| Previous Week | Back Home | Next Week |

Journal Key:

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

1/25/07 (Thursday)

Cara woke me up this morning at about 4:15. I let her have some grapes and snuggled her and put her back down within about twenty minutes, but I didn't really get back to sleep before my alarm went off. I don't think Cara did, either. She just stayed in her crib, being quiet and good and perhaps talking to herself a little bit, until I was out of the shower at almost six.

Susan reports a good day, although she says Cara was "weird" after being woken from her nap at quarter to four. I'm not at all surprised to hear that Cara was weird upon being woken. It turns out that Cara has been napping on a mat for weeks, not getting up off of it at all! I had thought that that was a one-time event. The art project today was a little Styrofoam cup with play-doh in the base holding a popsicle stick upright. On the popsicle stick is a paper cutout of a chef's hat, and stuck to the back is a little clothes pin. It's a recipe-card-holder! I am sure I can find some good used for ours. Cara colored her hat with enthusiasm, and it sort of looks like a skull with big green eyes and a green mouth around a purple nose. Today we learned that Cara eats play-doh.

"Water!" Cara exclaimed when she saw me. "Water!" she exclaimed several times on the way home. (Susan had her hands quite full today, but I know that she does not torture the children by depriving them of liquids. When Cara sees me there, her thoughts always turn to her stomach.) We got home and sobbed for the long, long time that it took for us both to get our coats off, and then we went and got some water. After that, we had a very nice mommy-daughter bonding experience. She sat on my lap on the kitchen floor and we ate goldfish crackers together. If I'd been with anyone older, we'd have had to talk. With Cara, I just snuggled. Sometimes we fed each other. We spent a long time like that and ruined my dinner.

We didn't ruin Cara's dinner. She ate some of her hot dog and some broccoli, but the big hit was the rice. We had to get her to say "More!" several times; I was astounded at how long she went on eating. It's strange about saying "more." She used to do it, I think. My theory is that in times of stress, her words leave her.

After a good bath and a few chances to almost-pet the cats and a nice walk in Daddy's flip-flops, Cara is in bed.

1/26/07 (Friday)

In what has become our cold weather habit, I met Grandpapa and Cara at the library, where she remembered last week's activity and expected to find Pooh in the program room; instead the paper cut-out was a chilly penguin. I wielded the scissors and Cara enthusiastically applied the glue stick. When we were done she carried the scraps to the waste basket. High-five!

Back at the ranch Grandpapa had a pot of soup simmering on the stove by the time we got there, singing "Winnie Pooh, Winnie Pooh, Winnie Winnie Winnie Bear" all the way. This week's DVD from the library was also none other than Winnie the Pooh; now I know the real lyrics. [Incidentally this DVD was not from the library but was our special copy of the out-of-print movie, which we bought used from Amazon. George borrowed it to test its surround sound capabilities on his entertainment system. -SG] She has simplified "willy-nilly silly old bear." We had playtime before supper and saved the DVD for after. At times Cara would get up to play with other toys, but as soon as Grandpapa turned off the video she would announce "uh-oh" and return to viewing it each time.

After her bath Cara received a small gift - a brand new, child-sized toothbrush - for which she said "thank you" more than once. As soon as it was opened, she promptly applied it to her teeth. She also, by the way, opened wide to show me her teeth when we read the Berenstain Bears dentist book and I asked where her teeth were.

She had little interest in her bedtime book last night, so after a short while I simply placed her in the crib with her plush menagerie plus Mickey, Minnie and "Dodald." She lay down on the huge doggie and I covered them both, turned out the lights and left. I thought all was well, even though Grandpapa had not started the evening music. After a short while, however, he heard her and went down to remedy the situation. Then, of course, she bawled for a few minutes before she reverted to talking to her toys. And then she slept until about 7:15 in the morning.

1/27/07 (Saturday)

This morning she emphatically did NOT want to be dressed, but wiser heads prevailed. The little jeans Grandpapa brought for her are a little too small; the snap kept popping open. "Uh-oh," said Cara. She inhaled her own portion of eggs and half of her Grandpapa's as well. Then we read a few stories and away she went, protesting desperately that she did not want to be put into the car.

Cara came happily into the house this morning and we had some nice morning playtime. We went into her "reading area" and I was showing her the Muppet Dictionary we have. On the cover is a kite. I told Cara that we had a Curious George book where he flies a kite. I said it was a blue book and pointed towards the bookshelf in the general direction of the book. Cara went straight to it and brought it back to me. I was impressed.

We had gotten through that book and we were beginning on a book about a cat named Pickles who goes to live in a firehouse, when Cara's grandparents (my parents) arrived. Cara ran into the playroom to see them, then hugged her Mommy's legs and was shy. But soon enough she was over this, and when she noticed later that her Grandpa had not joined us at the kitchen table, she called "Papa!" until he came out of the basement to sit with us.

Daddy had cleverly called one location to order our lunch, and then driven to a different location to pick it up, so it took a while to bring lunch back. Then Cara was very, very slow finishing her cup of soup. I kept thinking she must be done spooning it up (pouring many spoonfuls into the special pocket on her bib, but also some into her lap, so that we changed her into her pajamas afterwards), but she kept requesting it back. We even got far enough that she was eating a piece of chocolate for desert (in the most hideous way possible, I might add, with chocolate all over her hands and the lower half of her face), but then she still wanted the soup back for a few more sips. It got low enough that she was just picking up the cup and tilting it back to drink it.

Finally Cara got some cleaning and got changed and put in for her nap. She was very unhappy to get into her crib, which is generally true, but may have been more so today because of her grandparents (and possibly because she thought she was going down for the day, being in her pajamas!). It was late in the afternoon and by the time she awoke at around 4:30 her grandparents were driving away.

We whiled away the afternoon with some playtime and then had a patched-together dinner; Cara ate lightly. I was just getting ready to eat away the rest of the evening by giving up and turning on the television when we were saved by a call from our neighbors: cupcake party at PJ's house! When we asked Cara if she wanted to go to PJ's house, she said "PJ's house!" and walked directly to the coat closet, opened the door, and started trying to tug my coat off the hanger, saying "Coat on!"

Cara had a blast at PJ's house. She finally got to meet her friend Julianna again, with whom she was very shy. She got a little cupcake. But the real fun was chasing and being chased by PJ, around and around the dining room table. Cara and PJ had a very nice interaction. I was watching them looking at each other and laughing, and running around laughing, and I just hope that something like that happens when they are at Susan's house during the week.

Eventually Cara had to go back home. She was taken out of her pajamas and her dirty diaper and eventually got into the tub, and then out of the tub and put into a new set of pajamas. It was already late, but Cara managed to stall by finding a snack trap full of goldfish crackers and running around eating them, preventing us from brushing her teeth. But Evie finally got her in the glider and read her some books.

Evie's story for the day: Cara has been playing a lot with our remote control Pluto dog--a hand-me-down from PJ, who is inexplicably deathly afraid of the Pluto dog. Cara loves him and has even kind of gotten the hang of controlling him a little. Today she was doing that but then went into the bathroom and got a used tissue out of the trash can so that she could wipe Pluto's nose. She then replaced the tissue in the trash can, only to bring out another one and wipe his nose again. This process was repeated.

1/28/07 (Sunday)

It was an early morning for us all, as Cara decided to get up a little before 6 am. Mommy made us a batch of pancakes. There were 8 pancakes. I ate one. There were two left on the plate. By simple subtraction, this means that Cara must have eaten five pancakes. Wow! Not too long after that Evie had cause to ask her daughter, "Are you making a poopie?" Cara said yes, she was! And she was! A step in the right direction for potty training.

We got ourselves showered and ready and then played around a bit more, and then I decided to enact my plan of giving Mommy a break and taking Cara out to the mall. There was a tragic parting when Cara realized that Mommy was not going to come with us to the car, and she actually wailed the first few minutes of the drive (I was beginning to have vague thoughts of giving up and turning back), but eventually forgot her troubles with the help of her little stuffed Curious George and Piglet. We arrived at the mall around 10:30, only to discover that the stores did not open until 11. Cara and I wandered about the mall. She loves climbing up a big sweeping staircase near the entrance we go in; there are holes in the risers through which she can look down on people below, but mainly she just loves to climb: "Hime, hime hime!" We also went up and down many escalators, for which Cara will get down and stand on the moving steps. There were brief moments aside from these when she wanted to walk or run, but mainly I was carrying her around.

I was particularly annoyed that the mall staff did not turn on the projector for the floor-based video game thing that Cara loves so much. Very fortunately however, we came back to the thing for the third or fourth time a little after 11 to find that it had just been turned on, and Cara got to dance around through all the different games, totally by herself. One little girl who was younger than Cara and got quickly bored was there for a little while, and I jumped in for a few seconds once or twice to encourage her, but mostly she had tons of fun by herself.

After that we wandered over to a pet store which unfortunately was not open, but we peeked at some doggies through the window. We actually passed one of those bad food stores that sells cookies and fried pastries, and I myself asked Cara if she was hungry and wanted cookies, but she herself shook her head firmly: no. So we moved on to the Apple Store, where I sat Cara down in front of one of the kiddie computers (the kids get to sit on foamy balls, which she enjoyed) and we found a game which was a computer version of her Dr. Seuss A-B-C book. It was perfect and it probably would have kept Cara riveted through the whole alphabet, but I decided we needed to be about our business somewhere in the letter G. Daddy needed some unmentionables at the department store, so Cara got carried all the way to Macy's and all the way downstairs and all the way deep into the men's section, where Daddy bored her intensely by wading helplessly through some shelves. Then she decided it was okay for her to walk by herself and started going around and around a sign standing nearby. She hit herself on the top of her head with it and was in drama queen mode when I went to ring up my unmentionables. By the time we left the nice cashier Cara was happily waving: "Byyeeee!"

This reminds me that I was sucked into something very silly at the mall today. Often these days when you are walking along, minding your own business, someone will jump out at you and start saying, "Excuse me sir! Would you like to--" and usually at that point you've run away and told them you're not interested. But this time a woman asked me how old Cara was and I told her, and then she told me how cute my daughter was--a very sensible young woman, I thought. She explained that she worked for a modeling agency and, well, I ended up giving her my phone number so they can call me to set up a "free evaluation" to get Cara into a child acting career. Of course when they call back we'll probably just say that Cara already has a few movie deals and her own agent, so she's just fine, thanks.

Anyway after Macy's it was off to the food court. By the time I was done I was holding Cara, my bag from Macy's, my own and Cara's lunch in another bag, and Evie's lunch in yet a third bag. Somehow I trudged all the way downstairs, through the mall and out to the car. Then we made it home, where a sleepy-looking Cara covered herself and her chicken nuggets in sweet and sour sauce, and was totally hyped up out of her mind, but eventually Mommy read her a story and got her down. She chatted to herself for a very long time; she probably got put down around 1, but who knows when she fell asleep. She did not awake until 4:30, and even then it was not until we opened her door and walked in.

To fill up our evening, since Cara had not gotten a good enough look at doggies in the morning, we all drove out to the Puppy Shoppe near our house. I took Cara to this place once before when she was very much younger, and she enjoyed it. She also enjoyed it this time, yelling "DOGGIES!" and also "KITTIES!" very loudly (though there were no kitties, as I tried to explain to her: only puppies at the puppy shoppe). She found a bag of doggie treats and wandered off with them, perhaps with the idea of chasing the doggies into their caging area and threatening them with the treats. Instead she was distracted by a giant inflatable dog, which she tried to feed and referred to as a "bear." I think it would have been much more fun and more to the point if we had had the luck to see a dog out of its cage and running around in the area they have set up for such things--she saw that last time and was very amused by it, little as she was.

After this it was off to the grocery store, where Cara was kept amused by the endless array of toys which Mommy kept producing out of her coat pocket. Then we had some pasta for dinner, which Cara correctly called "Pasta!" even though neither Evie nor I remembered having used the word all evening. She kept saying "More!" until eventually it became clear that she was just saying the word because she could say it. But communication at the table has become much better. Cara is also working on her singing, and can kind of sing a gibberish version of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," which is much closer to the real thing than her cover of the "Winnie the Pooh" song.

We were a bit late getting to the bedtime routine and Cara was again very hyped up and charging around. There have been many, many "Hi Daddy"s and "Hi Mommy"s this weekend. She got into her laundry basket and wanted to be ridden around. I said, "Let's count to four. One..." "Teeewww!" said Cara. I got ready to say "Three." "Sssixx!" said Cara. Then it was quickly on to "Seven, nine, ten!" Eight is right out. Three four and five are entirely optional.

1/29/07 (Monday)

So, for two days I have read Cara to sleep and Steve has done the journal. For two days Cara has gotten up much earlier than we really would have wanted her to. Hmmmmm.

Today we were up at a quarter to five, just heading downstairs to play. Cara was very bright and chipper. When she and Steve went past the bathroom, she told him, "Mommy shower." Later, she explained in turn to me, "Daddy shower." I went out to get the paper and tracked in some snow. When Cara stepped in it, it made her pajamaed foot cold and wet. We had to head upstairs to get dressed and put shoes on! We had a nice breakfast and romped about together for a couple of hours, getting lots of drawing done and cooking lots of fake food.

After school, when I got home, Cara gleefully ran around and around, giggling hysterically. She felt no need, apparently, to actually greet me personally. She and Grandpapa had been playing. He asked her where the Playmobil grandmama was, and Cara looked around. "Where Mama go?" she asked. Soon she found her. Later, Cara stood on one of her chairs as I sat beside her. "I tall," she announced. Her counting has also continued, with particular attention to seven, nine, and ten.

Cara found a nice ball under some furniture, and she and Steve played one of the funniest games of catch I've ever seen. Cara throws by doubling up her arm, with the ball near her head, facing her ear. Her throws go about two feet and then roll. When Steve throws back to her, his do the same. They both had to pick up rolling balls, and they both counted down (in some fashion) before throwing. It was wonderful. When the ball rolled down the stairs, Cara would go and get it. This became a game in and of itself soon; she can hold onto the wall and walk down like a big girl, with some effort.

1/30/07 (Tuesday)

Cara had a great day at Susan's. Susan reports that Cara has been talking up a storm. She plays with a dollhouse and talks to the people. Cara came home with two art projects. In one, she matched three drawings of people in traditional garbs. The Eskimo is glued above the Eskimo, the lady in the kimono is above the lady in the kimono, and the Mexican man is above the Mexican man. Her other project involved coloring pizzas. Today was circle day. They also ate circular foods, like bagel pizzas and blueberries.

I was tired today! Cara and I did some quick groceries, and then we came home and I put on Winnie the Pooh and lay down on the couch. Cara liked sitting with me. She was happy because she was eating crackers, so she mainly let me lie. I did get some kisses, and once she pried one of my eyes open.

Poor Steve got home and had to make dinner for himself and a toddler. He made hot dogs for Cara, and there were vegetables, but she also ate half of the frozen pizza he made himself. This is after eating two snack traps full of goldfish crackers.

When Cara got out of the bath, she did not run around as she usually does. She discovered a book, the "Goats Guff." It's an epic tome about three goats crossing a bridge. She sat in the glider and looked at it thoroughly, even while I brushed her teeth. I took her over to the wall near her crib and asked her what she saw. She looked around. "Goats Guff!" How many? "Two five six seven nine ten!" We moved over and looked at other things, like a pumpkin patch and Humpty Dumpty, whom she examined closely while standing on her tippy-toes.

Some additional observations, all language related: this morning I got Cara ready and left her to her breakfast for a moment so that I could go pack up the car and get it started. When I came back into the kitchen with my jacket on, Cara said "Susan's house!" (or rather her equivalent of that phrase, which I can't really duplicate). She knows the routine! I was showing her a Richard Scarry book this evening and she pointed to a picture and accurately described it: "Piggies crying!" Then when I picked her up and took her over to the crib, she rubbed her eyes and declared, "I tired!" And here's a quick word from George:

Yesterday's journal entry reminded me of this. Last Friday, when we took Cara out of her bath Janet put a towel over Cara's head. The cute pink towel has little rabbit ears. As Cara went by a mirror she exclaimed 'I bunny.'

1/31/07 (Wednesday)

We had a tough, tough night. Cara woke up around two thirty, and I don't think she really went back to sleep again. She liked snuggling in the glider with Mommy or Daddy; she didn't seem to want to go downstairs or anything, but she couldn't really settle herself in the crib. I got up with her again after a while, and then we both got up with her at four. Near five we decided it was time to get up, and Cara was happy to go play downstairs. My theory was that there was snow outside, which made her room brighter than usual. Grandpapa, when he arrived, suggested that she might have been cold and recommended using a quilt. I was e-mailing with Em later, and she asked whether Cara was getting molars. That might explain, I think, why she's been sticking her whole hand into her mouth lately! She's also been fairly drooly. It's weird; we used to medicate her whenever she woke up in the night, but we had forgotten all about that and didn't even think of reaching for the Tylenol last night! I gave her some before bed tonight, though.

I decided to play it safe and stay home today. I really needed a rest! While I napped, Cara peeked through the door a couple of times. "Kitty!" she cried. The cats were napping with me, and they were definitely more interesting. I got up after Cara went down for her nap, and then, when we were both awake, we spent a quiet afternoon. I put on Easter Parade, one of my favorite movies, most of which Cara ignored. I think it was when "Shakin' the Blues Away" came on that she started dancing, and whenever an audience clapped, so did Cara. This was a perfect opportunity for some old-fashioned tushie-shaking, but Cara's dancing now largely consists of turning "'round and 'round." She also loved being picked up and spun around.

It was playdate at our house this evening. I told Cara that PJ was coming over to her house, and she wanted to put her coat on and go right away! We managed to stay here, though, and I got dinner ready. When Cara saw me pull the table out from the wall in preparation for company, she went to the living room. I thought nothing of it, until I saw her pulling the chair from the computer toward the kitchen! She's noticed that whenever more people come, we move that chair in. I helped her through some tight spots, but she brought that chair to the table. It may be the most helpful thing she's ever done.

At dinner, Cara and PJ shared a banana. He experimented by putting some into a glass of water, which Cara helpfully pointed out to us. Steve and I both noticed something which I confirmed through experimentation later: Cara is calling Em and Ron Mama and Papa! While we finished eating, PJ headed out to the living room and did a lot of hammering. At one point, he must have hit his finger pretty hard. Now there are two pegs in Cara's workbench that are wedged in so tightly that I cannot pull them out!

We all played downstairs. Cara was not very nice about letting PJ touch some of her toys, but she seemed to get over it. She does tend to walk around saying, "No, PJ, no, no!" PJ dumped out the play food and put the bucket on his head again, which was a big hit. He also does a magic trick that involves making things disappear by throwing them wildly. Casey is rolling over and sitting really well. She's starting to become mobile, sort of. Well, almost. Cara walked around with her big four-square ball. She rode around on a little car, and she tried to ride her giant rubber duck. The toddlers cooperated in knocking everything off of the drawing table. Everyone had a good time.

| Previous Week | Back Home | Next Week |