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Journal Key:

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

2/22/07 (Thursday)

Last night, besides feeding Casey and making dinner for us and a separate dinner for the children, Em also baked and iced cupcakes. Today was PJ's daycare birthday party! It was a Wiggles-themed party, so the cupcakes were iced bright red. This was also practice for the fire engine birthday cake that will appear on Saturday.

I got an e-mail during the day in which Em apologized in advance for Cara's shirt, having just talked to Susan and heard how much the children enjoyed their cupcakes. I spent the rest of the day wondering which shirt Cara had worn and ruined.

It was her white turtleneck. It really probably is ruined, since the front has a huge red blotch resulting from Cara's reaction to the icing. She's not a big icing fan. The kids had a great time today. They got charts with stickers to show when they've brushed their teeth. Cara and PJ both told Susan that they had brushed this morning. They both lied. They got to play outside. Cara had her snow suit to wear, and now I need to wash it. The yard is quite muddy. They were really, really happy to be back out there, though. When we left, Cara said good-bye to the slides. In addition to cupcakes, PJ's party had goodie bags! Cara took out her two twisty straws to play with on the way home, but we left the rest of the bag intact and put it in my pocket.

Downstairs, Cara dumped out everything from her bag. She got several little rubber balls, a purple saxophone that turned out to be a whistle, a football-shaped whistle, and two flower ponytail holders. Cara had to work to shake everything out of the bag. I headed upstairs to start dinner. When I came down later, she had put most of the stuff back into the bag! The whistles are both fun, and she can actually operate both. The straws are a big hit. She kept giving them to us, running into the kitchen with them and saying "Ball, Daddy!" or "Ball, Mommy!" Ball? Much, much later, it dawned on me: Blow! She wants us to blow through the straws.

The crowning event of the night was when Cara got a chocolate. She was loose, which was bad. She took it into the living room. Remarkably, it disappeared into her mouth. Her hand was nice and brown, but she wiped it on my pants. Several minutes later, when she fell down and was crying (but unhurt), Cara released a stream of chocolate drool that ran all the way down her shirt, crossing her red patch and even making a peninsula on her sleeve! I took a picture, but I only got one because the batteries ran out.

I have been reading again about calcium, and I am opening a new phase in the campaign to get Cara to consume sufficient calcium. It's the chocolate milk phase. She drank a whole ten-ounce cup of it today, which I think is a step in the right direction. It's probably better than trying to get her to take a supplement, I think.

A few additional items:

Q. Can a catnip mouse blow a whistle?

A. Why not?

Q. Who really likes to ride in a stroller?

A. Small rubber balls.

An anecdote: I am in the kitchen. Cara comes in. She holds her ball up over the dish of corn on the counter. Does she intend to put it in? Is the ball eating the corn? Taking a chance, I tell her that balls don't like to eat corn. She runs out of the room crying. Am I living with a toddler or a teenager?

Cara is tall. She has started reaching into the silverware drawer. So far she has discovered my special July 4th straws with pinwheels on them, which is okay, especially since she put them back when she was done messing with them. However, this bodes ill for the future.

2/23/07 (Friday)

Regarding calcium: Cara's favorite food is "cheeese!" and she has yogurt every day.

Today we hit the mall where Cara ran around a lot after playing nicely at the PlayMobil store. Certainly the 'ponies' were a hit. It's gratifying that where Cara sees children ahead, she calls out "kids!" and sometimes says "hi" to other little ones who generally ignore her. Coming into a store, Cara cried out "people!" and got a laugh out of someone.

She's beginning to speak in sentences. Of the five or six times this happened today, I remember "Where ball go?"

On Wednesday a cute thing happened that I forgot to write up. As you all know, in Cara's room there's a gorgeous mural. In the afternoon, while lying on the changing table, Cara pointed over and said "horsies!" and there weren't any toy horsies on the carpet. Once off the changing table, she showed me the flying horses lovingly painted by Aunt Claire. I asked if she could find the walrus, thinking that she doesn't know what a walrus even looks like. But she walked right over and pointed to the walrus painted by Grandmama Janet. Then, pushing my luck, I asked for the Billy Goats Gruff, and she walked over to the other wall and pointed them out to me. Then Humpty Dumpty. I showed her the houses of the Three Little Piggies but I think she already knew...

Cara was very enthusiastic about the weekly craft at the library; "Make SEAL!" she commanded. I cut out the shapes and she industriously smears glue everywhere - but only on the paper. After we had tossed out our scraps she wanted to make another. The policy is one to a customer, but - oh well. We made two. I think this appeals to her from a number of standpoints: it is an activity we share, it is similar to some things she does at Susan's, other people are doing the same thing at the same time, and it produces an object she can proudly carry around.

Then, of course, we had to wash our hands. Standing on the library stool, Cara became fascinated with the sink. A sponge was in there, and she used it to scrub the sink itself - "I cleaning." She cleaned for quite a while. She cleaned and cleaned. Finally another child needed to wash up and I carried her away to the picture books and toys. She was so interested in puzzles and such, we hardly looked at a book. Soon the library announced they would be closing - time to go find Grandpapa. Cara hurried to the doors. I reminded her that we would need our coats, so we hurried back to get them. She laughed happily at the discovery of her very own coat just when she needed it!

At home we tried a different type of DVD - Thomas the Tank Engine - which was not nearly so engaging as Blues Clues. In fact, it was entirely tepid and struck me as no more than a framework for marketing the many, many engines. No matter, because Cara had much else to entertain her - wagon rides, crayons, supper (pizza), a snack (ice meme) and a bath. She noticed a plastic watering can and took it into the bath with her; luckily, all the water remained in the tub.

While Cara has her bath, Grandpapa assembles her crib and thoughtfully stocks it with toys to sleep with. By the time she has been dressed and brushed and read to, she is happy to lie down with her giant doggie and an assortment of other buddies, and after the lights were out I could hear her happily talking with them.

2/24/07 (Saturday)

Cara woke at about 7 this morning. We released the Schmutz from the basement - "Shelby! Buster! Mutz!" - and fed him. She seemed hungry, so I made multi-grain toast for two, and she ate about a third of her piece while she waited for Grandpapa to fix her real breakfast. Then, not so hungry after all, she hardly touched her eggs. I offered her a plum, which appealed to her. "Do you want me to cut it?" I asked, showing her a knife. First she took the whole thing in her hands and nibbled through until she could suck some juice from it. Then "Mama, cut," she told me, handing me the plum, and she ate a couple of small slices. That was pretty much it for breakfast.

We had a lovely, snuggly reading time before she left. She got to choose books from the basket - "This one" - and sit cuddled in my lap as we read them together. Then off she went after one last hug.

Today was PJ's birthday! While Em and Ron got ready for the party, PJ and Casey hung out with us! They got here this morning earlier than Cara, and Steve and I were both concerned that she would get home, see other kids playing with her parents and her toys, and be very upset. However, what happened was the opposite. Cara was happy to see PJ and Casey, and we had very few issues about sharing toys.

I know I haven't spent an awful lot of time at it, but I think that having three kids is easier than having one. They occupy each other some of the time, and when they're occupying themselves there's always at least one doing something interesting. Casey is at a great age now; she'll be seven months soon, and she's spending most of her time, it seems, sitting up. She drooled on a lot of things, and she knocked Cara's old musical flowers around thoroughly. PJ still loves the ball popper, but he got to play with the Weebles for a while, too, because Cara was distracted. He's still a much better climber than Cara is, but he doesn't climb into the bay window because it just doesn't occur to him. He plays the piano. Cara and her daddy went out to the card store, and Cara picked out a special bow to put on PJ's card. (On the card, we wrote "No, no, PJ, don't stop partying on your birthday!" It was Steve's idea.)

Cara was happy to see her Grandmom and Grandpop when they arrived. She immediately started bossing them around. "Mama, siiit!" "Papa, color!" They had to get things from the car, and it made Cara very anxious because they kept leaving. She would look up and gasp, then ask "Mama?" I had put Casey in the high chair in the playroom and spooned a jar of pears into her, and then she had fallen asleep. A little bit after eleven she woke up, just as we would have woken her, and we headed off to the party.

The first exciting thing for PJ and Cara was the balloons. There were some outside, but we convinced the kids to come in out of the cold, and there were even better ones there! Cara, in Daddy's arms, held the string of one for several minutes when we first got there. She was a little shy. Daddy was therefore tied to the stairs.

Cara enjoyed the pasta salad and some crackers, but she really didn't eat much. She got to snuggle with Julianna. We emphatically did not let Cara get her hands on the cake, feeding it to her and not letting her touch even the fork. She was having a good time running around upstairs, anyway, looking down through the railing and saying "Hi!" to everyone periodically. While the presents were being opened, I tried to keep Cara in my lap. Eventually, she and all the other kids were up there, anyway, being enthusiastic about the new toys. Any time people tried to get PJ to say something, there was another kid there to say it first. Cara chipped in her version of "dinosaur." Because the party was during naptime, Cara had already told us a few times that she was tired. Soon we took her home.

Mama and Papa were still there, and they got to play with Cara. They all colored together, and then Papa read Cara a few books, including I'll Share With You, which is possibly the most insipid book we own. Cara offered it to the rest of us, but we told her how much Papa would love to read it to her. Being a brave man, he got through it.

Cara had a short nap, and then we had a lazy evening, watching our new Curious George DVD from Grandpop, spinning round and round, and climbing. I know she had it for lunch, but I made pasta for dinner. Cara loved it; her eating was punctuated by exclamations of "MMMMmmmm!" It was rotini with a little olive oil and salt. Practically gourmet.

Em, who has a degree in speech therapy, has been sharing information with me about language development. The letters P, M, H, N, W, and B are the first to develop, between 18 months and 3 years. The next group is K, G, D, T, and NG, which develop between 2 and 4 years. This is interesting. Cara sometimes, as we've mentioned, uses an N instead of a D ("nounstairs"). The J doesn't show up until 4 years, which explains why Cara's version of "George" is so interesting and unduplicable. I'm assuming the the G in the chart is G as in "go." In a textbook Em lent me, I noticed that toddlers may start to become bossy around age two. Cara's advanced! A few things I'm proud of: her pronoun usage and her suffix usage. If I say to her, "you stand," she can say "I standing!"

2/25/07 (Sunday)

It was a lazy family Sunday with nothing exciting to do. We woke before seven; I was awoken by hearing Cara talking. She was saying "Daddy," but I charitably went and got her anyway. She was happily babbling away in her crib. As a treat, we went out to the IHOP. We asked Cara whether she wanted pancakes, and then we confused her by having her put her coat on. However, she remembered what we were there for. Although we hadn't mentioned the word since before we left the house, she said "pancakes!" while we were waiting to order. Cara liked her silver dollar pancakes and scrambled egg.

We really didn't do much all day. I remember dancing with Cara to a Police concert video, each holding onto an end of a short cable she had picked up. I tried to get Cara to help me dust the living room, but she was fairly ineffective.

At dinner, Cara started something new. "Scary monster," she said. I asked her where, and she pointed to the corner. I asked whether there was a monster there, and she said no. Further questioning elicited that the monster was upstairs. She was done, so I took her out and carried her out of the kitchen. She huddled her head against my shoulder, pointing the way. I turned on the light. Was there a monster in the hall? No. In Mommy's room? We checked. No. We went into the office, where there were no monsters. We looked out the window at the pretty snow, but Cara remained uneasy. The bathroom was free of monsters. We went into Cara's room. She showed me the scary monster.

On Cara's mural, we painted the three Billy Goats Gruff. They have their bridge, and, under the bridge, Aunt Claire painted a really adorable troll. This is the scary monster! "Under bridge," says Cara. I told Cara what we do with monsters: we tickle them! We tickled that troll. I really hadn't expected there to be a monster at all, so I was unprepared. She had no more monsters to show me, so we headed downstairs.

I thought it might help to make monsters un-scary if we could play act a little, so I asked Cara whether she was a monster. At first she was offended, I think, but soon she got into it. Whenever she said she was a monster, I tickled her! When she said Piglet was a monster, we tickled him. When her octopus bath toy who was in the living room for no good reason was a monster, we tickled him. She said I was a monster and I invited her to tickle me, but instead I got a nice kiss.

I really don't know whether what I did helped at all, but it doesn't seem to be a big issue; she's not scared to be in her room. Before the bath she hung out in there and played with her toys with no worries. We did visit the monster again, and we tickled him.

2/26/07 (Monday)

I had a delayed opening today, and Cara was up bright and early, so I saw plenty of her this morning. She came running to get me when "Go Baby" came on; I had to come and watch it with her. She joined Grandpapa and me for breakfast and tried to get some of my "coffee." I'll really have to work hard, I think, to break her of her coffee fascination, given with whom she eats breakfast every morning.

When I got home, I heard wailing. Cara had a fine morning, I believe, but then she gave Grandpapa the same treatment she gave Mommy and Daddy this weekend. She really didn't want to go down for her nap. She slept, but then when she woke up she was clingy and wailing. She had spent some time on the couch with Grandpapa, crying, but he had gotten her calmed down enough to eat some yogurt and look at a book. While they were reading, the phone rang. This upset the fragile balance, and a few minutes later I arrived.

Cara wailed on me for a while, but I put the television on. Within a minute of Grandpapa's departure, Cara was sitting up to watch Pooh and Piglet. She laughed at Eeyore. She went to the TV to kiss him. She clapped and danced. Gradually, I was even able to wean her away from the movie to go play downstairs!

I was thinking about our stroller-chase game from a psychological standpoint. Cara likes to push something in a stroller while running away. She also likes to be chased by something in a stroller. Actually, we can perform any variation. It could indicate her deepest, subconscious feelings, or it could just be that she thinks that Clifford, or George, or her sweater is really having fun playing chase.

We also played catch with the big, pink ball. Cara was willing to roll it, step by step, over to where I sat, and then run to the other end of the room to receive it back. Sometimes, she picked it up and arduously carried it to me.

Cara helped me make dinner. I thought she could help break asparagus, so I got it all set up on the counter and her up on her chair, but it was a no-go. Breaking it was too involved. However, I could break it, and Cara helped by handing me a new piece every time I was ready. I told her what those "sticks" were and that she liked to eat them, and she experimented. I told her she liked them when cooked, but she went ahead anyway. She ate a little bit, more than I would have tried, from the tip of one stalk. She seemed to like it, so I finished quickly.

Soon Daddy called to say he'd be a little late. While I was on the phone I heard Cara saying something about "Daddy," so I put her on. For the first time, we got Cara to say "Hi, Daddy," into the phone! Despite earnest prompting, she's never been willing before. She was still kind of freaked out.

At dinner, Cara ate her asparagus and bread and ignored the meatloaf, which I had made specifically because Steve requested it which I am awfully pleased about. I believe she said something along the likes of "I no like it," which is much too complicated a sentence for her to have said, but which captures her gist. "I don't think you tried it," said Daddy, forking a piece and putting it into her mouth. She ate it. He asked whether she liked it, and she automatically said "No," while reaching for her next bite. She ate a whole piece.

Upstairs, Cara usually escapes naked before her bath. She runs around very fast, which is very funny. Tonight we tried to get a picture of her wearing nothing but Steve's big, red flip-flops, but she got distracted.

2/27/07 (Tuesday)

We had a trip to the basement today. All of our trips to the basement follow a certain pattern. Cara tries to explore as much as she can and make the trip as long as she can. The adult involved tries to keep Cara out of as many things as possible and to make the trip as short as possible. While I was putting groceries into the cabinet, Cara discovered the cat treats. I saw that she had knocked a candle off the shelf as well. When I got done and turned around again, Cara still had the treats, but the candle had been neatly replaced where it belonged!

Cara helped me make dinner this evening. We were having PJ over, so we made chicken nuggets. Cara put them on the baking sheet, and later I tried to avoid giving him the pre-bitten ones. MMMMmmm! Cara also learned how to turn on the stove, and I learned that I had better get covers for those knobs, if I'm going to let her stand at the counter!

PJ and Casey arrived a little bit after Steve got home. We got to baby-sit them tonight, because Em and Ron are getting an addition on the house and had some sort of financial thing to do. Fortunately, Casey got to have her dinner before coming over. (It's her seven-month birthday!) Cara and PJ both came up to the kitchen when I called them for dinner. They were a little bit slow, and there was considerable confusion over whose cup was whose, but they both headed in the right direction. Soon PJ was strapped into the booster seat and Cara was in the high chair. I got to supervise PJ, who had a good dinner. He tended to leave a little portion of each chicken nugget, and later he handed a small portion of each strawberry to any available adult. He and I both had ketchup, and he finger-painted very neatly in his. I'm not sure how good a dinner Cara ate; we think she might have been unhappy about her chair. In any case, she got out before PJ did. Soon after I let him loose, we heard a cry from the stairs. We both hurried to see what was wrong, to find both toddlers at the top of the stairs, arrested in their progress by the sight of us. "Hi, Daddy," said Cara. She waved, and they both headed downstairs.

It's interesting having another toddler around. We tried to incorporate him into a game of chase, but he doesn't quite have our rhythm. It worked, a little bit. For a while, he pushed the corn popper while I chased him with the stroller and Cara just ran. They played independently, sometimes arguing over small items that one or the other would decide to steal. They argued most sharply over Cara's armchair, which PJ decided was his homebase. He played on it for a while, climbing around, and thereafter, when Cara made a move onto it, he would run over and sit down. When I took PJ up to change him, he rediscovered Cara's dinosaur. To get him to come back down, I had to bring it with us. On the way, he found a snack trap full of goldfish crackers. Downstairs, Cara started to monopolize the dinosaur. Seeing it in a new setting made it much more exciting. PJ tried to get it back by sitting on Cara a little, but this backfired. Soon, Cara was taken to play with her daddy while PJ got the dinosaur. By this time, of course, Cara had the snack trap! Don't worry, we made sure everyone got a chance.

It was about a quarter to eight when Em called and we all headed over there. We got the toddlers into their coats, Steve picked up Cara, and then, while I was picking up Casey, they all went out the door. By the time I got to the driveway, they were practically there already! PJ, the pace car, ran the whole way.

Because it was Casey's birthday, we all got ice cream. Cara and PJ both sat nicely in the kitchen and ate, using their spoons and not making a horrible mess. Cara plaintively asked, "nounstairs?" every few minutes. When we were done, it was after eight! Despite her continuing pleas of "nounstairs," we bundled her into her coat and headed out. Cara ran all the way home. Unfortunately, outside the door she found our snow shovel. She went to shovel snow, and despite initial success ended up falling on her knees in the very wet mud. We carried her carefully in and steered her toward the bath.

2/28/07 (Wednesday)

I woke up at four this morning when I heard Cara crying. I went to her to discover that she had thrown up all over her crib, her blanket, her pink bear, the puma she was still clutching, and her pajamas, and therefore my pajamas as well. Once I got her out and a little bit cleaned up, Cara was fine. I changed us both, and she was ready to go nounstairs and play. The next hour or so was spent in a juggling act; I had to play with Cara and clean up the mess at the same time. She didn't mind that I put the TV on, but she wasn't a bit interested in sitting quietly and watching. Interestingly, while we were downstairs Cara spontaneously and correctly identified the yellow and orange crayons.

Somehow I got a load of laundry started before Steve got up, around five. Cara threw up again, this time on my new pajamas, and when we got cleaned up again I got to get into the shower. Except for when she was actively ill, Cara was in fine spirits. She was a little bit clingy. She was clearly not willing to sit in the living room alone while anyone had breakfast. She quieted down, though, and was willing to watch Blue's Clues. I dozed there with her while Steve showered. After that, the diarrhea started, and then there was more throwing up, but this time on my work clothes. When I left, clean but quite late, Cara was clean and comfortable once more.

Astonishingly, Cara got sick on a non-Susan day! I called home a couple of times to see how she was doing. She threw up one more time (Grandpapa, less insane than I, got her to the sink on time) and had some more diarrhea, and they spent a nice, quiet day, reading a lot of books. Cara did eventually drink some water, and, after her nap, she had some Jell-O.

When I got home, she was starting to get warm. I took her upstairs and we lay down with Winnie the Pooh on, and we stayed that way for two hours. Cara was limp. A little bit before six she agreed to try some Jell-O, so I put her in her booster seat. She refused Jell-O; she refused water. I was upstairs checking the pediatrician's guidebook and finding her thermometer when I heard the spoon clinking against the bowl. I didn't want to intrude, so I took the opportunity of changing out of my work clothes. When I ventured back into her line of sight, Cara asked me for more. At one point, she stopped because she was upset that her hands were sticky. I cleaned them as requested, and she continued. When Steve got home she was still there; her response to his arrival was to hold out her spoon: "Daddy feed with me." He was invited to take part in the Cara-eating-Jell-O process.

Cara spent most of the evening limp on one or the other of her parents in front of the TV. When we ate dinner, we had to do it in shifts, so that one of us was there for her. I tried bringing her in with me, but she wouldn't sit in her chair. We've had a couple of messy diapers, but nothing really dramatic like this morning. She's had some water to drink, and we gave her some Tylenol for the fever, which did get up above 102. She's sensitive and needy, but she perks up. She's finally in bed, where I hope she will get a few good hours in. Her puma, by the way, is as good as new.

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