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Journal Key:

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

11/13/08 (Thursday)

It was a good day at Susan's. This week the topic of study has been manners; it's great because occasionally one of the kids shows some! Actually, it's really a nice thing. Today, they did some table setting. Susan says she can tell that Cara does it at home, because she knew where everything went. The letter they studied today was F, but the most exciting thing was on the back of Cara's worksheet: she drew a picture of herself and me! She made bodies and arms and legs, all with two lines each. We seem to be waving. She gave us perfect faces; the eyes are circles with dots in them, the noses are dots positioned below the eyes, and the mouths are two lines each, smiling. She gave herself hair that looks kind of like hair, but I have . . . teddy bear ears. Susan says it looks a little like a chinchilla. She's right. It's definitely a keeper.

Cara's favorite game for the past few days has been taking the cushions off of the couches in the living room. She piles them up, she builds houses, she lays them out and jumps on them. The fun never stops. Well, if it does stop, it's always easy to find a place to rest. Both last night and this evening, Cara has managed at least once to really bang herself against something, enough that I heard the clunk and came to check her out. She does have a nice bruise on her upper arm. I really won't mind when this craze has run its course; I like my cushions on my couch and my child in one piece!

Cara asked me to read her a book while she was in the bath. It had to be about Belle and apples. I told her we had no such book, so she said she wanted an imaginary one. I made up a story in which Belle wanted yellow apples, because she loved yellow, so she found some and brought them home and planted the seeds. Cara was astounded. Then I got to tell stories about Sleeping Beauty, who wanted a pink orange; Cinderella, who wanted something blue; Snow White, who wanted a red gummy candy; Tinkerbell, who wanted a green pear; Ariel, who wanted a pink horse; and Jasmine, who wanted a blue butterfly. Some of them were actually pretty good, I think.

11/14/08 (Friday)

Cara and I had our big night out this evening. First we went to dinner, where we were joined by Grandmama and Grandpapa as well as Claire and Casie. A theory that I have been generating about Cara has yet to be disproved: no one, no one in the world, can trump Aunt Claire in the who-gets-to-take-Cara-to-the-potty contest. Even with Grandmama there. Cara drew a cute picture of herself on the back of her place mat, complete with pinktails and pinktail holders.

Cara rode with Grandmama to pick up GiGi, and we all met at the theater. I had brought a pink jumper for Cara to put on; I was glad I had, because lots of other little girls were dressed up. Cara was happy. She loved the theater. I bought her a light-up rose, and she walked around carrying the rose, Puma, and Belle (who had also come, of course). We went for a walk upstairs and used the bathroom, even though Cara had gone at GiGi's house as well as at the restaurant. Grandmama took Cara to look into the orchestra pit. When the show started, Cara was sitting on Grandmama's lap.

It was a little scary. It was very much like the movie, though with some added things. We've never gotten through the movie, so it wasn't surprising that Cara was ready to go home about half an hour in. We took a break in the lobby and I gave Cara a treat, and one of the ushers suggested that we might have better luck sitting further back. We'd been in the 5th row, so things were a little loud. We tried it, and we only lasted a few minutes. If only there were a musical with no one showing any strong feelings except happiness!

As I carried her away from the theater, we talked about it. "It was a little scary," Cara reported, but she also said more than once, "I'm proud of myself for being so brave!" About fifty yards away, suddenly, "I just feel a little happy! I'm not scared anymore. I think we can go back." I mentioned that we would probably see the beast again. "Oh, OK, let's go home."

11/15/08 (Saturday)

I took Cara to gymnastics this morning; the highlight of the experience was that I got to see her stand up from a c-drop for the first time. The instructor didn't let her bounce a lot before she tried it, and it worked! Then she did a few where she bounced and bounced and went down and just bounced. At the end of the trampoline section, the kids all get to sit on the trampoline on a mat while the instructor jumps to bounce them around. They pretend it's a train;she takes their tickets and she gives them "ice cream." I've noticed that, in the midst of the hilarity, while the other kids are just gleefully bouncing, Cara is gleefully bouncing while still pretending to eat her ice cream.

After gymnastics, Cara drew some pictures. As usual, she made faces. These faces had big, big mouths, and Cara carefully put a lot of little lines coming from the lips to indicate teeth, both on the top and the bottom. She's never done that before! We meant to bring them to show grandmom and grandpop, but they got misplaced. Cara and her daddy got into the car and headed south, where Cara got to stay with her grandparents for the day while Steve went to his brother's house.

Cara came home, bathed and happy, around nine. She brought home two stuffed monkeys she's borrowing from grandmom. She also brought home Tinkerbell the movie, which apparently is relatively conflict-free and is therefore perfect for little people. I'm not really sure how this happened, but Cara asked Steve to play a video game, and so they're sitting there on the floor, flying a little spaceship. Weird things happen when you're a parent.

11/16/08 (Sunday)

This morning we had our weekly pancake breakfast, and we watched the Tinkerbell movie. I was interested to see it and probably paid more attention to it than Cara did. It was nice and almost entirely unthreatening, so I have a feeling we'll be watching it again (and again and again).

Eventually we got ourselves outside to do some Fall chores. Cara was very helpful at times. She brought out her little snow shovel to help with the leaves. It was not the perfect tool. She spent some time playing with her sand table, in the chilly, windy weather. She also rode a little on her horsie. Both for the last time this year, I think, since we put the horse in the shed and emptied out the sand table to take inside.

Cara spent some time inside, where she carefully set up some tablecloths and cups for a tea party. She also came outside and jumped in some leaf piles, and sometimes helped us by standing on a corner of our leaf tarp to hold it down in the wind. She followed ahead of us when we carried the full tarp out back, to open the gate leading downstairs.

We did a lot of work! When we were finally done, it wasn't long before Grandpapa George and Aunt Claire showed up! They were here to watch some football. Cara was thrilled. She did a lot of screaming and jumping around. We got pizza delivered, and then Cara helped to make brownies. Somehow she got Claire or Evie to write her name in icing on one of the brownies, and "Puma" got written on another one. Then after she ate her "Cara" brownie, she asked for another one with "Genzano" on it. I attempted this and fortunately she had me put some sprinkles on the brownie as well, which hid the mediocre job I did--writing with icing is hard. We once again managed to watch a complete football game without any major objections from the little girl.

When the game was over, our company left because we all thought the Loeffler kids were coming over for babysitting. As it turned out, though, this event was postponed, so we spent the rest of our evening pretty quietly. Cara did some nice independent coloring, and made Mommy cut out some paper girls and paper bears. I had to draw portraits of her little counting bears, and then put "baby teddies" on top of their heads. Cara had some hot dogs for dinner, and in between she carefully took all of the cushions off the couch and love seat and laid them down in a line stretching from the living room into the kitchen. She travelled between the rooms by hopping from one cushion to another, and wanted us to do the same.

11/17/08 (Monday)

After putting the red shirt she found back onto her stuffed Winnie the Pooh, and after deciding she had to bring her pink princess ball, Cara allowed me to take her to Susan's. It was exciting because the landscaping men were there blowing leaves around: all the kids were in the living room watching.

This evening Mommy needed to rest and not eat, so Cara and I did what we usually do when it's just us for dinner: we went to the Baja Fresh. She thought we were already there when we drove by the auto parts store. Cara was very happy and well behaved. She did manage to drip more apple juice, spill more rice, and dribble more apple sauce than usual. The juice was due to a defective juice box straw, and the rice was due to her original method of spooning rice out of the plate and onto a napkin before trying to eat it.

We had a nice time and then came home to watch some more of the Tinkerbell movie she'd started earlier. There were also more paper people to be cut out. I cut out a string of men, and Mommy cut out a string of tiny bears. These had to be colored. Evie figured out the other day that we can get Cara to take a bath if we just color the paper people while she's in the tub. Cara and I decided to color these "baby" bears as though they were Care Bears, so each one got a different symbol on his or her tummy. They all ended up being animal heads, mostly of Cara's choosing. I drew the line though when she suggested a bear head--too redundant.

11/18/08 (Tuesday)

This morning my mom-in-law drove up very early to take me for my colonoscopy. I was nervous about having both her and me in the house in the morning when Cara was getting ready to go, since neither of us was going to stay with her or even drive her to Susan's. However, Cara was pretty good. She certainly wanted Grandmom's attention, but she didn't freak out when we left. Of course, she was already upset a little because she'd just bumped herself or something, so that upset helped pre-empt the trauma of our departure!

For the past couple of days, one of Cara's favorite pastimes has been getting us to cut out paper dolls and color them. I'm pretty sure we've made two sets of new girls and at least three sets of new bears. There was also a set of boys, because on one set of bears I missed leaving the first ear on and then it all went to heck.

Since Cara's explosion of artisticness that began last Thursday, though, she's been far more willing and able to color things herself. She's been coloring in bears all evening, giving some pants and tops of different colors and others body suits. She gives them faces and puts pink in their ears. We have done some of the coloring, still, though. Steve's set of Care Bears was one example; I also made a set of bears in all different types of outfits. One of them is a ballerina, complete with tutu, and another is in polka-dotted pajamas. I'm really finding it a very satisfying outlet for my artistic expression.

It's been really hard lately to get Cara to watch anything new on TV; she just wants to see her same dvd's again and again. Today, though, I managed to trick her. I asked her whether she wanted to see some ballet; she did! I put on the Muppet Show. The first episode features a dancer, and I thought Cara might like her. We cuddled up and watched. There are a lot of really good parts in that episode, including "Mnah Mnah" (I see a lot of different possible spellings online), in which two fluffy pink muppets are annoyed by the mnah mnah guy. At first, Cara only liked the pink ones. Gradually, though, she warmed to the idea that the other guy was pretty funny. We watched that part twice. When Daddy got home, we watched it again ("Daddy, you never saw 'Mnah Mnah.'"). At bedtime, we traded a book for a chance to watch it yet again, shrieking with laughter every time!

11/19/08 (Wednesday)

This morning we had to watch that Muppet Show episode again, and then at Cara's request I put on Tinkerbell. It occurred to me as the movie unfurled itself that this may be why I am habitually late to Susan's every morning. She was quite picky about her gummy vitamins (I gave her two that were the same color) and her pancakes (I gave her snowmen pancakes--she wanted a Mickey Mouse head), and was annoyed when I would not cut paper bears for her (this when we were putting her shoes on to leave). But we did get out the door finally.

This evening was playdate at the Loefflers'! I was actually late getting there (as seems to always happen on Loeffler playdate nights), but I'm sure the kids had a fine time messing around with toys in the playroom. I found Cara setting up a little dinner or tea party with Fisher-Price people--putting people around a table is one of her favorite things to do.

We had a good bath with mermaids and Cara held me to a promise to draw a bear for her--she also got me to draw a kittie. Cara wet her bed last night. She seems to really not want to get out of bed in the middle of the night. Evie staged some "potty drills" today to try to show Cara that it's all right. With all the lights turned off in the hallway, we had Cara pretend to sleep and then "pretend" to get up and go to the potty. Ironically both times she did a potty drill she actually did use the potty.

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