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Journal Key:

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

4/16/09 (Thursday)

Today was full of adventure. I got to pick Cara up from Susan's very early; I was scared she'd still be asleep, but everyone was outside already. I dressed her in her ballet outfit, which is pink and fluffy and has a tutu and feathery trim, and which comes with a rhinestone necklace, a tiara with pink fluff, and a long pair of "gloves" that just have a loop of elastic that goes around a finger. (The other little girls at Susan's are somewhat jealous.) I got her hair neat and tidy, she stuck her tiara on, and we headed off to get her picture taken. The back room of the dance studio was full of mommies and little girls in fluffy pink outfits. Some little girls had had their hair done up and curled; I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. Some had make-up on.

Cara, of course, was absolutely delighted to be there. She loved seeing her teacher and the other girls, and she was very happy when the whole bunch of little girls was taken away for their group photo. The other girls came back, and Cara did not. Her teacher told me, as I had guessed, that she was getting her individual picture taken. I hadn't realized that we wouldn't be able to see! It makes sense, though, because it was explained that they used to get group shots with kids looking off in all different directions, at their mothers. Cara soon bounced back into the room. She really, really likes to get her picture taken. A lot.

We changed her into her tap costume, which truly is horrible. It's white with rainbow stripes going up and down, with silver spangle trim, with bows with giant rhinestones, with a fluffy magenta skirt in the back. There is also a very very itchy silver rhinestone bow tie. The hair piece is a magenta bow with a giant rhinestone in the middle. "This is my favorite costume!" said the studio owner. She insists that on stage, under the lights, it's going to be beautiful. She also says that the bow will go directly on top of their heads, facing front, because they'll all have their hair done up for the recital. Sigh.

Back at home, we went around the block with PJ and Casey. We went to play in their back yard. "My yard! My yard!" insisted PJ. I warned the kids to be careful of dog poop. "My dog poop?" Yes.

4/18/09 (Saturday)

I hear tell that Cara and her grandparents had a lovely time on Friday evening. (In a shocking turn of events, by the way, Cara insisted that Puma did not want to go to Grandmama and Grandpapa's house because she was too tired. Deesta, the cat from Build-a-Bear, was taken in her place! However Puma was back in the ascendant today, though she was still randomly excluded from certain activities.) This morning, Evie and Grandmama had a phone conversation and Evie discussed her plan to take Cara on a hike at a park to enjoy the excellent spring weather. I think this information was somehow transferred back to Cara, with the result being that she insisted on being taken to the local park before leaving Middletown.

When she did actually get to Edison, she was soon back in a car on the way to the farmer's market to get some food for a picnic! We ended up meeting with Claire and Casie at Holmdell Park, back in Middletown. Before Claire and Casie arrived, we took an interesting tour around the period farmhouse they have there, where Cara and Evie recognized much of the furniture from Evie's old dollhouse. We also saw plenty of the usual barnyard animals. When we were all together, we found a lovely spot under a tree and laid out our picnic.

At the farmer's market, gummy worms had been purchased. Aunt Claire brought rolled up slices of ham. Thus it was that Cara stuck a worm inside of her ham roll and ate it. She claims to have enjoyed it, even. After this exciting meal, we planned to let the child play on the huge array of playground equipment nearby. But we found to our disappointment that it was all fenced-off and unreachable! Cara took the disappointment in stride and we were soon hiking into the nearby woods.

By this time the child was already showing some signs of fatigue. She had already had her morning trip to the park, a shopping outing, and a lot of trekking around the farm. She got several piggy-back rides from several people on the hiking trail, alternately perking up when we came to exercise stations, and sometimes skipping along the trail. It wasn't long before she decided she was done hiking. But it was a beautiful day and a nice trip all the same! We hope to repeat the experience in the coming weeks.

Our day was not yet over: we returned to Aunt Claire's house and, no doubt due in some part to pure fatigue, sat through the entire Disney movie The Jungle Book, which Cara had never seen before. I hardly remembered the film but was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a good one for her, and that even the more frightening parts (where a tiger attacks the main characters) were endurable. I was amused to find myself identifying with the scolding, parental panther character, whom I was sure I'd found irritating when I'd seen the movie as a child.

After that it was off for dinner at an exciting Hibachi restaurant! We were joined by Grandmama and Grandpapa (who clearly hadn't gotten enough of their granddaughter) and GiGi. Cara has been to a Hibachi place before, up by us, but this particular Hibachi chef was much more exciting than the one we'd previously seen. He did a lot of fake-outs with his knife and his sauce bottles, as though he was going to hit us or squirt us. A lot of this was meant to amuse the child, but a lot of the time she was simply frightened. In between, she was enchanted, and loved the tricks he did by flipping eggs and bowls around. She alternated between terror and glee. The waiter gave her a pair of chopsticks that were cleverly stuck together with a rubber band and a piece of cardboard, and she was actually able to eat with them! (And eat, and eat, and eat...) She also had to take a break to go see the sushi bar in another part of the restaurant. She was very interested in it. The sushi chef there tried to have a conversation with her about kindergarten. She was unresponsive, but he still waved at her when she was going to the potty later.

After all this excitement, we had quite a tired kid. We got back to Claire's, packed up and headed home. Predictably, she fell asleep in the car. She was not overly crabby when she woke up: the hostess at the Hibachi place had given her a tiny box of gumballs, and one had fallen out of the box while she was asleep, so she was distracted by having to look for it. Inside the house, Cara shocked her Mommy by telling her that she wanted to skip her bath and go straight to bed without any books. We did actually skip the bath, but as she was being tucked into bed, she said, "Maybe one book." After Daddy read her one book, she claimed that Puma wanted another one. But that was it. She was down by 8:25!

4/19/09 (Sunday)

We had a chore-filled morning, in which Cara and I went out to do groceries. When I parked next to the cart return, as is my wont, I got very unlucky. The cart guy was just neatly putting one of those shopping carts with cars built onto the fronts in there. Cara noticed it. We had to take it. The car sat two, and the seat in the cart sat two. I heard that there was a woman in the store who actually had four little boys in a cart, but I didn't get to see it. I thought that, since the cart was kind of huge, it would be awful to drive. Really, though, it wasn't at all.

Cara and Puma were very happy in their car. Cara buckled herself in, of course, and neither could nor would get out for anything, even to pick out Grandmom's birthday card, which was what I had brought her for. I had to get them down for her to see. The trip went very well, actually. I just got to shop, almost as if I were alone. The only interaction I had with Cara was when she told me that she had stopped or admonished me, saying it was time to go again. I kind of missed shopping with her.

For Grandmom's birthday, we went to Uncle Jim and Aunt Sarah's house. It's quite a while since Cara's been there, but she made herself right at home. Floyd bore it manfully, even when she was running around, squeaking. We went out for Chinese food, and Cara got a little plastic thingie to hold her chopsticks together. I'm not sure it was as successful as the set-up she used last night: chopsticks held together by a rubber band wrapped around a rolled-up piece of paper. She did enjoy her shrimp lo mein, though.

Back at Jim and Sarah's, we ran around in the yard. Cara brought flowers to Grandmom, me, and Sarah. None for the men, I think. Cara also lounged on a lounge chair, even having a blanket brought out to her. She and Grandpop blew on the wind chime when the breeze failed. It was hard to convince Cara to come home again. As we were getting her into bed this evening, she announced, "My favorite part of today was seeing Jim and Sarah!"

4/20/09 (Monday)

As a father, you start to wonder whether you're losing control of the situation when you leave your child downstairs watching TV while you go to get clothes for her to put on, and when, after bringing said outfit downstairs for her, she rejects said outfit, you meekly go and get a different outfit.

Cara was very happy with the new pair of socks I put on her--Easter presents from Grandmama which said "Princess" all over them. She said they fit on her because she is a big girl now. She spent the entire car ride to Susan's singing improvised songs to herself.

This evening when I got home Cara came downstairs in a shirt and tutu. She brought me upstairs and showed me that Mommy was making dinner, and so, since Mommy was doing that and I was clearly unoccupied, I should make paper dolls for her. Paper dolls were made. After dinner Cara had the nice idea of setting up a tea party. She has a basket in which we put all the items from her new tea set. Instead of using the basket, she tried carrying it all downstairs in her arms; when that failed, she decided that bringing it all down one-by-one was the only way to go. I think we convinced her to use the basket. Eventually she had a whole spread set up on her small table down in the game room, with mugs, plates, spoons and napkins at every place, and a single slice of play food bacon on every plate. Then she added several pieces of food to her plate. When I tried to add something, I was scolded and forced to play-eat nothing but bacon. We spent some time sipping and obsessively refilling our teacups, and having polite conversation.

4/21/09 (Tuesday)

Today's big excitement when we got home was the the landscapers had started: they replaced our railroad ties with a nice stone wall in the front! The step isn't quite done, but the opening in the fence has been cut. We're really thrilled about the wall; we walked on it, sat on it, and even jumped a little on it.

Cara and I exercised our civic duty by walking to the polls to vote in the school election. As is customary, we ran part of the way. Afterwards, we stopped at the park. I had Cara go on the big-girl swings, because it's really time. She's definitely big enough and mature enough, and it's getting hard to get her into the little-kid ones! We talked about pumping and she's starting to kind of get the hang of it. The second time on the swings I just pushed her and we had a nice talk about how there are good things and bad things about growing up.

On the slides, we were joined by another little girl about Cara's age, who was pushing around her baby stroller with a doll. I got to just stand around while the two girls ran and ran, going up the stairs and down the slides, with Cara in the lead. They had started actually speaking to each other a little when Daddy showed up, fresh from voting, to take us home.

It was fun to show Daddy the wall. Cara realized, also, that Puma had not seen the wall! We had to go and bring her right out. Puma was very, very excited. She got a little bit of mud on her, which concerned Cara, but it did not concern Cara enough to stop her from gleefully tossing Puma into the air repeatedly, letting her land any old place. There was a patch of gravel on the lawn, and Cara said something about how Puma "just loves to lay in rocks!" I looked over to see Puma on her back, legs splayed out, showing her business to the world. She really must have enjoyed it, though, because after jumping around some more she went back to it.

4/22/09 (Wednesday)

Yesterday things were muddy at Susan's, and Cara changed her socks when she got home. She put on some new ones that had the earth on them; I thought they would be perfect for Earth Day today, so I washed them last night. Cara woke up early today and I showed them to her. She rejected them, of course. She did choose solid green ones instead. I offered Cara her pink-and-green psychedelic dress to wear, since it was the greenest thing she had. She rejected it. I went to work. Later, Steve emailed me to tell me that he had offered Cara her pink-and-green psychedelic dress to wear, and she had rejected it. It was "too fancy." She wore jeans and a shirt with flowers, which really was probably much more practical.

Cara's been saying lately that she wants to go back to gymnastics instead of dance. She seemed enthusiastic enough this afternoon, though, when I picked her up. Off she went into class. In a little while they all trooped out to do their ballet dance for everyone. They all danced--except Cara. She stood stock-still in her place the entire time. On their way out, the teacher told me that Cara said she had a boo-boo on her leg and therefore could not dance. When, a few minutes later, Cara came bouncing out in her tap shoes for a potty break, I asked her about the boo-boo, she showed me the tiny scab on her knee that has been healing for several days. It's barely visible. Miraculously, she was able to make it through her tap number. She was even able to walk back to the car afterwards without being carried. There seems to have been a remarkable recovery.

This evening, Cara got to pick out two books for Steve to read to her. She chose one library book, and then she started looking for "the snow one." This is a Highlights magazine, which Steve has had to read to her for the past four nights in a row, at least. It has children sledding on the cover. In the back, there's a picture of a puma. Puma just loves it. Steve helped Cara find the magazine. She held it up to show him, "Because you haven't read this one for a long time!"

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