| Previous Week | Back Home | Next Week |

Journal Key:

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

 

10/18/07 (Thursday)

Last night, I repaired the girl who was broken a few weeks ago. Cara saw her and was, of course, delighted with her "new girl." This morning, Cara wanted very much to play. She ended up taking her new girl in the car with her to Susan's. When I picked her up, Cara told me she wanted her new girl. Where was she? In Daddy's car. We repeated this conversation several times. Cara was very happy that Daddy was bringing her girl home to her. Later in the evening, of course, the girl broke again. We are not heartbroken, though, because I told Cara we could get a new girl to replace her. I want to, too. That was my favorite girl. (I know I won't get the new one, but maybe I'll get a hand-me-down.)

The event of the evening was that Ron and PJ came over! PJ settled, in a few minutes, on playing with the girls' car. Strangely, this never resulted in disciplinary action. Cara was very distracted by Ron. She had to show him her project from today. She had to go all the way upstairs to get her new Curious George book to show him. He had to read it to her. When she went up to the living room, she called "Ron, I up here!" She explained to him everything that happened, just in case he had missed it.

In other news, Steve has explained to me that Cara's pajamas do not have bears on them. They have sheep. What I had thought were bear heads on white, fluffy doilies are in fact sheep heads on white, fluffy sheep bodies. Interesting.

10/19/07 (Friday)

Cara has discovered that letters make words! As we drove down from Susan's she pointed out signs, demanding, "What that say?" I did not think, during the evening, to see whether she can recognize her own name.

During the drive she also mentioned her new hero "Yaygo" (Diego) enthusiastically: we would go to my house and watch Yaygo. Luckily, Grandpapa had taken the forethought to provide a Diego DVD. Cara watched it with rapt attention, nodding and laughing. She does enjoy the drama of a good story, and turned to me anxiously when small critters were in peril: "The marmosets!" One story actually featured pumas, sadly as a danger to the critter of the day, but that mattered little to us; Cara was simply thrilled that Puma had made a guest appearance.

Before we resorted to DVDs, we did a lot of painting. Photographic evidence is available: Grandpapa took pictures.

After last week's difficult bedtime, I chose to take my time. Consequently the child went to bed peaceably but rather late; sorry.

10/20/07 (Saturday)

It's months since I've checked whether Cara can recognize her own name. She always could, since she assumes whatever you show her must be her name. She does not show any evidence of being able to recognize any letters on her own, though she writes them so well with Susan.

We tried to spend a lot of time today just playing in the house. Cara really doesn't get too much time to just hang out here, since we're always so busy. This morning, though, we played hard and made a huge mess. Interestingly, Puma helped. He was downstairs with Cara, who would hold him and help him pick things up with his hands and put them places. He helped Steve build a block tower. (He handed the blocks to Steve, that is, while knocking down as many as he picked up.) Cara and Puma also took several naps on a pillow in the game room. I had to tuck them in, turn off the light, and close the door. Then I got to tidy up some toys until Cara opened the door again. She played with her play food a lot. She made several sandwiches that were really tall stacks of bread with some cheese or butter between them. She seems to have decided that some of the cheese is pink, though when she asked me for it I could not find an item that satisfied her. I even offered her the round pink discs that I assume are bologna. It turns out that they are salami. Or just lami.

The whole family needed clothes, though, so we went out to Sears. Cara was fascinated by the Christmas decorations on display. We had to walk around and around them. Steve had to go on ahead so that I could eventually say, "Where's Daddy? Let's go find him!" I was astonished: when we were walking by the electronics department, which is fairly distinctive-looking, I suppose, Cara started talking about the yellow shoe and how it got lost here! That must have happened months ago!

We got plenty of new work clothes for Daddy, and Cara spent a while running around the men's department. She tried helping us pick out shirts, but she and Daddy do not agree about pink. She had brought two finger puppets with her, and they both got to slide down some shirts. When that had paled, Cara crawled between some pants and discovered the cave in the middle of the rack. Delightful. Next we went to pick out more pajamas for Cara. There was a brief detour through the lower level, during which Cara found some decorative candles and touched them, explaining that when she touched candles people said no to her and she was sad. She talked about that for a while afterwards, too. We found two pairs of pajamas like those sheep ones from Grandmom; one pair has pigs on it, and the other has a princess. Cara wanted to wear them right away; she even got the pigs off of their hanger.

She was a tired little girl after her late night of debauchery. We went over to have Mexican food for lunch, and she got to sit in a booster seat. She leaned her head over on her daddy while she ate her chips. Refried beans woke her up, though!

After a much-needed nap, we headed to the park. As usual, it was very exciting. There was a grandma there with two big girls whose mommies and daddies were having date nights! We outstayed them, naturally, and ran all over the place. Cara wants to assign us all sides of the climbing wall. She gets the left, I think I get the right, and then Daddy gets the middle. The twisty slide was exceptionally staticy. Cara's hair stood straight up. Steve's hair stood straight up. My hair stood straight up. Where were our cameras?

It was dark when we got home. We got out Steve's impulse purchase from Sears: a Diego DVD. We snuggled up, since Cara was still tired, and watched the dinosaur rescue. It was truly terrible. We splurged and watched another afterwards, though Cara got up and had to play with her toys and didn't really watch. Diego "rescued" some tree frogs by encouraging them to jump to safety. The redeeming quality of the show was the tree frogs' song, which was relentlessly cheerful. They happily sang, "Help us, help us! Ribbit, ribbit!" They were still cheerful when they were about to go over the waterfall. The dinosaur episode had little such irony.

Cara is very happy to be wearing her new princess pajamas.

10/21/07 (Sunday)

Cara slept until 8:30 this morning! She had hot chocolate and barely spilled at all. We snuggled for a little bit with Playhouse Disney, though they seem to have changed their lineup since we last checked in with them. They have ads for strange things. We are confused but not overly concerned.

This morning, we made Halloween cookies! I bought cookie cutters in the shapes of a ghost, a cat, a moon, and a pumpkin. I made sugar cookies. I bought colorful decorations and some tubes of writing icing in white, teal, purple, and pink, which I believe are traditional for Halloween. Steve and Cara decorated some unbaked cookies while I cut them out. I put each one on a separate little plate to ensure maneuverability and neatness. They shook sugar on, applied sprinkles, and stuck in those colorful little candy things. Cara stuck them in nice and hard. When the cookies started to come out of the oven, the fun began again. Surprisingly, Cara liked the pink icing best! They don't look awfully seasonal, but we had a good time.

After that, we got to play outside. We took a bucket, because the squirrels have been making a huge mess! They've dropped bunches of leaves all over the front yard because they've been chewing the twigs off of the big oak trees. We all went out and picked them up, filling bucket after bucket. Juliana, whose driveway has been receiving the same treatment but with incredible barrages of acorns as well, theorizes that they are building nests. Cara got to play with her horse and sand table, too, which was nice for a change.

I woke Cara from her nap around four. Today was her turn to go stay with PJ while we went out. She was still sleepy and cuddly, but I asked her whether PJ liked Diego. She nodded gently for a while. Then she told me she needed her shoes on. I am very proud of that parenting trick. We took Diego right over to show PJ.

When we got home, everyone was over at the Loefflers' next-door neighbors, where Cara had eaten a huge dinner of pot roast, noodles, and carrots. Em reports that it is the most meat she's ever seen Cara eat. Cara was sitting alone at the table when we came in. She did not want to get up. Eventually it became clear why. Ron had said that ice cream would be forthcoming, and Cara was ready for it. When we convinced her that the ice cream would be at PJ's house, she was willing to come out of her seat. The kids sat on the front steps and ate coconut popsicles. No one else wanted them, but they didn't know any better. (It turned out that a friend's child had bought them and realized she didn't like them, so they had been passed along.) It was dark out, but everyone was ready to play. Ron set up a bright light, and he made some shadow puppets on his truck. I contributed a dog.

At home again, we had some time to play. Afterwards, Cara cleaned up beautifully. She kissed each Weeble before she tossed it into the tub. When she noticed me putting away Princess Hat, she did begin to wail. Even so, she also kissed each of her purple bears as she put them away. She stopped in the kitchen for a small snack. I proposed that Daddy give Shelby a bath. "No, me!" I know she loves her special time with Daddy.

10/22/07 (Monday)

I came home intending to basically ignore Cara and cook a good dinner. Instead, I got completely off-track and painted her face. I knew I needed to try it for practice once or twice, and today seemed as good a time as any. She sat as nicely for me as she does for the ladies at the zoo, though perhaps she is a little bit better for them out of awe at the situation. I looked at pictures of the two times she's been a kitty for guidance and just kind of jumped in. I put her hair, including her bangs, up in doodlebops. Then I gave her a pink nose, pink ears on her forehead, pink cheeks, and a pink chin. Then I stuck some white on, too. It was okay. It was kind of crooked, but it was okay. I had also bought a black makeup pencil, and I used that to add some whiskers, a nose, and some little spots. The paint hadn't really dried yet, so that didn't turn out great. When I tried it later, it wrote on the paint really well. Cara and I both got hearts on the backs of our hands with the pencil.

That paint was wet. I decided not to keep the child in the house, so we went out to show people. Ron was the first we found, and he was very impressed. When Em pulled up with PJ and Casey, they were thrilled. Juliana came over and asked where we had had it done! The kids headed inside to play and see Diego (surprise), and we all had Oreos. Cara got the brown all over her chin, which actually looked pretty good.

When we got home, Daddy was here. He and Cara hung out while I cooked that good dinner after all. Afterwards, we had a couple of cookies. Cara wanted another. I said no and brought her out to watch Diego. She was not to be dissuaded. Finally, laboriously, I made a deal. If she had some oranges first, she could have another cookie. I'm not sure how I feel about that deal. I think it makes the oranges seem like a punishment, which is not precisely the effect I want to create. However, she ate a lot of oranges and asked for more, totally forgetting about the cookies.

Cara noticed the little circular mirror I had brought down earlier to show her her face. She wanted me to put her in it again. I gave it to her. She was charmed and giggled at herself, putting her kitty face about two inches from the mirror. She showed Daddy her face. She showed me her face. She did this by holding up the mirror to us so that she was looking at herself and we were looking at ourselves on the other side. She ran up to the TV and cried, "Look, Diego, I kitty cat!" She held the mirror up to him. She was happy.

This paint is harder to wash off than the zoo paint. We did it, though. After the bath, we played with the light-up turtle, who gamely shone stars throughout. He was spinning on his back on the floor. He went to bed with us in my bed. When Cara walked up the hallway, she had to stoop over to make him walk. Fortunately, he also did some jumping. She wanted to brush his teeth, too.

10/23/07 (Tuesday)

It's been a strange day. Cara was up early. I got to watch JoJo with her, which we haven't done in months. Susan reported that Cara was "off her game" today. She didn't even make a project! She seemed perky enough when I got there, though Susan says it was the first time all day.

As we pulled up to the house, Cara reported seeing a girl stuck by her hair. I guessed that it was some sort of Halloween decoration on a nearby house, so I suggested that we go see. We left our things in the car and set off, hand in hand. We crossed the street and set off down the sidewalk, Cara jumping over the larger cracks. Essentially, we had a nice walk around the block. We saw no girls with stuck hair. When we were halfway around, Cara decided we should go home. When we were almost home, Cara said she heard PJ. "PJ! We are coming!" I was skeptical. Soon, I heard him, too. We ran, Cara shouting periodically that we were coming. Somewhat mysteriously, he was not there. No cars were there. We discussed this, though Cara did not feel that it was a problem. Finally we went home and Cara helped me bring in the recycling bins.

She wanted her face painted again. I compromised and drew her a nose and whiskers with the black pencil. We kind of sat around and snuggled with the TV on. Dinner was soup, which Cara ate some of. She told us a few times, "That was my tummy!" Apparently it was noisy. She mentioned a tummy-ache, though on questioning she denies this. She may be burping a little. I think something is up with her tummy. Now, though, she has started sneezing. So, we'll see.

For entertainment this evening, we had plenty of material. I got out the box of Forbidden Art Supplies yesterday to get a paintbrush, and Cara took it down and opened it. She went through everything, with no disasters. The things she picked out to play with, after the pipe cleaners, were her old stamps. We took them downstairs to try them, and they mostly work. I get the green one, and Cara gets the yellow, purple, and pink ones. She likes to share, except when it involves someone touching her things.

10/24/07 (Wednesday)

Susan called us this morning to close for the day; she's sick. I had conferences at work, so I definitely had to go. I left, but down the street, Ron had a great idea. Why not invite Cara for the day? Well, after breakfast Steve brought her over. Ron had to go to work, too, it turned out, so Em stayed home with the three kids. When I called, around 10:30, they were having a ball. They had played Play-doh. They had even made a cake! They really had a great morning, because Em reported later that she had had to wake them all up from their naps!

When I arrived after school, everyone was in the kitchen, making icing from scratch. The mixer was running and PJ and Cara were taking turns pouring in scoops of confectioner's sugar. If they had had their way, that would have been some very dry icing. We all had some cake, and then I came back here with PJ and Cara. They both held my hands to cross the street. We got out some regular toys, but then Cara suggested Elefun, so we headed for the basement. Cara carried the box upstairs, and PJ helpfully made sure that the cat toys were all downstairs. We argued a little bit over who got what color net, but we managed to play a few rounds. Then somehow or other I ended up lifting them in turns to put individual butterflies into the end of the trunk and watch them fly out. Cara put all the red ones into her red net and wandered off, but PJ could not get enough.

It was all the lifting that led me to notice that they both needed new diapers. In fact, they both needed new pants. Upstairs we went. I changed PJ first and let him select some new pants to wear. He picked Cara's Shorts of Doom, which went nicely with his brown-red-and-blue striped shirt. He put them on backwards and started to climb up the glider, in an attempt to stand on the arm and climb into her crib. I changed Cara, who declined to select any new pants. Off she ran.

I turned PJ's shorts around, and he found a nice pair of pink shorts he thought Cara should wear. We went looking for her. She was in my bedroom. "I sleeping, PJ!" He climbed onto the bed, where she had gotten under the covers. He considered getting in, too. He almost did. He was more concerned, though, with the shorts. So, for the first time, Cara went to bed with a boy who was trying to get her to put her pants on.

After that we ran wild for a while. We got out a lot of toys. We drew with markers. We used stamps. We played with Play-doh. PJ and I kind of half tossed, half rolled some Play-doh balls back and forth. Cara held her four containers of pink tightly in her arms. Em, Ron, and Casey came, and we got out the big Play-doh set. They enjoyed the toys, though PJ quickly squished any bear that came his way. Steve brought home dinner, and after that, and dessert, it was time to head for bed.

We need to start starting to go to bed earlier. Bedtime has been stretching! After her bath, now, Cara does not select pajamas to get into. She likes to throw all the pajamas onto the floor. Then she jumps onto them and giggles. Then she runs around. It can go on and on. Once we've gotten her into her jammies, she is perfectly willing to clean up. She stuffs them all back into the drawer, and the routine continues.

| Previous Week | Back Home | Next Week |