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Journal Key:

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

 

11/27/08 (Thursday) - Happy Thanksgiving!

Cara unfortunately had a very rough night. We tried several things to help her get to sleep, including more cough medicine and giving her an extra pillow to keep her head elevated. But she was coughing late into the night. This morning Evie explained the problem to Em and got a humidifier. We also got a different kind of cough medicine. We are trying both this evening.

So yes, the cough is still present, but we got no call from the doctor today, so presumably no antibiotics are necessary. We had a nice morning with a leisurely breakfast. Cara was not interested in what Mommy made, and instead asked for a hot dog. This was a very unusual breakfast request, but she got a hot dog. She ate very little of it. We watched some Disney for the first time in a while, and also watched the Thanksgiving Day parade. Cara got to see the Care Bears float! We also made some more fairies on the internet.

Evie and I were getting the house and food ready into the afternoon, and Ev found some ways for Cara to help. She did a little table setting, among other things. Cara was thrilled when everyone started to arrive. She had independently decided to make a drawing for Grandmama: she sat down at her table in the morning, got out paper and crayons, and drew a person. Then she gave it to Grandmama when she arrived! She was a good little girl. She ate a little bit of dinner. She played nicely when she was not at the table. I've been home with her a lot this week so I was picked for a lot of tasks, like coloring with her or playing girls with her. I also got to read her quite a few definitions in a Muppet Dictionary--I was afraid we'd have to go all the way to Z, but she did eventually lose interest.

Shelby the cat did what she usually does when company comes: she slinked upstairs to hide under the bed. Buster nonchalantly settled in the glider, which we had moved right next to the dining room table, and tried very hard to ignore everyone. But Cara kept going over to pet her. Buster, perhaps in sheer determination to keep her comfortable spot, allowed a lot of petting to happen. It was nice.

After dinner Cara made several remarks about how she "Liked this Thanksgiving Day." I think she was going along with everyone else, but I also think she meant what she said.

Cara had a great idea later in the evening, when some people had left but Grandmama, Grandpapa and Claire were still here: "We can watch my Tinker Bell movie!!" Everyone else settled down to watch the whole thing. Cara wandered off and made a "road" out of Mommy's yoga mat and some wash cloths and dish towels.

11/28/08 (Friday)

One thing about Cara that has just been amazing me lately is how she very often knows just the right thing to say. When I serve dinner, she thanks me or tells me how good things are. She remembers things that people have done, and she thanks them. Yesterday, when she spontaneously remarked how nice Thanksgiving had been, I was still astonished. It's like she's a tiny, polite adult.

Yesterday, something reminded Cara of the cheese she has in the refrigerator, and she ended up making someone, probably Grandmama, make her a red wax princess. The ones I made, which look like traffic cones, are still on her dresser. I barely got to see the one Grandmama made, which seemed impressively endowed with features and limbs, because when I saw it Cara was brutally crushing it so that I could make it into a traffic cone, like the others. Actually, it went a little differently from usual. Usually, I make a traffic cone with flipperlike arms, and then Cara carefully smushes the arms down. This time, she left them up. I'm awfully pleased.

Poor Cara had another rough night. The humidifier probably helped, and the different medication definitely did. Around one, though, the drugs wore off and we were all up. Again, it took her a while to wake up, during which time she slept, coughed, and screamed. When she was up, we remedicated her and I sat with her in the bathroom with the shower running. After a little while, she got up and went back to bed.

She slept until almost eight thirty, when I went upstairs to find her sitting in the hallway waiting to be found. She didn't want to go to the bathroom by herself (which she does all day at Susan's); I suggested that next time she could come a little farther to find us! Actually, I'm pretty excited about her having gotten out of bed on her own. I think she did that yesterday, too, so this may be real progress.

Cara chose most of her own outfit today. She wore the pink leggings and tutu that Grandmama bought her at Target, and I selected a light pink turtleneck to go with them. The effect was stunning.

We went to Grandmom and Grandpop's house today, and we got to see Uncle Jim and Aunt Sarah, too! Grandmom had gotten an old Lego set out of the attic; it's a castle with knights and a drawbridge and portcullis and all. It also incongruously sported two bouquets of flowers on the lawn. The Cara Bears, who had come, enjoyed the castle very much. There was a little jail cell that Love-a-Lot got to use as her room, and the others were assigned towers. While we played with it a lot, somehow the strings on the moving pieces never broke! Cara also ate about four clementines today, two of which she peeled all by herself. I know she's proud of it.

Aunt Sarah got to be in charge of Cara for a little while. Cara got to be in charge of Aunt Sarah for a little while, rather. They were very busy. They went into the back bedroom and came out with a little chair and a book, and they debated where to sit to read. Cara wanted to sit in the little chair and somehow believed that Sarah could sit and read to her like that. Eventually they went on the potty, where Sarah got to explain some fundamentals of managing one's tutu. For the past few times that we've been down there, Cara's been forcing us to get out the little stepladder from the hall closet for her to use to wash her hands. Sarah was no exception.

One exciting thing we did today was to go through and divide up the old Christmas ornaments that Janet's been saving. Nothing broke, and Cara got to look at lots of fun stuff. We all went home with some beautiful new things. Grandmom also gave Cara a tiny eraser shaped like a Christmas tree, for which Cara thanked her profusely. She went walking around with it, saying, "I'm so happy. I'm just so happy!"

After we ate, we watched the Grinch movie! Cara had picked it out. There were a couple of parts that she found scary, but afterwards she reported that she had liked the whole thing! She certainly has seen the book enough.

The little one really does have a fierce cough, though. Poor thing! She coughed all day, and she coughed while she slept in the car. When we got home, though, she did much better than usual! She woke up and didn't cry and brought herself inside and functioned basically like a normal human being. It was very relaxing. As far at the cough, at least now it's bedtime and we can give her the nighttime medicine that Steve bought yesterday. While I don't anticipate a full night's sleep, I do think it helps her.

Before her bath, Cara got Steve to play some video games. Not many three-year-olds are as familiar with Super Mario World as she is! I'm sure there are many children out there who don't even know what a Yoshi is or why one would want to have one.

11/29/08 (Saturday)

Having had a rough night, though less rough than the previous two, we elected to skip gymnastics today. We spent the morning at home in our pajamas; it was very pleasant to relax and go through our holiday decorations at our leisure. Cara played for a while with the jelly menorah set that she has, which we'll stick on the fridge for her even though a couple of parts are broken or missing. She enjoyed sticking parts of it to things this morning very much.

It was a long, long day for little girls, though! We went down to Aunt Claire's house around noon; the four of us went out to lunch, even though Cara insisted that she was not hungry. In fact, she barely ate at all, so she was probably right! She and Claire did get to go to the potty several times together today, though. After lunch, we split up a little and Steve went off on his own while we ladies shopped. We went into at least four stores. Cara enjoyed running around in the curtain section of Linens n Things, and then she systematically climbed onto and off of all of the chairs they had out on display. Kudos to Claire for a timely Goldilocks reference! In Pier One, the chair-climbing was even worse, exacerbated by the facts that the chairs were scattered around the store in astonishing numbers and that they were often near very fragile things. At Best Buy, we let Cara get a little animal from the machine where, many months ago, she got Lucy the Dolphin (who is currently AWOL). It's a tiny cute teddy, who is very squishy and weird but much beloved. By that time we were tired; we asked Daddy to go get the car for us.

Our next stop was GiGi's house, a wonderful place to go if you're a now-hungry little girl! Cara ate her way through a lot of cheese and crackers before she ran off to play. She thoroughly explored the living room, finding lots of things that would be good to play with. She showed GiGi the picture of fairy dolls she found in a little booklet inside her Tinkerbell movie box; she also showed Claire, I believe. It's very important. People like to see pictures of toys! Cara was awfully good and happy at GiGi's, but soon it was time to move on.

We stopped at Claire's house for a little bit, hoping Cara and Steve could meet Eva, the kitten. Cara headed upstairs with Claire to look, succeeding only in driving Tommy, the cat, to ground under Claire's bed. We got to see Casey for a bit, and Cara distributed whales to each of us. She also rearranged the magnetic letters on the fridge to spell "pigs." C-R-A: pigs. With a little coaching, we got it right.

Cara and I went to the mall, leaving Daddy and Claire to play Warcraft for a couple of hours. The biggest milestone was that Cara was willing and able to jump onto the escalator by herself. The man behind us jumped on by himself, too. I had promised Cara that we'd get a treat, and somehow she psychically knew we were near a bulk candy place and asked for tiny gummy bears. We got some. I got some lemonade elsewhere, and we found a quiet place to settle in and relax. We shared. She got half the drink. I got one gummy bear. Eventually, though, we went on to do some serious and some not-so-serious shopping. We did manage to get a lot done. I do think the sugar made her a little silly; she did a lot of running around and around and around me in circles.

We went and picked up Claire and Steve, and we all went to the Red Bank diner. Cara was clearly tired, but she did great and ate some pancakes as well as half of Claire's bacon. On the ride home, Cara was astonished to discover that she was not in her pajamas! I guess we do put her in them a lot when we're out late. It's gotten so I bring them most places, but today I thought surely we wouldn't need them!

We did need them, actually, more than usual! Cara fell asleep in the car. When Steve carried her into the house, she blinked at us a lot. We took her coat and shoes off and said soothing things and sat her on her bed. I got out pajamas and asked her to pick which she wanted to wear. She crawled up to the pillow and lay there, blinking at me. Then she stopped blinking and was asleep. In her clothes. On top of the covers. With her pigtails in. I got out the pigtail holder that I could reach, covered her over, dimmed the lights, and left. That's never happened before!

Right now, I'm very sad that I have to stop writing this, because it means I have to help Steve put together the Playmobil advent calendar that we'll give Cara to start on Monday. It's really a gift from Aunt Claire. It looks a little complicated.

11/30/08 (Sunday)

Well the Playmobil advent calendar was not very hard to put together at all. Evie and I are both excited about showing it to Cara tomorrow. The real exciting part will be convincing her to only open one box a day. The little girl actually slept in her clothes all night last night, without ever really waking up. When she woke up she wanted to get into pajamas and was very upset at the idea that it made more sense to put on regular clothes. She did in fact end up wearing pajamas for most of the morning.

Mommy went grocery shopping and Cara and I hung out. We played some Candyland at Cara's suggestion, and got through a few turns before losing interest. The gerbils got some attention. Then it was on to video games. After an interlude wherein Mommy returned, she went out again to go holiday shopping and Cara and I were back to lazily passing the time. It was a rainy day and the little girl is still recovering from her bug, so it was probably okay that we were lazy, especially after yesterday's excitement. She had a bit of lunch, I had a bit of lunch, and I finally managed to get her in her bed at 2 in the afternoon. For some reason she insisted having the bedroom light on, but she still fell asleep and had to be woken up at around 3:30 to get ready for a birthday party at Chuck E Cheese!

It was a traumatic awakening for her, as often happens, and it took her a while to get going at the party. But she did have a great time. It was the birthday of a little girl from daycare, so PJ and Casey were there, and even Susan came by! Cara had three slices of pizza and played around. When she arrived home to see me she was bouncy and happy.

One of the items in her goodie bag from the party were some paint-by-number pictures. Evie and I were both very impressed with her number recognition: she found the fives and the sevens!

She's still coughing a little but is definitely improved, and I don't think there will be any problem taking her to Susan's tomorrow.

12/1/08 (Monday)

Cara had a great day back at Susan's. On the ride home, we had fun looking at the few sets of Christmas lights that were already on. Cara also reported which houses had Christmas trees in them. Having missed seeing some lights near the house, she suggested that we could take a walk to look at them. I thought that was a great idea for after dinner!

Cara helped make dinner, a little; she put salt and pepper and cheese onto the chicken parm, and she helped put spaghetti into the pot, though not as much as she wanted to. After we ate, we all put on our coats and out we went. There aren't any lights yet on Nancy Circle, but nearby we found plenty; we ran from house to house, always holding hands to cross the street. One house even has music, which I'm very impressed by but which I think I'm glad I don't live next door to.

We had bundled up, but as we were heading home Cara announced, "Mommy, Daddy, I need my hood off so I can sing my song!" She took her hood off, and then she skipped away, singing, "The wind is blowing my hairrrr, the wind is blowing my hairrrrrr!" Which is the song she used to sing last summer at the park.

When we got home, it was time for a treat.We finally got out the advent calendar! Cara got to open the first box, which contained a little green base, a Christmas tree, and a couple of little birds. It's very pretty and exciting and we're looking forward to adding to our collection. At the end, we'll have a little scene with Santa feeding forest creatures. It's going to be an adventure finding the correct box every day. Cara demonstrated that she can get all the way to the fifth one on her own. We're really excited that Claire got this for Cara; it's reusable and we're sure that it'll be a wonderful December tradition.

12/2/08 (Tuesday)

Steve let Cara open her second box this morning; she got a little leafless tree to go in the final hole of the base. He explained to her why it would be leafless, and she was able to explain it when I asked in the evening. She seems to really be getting the one-box-a-day thing, too, which is nice. I have a feeling it'll become routine to open a box each morning.

When Em is trying to get PJ to eat, she points out spots in his tummy where there are holes for food. Cara has started using this technique herself. This evening she was too full for more broccoli, but she had "a little hole right here" for bread. I took advantage and got her to eat some more broccoli first, though!

After dinner, we all went to the gym. Cara was very happy; she danced the whole way through the parking lot, and I hope we'll make it a family tradition to do that a couple of times a week.

12/3/08 (Wednesday)

Disturbing Developments: Cinderella's hair comes off. It's actually been like this for a few days. You can pop it back on, but it'll come right back off. "I'm a little girl with no hair! Heeee heeee heeee!" she gleefully announced from the tub this evening.

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