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Journal Key:

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

5/21/09 (Thursday)

We went to the library after Susan's; it was a great trip! We returned most of our books, but Cara did insist that we renew Herb, the Vegetarian Dragon. We haven't really been reading Herb much lately, but we're just not ready to give him up. When we picked out new books, I found something special: The Sweet Touch, from 1976. I remember loving it as a child, and I am absolutely delighted to rediscover it. I still like it. Fortunately, Cara likes it, too.

Cara really didn't like the book Merry Christmas, Princess Dinosaur. We returned it today, and I paged through it just to check it out. Princess Dinosaur, a toy, is excited about Christmas and Santa. She and the other toys seem to give each other lots of gifts and they're very busy. Princess Dinosaur goes downstairs to wait for Santa. She gets hungry and thirsty and eats his cookies and drinks his milk. She climbs up into the Christmas tree and falls asleep. When she wakes up, Santa has been there and left presents for everyone. They are all happy. The end. The problem, for Cara? Princess Dinosaur shouldn't have had Santa's milk and cookies.

Cara loves the computer games at the library, and I let her play some. Literally. I sat and looked at the books we'd picked out, and she used the mouse to play. She gets stuck sometimes, but she's mostly good. I've shown her how to hold it, but she mostly just pushes it gently and lifts her hand off it when she's going to click. She's getting confident, though!

Outside, Cara brought Juliana a little helicopter from a maple tree, and Juliana showed her (with considerable effort, since they're all dry and brown right now) how to split it; Juliana put it on her own nose to demonstrate. Now, whenever we're outside and Cara finds one, she brings it right over to Juliana.

I don't want to jinx anything, but I do have to say that Steve just read Cara three books tonight--no magazines!

5/22/09 (Friday)

Cara and I went over to the preschool she'll start at in July today. We spent about an hour there, visiting in her classroom, meeting the other kids, and seeing all of the toys. Cara likes her teacher, Miss Jane. Miss Jane showed Cara around, but the other kids took over. They were very friendly, and, though Cara wasn't really ready to talk to them yet, she was ready to run around with them. They're a very nice bunch of kids, and they were very happy to meet Cara. She got in the line when they were going downstairs, and she went outside to play with everyone while I stayed inside to fill out forms. Cara agrees that it'll be a lot of fun to go to school there. She didn't know there were so many other girls who were four!

For Family Fun Night, we went out to Friendly's. We skipped ice cream, though. Cara was cold, and Juliana had made a cheesecake, so Steve and I were under orders to skip dessert. Cara didn't mind leaving without ice cream; she decided to have a strawberry yogurt treat at home. Those have been a huge hit! I'm going to have to buy more.

5/25/09 (Monday)

A long time without a journal! Mostly this is because we had a little bit of a vacation for Memorial Day weekend. On Saturday the family spent the morning outside doing yard work, and then we had to run inside and get ourselves ready to go down to Grandmom and Grandpop's house. We had an early dinner with them and with Uncle Jim and Aunt Sarah. We somehow avoided pulling out all of the toys in the house, and instead spent a lot of time outside, where Cara tried very hard to get Rusty and/or Floyd to run around with her. In the evening after Jim and Sarah left, we watched The Tigger Movie, a DVD that Grandmom had gotten out of the library. Even though it was an entirely new movie we had never seen before, it had the familiar Pooh characters and Cara enjoyed it very much.

It was a sleep over for all of us! Cara wanted to read one of her lengthier library books, about a young cat who meets a bunch of cats from Mars and ends up flying around in a spaceship and getting lost (Grandpop had already read the same book to her earlier in the day--it seems to be the current favorite). Grandmom was not thrilled at the prospect of this story, so Mommy and Grandmom took turns doing the bedtime stories, and Mommy went to sleep downstairs.

We all got a good night's rest, then got ourselves up the next morning. Cara and I went with Grandmom and Grandpop to the local park, where Rusty got a walk and Cara sampled the playground equipment. It wasn't long before we were all out in the car on our way to Wheaton Village (now Wheaton Arts) for the main event of our vacation.

We were lucky that the weather cooperated with us: it was a nice sunny day and we had a nice time strolling around the place. The first thing we did was stroll down to a lake, where we saw some geese and a number of friendly turtles (who no doubt expected some handouts from us). We all got to see a cool glassblowing demonstration, which Cara very patiently sat through. Then we went to the museum. We were a little concerned that walking through a museum full of glassware might be boring for the child, but right at the beginning a kind museum employee gave Cara a little paper with a treasure hunt. She had to walk through the place and find glass pieces to match the pictures on the paper--the appropriate cases were marked with a sticker in the shape of a piece of cheese, because the whole treasure hunt was related to a little mouse named Millie who supposedly wanders through the museum after they lock up at night. It was a cute idea and a fantastic way to keep the child occupied and engaged. When she was done, she got a little mouse stamp on her hand.

After a successful museum visit Cara got an even more child-friendly treat, because the village had a very large playground set. This was an old-school set of equipment, with very tall ladders and long slides. Some of them were too scary for Cara at first. I convinced her to go down one of the long slides with me, and by the end of her visit she worked up the courage to go down it all by herself. There was also a tall metal ladder enclosed in a tube that Cara was afraid to climb up, but when Grandpop got to the top and looked down encouragingly, she climbed up with no problem. We were proud.

To finish off our visit we went into an old-fashioned general store, where I was excited to find a little magic volcano which "erupts" when you put it in water and dissolves, revealing a little dinosaur which grows bigger in water. I also found one of those cool little paratrooper guys with the little plastic parachutes. We just had to purchase both...um, for Cara.

Then it was time for lunch. Grandpop may have started a rather dubious tradition by bribing Cara with a dollar so that she wouldn't kick the booth in the restaurant with her feet. The child had seemed awfully tired by the time we got out of Wheaton Arts, but when we returned to the grandparents' house she was soon in the back yard, running around and inventing her own dance moves.

She did sleep on the way home. But it was still just afternoon when we returned, and we had time to stick our magic volcano in water, send our paratrooper on several missions, and do some cleaning chores in the back yard. It was a nice little vacation, and today we have one more day to ourselves to hang around, do a few other chores, and have the traditional cookout.

Later:

Claire came over in the afternoon! Cara was very happy to see her aunt and after jumping up and down for a while she dashed off to show Claire everything in the house she could think of that Claire might not have seen lately. We played outside some and had our cookout. There was a moment in the afternoon when we were talking about a lot of different foods and Cara was commenting that she disliked every single one. One of the foods mentioned was Doritos. By the end of the day Cara had changed her opinion on Doritos.

The child has been doing a lot of improvised dance routines lately. One of her favorite moves is a spin which ends in her facing front and pointing at the audience, or holding up different numbers of fingers. She also improvises songs to go with them. There was one song today which was a (surprisingly seamless) combination of the theme song to her Tinkerbell movie and the song that her Barbie doll sings when you push the button on her neck.

What the child has also been very good at lately is independent play. She used to be quite dependent on us for amusement, but has definitely learned to go off and enjoy herself with her toys. Cara did not have a nap today, but her parents managed to have a little rest in the early afternoon while Cara went downstairs and played.

The Loefflers strolled by in the evening and Em very loudly asserted that it was "almost bedtime," regardless of what anyone's watch might say. We have explained to Cara how this time of year the sun stays up longer, and it's later than it really looks outside. So it's looking like we'll get a good bedtime tonight.

5/26/09 (Tuesday)

The picture today from Susan's is a spring scene on which the kids glued a paper cutout of grass, drew dandelions, and stuck stickers of a great variety of bugs. Cara drew a hopscotch board on hers. The really remarkable thing: she did not draw a girl. It's got to be the first time in months. In a great example of cosmic justice, Casey drew what she explained was a girl on hers.

Cara would really like to get a friend for Deesta. (Apparently the two tiny Deestas are not enough.) She wanted to go today, but I said that we couldn't, this evening. She concluded that that was because Deesta would get wet in the rain. "Nice and soggy!" Actually, Cara got a dollar the other day when Grandpop was reduced to bribery to get her to stop banging her feet against the bench at a restaurant. She decided to spend it on a friend for Deesta, and we explained about the concept of saving money. We may persist in this endeavor. Only $34 to go!

5/27/09 (Wednesday)

Today's picture from Susan's, once again, has no girl on it. I forgot to ask about Casey's! Cara sat outside in her leotard and tutu while I did her hair, and she and JoJo, who was wearing a tiara, told each other how cute they looked and were very polite. They also did some hugging, which did not particularly help the hair process. In the end, though, it got done.

These post-recital dance classes are the really fun ones, it turns out. Today, I was a little bit surprised that Cara wasn't upset about not going into the big room with the big girls like last week. It sounded like they had some fun going on in the back room, though, and what really tipped the scale, I'm sure, is that "Mr. Andre" was there. He's one of the few boys at the studio, and he's a graduating senior. It was nice of him to come and hang out with the little girls, who loved having him there.

Em noticed last week, by the way, that in the middle of the program from the dance recital, on the page with pictures of some of the classes, there is a picture of Cara's class with Cara in it. I had had no idea, frankly. It's right under the headline. I showed Cara this evening, and she was surprised and delighted. After "oh, that's me!" her reaction was, of course, "Where's another picture of me?"

Playdate was down the street this evening, and we ate outside. They have two tables, a normal one and a high one. So, this evening, the kids got the high table and we got the other one! It was their first kids' table! It went well, except for the difficulty that the high chairs caused for people interested in potty breaks. Though that may have been part of the fun.

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