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3/5/09 (Thursday) This morning Cara was up early and I got to give her pigtails. After we got home in the afternoon, it took me a while to process certain facts: the griddle was out. Steve got to make pancakes this morning! We came home early because PJ and Casey were coming over; Em had to take Ron for an appointment. It was a busy, busy evening. Everyone was very well-behaved, of course. Our favorite activity was probably when we had the couch cushions off and the sofa became a boat. Cara was a girl pirate. PJ was a boy one. They went fishing using pinwheels. Cara caught a mermaid. (It was one without a face. A little one. Cara ate her.) They all like to climb the outside of the stairs at the back of the couch, and I think that they had some vague idea that that was the rigging. Eventually Puma became a mermaid. So did Cara. They both, I assume, still had faces. Our favorite toy was the star-shaped plastic ice cubes that we got out at dinner. Cara and Casey eventually had all of them out and were carrying them around in bowls. I'm really not sure what they thought they were doing with them, but I do anticipate hours and hours more fun. The first thing PJ wanted to do when he came over was to play video games with Steve. He had quite a wait until Steve got home. I was surprised, when they finally got to play, that PJ voluntarily stopped for dinner. He is very, very dedicated to this pursuit. I'm tired. Steve is tired. Unless events conspire against us, we will both sleep well tonight. 3/6/09 (Friday) A recap of the sleepover fun from Grandpapa! Grandmama Janet has dedicated herself to continuing Cara's education in collage. When I came home from work, they were busy cutting out gingerbread people. 3/7/09 (Saturday) Cara came home this morning and got out all of the many paper animals she had created the day before. It was a beautiful day for the first time in quite a while, and we soon found ourselves out back with PJ and Casey and Ron. Ev got out the sand table--currently sandless--and the kids played with cars. They went down the slide and played catch with balls a little. And after there was a little unhappiness over who would get to play catch with whom, I recruited PJ and Cara to throw sticks over our back fence and down into the ravine. The Mommies went off to fetch a nice lunch for us grown-ups, and we all ate together at the Loeffler home. After some more running around outside, we coaxed the child home for a nap. Lately our weekend naps have been "non-naps." But after some extended non-napping, Cara actually fell asleep, and we had to go in and start the laborious process of waking her some time after 4 pm. We found that, in addition to having placed Puma with some library books on the floor, Cara had gotten a light jacket out of her closet and carefully buttoned herself into it before falling asleep in her bed. When Evie picked her up out of the bed, we found that she was also wearing her black and pink tutu. After a little bit of waking-up-from-nap television, we decided to venture outside again. I had the idea of getting out a croquet set that Evie had purchased quite a while ago, which we had never opened. We had a fun time messing around with mallets and balls for a while, and even convinced Juliana to come over and play with us (she has a heck of a swing!). Cara is still working on her croquet skills, and eventually she resorted to holding one of the posts and telling the rest of us to "Go, go, go!" Then she distributed medals. Juliana, with the red mallet, was the recipient of every gold medal, since Cara only had red gold medals. After that, Cara was ready to take Puma for a walk in her little stroller. By this time she was still wearing her tutu, along with a pair of pink sweatpants, her tie-dye T-shirt, and a tiny pink Disney princesses tanktop over all. It was quite incredible. We have pictures. We had a pleasant walk around the block (it took Evie to point out to me what the neighbors must be thinking about our fashion sense). From our morning activities, Cara was much more attentive to sticks lying on the sidewalk, and we had to stop and throw them into the street from time to time. Eventually she was carrying Puma and a particularly big stick, which made it very hard for her to pull up her tutu, which is a little loose and kept falling down. For dinner we wanted to go out, and Evie gave Cara the choice of restaurant. She picked On the Border. On a Saturday night at a little past six, the place was about as crowded as it ever gets. Cara was still adamant about eating there though, even after we explained the waiting part. So we went to the nearby Sears and tried out their mattresses and furniture for a while, then returned just in time to be seated. After having had a hot dog for lunch, Cara had a corn dog for dinner. At least she didn't have one for breakfast....I hope... 3/8/09 (Sunday) I do think that Cara asked for a hot dog for breakfast this morning, but I deflected that by suggesting pancakes. In the morning Mommy and Cara went out on a bunch of errands. Today Mommy dressed the child so she was looking quite elegant, and she also got a mature-looking hairdo. One of their errands was to buy a new pad of paper, since Cara's coloring and constant requests for paper dolls have quickly reduced our paper supplies. We skipped our nap and drove to Grandmama and Grandpapa's house for Grandpapa's birthday celebration! Before leaving we had to get Grandpapa's card ready: Cara speedily wrote her message inside and then sealed the card up in the envelope before we had a chance to put any other names in it. At the house, Cara decided that she wanted to do a special dance for Grandpapa. She made some attempt to go through her dance-class recital routine. It was my first time seeing it. It involved a lot of spinning. There was some hide-and-seek that eventually involved hiding stuffed animals, and somehow ended with the stuffed animals being flung down the stairs. Cara got to help make pizza, which she did with great gusto--I think some ingredients got flung a little farther than was quite intended. She was very happy to eat pizza, but somehow the cake just didn't interest her. It was a blueberry buckle, an unknown quantity for the little girl, but also her celebratory spirit seemed to have left her at that point--she didn't even come up to sing, preferring to stay downstairs and color. The evening visit ended with a "movie" for Cara. She watched a DVD I have never seen before with animated "Little People." There were various short shows teaching basic facts about the alphabet and spelling. By the end the napless girl was about ready to go home. Grandpapa was fast asleep on the couch. Not wanting to wake him, we quietly left the house. Happy birthday Grandpapa! 3/9/09 (Monday) I'm not sure whether Steve has mentioned Cara's Boo book. It's about a little pig who dresses as a superhero and goes around popping out at people and yelling "boo!" This of course has inspired a rash of copycat crimes in our house. When I read it to Cara, I got her to "read" the word BOO. She could point it out and "read" it pretty reliably. On the way home today, Cara told me how fond she is of stop signs. I asked whether she knew the letters on them. We looked. She read: S-T-O-P. We spent the rest of the ride home looking for more and reading them. At dinner, I asked Cara to tell Daddy what she had been reading. She couldn't remember the first letter. "S," I told her. "T-O-P!" she cried. 3/10/09 (Tuesday) It's occurred to us recently that all our pictures this year have been of Cara wearing some ridiculous outfit. Hmm. But today I dressed her in a perfectly normal matching ensemble, which stayed on all day. Our obsession with paper dolls continues. Lately the process has been: Mommy or Daddy cuts out a string of dolls; Cara colors one; Cara cuts it out; Cara tapes it onto a piece of paper. In fact, she has actually colored, cut apart, and re-assembled (with tape) a whole string of girls. They are taped onto a piece of paper that has green marker scribbles on it, like grass for the girls to stand on. Tonight she said she was going to cut the girls out in order to put them into the shoebox where we are currently trying to corral all of the paper people. I put my foot down on that one, though--those girls had already been through enough. This evening while we were still finishing dinner, Cara carried her Barbie/fairy bin upstairs and lined all of the figures out on the kitchen floor. This reminded Evie that the last time PJ was here, he was singing along to the songs that our Barbie doll can sing. 3/11/09 (Wednesday) When I got to Susan's house before ballet, everyone was outside playing. It was a nice, though slightly damp, day. Cara was very excited to show me that there were flowers growing. Me: What are those called? Cara: (thinks hard) Dandelions? Me: Those are crocuses. (appreciates flowers but tried to move self and child towards getting ready to go) Cara: Look over here! Me: Oh, those will be flowers. What kind will those be? Cara: Probably dandelions. Susan: No, but it does start with a D. Cara: Dandelions? Susan: Daffodils. Cara and I move towards the door, to go inside and get her into her leotard. PJ: Cara, look! I have a flower for you! Susan: Oh, PJ, don't pick any more. Cara: (moves towards edge of porch to get flower) Thank you! It's beautiful. That was sweet. PJ: (moves into shrubbery to give her the flower) I picked it for you. Susan: It's nice that you picked it for your friend, but let's not pick any more. Cara: I want it. . . . we lovingly carried the crocus inside and discussed putting it in our hair and then putting our hood up to keep it in. We were talked into putting it into the cup holder of the car seat. What became of it after that, I really could not say. While Cara was in the bath, I brushed my teeth. She had to take over and play independently. Her girl shark had been playing with the bath puff, and she wouldn't share with the boy shark. When I was busy, the girl shark got in trouble. Her mommy locked her in her room for the night and the next morning. Then the boy shark and the mommy and daddy went to sleep. There followed an extended narrative, some of which I missed, which involved the girl sneaking out of her room apparently to go and get Barbie and finding her parents watching her new movie. She turned it off and took it from them and brought it back to her own room, where she had a TV. She liked to put it on at night. Her parents came in and her mommy turned her television off. I must have lost track of it around there, or perhaps Cara lost track of it, but in any case I find several parts of this interesting and disturbing in a variety of ways!
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