She occasionally peeked under the gate at us--we waved. Eventually she was once again whisked away for more errands (one of which was to buy Cara some new picture books--she got to converse with a bunch of slightly older boys who were examining Thomas the Tank Engine toys at the book store), and when she returned we all sat down to lunch. Grandpa Jim got to see Cara's "meat sticks" for the first time. This is one of her grosser little girl foods--he was suitably horrified, but Cara didn't know any better and greedily ate the whole jar. Ironically they were turkey flavored, the same meat which Grandpa Jim and I were enjoying in our sandwiches. Cara did not stop with the meat sticks and also enjoyed some of the cheese quesadilla she had refused to eat the night before at Friendly's (she had a very light breakfast this morning).

After lunch it was time for her nap, and work continued in the basement. Cara had a nice full nap and then was back playing around. In the afternoon, PJ and Ron stopped by! PJ was officially dropped off for a very short test babysit. PJ and Cara played around in the play room for about an hour or so. PJ was very good, but Cara had some sharing issues. Some of the time she was good and quietly looked at her books while PJ was playing with her Mommy, but other times she was very upset and delicate and wanted to sit in everyone's lap. We look forward to more babysitting events in the future, so Cara can get used to this sort of thing!

In the evening we returned PJ to his house and hung out there for a while, running about and so on. Another thing we hope Cara will learn from PJ is his trick of successfully descending the stairs without help. She is working on it. We had some pizza and then it was time to go home, eventually to the bath tub and the crib.

Cara spilled a lot of water out of the tub tonight. She seems to have figured out that most of her bath toys spray water out of themselves, and she seems to want to use this feature to bail out the tub. She continues in her desire to play in Ron and Em's dog's water bowl and food bowl. She likes to point at pictures in books. She very much likes her Playmobil people and seems to want to make them ride the Playmobil horse, which is nice. She very much likes to shake her head lately, and it's possible that she may know that that means "no."

Tomorrow Cara may get to see a horse race!

8/6/06 (Sunday)

Our little girl woke us in the middle of the night quite unhappy. Instead of putting her in front of the TV as we have sometimes done in the past, we gave her a little time with us and then popped her back in the crib. As usual, what followed was probably nearly an hour of wailing before the poor kid tired herself out and finally fell back to sleep. This of course kept us up as well, though perhaps not as much as her. Instead of sleeping late after this performance, Cara awoke around 7:30 or so.

It appears she is once again sick. She had a runny nose today which required many tissues and wipings, which Cara very quickly tired of. Evie took her out for a bit of outside play time in the morning, and in the afternoon we all visited Home Depot and Cara was smiled at and waved to by various people, who presumably did not notice the snot. She also had a little bit of a chance to run around. Mostly though it has been an inside day. Cara was not too miserable, just runny at the nose, so I had a nice time playing with her, and we also had an excuse for some TV viewing. In the morning we stuck on the Disney channel for quite a while, it being the only station which seemed to be playing cartoons (at least cartoons where the characters spoke English instead of Spanish). We saw a computer-generated Mickey Mouse and his friends solve problems, and then a trio of strangely-garbed people called the Doodlebops learned lessons about sharing and such.

Cara also looked at many books. The Itsy Bitsy Spider book she borrowed from PJ has become somewhat of a favorite. I'm pretty sure Cara tries to say "itsy bitsy," but with her it comes out "bishee bishee," or something like that. She sits in our laps quite often now, which is very nice. There was a lot of time spent with the Noah's Ark and the Playmobil house. The Playmobil cow and horse traveled many places with her today, including into her bath (which, I've decided, is not good, because water gets into the plastic molds but is very hard to get out again).

I decided at one point that what Cara really wanted was to watch Star Trek. I chose a particularly good episode, "The Trouble With Tribbles," but my instincts were all wrong--Cara quickly lost interest, as to her any scene excepting perhaps the fist fight and the part where a giant load of tribbles tumbles onto Captain Kirk's head is pretty much just a bunch of smartly dressed guys saying things she doesn't understand. Later on she did much better with Finding Nemo, because it has such pretty fishes. She even walked up to the TV screen several times to try to touch them.

For dinner Cara had another jar of meat sticks (mmm!) and a few other things, including some of the blander portions of Indian food that Mommy and Daddy were eating.

We of course are hoping for a good night tonight, but I don't expect that we'll make it through without some disturbance. Cara missed her horse race today, but maybe some other day we can try it. In a sense this cold came at a good time, because I figure by the time we want to take her down to Baltimore in a little over a week from now, she should be over this and as healthy as ever.

8/7/06 (Monday)

When Cara wakes in the night, she screams for an hour. I decided before I went to bed that it would be more pleasant to watch the Muppets for an hour than to hear screaming for that duration, so that was my plan. I couldn't remember what would happen after our television session, but I was hoping she would go nicely to sleep. Well, she woke around one or two, I think, and we watched TV happily together. Cara had her Playmobil horse and cow with her, and she very companionably shared them with me, clearly wanting me to be very happy. At the end she found her shoes on the floor and suggested that we put them on and head out to play, but instead I put her back down. She cried for a few minutes, but she never really hit full volume and it all worked out well.

Of course, the creature was up early again today. We really had a very relaxing, pleasant time, though. We skipped the gym, because I couldn't leave her runny nose in the Kids Klub. I put the TV on again for a while and we took it pretty easy. Mainly, that is, I took it pretty easy. Cara spent much of her time working hard. Her car is the only real toy left on the kitchen level, and for the past few days Cara has been with great difficulty and concentration pushing it back and forth. She just keeps going and going! She pushes it backwards and has become fairly expert at getting through doors and around chairs. I got to see my favorite episode of Sesame Street.

In the morning we went out for a while and helped Julianna with some yard work. Cara splashed in puddles, and I tried to show her how to float leaves as boats. That is a concept that will not be interesting, I think, for at least a year. Bad news: Cara now knows that she can get off Julianna's porch by herself on the back yard side! We had felt pretty secure leaving her on the porch, because she was stuck. Now, though, I went back to look and saw her toddling off down the path, heading for the cacti. The step down on the driveway side is about the same, but I'd bet that Cara still thinks she can't do it. She has less motivation.

We stopped at the mall for a little while, and Cara ran all over the food court. It was like those Family Circus (Circle?) comics with the little dotted line for Billy; she just wove through everything, going up and down and around. On our way out we ran into a woman I work with who was out with her twin sons, just four months old! They were adorable. Cara was also cute, but she was on the go. In an interesting (I suppose) development, Cara has been choosing to bring her Noah's Ark birds with her on outings lately, rather than the giraffes. I'm not sure what political machinations go on behind the scenes. I do know that she dropped her birds in the library, and I put her down to get them. It took great concentration, but she did it and then asked to be picked back up. That was perfect.

Cara is working very, very hard right now on getting down stairs. I don't remember being so aware of her efforts in any other stage of her development. She is clearly thinking about it a lot, and we spend a lot of time on the stairs, trying. She knows, I think, that PJ goes down on his tushie. She wants to do this, but she wants to hold the railing at the same time. This, of course, is not possible. When she does sit down, her feet get tangled under her. She just doesn't quite have the whole thing coordinated, but she does get down a step or two, here and there. It's coming, though.

Cara let me make dinner tonight; I let her play with the pots and pans. She had a good dinner of chicken, onion, and noodle, and then we gave her some blueberries. Then we gave her some blueberries. Then we gave her some blueberries. Yeah. After dinner she had fun getting her daddy to read to her. He read a lot of books. I think he's right that she says "bishee bishee" to indicate the Itsy-Bitsy Spider. We did some dancing and some playing and, better late than never, the little girl was off to bed.

8/8/06 (Tuesday)

Cara's poor Daddy was up with her in the night. It's my turn again now! This morning I made Cara some very nice scrambled eggs, but she spotted the jars of meat sticks on the counter and would accept nothing else! Don't worry, scrambled eggs reheat just fine in the microwave, so we're set up for tomorrow. Cara had a nice breakfast of meat sticks and blueberries. We played all morning, reading lots of books and running around outside, and then Aunt Claire came! I went off to an appointment with my doctor, and Cara got to play with her aunt. They read lots of books and ran around, and they had a snack. Eventually Claire decided that the little girl was tired, because she stopped fighting so hard about getting her nose wiped. Claire was clearly right, because Cara had a nice, long nap.

It hasn't really been a very exciting day. Cara and I did more reading and playing, and then we had to run to the store to pick up something easy for dinner. Cara didn't want to come back into the house! She insisted, so we stayed out for an extra half hour and played out back. Ooh, there was one very exciting thing today. In the morning, Cara was playing with her wagon outside. She likes to mess with the straps. Today, for the first time, she climbed into the wagon! I gave her a ride around the block, which I admit neither of us really enjoyed. I was tired, and she wanted to run around, so it was the opposite of what we needed. She tried again later to climb in, but the wagon was parked at a different angle.

After dinner we went out to play with Julianna. She had her sprinkler set up in the middle of her front lawn, and Cara got wet going up the front walk. When she noticed the water, she went right off the path and walked directly up to the sprinkler to investigate! She ran all over and got pretty wet. She inspected all of the outdoor lights that line the driveway, she picked some flowers, and she got on and off the porch. Julianna gave her an adorable board book about a duckling. It has a plush duckling face in it, and Cara of course is very happy to get his beak into her mouth. She is also happy to get him into the sprinkler. The funniest part was when she would put his beak in her mouth, let go of the book with her hands, and walk away, usually towards the water. We really don't think she could see much, but she was perfectly happy to walk around like that. It was a nice evening.

8/9/06 (Wednesday)

Cara tricked us and slept through the night! In the morning she and I had a good time playing outside. She helped me water my garden, which is something she is enthusiastic about. She holds the hose and waves it around in the direction of the plants in what I think is a very controlled manner, for a sixteen-month-old. She barely gets any on her shoes, and she doesn't try to run around with it. I forgot to mention Cara's month-birthday on Monday. Sorry, Cara. I tried to get her to play ball with me outside, but she would have nothing to do with it. I had a really good game where I could kick the ball up the hill and it would sort of come back down, but nobody would help me. I tricked Cara by letting her think she was running away when really I just stepped around the other side of the fence and caught her.

I said that yesterday was uneventful, but I forgot one thing. We were playing out back, and Cara went over to her slide. Usually she tried to head up the slide, but this time she went around to the other side and got up the way you're supposed to, which I've shown her and coaxed her to do many times. She'd never done it, unprompted, before. Then she sat down and, with minimal hesitation, slid down her slide! I was astonished. I wonder whether there was a full moon.

Steve stayed home today and Grandpa Jim came up to work on the basement. I was at a meeting at school in the morning, and when I got home Cara was down for her nap. It was earlier than I had been putting her down, and then I missed my nap, which made me very cranky later. Cara, however, was tired. When she got up I tried to give her lunch, but she wasn't really hungry. We've been saying for days that she just had a runny nose, but today poor Cara really is sick. She's out of sorts, not herself, and even, this evening, a little feverish.

Lunch didn't go too well. She had chicken nuggets, and she toiled through two of them, protesting all the way. When I finally took her out, though, she grabbed the other two on her way down. She held them for the next hour and a half (literally), nibbling occasionally. It was somewhat messy and not particularly attractive but really just fine. Because the construction was going to get very loud, I took Cara out of the house. We went to Wegman's, our fancy grocery store. It was quite impressive, and Cara was very good. She sat in her cart and nibbled her nuggets, mainly, but she paid attention to everything. She was excited to see a big (fake) cow, display fish, and wooden rooster. At the end I bought her a strawberry smoothie, which she liked. She had finally done away with her nuggets by that time. I'm not really sure what finally happened to the remnants, and I don't want to know. Nobody ask. I just have to say that I'm normally a good, conscientious, non-littering citizen.

At home, Cara liked watching the work happening. She got herself with some help down the basement stairs, and she paraded around down there waving what I believe to be the track for our new door. She selected and waved some pieces of plastic, too, and one nice cat toy. She mainly didn't damage anything or really get in anybody's way.

Cara ate some blueberries, some meat sticks (as a special treat), and some cookies her grandma sent her! She and her daddy got to spend lots of quality time together this evening, because Mommy was wiped out from her long day of doing . . . I'm not sure what. I like to think that I'm a whole lot more energetic and helpful what I'm not sick. I hope I am. Anyway, we let her run outside a little, read some books, cooked something imaginary, and put the little girl to bed on time, for once.

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