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Journal Key:

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

7/12/07 (Thursday)

This morning Evie's car continued unwell and was still at "the doctor's," so it was Daddy's turn to take the little girl to Susan's in our one healthy car. It's been a few weeks now since I've taken her and Cara tried to tug at my heartstrings a little at our parting. I managed to get away.

I took a half day at work and got home early! Both Mommy and Daddy drove up to Susan's in Mommy's car (it got better), ready to take Cara to the park! Cara had made a big sign at Susan's today that has her own name written all over it. We asked her what it said. "My A-B-Cs!" After some coaching she decided it was her name. We were going to take her to the park right away, but Cara was wearing a big loose tanktop whose spaghetti straps fell down her shoulders as she jumped up and down to greet us. She was suddenly only half-dressed. Susan commented that Cara had been getting "sexier and sexier" all day. We took her home and got a more park-appropriate shirt.

Cara had some water ice and fed some goats, though not as enthusiastically as she went on the swings and playground equipment. We picked up dinner on the way home and we all sat down and ate it--actually a fairly major accomplishment. Then Cara wheedled one episode of Curious George out of me before Evie convinced us to go outside and talk to Juliana. Cara had fun running around her driveway and her yard, looking at flowers, making wet footprints, watching birds (and telling them to "Stop!" very firmly when they started making things drop out of the trees), and peeking over the top of bushes. It was hard to get her to go inside for her bath. It was a froggie and turtle bath tonight: the Playmobil boat has lost its new-toy gleam, I suppose. She wanted to sleep with her froggies and turtles tonight, but I nixed this idea, to her chagrin.

7/13/07 (Friday)

Today was a pleasant but not exciting time. In the morning, I took Cara with me to the chiropractor. We brought plenty of toys, so while I lay with heat on my back she played. There was a small, padded stool on wheels near my head, and Cara decided to climb onto it. On her third or fourth try, she succeeded. She wouldn't talk to anyone; actually, all day she refused to talk to new adults. On our way out, though, Cara's day was made. She got a lollipop.

Cara holds lollipops outside of her mouth and dramatically sticks out her tongue to lick them, grinning. Then she forgets about that and just sticks them in. To my astonishment, in a few minutes I looked back at her in her car seat and saw that she had actually bitten off half of it! I heard her crunching it up, and soon the other half followed.

Since that was over, we went to Barnes and Noble to play trains. Cara really enjoyed it, and a big girl very nicely played with her. Cara was friendly; I heard her saying, "I big girl" very confidingly. After a while, she started to notice her surroundings. She brought us several stuffed animals, and then she found the toy of her dreams. She picked it up. She held it. She told me all its colors. She said, "I wuv it!" She wouldn't let me touch it. She had to have it, or her heart would break. She cared for nothing else. It was a cupcake baking and decorating set for girls ages six and up. I thought it looked like fun, too. I told her we couldn't get that today. She gave it to me to put back, and she wandered off to see Pooh and Piglet, perfectly content.

People, possibly mainly me, have been asking Cara for months, "What's your favorite _____?" She has clearly not understood the question. Lately, however, she's been using the word herself. I'm not sure that she's consistent, but her favorite color may be red.

Three times today I played patty-cake with Cara. Mainly, I am the patter and she is the pattee. Sometimes I pat on her feet. Three times, I started out by marking the cake with a C and putting it in the oven for Cara and me. Three times, she said, "What about Casey?" I patty-caked for Casey. I heard Cara talking about Casey "eating it all up!" I asked her who else we should make a cake for. Three times, the answer was something that I can only interpret as "Annie and the dinosaur" or "Annie the dinosaur." I have no idea who this is.

We've been falling out of our routine of walking in the evenings. In fact, we haven't been out this week. Tonight, we decided to walk, just the three of us. When I asked her whether she wanted to go for a walk, Cara ran into the other room and climbed into her stroller. Steve and I went to go get our sneakers on. We just breezed through our usual route; Cara made up for PJ's absence by yelling "bulldozers" when we went by the industrial park, as he always does. Of course, the bulldozer wasn't there this evening. It's the thought that counts.

7/14/07 (Saturday)

I love it when Cara asks me to make pancakes. Of course, the request is always followed by heartbreak because the pancakes are not ready immediately, but it's the sort of heartbreak that's easily forgotten. She is delighted when she finally gets her "no-man" or Mickey Mouse.

Steve's folks came up today and saved Cara from the tedium of yard work; Steve and Juliana and I were all working our tails off, and Cara was not particularly interested. Inside, Cara got to paint with water and work with Play-doh. Somehow, her grandparents made more progress in getting her to roll a cylinder than I ever have! Then Grandmom made it into a snake, and Cara got to say "sssssssssss!"

Cara continues to be very interested in lollipops after her delightful experience yesterday. We went out for lunch, and she noticed a bowl of red-and-white mints in the front of the restaurant. She remembered them and asked for a lollipop when we were done. Grandmom got her one, which she stuck into her cheek like a squirrel. She kept it in longer than I thought she would, giving up about halfway through.

Even though we're very determined to adhere to our nap schedule, we went to the park after lunch to feed the goats. Cara impressed her grandparents by staying on the swing for a long time; she doesn't usually stick with one thing for that long! Swings are special. We got to see lots of animals, and then we did feed the goats some leaves.

Daddy put Cara down for her nap, so eventually she reached a "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!" phase. I just told her it was time to go to sleep. Her response was heartbroken sobbing, which ended in a nap. When I went in to get her, she had a Playmobil horse. "What happened?" she asked. She pointed to the wall. Soon it became clear that something had fallen. The Playmobil mommy had fallen behind the crib, hence the "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy." He was supposed to come get her.

We had some free time, so we walked to the park. When we finally got done swinging and went to the slides, we were alone. In seconds, we were joined by a gang of boys, much older, who were playing an imaginative and dramatic game. Cara said "hi" and kind of tried to join them, which really was futile. Eventually most left, leaving behind a friendly four-year-old and another boy in a diaper. He was far more agile than Cara, but she was a better talker. We wonder how old he was. The three kids definitely got to play together. It wasn't perfect, but it worked out. Cara was by far the most cautious child. She would get to the slide and the older boy would go right around her and slide down! If he waited, he would have to wait a long time. She liked to think about it. He liked to show off, and he showed Cara how he could go down the slide on his tummy, feet first. With some planning, Cara could duplicate this. The other little boy could, also, but he had no shirt on and was thus handicapped by friction. This did not stop him from trying numerous times; it just stopped him. We all ran around for a while, but it really was late. We explained that Cara had to go home and have dinner. "Then she's coming right back?" asked the boy. Alas, no.

Tomorrow, we will pack our things and get into the car. We are heading off on vacation, so this will be the last journal entry for a few days.

7/15/07 (Sunday)

On Sunday morning, not having had the energy to do it the night before, we began packing for our trip to New York. Em and Ron nicely offered to take Cara off of our hands so that we could do the packing without "help." So we wandered over to their house and left Cara watching the movie Cars for what must be at least the fourth or fifth time. Em had this anecdote to supply of the morning adventures (which for lack of a more imaginative solution, I will write in Evie's color):

PJ and Cara were downstairs on the couch happily eating watermelon and chatting confidentially. Suddenly, they ran all the way upstairs and I asked where they were going. Cara answered readily "We're going to the secret room." I, for some unexplained reason making sense only to myself at the time, did not WANT them to go to the secret room, so I suggested they jump on PJ's bed. This was great fun. They jumped for awhile...until Cara suggested they take a nap. So, the 2 kids laid down in PJ's fire truck bed, pulled the blanket up over them and "fell asleep," woke up, jumped and continued the cycle. The sleeping was complete with a blanket and pillow fight (not hitting each other with the pillow, more of a who gets to use the pillow sort of fight). Interestingly enough, each time they "fell asleep," it was always on the same side of the bed, regardless of which side they'd used for jumping.

We eventually came back to fetch our little girl and found the kids back downstairs watching the movie. We asked Cara if she would like to go on a long trip. PJ quickly chimed in: "I trip!" Ironically, he had very recently tripped and had some red marks on his nose to prove it.

Our long drive up to the Lake George area was fairly uneventful (thankfully!). Cara did well and did not fuss, and eventually took a nice long nap. Right over the state line we stopped at a rest area (which, we realized as we pulled in, was the exact same area we'd stopped at on our last trip to Lake George, taken just before we figured out Evie was pregnant with Cara) and Cara had some chicken nuggets and enjoyed the toy which came with her meal--a Transformer. Since he was only a fast food toy he did not actually transform, but Cara didn't mind.

When we arrived at the hotel, Cara seemed somewhat ambivalent about the whole thing (having just awoken from a long nap), but then we showed her the indoor pool. "We go to pool!" she said, and would not be dissuaded. So our first thing we did was go to the indoor pool. There, Cara quickly showed much more bravery than she has ever shown in a pool before. She did lots of "swimming" with Mommy (who held Cara horizontally and pushed her through the water while Cara paddled) and enjoyed getting out of the water, running around the edge of the pool (causing Mommy and Daddy a lot of anxiety, seeing as how we hadn't brought any swim vest for her!), and then getting back in. She also took breaks to lay in the lounge chair on the side of the pool--its cushion was sopping wet by the time she was done. On the steps of the pool, Cara liked to jump and sit. At one point she sat down on a step that was just a bit too far in and unintentionally stuck her head underwater! This was shocking. I demonstrated how things are much easier when you hold your nose and go under. Cara was taken with this idea and for the rest of the trip would periodically try to hold her nose and dunk her face in the water.

Also in the pool room were various arcade machines and games, one of which was a sort of pinball game in which the ball is a bouncy rubber ball that you win as a prize when it goes down the hole (the idea is to get it in one particular hole and win an extra, free ball, but you're guaranteed at least one ball for your quarter). I promptly won one ball for Cara, who was thrilled--she ended up with two other balls from the machine before the trip was over, and we somehow managed to bring all three back home with us.

Our hotel room was very conveniently located just a few steps from the pool, and it was also a very easy walk from the hotel down to the main street of Lake George and the shore of the lake. We took a walk and saw the sights: boats, a small stretch of sandy beach, and ducks, which Cara loved and with whom she had one-sided conversations. The town of Lake George is heavy on the Italian restaurants, and the main street by the lake has exactly the types of stores, arcades and eateries you'd expect to see along a boardwalk in South Jersey. For our first dinner, we ended up at a pseudo-Mexican restaurant which was playing a TV with nonstop surfing and a radio station with nonstop reggae music. Cara, unfazed by this incongruity, ate a hot dog and a large extra portion of refried beans, and drank some lemonade from a big-girl cup (we forgot for many of our outings during the trip to bring Cara's sippy cup, so we were forced to get her used to normal drinking, which was good). She didn't spill too much, and had a nice big meal.

On the way back we went into a tiny shop with the name of Rompa Room, which was absolutely filled with big inflatable kiddie slides and bouncy things. There was a slide built into a kind of squarish plastic jungle gym that was just her size, and a tiny ball pit that she could just manage to climb into. We bought twenty minutes' time for Cara to run around on these things. There was another, older girl there who wanted to show Cara how to do everything (and show off her own skills). Cara was a little shy but quickly picked up on the girl's habit of taking balls out of the ball pit and rolling them down the slide. Our girl was having a blast and just getting the hang of climbing on and sliding down all of the stuff when we had to leave. We would return the next day with a much more experienced little girl.

Having already done more than I ever dreamed we would on our first evening in Lake George, we walked down to the beach and onto a small strip of sand by a pier. Cara absolutely loved the beach and quickly got her pants coated in sand and soaked in water. Some children before her had dug out a nice hollow with a rounded, sandy rim. Cara very carefully brushed off a small portion of the rim and slowly sat down onto it--good thing she cleaned it off first! She loved scooping up the muddy, wet sand and moving it (which she copied off of another girl who was nearby). Evie made a "road" by dragging one foot along the sand, and Cara gleefully ran along it.

After all this sandy fun, it was necessary for Cara to ride home in her stroller with no pants on. We went back to the main street to purchase some baby powder, which helped to get the sand off! (I have about five containers of baby powder in a closet here. I never use it. I distinctly remember thinking, I ought to bring some of that to Lake George!) While I was purchasing this powder, Cara and her Mommy got a chance to play with a remote control truck that was out on the sidewalk, and had the ability to flip over and drive on either side. We also got to see a couple of street musicians, young guys playing saxophones at different street corners. Cara very much enjoyed this, like everything else she had seen and done so far.

As we returned to the hotel room we passed a spot where horses were waiting to give carriage rides to tourists. Cara called, "Good-bye horsies! We see you tomorrow!" over and over as we made our way up the hill behind the street that led to our hotel.

Oddly enough, Cara was intrigued by the hotel crib that we had in our room, and requested to be put into it. (On our last trip, to Baltimore, Cara did not particularly like being in our hotel room, but this time around she was much more agreeable and loved playing with her toys on the bed or in the crib.) We improvised a bath, made difficult by the fact that the drain did not close--Evie had to block it with a piece of plastic! (Maintenance came along the next day and fixed it up.) At bed time, we put her in and left the television on with the sound muted, to provide a little extra light in the room. This was the most dangerous part of the trip: the only sleeping away from home that Cara does is at her Middletown grandparents' house, and she never sleeps with anyone else in the room. After some initial crying, Mommy made a shush noise and Cara remained very quiet, but awake. She did a lot of talking to herself and was playing with the things in her crib and counting enthusiastically. She was awake for a long time, and Evie made a couple of remarks about how it was time to sleep. Finally she quieted, and actually had a better sleep than her parents did.

7/16/07 (Monday)

The next morning we all managed to get up good and early, and left the hotel room at around 7 AM--just too early to get breakfast at the hotel's restaurant. We ended up going down to the street and getting muffins and a "banna" at a cafe that opened early (and we knew it did, having checked their hours the night before!). We walked around the edge of the lake and checked out some things, solidifying plans for what we would do that day. Our first real destination was the beach, which we knew Cara loved. This time we brought our bucket and shovels, which we had not had the night before (Cara had missed them and actually asked for them, so that she could "Dig, dig, dig!"). We had an idyllic time making little sand castles and decorating them with rocks--and then stamping on them. I decided we should build a pond and I dug out a big, deep hole that was big enough to bury Cara in. She quickly climbed in and squelched her toes in the water at the bottom. There was a ladder from the water that led up to the pier, and at her insistence I helped Cara up it. We ran around up on the pier and looked out at the lake and saw some ducks. Cara tried to talk to them and wanted them to come visit us. I explained that the ducks were shy. "Hey duck!" she called, "Why you shy?" It developed that her new favorite thing was to jump down off of the pier back into the shallow water by the beach, then climb back up the ladder, then jump back into the water, etc. Of course we weren't going to actually let her jump off the pier, so we had to keep carrying her down, and she needed help up the ladder. She got so distracted by this that she had absolutely no reaction when she saw a few kids who had arrived and started playing with her bucket and shovels.

Eventually we had pretty much done what we wanted to do at the beach (and managed to do it all with almost no one else there, having gotten up so early), so we hurried over to another part of the lake edge and got tickets to the first ride of the day on the Minne-Ha-Ha, a paddle wheel steam boat that tours the lake. This was the first part of the trip that Cara was not absolutely thrilled by: "We have to get off the boat!" was her main comment on the ride. We had an hour on the boat, though, so we kept her happy with popcorn from the snack bar. She also, I am a bit ashamed to say, ended up with a candy ring and a tiny magnetic bear, which she "wuved" very much. The candy ring was a plastic ring with a fruit-flavored lollipop-like jewel set on it. She managed to swipe this sticky thing onto various parts of us, since she wanted to be held during most of the boat ride. In this way she remained happy through the hour's trip, and her Mommy and Daddy got to see the beautiful scenery and feel jealous about all the rich people with giant mansions on the lake's edge.

Our next destination of the morning, and a much more successful one from the Cara standpoint, was mini-golf! Our chosen course was a self-proclaimed award-winning tour de force called Around the World in 18 Holes. I for one loved it and felt it had pretty much everything that a great mini-golf course should have, including water traps, a windmill, a putting green shaped like a guitar, two Soviet guys turning in circles around the entrance to the Iron Curtain, and a ramp from which your ball was supposed to launch into the air and land in the pouch of a kangaroo!! (On the second try, I achieved this amazing feat.) Cara got a plastic green kiddie club that looked like a tiny hockey stick, and chose a matching green ball. She loved exploring the course and wanted to walk, climb, and sit on all of the things that you weren't supposed to touch. (We caught her almost at the very top of one of the Great Pyramids of Giza.) Not surprisingly, she did not have any idea of the approved club-holding method or swinging stance; she preferred to stab or swipe at the ball when she used her club, but often simply rolled them around with her hands instead. Evie I believe has long felt that the purpose of the mini-golf course is for the ball to "have fun" rolling around in the various tunnels and chutes it can go into, so she very much approved of Cara's methods. Our little girl helpfully retrieved our balls when she noticed they had wandered down the green. She got to ring a bell supposedly from Thailand and make a wish.

All in all, it was a very successful and fun first mini-golf game for Cara. But by the time it was over she was quite tuckered. We stopped for a quick lunch at a pizzeria, where Cara ate her pizza like a big girl, sitting in a normal-sized chair. Then it was back to the hotel room for some books, and a family nap. Evie and I had slept very spottily and were perfectly happy to curl up on the bed at the same time Cara was put in her crib. Very quickly we all quieted down and Cara slept for so long that we ended up by wanting to wake her up.

We got our stroller packed up and went back out to town (carefully avoiding the beach). We ended up at a touristy gift shop which nevertheless had an impressive collection of varied stuffed animals, one of which was a gigantic bear which Cara decided was the Daddy of her tiny stuffed bear with the magnetic paws. Fortunately he did not need to come with his child. She also found a gigantic stuffed tiger, which I convinced her was not at all dangerous, so she sat down on his back and told him he was nice. After that we returned to the famed Rompa Room. Cara was thrilled to be back and had the place to herself. She was much more confident this time and was quickly going down all the slides. Some of them had to be reached by climbing inflatable walls with handholes set into them. She found this a bit confusing but figured it out eventually. She had no problem with sliding down slides head first, and this time she was much more excited about the ball pit. Her favorite part of the twenty minutes was probably when she conceived the idea of simply diving into the balls, wiggling around in them, climbing out, and repeating the process.

For dinner, Evie and I decided it was time to finally have a nice, sit-down meal at a real restaurant. In preparation for this, Evie had purchased a sack of dinosaur toys, which we opened for Cara at the table. The restaurant was located at the lakeside and was up on a second story open-air deck, where we had a fantastic view and enjoyed a fancy and tasty dinner. Cara was happy with her dinosaurs and got to have a nice bowl of lobster bisque (yes, she did like it) and some macaroni and cheese. I think she made the little girl at the table next to us quite jealous with her dinosaurs, who quickly paired up into Daddy-Baby teams (though I surmised that some of the babies must have been adopted, as they were clearly different species than their parents).

After dinner we did some more shopping and bought some more silly (but cheap) toys. Cara met a pink horsie and various other objects that she wanted but we very much did not want her to have, and she was convinced to part with them with little to no fuss. We closed our outing with sweets: Cara and I had soft serve ice cream cones. We strolled down to the lakeside and sat on a wall to finish them. By the time she was done, Cara had chocolate in many unlikely places, including up her nose. She was the subject of much amusement for all the people walking by, until Mommy gave her a thorough wiping.

Back in the hotel, we went back to the pool! This time, after some careful shopping, we were armed with a nice float and a spongy ball in the shape of an octopus, which added to the fun. Cara swam and swam. Evie did most of the holding and was alarmed to find that Cara had little to no fear of the water and was actually fighting to escape from her Mommy's grip. I, oblivious to her bravado, amused Cara by swimming at her and dunking myself underwater periodically. As mentioned in yesterday's post, we got two more bouncy balls out of the "pinball" machine for her, and then we had a family game of air hockey. Cara obviously was not really able to slap the disc across the table, but if I held her and kind of pushed her arm, she could kind of hold her own against Mommy. Eventually Evie discovered a wooden box in a corner of the room which was probably meant to be used as a stepping stool for kids Cara's size. Cara and her Mommy continued playing even after the air stopped flowing out of the table by using the bouncy balls from the pinball machine.

By this time, our second night in Lake George, we felt we had done pretty much everything we could do with Cara in the town. Cara had had a blast, but had several times said things like "We have go home!" or "We get in we car, go home!" (She had seemed excited about going on a horsie ride, and I became excited about taking her on one, but when we asked her if she wanted to go on one she consistently said "No!") We had originally booked three nights in the hotel but decided it might be best if this second night was our last night in New York. (Of course, when we did actually successfully check out of the hotel the next morning and asked Cara if she was ready to go home, she said "No!")

Having learned from our first night, we did not leave the TV on and I think everyone had a better sleep, and went to sleep quicker.

7/17/07 (Tuesday)

We decided to go home early partly because we felt we had done what we wanted to do and partly because we are going to Florida for the weekend and wanted Cara to have more than two nights in her own bed. The trip went really well, and it was nice to be able to have only happy memories!

On Tuesday morning we stayed in the room for a while, then went to breakfast in the hotel restaurant when it opened. Cara ate pancakes, ignoring the ones I cut up and picking up whole ones with her hands. When we went back to the room to pack, we found our favorite TV show in the whole world: Curious George! It was strange to watch it on the TV instead of a DVD; Grandpop cuts out a lot of things for us! When we had fit everything into the car and inspected the room carefully (earlier I had happened to find the Playmobil grandpapa under the bed), we checked out and told Cara we were going home. She was, as Steve said, unimpressed. This was the little girl who had wandered out into the hallway in her pajamas before breakfast, saying, "We go car, go we house."

Before we went "we car," we went over to Fort William Henry. Our hotel was actually on the grounds of the fort, so it seemed silly not to check it out. Of course, first we wandered into the gift shop. Steve may not respect me, but I bought a lot of little things on this trip, and I'm very pleased with most of it. The ring pop was very useful all day Monday; I kept it in the stroller and pulled it out when we needed it. ("Oh, wanks, Mommy!") The baby bear has definitely provided more than $3 worth of joy by now! At the fort, I admit that I kept up my buying habit. I made sure we had plenty of things for Cara, PJ, and Casey. One thing Cara got right away was a drum on a stick. It has nice feathers on it, and you can tap it or just shake it to make sound. I'm enjoying it, too.

Cara didn't have a great time at the fort. We had to carry her most of the time. She was curious about the man giving the tour; he was an Indian in full (thus, partial?) garb. It was cool, but we didn't get to hear much. There were activities for children. We chose to make a bead necklace. I strung the beads that Cara selected. We made a mainly brown and pink string. Cara wore it all day, and she didn't want us to take it off her at night. I'm really impressed, actually, that it's holding together!

We heard drums outside the fort. I'd seen three people dressed as soldiers playing them yesterday, but we couldn't see them from inside. Referring to one of our favorite poems, Steve said it was Buntington Bunny. Cara very much wanted to go see him, and she kept talking about it for at least twenty minutes. When we finally emerged, Buntington Bunny had left. No one was playing drums.

We got into the car around eleven and, ironically, headed north. Cara fell asleep pretty fast; we had to wake her up when we got to the Natural Stone Bridge and Caves. This was something Steve and I did the last time we were up here, three years ago. It's a really amazing place to hike and climb around, in a relatively small setting. There are fun things for kids, too, including owl pellets for sale. (I considered getting one for PJ.) Well, waking up is hard. Fortunately, Daddy suggested lunch. I got some hot dogs, and we got our snacks from the car. We ate at a picnic table with a chipmunk nearby. Cara got to climb around on a playground. After her hot dog, a banana, and a brownie made by Juliana, Cara was a lot more ready to go!

Usually, our problem is that Cara wants us to carry her and we want her to walk. Here, it was the opposite. Once she saw all the rocks for climbing at this "special park," she was hard to stop! At first, she held my hand and I felt like we were in control. It was fabulous! Eventually, she was so hyped up that she didn't want to hold on! We were telling her not to run, so she decided that that meant she had to "sneak," with her hands held up in front of her like a little mouse. When we couldn't let her walk, we carried her. We had to climb up and down stairs made of rocks, picking our way. There were ramps and bridges. She loved it, which I loved. I know that's a place I'd want to go back to.

One of the first things we had done was to buy a bag of dirt to put into a sieve. We put it in a trough and let water run through it, and then Cara could pick out the pretty rocks. After our hike, we found a big swing we could all sit in. Next to another picnic ground, there was an "archeological dig" for children, where fake fossils are covered in dirt and paintbrushes are provided to unearth them with. Cara got down to work next to some older kids. As she has been doing lately, she started parroting them: "Look what I found!"

The last activity was feeding fish. It turned out that the fish pond was partway down the driveway, so we pulled over on our way out. It was a real trout pond, not a little artificial koi thing as I had expected. I threw some food in, and Cara threw some onto the weeds by the shore. Tiny minnows nibbled at the food. We moved over and tried another spot. Nothing. Steve noticed some tiny newts in the water. Suddenly, there was a splash. There were ripples. We kept watching. We'd been there quite a while, and we guessed that the fish must not be hungry. Slowly, though, they started eating the food. We could see them, big rainbowy fish flashing in the water and then disappearing. They jumped! It was really cool and worth the wait.

Finally we got into the car for the long ride home. When we got here, we were all glad. I made Cara some soup. Baby George was reunited with his daddy. We made a big mess with our toys. Cara chased the cats all over the house, trying to give them treats. Cara got to sleep in her own bed.

7/18/07 (Wednesday)

Today was just what we wanted: a quiet, boring day at home. Lots of toys got to play together. George was with his daddy. It turns out that the little kitty "wants his puma daddy." I found an old teddy bear, who wears a Trenton State T-shirt and is therefore the most educated of the toys, who of course turns out to be the tiny bear's daddy. The dinosaurs all were daddies, too. Hmmmm . . .

We went out to the mall for lunch. First we walked around. We hit a toy store, where we saw some interesting things. Steve found a cash register toy with labeled buttons: "steak, cookies, beer." Cara got on and off of some bikes. We went on and found the Reatrix pad, but the fun only lasted a few minutes. It was time to eat. At the food court, we can all get different things. I had sushi. Steve had tacos. Cara had soup.

While I was out at the store in the late afternoon, Cara decided to play on the couch cushions. She put her toys in her crib. She made Daddy take off his shoes. She made him turn on the light. Then she started stripping the couch. The pillows were all still down when PJ came over.

I got out all the souvenirs, some of which were new to Cara. PJ and Cara both got punch balloons, which they have now used in all sorts of ways. Each of them got an Indian headdress. Neither would wear it. Casey did, briefly. PJ got a drum, but he liked Cara's better. I got Cara a little mermaid (not Little Mermaid) set, which turns out to be less nice than the pirate set I got PJ. Each Loeffler got a Pool Pal like Cara's octopus, whom I got out to prevent jealousy. With all the old and new toys, we were busy until pizza arrived (I didn't feel like spending my playtime cooking).

After dinner, Cara and PJ headed for the living room. I explained my rule about no jumping on the couch itself, but PJ found a loophole. He leaped from the couch onto the cushions, landing face-first very happily. It did look like fun. (The pillows were only a few inches away.) Cara was, as usual, slightly less daring. Casey joined in soon, though not with the hard-core jumping. When things got wild enough, I brought out Munchkins and we went downstairs. Everyone was happy. Both two-year-olds tried putting back ones they were done with. They also wandered around with them. I followed them upstairs to find PJ lounging in the corner of the couch, while Cara apparently tried to sit on his lap. He didn't seem to notice. "Who wants more?" I asked. "Us!" said Cara. They went back downstairs. I put the cushions back. At the end of the evening, sugary and laden with loot, company went home. Ron got to carry the punch balloon, which he seemed to enjoy.

Cara helped clean up a little bit, mainly because she wanted to play "Ring Around a Rosy." In the spirit of everything being more fun at bedtime, she even wore her headdress. We were slow this evening! It was eight before she was in the bath. It was a long bath. When I came to get her, she said, "No, Mommy! I having fun my daddy!" Then, when I went away, she said, "Sorry, Mommy!" She told Steve she had made me sad. I told her I understood, I think her daddy is fun, too.

Today's theme: Daddies are great.

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