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11/8/07 (Thursday) Cara was already awake when I looked in on her this morning, very concerned. She needed another zebra. The stuffed one she'd gotten at the zoo yesterday was not enough. We have many other stuffed animals, but if memory serves none of them is a zebra. However I suggested her little plastic Playmobil zebra. We went downstairs directly to fetch it, and this satisfied her. We had pancakes for breakfast and then I was off to work, leaving Mommy to deliver Cara to Susan, where she reportedly had a nice day. This evening, as always, Cara was very happy when everyone was in the house. It's such a joy to come home to such a happy girl, who is willing to hug me (my legs, anyway). While dinner heated up, Mommy got out the Play-doh. Soon we were making bears. It developed into a family, with a Mommy and a Daddy and sisters. At one point one of the girls was crying, and Cara had the Mommy (or Daddy--they were indistinguishable, both being composed of sparkly silver Play-doh) come over. The usual result is that the parent cheers up the child. For some reason this time their reaction was to lay down next to the girl and start crying also. Soon the whole family was in on the act. Then they were suddenly happy again. Cara rejected one set of leftovers and requested her "yellow noodles" (lo mein) instead. She got her hands nice and oily and then left, requesting to watch Diego again (oy). We were firm with the non-Deigo, and she ended up back at the table with Play-doh. Bears were succeeded by giraffes. There was a mommy and a baby, who were necessarily the same size since they both came from the same mold. Many of the Play-doh animals suffered horrible injuries due to Cara squishing. At one point the giraffe baby was heard to say, "Oh no! My head fell off!" Before long it was time for the bath, which Cara was strenuously against but, as usual, once she got in she had a nice time. The sharks, who were a favorite before the advent of the frogs and turtles, are enjoying a renaissance. She really loves having me play with one while she flies the other one around and hides him and has him pop back out again. With all modesty I think she got this idea from me. Now she is upstairs being read some nice books, which she wanted to read very badly (most likely as a stalling tactic) before she got in the bath. 11/10/07 (Saturday) Cara had a great sleep over with her grandparents last night; she got to sleep with a bunch of pens and one of her dress-up hats. I think that that's one thing she can now cross off her list of lifelong goals. She does certainly love pens. She slept nice and late and got home after nine. We were upstairs playing in the tunnel we made of the comforter from the big bed when Grandmom and Grandpop showed up. They had brought a new toy: Colorforms! The picture is a little girl in her room. The colorforms include different types of weather to put in the window and different clothes to put on the girl. Ideally, according to Cara, the girl will always wear her dress with her swimsuit over it, and then possibly a few other things. She and her teddy bear and her kitty will also wear hats, and the girl will wear sunglasses. All of the weather will be in evidence. We went out to lunch, and Cara absolutely wolfed down her macaroni and cheese. Not a bit was left, and we had to give her something with which to amuse herself while we finished our meals. Grandmom had also brought along a toy catalogue, and Cara got very excited about looking at it. Particular people had to look at it with her, mostly Grandmom. There was some cool stuff in it, some of which we are familiar with. I heard Cara telling Grandmom that Lina and Sarah had one of the toys already. She gave the catalogue a very detailed perusal. We played Play-doh, which really meant that we worked to create animals and Cara collected them, demanded more, and commented. Then she went off to look at her catalogue again. One thing Grandmom likes to do is to take out all of the stuffed animals and pile them up. That was fun! Then Cara started running upstairs to hide in her tunnel, telling us first who had to come find her. Grandmom and Grandpop got to take turns. They had to bring animals with them. They also all played Elefun, which was cool. Cara wore a net on her head. Grandpop experimented with projectiles. I'm not sure who won. I think everyone was a winner. Another project was painting with water--Cara did a couple of pages with help from her grandparents and daddy. The only stumbling block was that Cara held all of the brushes but the two green ones in her hand and wouldn't let them go. When it was time for them to go, Cara gave her grandparents big hugs. She waved to them from the bay window as they drove away. We kept our napless girl quiet for a while, and then we went out to meet Wayne for dinner at Panera. The four of us went for a walk in Michael's first, just looking around at things. Cara was shy with Wayne, though I'd explained who he was and that we would be seeing him. When he wasn't there, though, she was concerned. "I can't find Wayne and Daddy!" or "Where Wayne go?" We got our dinner, finally, and Cara ate her soup nicely, of course. She kept telling us, though, that she wanted a donut. I thought she had noticed the pastries, but when I took her to see them, she was dissatisfied. She pointed out the donuts: there are baskets of bagels along the back wall! Fortunately, she liked the suggestion of getting a muffy, a muffin top. She still would not believe a word against those donuts. 11/11/07 (Sunday) We had a pretty lazy day today, except Mommy, who had to spend a lot of time grading papers. Mainly we stayed at home because it was cold outside. We watched some George and we watched some Curious Buddies, and we watched Pooh. We also did some playing, some painting, coloring, and blowing up of balloons (because I made the mistake of getting out the "forbidden" bag in the coat closet and then leaving it out.) In the evening Evie had the clever idea of setting up a pretend house, using blankets to mark off the rooms and Cara's furniture to decorate them. Then Cara took it a step further by getting Mommy to put more blankets over her table, making it into a sort of tent where she could hide with her stuffed puppy (whom she rediscovered yesterday). Before the tent happened I was ordered to cook a meal for Cara and Mommy, and further ordered that I could not eat any of it. After bathtime Ev started singing "Pop Goes the Weasel" to Cara. She will often sing a little song to distract Cara during the drying off and the diaper. Cara was really taken with this ditty, though, and requested it over and over. Perhaps she has some latent memory of having heard Burl Ives sing it to her about a million times when she was an infant. 11/12/07 (Monday) Cara really does love "Pop Goes the Weasel," though she's not really sure what it's called. Yesterday she requested that I sing "The Monkey Chase the Woozel." This evening, she wanted the monkey to chase the measle. Steve and Cara had a problem this morning. Her car seat, in which the straps have been getting very tight, was finally so tight that he could not buckle her all the way in! She wasn't even wearing her heavy coat, so that's pretty bad. In my car, I still have a little bit of room. With her big coat on, though, I can barely buckle her. This drove us to leave the house this evening and go buy new booster seats for the car, just like Sarah and Lina have! When we got home, we had to open one of the boxes right away and assemble Cara's new seat. It wasn't too hard, but it did take a few minutes, which was difficult. Cara wanted to sit in it. It is a nice gray seat with pink trim and a flowery pattern in some places, and it has two retractable cup holders! We had to take it out and get it into Daddy's car. This new seat is just the right height for Cara, and the grown-up seat belt, if anything, is a little bit too low. It's easier for her to get in and out, and it's easier for us to buckle her. The only difficult part was that we could not take a ride right then! Fortunately, a few drops of rain fell. That convinced Cara to climb out and run, full speed, for the house. I lugged the old car seat along, and she waited for me at the top of the driveway, holding out her hand. Together, we hurried a few steps, then had to wait for Daddy to hold Cara's other hand. Together, with the car seat, we made our way back into the house. 11/13/07 (Tuesday) Daddy worked late this evening, so Cara and I had a girls' night in. Our chief adventure was eating dinner downstairs at Cara's little table; I'm not sure where she got that idea, but I had thought about it in the past. She even got to drink her water out of a little plastic cup. I had brought it down in one of her regular plastic cups, and she did a great job pouring it, to my surprise. It was much later when Daddy and I were upstairs and heard Cara calling. She had spilled water on the floor. She was downstairs, where she had carried her big cup of water, barely spilling any on the way! She was happily pouring all of the water from the big cup to the tiny cup and back, and she had discovered that the water in the big cup could more than fill the little one; there was a lot on the table and some on the floor, as she had reported. She helped me clean up, and I took one of her cups away. Not to be deterred, she poured the remaining contents of the other one neatly onto the wet paper towel on the floor. We made another bedroom tunnel, and Cara finally learned what happens if she tries to scoot out onto the roof of it. I'm surprised she has never tried that before! 11/14/07 (Wednesday) Today's project was really cute: a turkey with handprints for tail feathers! Susan was very smart. Instead of letting each kid use each color, she had each kid pick a color and put a hand print on each picture. Now the children have turkeys made from all of their friends' handprints! Cara got to use red, and PJ was orange. I think Annika and Aliyah got purple and blue, and Avery got green. Now, I am very excited because we just got an invitation to Annika's birthday party. Cara is also excited, and she still mispronounces Annika's name, turning in into Mannika. On the trip home when we first got the invitation, we had a long discussion about it that involved, for some reason, all of us wearing different-colored goggles. We do plan on singing "Happy Birthday" and everything, but there will also be goggles. The other night, Cara found some Hanukkah decorations I had left out. I explained what they were for, and Cara understood instantly: candles for Mannika! A week or so ago, we brought our big plant, really a little tree, inside. We put it in the game room, and the cats seemed very happy. Buster, in particular, has made that room her home. She is almost always to be found sleeping on the couch. Cara is always in and out of there, when we are playing downstairs, and lately she has had some success in stopping to hug Buster. Buster seems to let her; it takes several minutes before she gets up and leaves! Today we even went and got a treat for Buster, which Cara brought upstairs and gave to her. She ate it! That may be a first. Generally, Cara just hugs Buster, strokes her, and tells her, "It's okay, Buster, it's okay." Today she got a little farther: "It's okay to be scared." She's probably not aware that what Buster is frightened of is her! Actually, I think it's sweet and wonder whether she's projecting some of her own fears onto Buster. She does sometimes tell us she's scared of things, which is what our handout from Susan from last month just happens to talk about! We were very happy to go over to PJ's house this evening! We started calling to him right after we crossed the street, telling him we were coming. While we were playing downstairs and Em was cooking dinner, PJ announced that he had pooped. I reported this to Ron, who prepared to take PJ upstairs and change him. "Diane do it!" PJ decreed. Okay. I was afraid Cara would join us and need a copycat diaper change, but it was just the two of us. While I had him on the table, I asked PJ about his day. I asked about painting, and he told me he had used orange. At that point I had sort of run out of questions, so I asked him whether he was going to be a grown-up some day. He thought about it. No. Would Cara? No. The best part of the evening was probably when we opened up the tunnel and the three kids started playing on their own, together, for a whole five minutes! It was amazing to watch, and they were all thrilled, too. | Previous Week | Back Home | Next Week | |