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Journal Key:

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

 

5/29/08 (Thursday)

Steve's morning report:

In the Tacky the Penguin book, which we don't have because it is at Grandmama and Grandpapa's house, Tacky sings a very silly song. The only line that I can remember is "How many toes does a fish have?" I don't know whether Cara made up or is correctly remembering the only line that she ever sings: "How many wings does a cow have?" She started singing that spontaneously in the car this morning. Then she answered herself. The answer is two.

I think that I provided Cara with a highly eventful and entertaining evening. Now, the first part seems a little silly, but it really makes a lot of sense. I got a little warm walking around before I went to get Cara, and I wanted a fancy cold drink, like a coffee thing. Instead of going to Starbucks on my own, I decided to go to Dunkin Donuts, where I'm sure I can get a pink drink for Cara. Why stop on my own when I could pick Cara up and bring her with me? Then, since we're there anyway, why not get a donut for Juliana, to nosh on while we gab about her new sewer line that got put in today? Also, how could I hope to get Cara out without a donut? So, I got two fancy drinks and four donuts, figuring that Steve and I might as well indulge, too.

Cara helpfully carried the donut bag and we went over and sat on Juliana's front steps to hear about her sewer-repair adventures. Cara happily ate the top off of her pink donut, leaving the uninteresting bottom part. She drank a little of her pink smoothie, but she really only likes it because it's pink. She never drinks much of it.

Dinner, you will be surprised to hear, did not go particularly well. Making dinner went really well! Yesterday Cara begged and begged to get to watch TV, and I didn't let her. Today, she asked once or twice and then went off to play happily on her own, taking out the big box of our old toys from its cabinet and taking lots of them out and making a very happy mess. She was so involved she didn't even want to come and make crescent rolls, which is kind of a shame because the only reason I get them is because she likes to make them! She came to the table, but she didn't eat much (bad Mommy!); instead she made Cinderella talk and perform acrobatic feats.

After dinner Cara and I jumped into my car to head to Linwood for Cara's first play. It was "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," and several of my students were in it. Cara really wanted to go back to the Science Fair, but I assured her that this would be just as good. At the door we bought our ticket and then Cara got her own program, her "little book." Lots of people had to say hi to Cara, which made her a little shy. She talked to a few of them. I took her back and bought her a box of pretzels and a bag of juice, which I was very nervous about and careful with; it went fine.

It was crowded, so we sat at a table in the back to eat our snack. Cara sat on my lap to give her a chance of seeing at least a little, and she happily ate and drank all of her juice. When that was done I took her and stood up with her on the side to watch. She loved seeing the kids dancing and singing; she was usually about fifteen seconds behind everyone else on the applause, but she was enthusiastic and sincere. It was really hot in there, and snuggling through the whole play did not help. We did make one quick trip to the water fountain in the hallway, where I was hugged by an Oompa-Loompa I teach, but we went right back in. Then some nice people let us sit in an empty chair, and that was much better. We watched the rest of the play the way it was meant to be watched, and we could both applaud at the same time.

Cara spontaneously applauded several times, but her favorite part may have been when they all took a bow at the end. She really understood that part, and I think that a lot of the rest was over her head. Afterwards I got her a second juice box, which she sat at a table to drink. She wanted to run on the ramp, remembering it from the Science Fair. "Just once," I told her. Off she went. I was confused when she stopped beside me at the bottom, but I soon remembered that I had told her she only got one turn. I hadn't thought she'd listen! We walked out through the bus lot. On the way in, we got to play with our long shadows. On the way out, we saw kids sitting on the concrete barriers. Cara wanted to try it. Every few yards, we had to stop so she could try it in a different place. It was fun, I imagine.

As I unlocked her car door and let her climb into her seat, Cara told me that Grandpapa's car only had one door on each side. I refrained from telling her that that was all he could afford. A really cool song was on the radio. "I know a cool song," said Cara. "I want to sing 'Minnie Daisy.' Minnie, Daisy, Minnie, Daisy, Minnie, Daisy, Minnie, Daisy, Minnie, Daisy." She eventually stopped and asked me whether I wanted to join in. I told her I didn't know that one. She sang for the rest of the way home, songs about horses and colors and birthdays and friends. She's happy.

5/30/08 (Friday)

The important part of the morning was right when I woke Cara up. Evie had told her the night before that if she got on the potty in the morning, she would get her tenth sticker and a new surprise. Cara told me in bed that night, "When I am done going to bed, I have to make pee-pee." So that's what we did. Cara is always in a hurry to get off the potty, and claimed that she was done even as the tinkling sound in the bowl told otherwise. We did manage to wait until she really was done, and she got a brand new girl! Not a tiny car girl, either, but a normal size Polly Pocket girl, with real cloth clothing instead of the stretchy, rubbery outfits of her compatriots. She has what Cara would describe as "floppy" hair, which means it has the actual consistency of real hair instead of being a plastic molded coif. Cara already had another girl with "floppy" hair, and they immediately became fast friends. The new girl stripped naked and her friend got to wear one of her outfits.

On the way upstairs to get dressed, Cara left the new girl on the bottom step. This is the step that Cara always goes to and sits on when she is upset with us. "She's crying," Cara explained. She elaborated: "Her mommy wouldn't let her play with her new sprinkler toy."

Cara sang "Minnie Daisy" for Steve in the car this morning. When I got to Susan's to pick her up, Cara was playing Play Doh with PJ and Casey and Susan. All of the kids were working independently; Susan says that she tries to make herself very scarce when she first gets it out, so that they do things on their own. She said Cara had been playing there for about an hour.

Steve got home early, so when we were done with dinner we got out the stroller and headed to the park. Em joined us with PJ and Casey. The kids had their own conversations as we talked and pushed them; it was nice. Everyone started on the swings, of course, and Cara spent most of the evening there. Steve and I had to run under her (and PJ) a lot. Steve raised the stakes by running out onto the grass when he ran under anyone; that was far more dramatic. Casey and PJ spent more time on the slides than Cara did, but Cara went on, too, at the end. PJ is a far better and more daring climber than Cara is, and he was going up the big triangular protrusion that I cannot describe and which, despite all of my coaching, Cara had never mastered. Before we left, Cara wanted to go on the slides. We all ran over, and we stayed there for a while. Cara tried the climbing thing again, and she did it! The second time, she did it without my help. She did it a few times more, each time a little better and quicker and more confidently. Finally, I told her one more slide and then back to the stroller. Strangely, she went down the slide once more and then went back to the stroller.

5/31/08 (Saturday)

After Cara's nap today, we got into the car and went to Grandmama's house. While Cara played, we cleaned out the basement. She reaped the benefits; we found lots of things to give her to play with! The first thing I noticed was the little doll cradle that my Grandpa Joe made when I was little. I'm hoping that we can make a little mattress to go in it, and then Cara's babies will have a nice place to sleep.

In a box, we found Claire's old set of tiny pewter gargoyles and their big green display stand. We took it upstairs and set it up in Cara's room, and she got to put each guy onto his own little shelf. Next I unearthed an old makeshift kind of buggy that I had used with my dollhouse, which of course was a nineteenth-century farm. We hitched up a couple of the toy horses that were upstairs, and Cara's two girls got a nice ride. We brought that one home today.

We played outside. Claire and Cara and I played hide-and-seek, and later Cara and I played bubbles. Grandmama and Grandpapa joined us, as Cara gleefully chased and popped the bubbles, exhorting us to join her.

Cara was really good when we went out for Mexican food, and afterwards we walked downtown for ice cream. She loved walking between two people, swinging from their hands even when they are not swinging her. As a treat, she did get swung this evening, by Grandmama, Grandpapa, and Daddy, who took a turn, too.

Susan says that we're getting closer to being potty trained, though we haven't seen much evidence lately. Today, though, Cara kept her pull-up dry from naptime to bath time. She got a prize, a new Sleeping Beauty. She is in bed right now with her two Sleeping Beauty dolls, "twins!" Unfortunately, I let her carry her new doll to the car on her own, so she has already lost a pair of shoes and her plastic bird. Cara reminded us of the fact that we lost a pair of Sleeping Beauty shoes on an airplane a long time ago, so they are clearly unlucky for us!

6/1/08 (Sunday)

Cara was a very lucky girl today, because she got to do a lot of fun stuff. Evie and I both slept late for some reason, and I got up and went to get Cara at 8:30. We slowly got ourselves up and breakfasted, and then broke the news to Cara that she was going to Chuck E. Cheese. She was, predictably, thrilled.

Chuck E's was very lightly populated, so we had a nice time and our pick of rides to go on. Cara only went up into the tubes a couple of times, but her climbing confidence has clearly increased; her first time going up was much quicker than I remember. We went over to the other side of the place and played a bunch of games that we'd never tried before, mostly because that side is more for older kids. But there were still fun things for her to do, like a water gun game where spraying a target makes a little stuffed lion move up on a pillar, and a similar game where you can make a toy car drive up the wall.

We were wondering whether Cara would be attracted to the little plastic spider toys, as she was on our previous visit, but somehow she just walked right past them. She has shown herself to have an extraordinary memory for certain things (for instance, this evening she remembered that her first purchased halloween costume was packed under our bed, and had us get the fabric monster head out), but the spiders seem to have slipped past. She did want another lollipop, but we managed to get out of there without giving her a pre-nap sugar rush.

Nevertheless, her nap was not much of a nap. There was a lot of happy chattering and some unhappy wailing, and at 3:30 I gave up and went to get her. Evie has been going out with Cara a lot lately and giving me a lot of free time, so we agreed that I would take Cara out for the afternoon. I tried to give her a choice of things to do, but when she heard "mall" it was over (in retrospect, too bad! it was a lovely day out!). So we drove to the mall and Cara demanded that we go in the entrance next to Dick's sporting goods, which has a sort of tall gazebo thing in front.

We went right over to the carousel (which Cara had realized earlier in the day had her name in it--"Cara-sel!"), where Cara informed me that she did not want to go on the carousel--she wanted to go to the Playmobil store. We went there instead. There were too many other kids playing with the more "grown-up" toy display, so she spent some time playing with the Playmobil 1-2-3 setup, which is for kids 18 months to 3 years old, and which was totally uninhabited except for her. We soon got tired of this and finally did ride on the carousel. (I asked her afterwards if she wanted to go to Tinytown. "No," she said, pouting a bit, "I want to go to Bigtown." I told her, after a bit of reflection, that whenever we are not in Tinytown, we are automatically in Bigtown. "We're in Bigtown right now. This is Bigtown!" I don't think I convinced her.)

Unfortunately, Daddy had no loose change to throw in the fountain, which made Cara quite unreasonably upset--she was tired. I suggested Friendly's or going home to eat with Mommy. She chose Friendly's and was soon happy again. When we sat in a booth, she insisted on sitting next to me instead of across from me, which I had figured was going to happen. We had a nice cozy meal. In keeping with the last couple of visits to Friendly's, I traced her hand in various colors on the placemat and then drew critters on each of the fingers. For some reason today they all had to be tigers. I don't remember ever drawing tigers on the fingers before, but today she got a total of fifteen tiger heads.

She also got ice cream. I think Cara likes the idea of ice cream, but not the food itself so much. What she does seem to like, I've decided, is the cone. I showed her some pictures of kid desserts, and the first thing she wanted was a double cone. I persuaded her to go with the more typical Cone Head sundae instead. She spent most of her time licking the fudge sauce off of the cone and eating that. She got more food smeared on her face than I can remember happening for a long time. We went to the potty to clean it off afterwards.

Since I had absolutely no cash left to take her on any more rides, we returned to the Playmobil store. By this time the evening was wearing on and very few kids were in the store anymore, so Cara soon had the "grown-up" Playmobil toys all to herself. She got down to business. The display featured a big horse-racing set, with horses, ponies, donkeys, stalls, wagons, etc. It was nice. It took some convincing to get her to leave, but she eventually just decided she was ready and we left in a good mood.

We had been able to walk hand in hand for the beginning of the trip, but I'd spent more time than I liked carrying her around. When we finally exited the mall, I put her down and suggested she walk for a little bit. I was surprised that she agreed to this as calmly as she did. We got to the big circular gazebo-like structure, and Cara had to run around and around. Then she had to jump around. Then hop. She exhorted me to do all of the same things. Eventually she stopped: "The jumping made me tired." But then out in the parking lot she started pulling my hand and running around and around me. Our parking spot was a long way away. There was a lot of running.

On the way home in the car, Cara was a bit sad to be leaving. I reminded Cara what a lucky girl she'd been that day: she had gone to Chuck E. Cheese's, gone to the mall, had a ride on the carousel, and got some ice cream. This made her happy. (She also spotted Chuck E. Cheese, which we passed on the way home, and was very excited. I was very glad that she didn't think we were about to go there again.) As we pulled onto our street, we saw Ron and Em and the kids all outside on their lawn, and we couldn't pass up going to visit them. They, we found, were waiting for the ice cream truck, whose tinkly siren song had been heard some twenty minutes past. We played around for quite a while longer, until Evie came to join us ("Diane!" cried PJ. "Diane! Diane!" cried Cara joyously), and then finally the ice cream truck appeared on the street.

Well, what could we do? We got Cara her second ice cream of the night. At first Cara was set on having another firecracker popsicle, but for some strange reason (possibly because Em had just been telling me how much she hated Spongebob Squarepants) she changed her mind and asked for a Spongebob popsicle instead. As such things do, it melted down her arm, and even with a bowl in her lap she managed to drip red all over herself. "I'm sticky." Casey, having devoured a Dora-sicle, looked slightly the worse for wear. Em took some all-too-familiar pictures of the kids on the front steps all eating ice cream.

After that and a short visit to Juliana ("I'm sticky"), it was time for the bath. I wonder if Cara knows how good her day was?

6/2/08 (Monday)

I've decided that Cara prefers fresh-cooked breakfast to microwaved, leftover breakfast. So I cooked scrambled eggs today, which she was excited enough about eating that she turned off Curious George. She claimed to not want butter on her toast, but when she saw me putting it on mine she changed her mind. I wanted to dress her in a T-shirt, but she pulled out her princess-themed tank top, so I put that on her and added a light jacket. I thought she had grown into it enough that it wouldn't be falling off her shoulders all the time, but when I saw her in the evening I decided she still has some growing to do.

When I pulled up to the house this evening Cara was out with Mommy and they were playing with the sand table. Evie told me they had yet to get into the house. They had been playing outside since they got home from Susan's. There had been some games of "Catch the Girl," and then some water had been put in the sand table. When I walked over there was a nice mound of watery sand that Cara was enthusiastically pushing around.

I grilled some hot dogs for dinner, which Cara consented to eat. Then we went outside again for a walk--Cara got some cereal and sat in the stroller. She made it through the day without any ice cream. In the bath, I found (as we sometimes do) that her hair was gritty with sand. We think this was from Susan's house and not from our sand table--Cara claims that Emma put sand in her hair. Regardless, it is quite hard to get sand out of hair. The bottom of the tub after I drained out the water was quite a sight: little piles of sand.

Cara spontaneously began singing "The Witch Doctor" this afternoon. As you know, the Witch Doctor is the one who tells you what to say: "Ooh, eeh, ooh-ah-ah; ting-tang, wallah-wallah-bing-bang," and so forth. Then this evening Cara requested that Mommy sing her a song about three girls who had no cupcakes. Mommy obliged, gamely improvising a story to the tune of "You Are My Sunshine." Many variations followed, one with boys whose Daddy made them cupcakes, and then songs with different-colored girls who picked flowers. I tried to inject some Tom Petty songs, but no one wanted to listen to me.

6/3/08 (Tuesday)

We're back to our summer routine at Susan's: the kids are in the pool when we get there to pick them up, and so each mommy gets to dry her little one off and help with the getting-dressed process. They're all happy. It's fun and crazy and seems chaotic but really Susan has it all organized.

I was good today (in a way) and came inside to cook dinner. Cara played while I worked, bringing her Sleeping Beauty into the kitchen to show me how, if you jam her into a slinkie and then shake it around, she pops out. I was getting close to the point at which I could have taken her outside when Steve came home and did just that. Sleeping Beauty got to go back to the sand table, where she had gotten pretty muddy yesterday, and try it all again.

The real event of the evening was that some people on the next block put some good toys out on the curb, including a dollhouse identical to the one Lina and Sarah have. It's nice because it folds up to be smaller for storage. I was going to skip it, but Steve went and picked it up. He was right! It's perfect for all of Cara's girls, who have of course been homeless all this time. They've had to try to hold balls in the Weeble castle! Today they all got dressed up in their finest to inaugurate their new home. Prince Charming came, and he was very popular. Things swiftly degenerated. We're not really sure what happened, but by the end Steve was holding the prince up while Sleeping Beauty pummeled him. It was really getting WWF-ian. She was trying to leap headfirst through windows at him and everything.

For the second night in a row, I got to read to Cara. While we were choosing our fourth book (the bath ended early), she pointed out the houses of the three little pigs on the wall. Instead of reading her a book, I got to tell her that story. Then she needed Little Red Riding Hood, and then Rapunzel. That one was tough. Finally I sang her a song about three little girls and three little boys. They all had cupcakes. I kept it going for a little, because she seemed very bouncy, and had them all get ready for bed and snuggle in to go to sleep. I think it helped, at least temporarily.

6/4/08 (Wednesday)

Susan explained that she makes herself scarce when she first gets out the Play Doh, so that the kid start doing things with it themselves instead of trying to get her to make things. I tried that today with painting. I got Cara all set up and then left the room for a few minutes. When I came back, she was painting a girl. It came out too big and I had to get her new paper, but she went right back to work. Cara painted two dresses and asked me to put heads on them. I put orange circles for heads and then I dotted in blue eyes, but then Cara took over again. She put a big blue circle into one face, and then she made a big blue blob on top of it that may have been a replacement head. The master work was complete.

I had to sing songs for Cara again this evening. They had to be about Elmo. He was red. Then I had to sing one about yellow Elmo, who I thought might be a cousin but who turned out, according to Cara, to be a sister. Then blue Elmo. I decided he was the baby. Purple Elmo was a big sister in college. Green Elmo? A friend who lived next door.

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