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Journal Key:

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

9/13/07 (Thursday)

When I picked Cara up today, early, we went down to TGI Friday's to meet Lina and Sarah! There was considerable happiness and bouncing on our way to the table. We got a booth, and Cara sat at the head in her high chair, while I sat next to Sarah. That was very nice, because I got several hugs and even a kiss! The kids all loved the mozzarella sticks, which Cara ate with the marinara sauce. She was the only one at the table who was interested. I had let Cara look at the kiddie menu and pick out what she wanted based on the pictures. She selected macaroni and cheese, which she proceeded to eat (almost) all up! The girls noticed the exciting decor, including a Jaws poster across the room and a stuffed swordfish near it. In the middle of our meal, we all had to get up and go see it. We also enjoyed looking at an astronaut up on a shelf. We took a couple of subsequent trips as well. Dessert came with our meals, so the girls had ice cream. Shannon and I got four mini-desserts, which came in what looked like large shot glasses. Of course, the girls were all very interested and moved right in on them. I think we all found things to enjoy. While we waited for the check to come, we had a dance party in the aisle. Everyone was impressed.

The playdate reconvened up at our house. Cara really plays well with the twins, especially here. They dragged the dog out into the big playroom, and after I told Shannon that Cara won't let me bury her, we buried Lina and Sarah. Then we had to bury Cara, who loved it. We always dug them up afterwards. All the kids loved diving in. Astonishingly, Cara, who was sitting in the balls when Lina jumped in, did not scream or flinch, which is always her reaction with PJ. I think it's because they're girls.

My favorite episode of the evening was Lina standing in the ball pit, throwing out all the balls, trying to find her feet. No one was allowed to help her, either. Twice in the evening, the majority of the balls were out on the floor.

We played girls and Playmobil and Dora and little pets and ponies. Cara suddenly mastered her grabbing claw and brought over several items, held in its clutches, for our examination. Cara decided she wanted Elefun, which she seems to call Elenor, so she went down to the basement. We all went! We played the keyboard and dressed up in the winter hats that we found. Sarah very nicely gave Buster several toys, so uninvasively that Buster did not feel obliged to run away. Then Cara turned up and tried to give them to Buster by putting them basically on her face. That did it. By the end of the evening, Buster was wild-eyed, hiding under the play table.

9/14/07 (Friday)

When I arrived at Susan's, Cara ran to me and jumped into my arms! Susan presented the school work of the day: Cara had traced the letter B on a worksheet. Cara told me the essential fact about her bag: Puma here! In the car she held Puma and talked to him all the way home.

At home we discovered Aunt Claire and her friend Moira watching a movie. Cara was inclined to be sociable, which gave me a chance to go change my clothes - I had come straight from work. Not only were Claire and Moira good companions, they also had freshly baked tookies! These were top-notch tookies, crisp on the surface and soft inside. Cara took one for the road when we left for the park.

You know you are truly loved when a child does a U-turn on her way to the slides and hurries back to the house to get you. That is what Cara did for her Grandpapa. While we were waiting for Grandpapa to get ready, GG showed up bearing gifts: a T-shirt that is probably too small and two tiny pink pigs which instantly became the treasure of the day. Cara held them in her hands constantly, only relinquishing them briefly when climbing ladders.

We ran through the park hand in hand. Every time a stick lay across our path Cara cried "Tump!" and, having succeeded, announced, "I tumped!"

The playground was crowded with kids, all of them older and bigger than Cara. She was torn between caution and attraction. A friendly 6-year-old played nicely with her and she gained confidence. Two little boys showed off the interesting caterpillar they had found and worked vigorously to dig a deep hole for it to live in; Cara was an interested observer. She got in her fair share of ladders and slides. She did slip near the bottom of a curved ladder she was descending, but was immediately reassured and explained happily, "I fell."

After she had climbed and slid and played in the sand I began to talk to her about supper. We have macaroni and cheese, I told her. And very good bread. "And you have tookies!" she reminded me. I was a little concerned that a tiny child who had nibbled three entire cookies might not have room left for supper, but she chowed down on two helpings of mac and cheese, and even ate some peas.

Supper was followed by the usual: an episode of Blues Clues and a delightful bath (the piggies went in). Cara helpfully tried pouring water over her own head! When she had been thoroughly cuddled and brushed, she tried a few diversions before settling down to be read to. The Platypus book was completely engrossing; in fact, we read it twice and each time Cara gasped at the advent of every misfortune Platypus suffered, and rejoiced with him at the end. Then a very tired little girl was tucked into bed without the least protest, and slept soundly until well past 7 in the morning.

9/15/07 (Saturday)

Awake before Cara for once, Grandpapa decided to make pancakes. We mixed up the batter together and soon a happy child was wolfing down pancakes with real maple syrup. Everything pleased her this morning, and she was very happy to be going home as well.

Cara was indeed a very happy girl today. Aside from the obvious happiness in getting to visit one's grandparents (and she got to see her other Grandpa today), I think Cara is just happy it is the weekend and she gets to spend the day playing with her toys. She was excited to hear from her mommy that Grandpa was coming to visit today, and immediately wanted to look out the window and watch for him. (She also immediately added, "And Grandma!" and Mommy had to explain that Grandma couldn't come today--she is in New Mexico at the moment.) Grandpa got the chance to do a lot of playing with his girl today, since Mommy and Daddy had to go outside in the afternoon and do work in the yard. Cara got all of her toys out and they were all over the play room. She dismantled the papasan and the wicker, cage-like seat was overturned. She very much enjoyed jumping onto the cushion, which was laid flat on the floor. She did a lot of screaming, which has become one of her more favorite things to do lately.

Also today Cara did a lot of "Doo-bee-doo-bee-dah" type of sounds. I'm not sure exactly where she got this from, but I think it's just another sign that she is very musical. Another reason for Cara being very happy today was that she did not get a nap--she's just to excited to nap on the weekends when someone is visiting.

For lunch we went out and Cara sat on a booster seat in our booth. We've had one very good booster seat experience, at our local Mexican restaurant, but at this particular restaurant the size of the booth and the size of the booster and the size of Cara just did not match up: she was too far from the table, and when she slid forward close enough the booster seat tipped. I spent the meal sitting next to her, leaning on the back of the booster and occasionally grabbing her to keep her from sliding under the table. Ironically enough, she had macaroni and cheese--we later came home and read Grandmama's journal entry to find that she had had the same thing for dinner the night before!

For dinner I decided to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I remember almost living on these when I was a kid, but Cara hadn't eaten one before. She was intrigued, so I made one for her to try. New things are weird and she didn't end up eating a lot of it, but there's still a chance she will be a chip off the old block.

As the late afternoon turned to early evening, we decided to fill the gap until bedtime with a trip to Johnson Park (Cara had brought up the idea of going to see goats earlier in the afternoon, so it seemed a good thing to do). We took our napless girl through an extended stroller ride, finally arriving at a playground where she bounced over and got to work. Her impressive achievement this time was to climb a kind of plastic tower set up next to the main jungle gym. It has all kinds of handles on it but I wouldn't have thought she could manage it. With a little assistance from Mommy, she made it up and over to the platform and nearby slide. After that first time, she was thrilled with what she'd done and repeated the act several times. She also tried an even more complicated climbing thingie which is a bit too advanced for her, and had to be extricated.

Even after all this, our evening was not over. We walked on to the other playground and Cara got onto the swings. Cara is very serious about the swings. She had a long turn in one swing, then requested to be put into the next swing over, so that she would be in better position to watch a little boy who was swinging at the same time. Even after the boy left and Evie had run through the alphabet song, Cara still wanted to go on swinging, and it was with some difficulty that we coaxed her out with the promise of goat-feeding.

We did indeed feed the goats, who received many leaves from our excitable little girl. Then Cara pointed over to the snack bar and cried, "We have ice cream!" Mommy cleverly tricked her by saying we had some at home, but carefully not promising that we would eat it--by the time we got home, ice cream was entirely forgotten.

Cara was very, very tired (though not crabby tired, just dazed tired) and had a very short bath. She harrassed her poor mommy out of the Elmo couch, and then harrassed her out of the story chair, where I read her what must have been almost half of the Big Book before putting her tearfully into her crib. As soon as I shut her door all was quiet, and I have heard nothing since.

9/16/07 (Sunday)

Daddy went out to mow the lawn this morning, and that was enough motivation for Cara to get dressed. It was a nice cool day, so I suggested we go find jeans. She ran to her shirt drawer and found two greens. Fortunately, one of them was a nice long-sleeved top that still fit, so it went nicely with the jeans I found her. She has a drawer full of 2T pants, all of which are still, I think, too long. What she wore today was the longest of the jeans she was wearing last spring. The length was good, but they may have been too wide up at the top. She still has a couple of pairs of sweat pants that may fit, but I don't know whether her other old jeans will be good. We may be in trouble. In better news, we have three 3T turtlenecks in her closet!

Outside Cara recited the whole of "Pennington Poe" while riding on her horse. I'm not sure she knows what a poem is. A couple of times I asked her to say a poem, and I think she said, "a poem." We also played sand, and I have donated an old paintbrush as a toy for the sand table. I like to be able to clean off the roads, and Cara likes burying cars and finding them again.

Joy of joys, Aunt Claire came to play! She got to greet the cats, I think, and then she had to sit right down to read Cara a few books. Then Cara had to show her some toys. Daddy was making the bears all line up in patterns, and Claire got to join in that. We let her play with our guitar, and later when Cara thought Claire needed something to do, she brought it to her again. She showed Claire her shoes. She started to put them on to show off that she could, but it didn't go well. Cara loves Claire. Anywhere we went, it was, "Come on, Taire!"

We went out to On the Border for lunch (Taire came!), and Cara, a mimic, dipped her chip in the salsa. That didn't work out too well. She got to watch several other little kids, and she was kept quite occupied by her daddy with crayons and animal stickers. She was fairly friendly with the waitress, which was cool. She helpfully repeated things like, "She'll be right back," in case we hadn't caught them. We'd been looking at the dessert menu, and we ordered something that came with ice cream. Cara had definitely agreed that she wanted ice cream. When it came, I put some in her mouth. She was shocked! "It's very cold, little girl," Daddy told her. "It's very cold, Taire!" Cara cautioned. On the way back to the car, I held Cara's hand. She walked on each of those thingies that sit across the heads of parking spaces, like so many little balance beams, jumping off the end of each one.

Around four, we took Cara over to PJ's house to be baby-sat! She was happy. When we came to pick her up, she was glad to see us but still happily playing. All the kids were taking turns being inside the big tube, and then they also got to slide down inside it as Em or I held one end on the couch. Daddy read her a Bob the Builder book, which may not have impressed him as great literature. Soon, though, we took our tired, napless girl home for her bath.

9/17/07 (Monday)

She was tired, and she has a little cold, but Cara still had a good day at Susan's. She made a picture of a tree, which has some strange stuff that may be some sort of colored rice in it. I suppose it has something to do with Fall. It also has two squirrel stickers, which makes it really cute.

The other day, we were looking at the big book and feeding Hilda Hippo her ABCs. Cara was able to identify the letters P, O, and M for me! It may have all been a huge coincidence. When she was drawing one evening, she started writing her name, which I believe is spelled "P-A-R-A." Her scribbles looked more lettery than usual. Today, she's been singing snatches of the alphabet, loudly. It goes something like, "Q R S T U Z!"

She can also get through "Baa Baa Black Sheep." At the drop of a hat.

Sometimes we ask Cara whether she wants something or wants to do something that we know would be a good idea but which she may not be excited about. She just says, "No fank you, Mommy," (or Daddy) in such a cute, quiet way that it's very difficult to press the point.

We played girls today. Cara also got out a fancy set of finger puppets, which the girls got to wear on their heads! (Okay, that was my idea.) Then they could say things like, "I dgaffe!" "I seal!" They bowed to each other and danced a lot at their Halloween party. I'm kind of hoping to get Cara excited about Halloween, because she never stays in dress-up clothes, at least while she's at home. It would be nice if she kept her costume on for more than five minutes!

Tomorrow is an exciting day. Cara will be baby-sat! We are going out to a concert, and one of Aunt Claire's friends will be staying with Cara. So, no Tuesday journal, but I'm sure we'll have an interesting report on Wednesday.

9/19/07 (Wednesday)

When Steve brought Cara home yesterday, the sitter was here. Cara immediately began to show off her toys. When we left, though, the little girl did try to go with us. When she couldn't, she fell flat on the floor, wailing. Naturally, as soon as we were gone, she was fine. Steve had picked up two toys to use as bribes, and Cara actually only got one: the Mommy giraffe. He had hoped it would be a daddy, but it's definitely a mommy. It goes perfectly with the baby giraffe! When the sitter asked Cara whether she brushed her own teeth or needed them brushed for her, Cara said, "You do it!" Then, after she was in bed, Cara confused the poor sitter by staying awake for about an hour, just singing and playing. So, she definitely had a fun night. We're proud of her.

Today at Susan's the project was a bag with leaf stamps on it; it contains "treasures": a leaf and lots of acorns. Cara is proud of it. She was excited to see me when I picked her up, and I'm sure she was happy to see Daddy this morning. We had a good snuggle.

PJ, Casey, and Em came over, and Cara had a tough time. She wailed whenever PJ touched her stuff. Em suggested, and we agree, that it was probably in part to give us a hard time over abandoning her last night. That's reasonable. We had Mexican food for dinner and headed for bed. Cara got read to a lot by her daddy, and then she got to wear her white zip-up pajamas. They're not convenient for using the potty, but they're warm and comfy and currently very exciting.

Em reports that the kids learned a song about squirrels today the performance of which involves the singer knocking on his or her own head. Neither child was prepared to demonstrate it.

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