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Journal Key:

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

5/28/09 (Thursday)

Cara happened upon a large post-it pad after dinner, and she asked whether she could have a page. We said yes. She was off. She made a sign and put it on her bedroom door; it has a picture of her on it and it says her name on it. She meant to write "Cara's Room" but, frankly, that's beyond her.

After that, things got more elaborate. There are now three signs on Cara's door, and there's one on ours, too. Ours has a picture of me and Daddy on it. On the door of the office, which will be the bedroom of any eventual sibling Cara has, there is also a sign. It has a picture of her baby brother and sister. (Well, Dora got both!) Cara took it down to write their names on it. The boy is PJ, spelled JP, which is how PJ himself writes his name. The girl is a random selection of letters: OPAR. Cara asked me what it said. "It's Opar," I told her. "Yes, Opar," she said, "That's a good name."

5/30/09 (Saturday)

Friday was a sleepover night. Cara returned this morning bearing a book that she and Grandmama have been working on for a while now: every page had a watercolor painting on it and a word to go with it: "Day," "Night," "Rain," "Snow," etc. One of them, of course, was "Me," and had a picture of Cara. When read in order, the words rhymed. It was very pretty and Cara read it for us, getting the great majority of the words right. Lovely!

Evie is under the weather and very tired. In the morning she had some energy and was willing to take the child outside for a bit. Cara spotted the Loefflers and we had a bit of a stroll with the kids and tried out PJ's new bubble machine, which has Buzz Lightyear on it. Then it was back to the house for a light lunch (Cara ate almost an entire can of numbers and letters). Evie managed to take the child outside to water the plants (the child doused herself somehow, requiring a complete outfit change), but in the early afternoon she was very much out of steam.

So, at long last, Daddy took over. I drove Cara off to the mall. Now the other thing that happened this morning was that Mommy introduced the idea of saving money to Cara. We emptied Cara's piggy bank, counted what money she had, and explained about an allowance, and gave her her first allowance payment. Then Mommy carefully drew a chart showing how many dollars Cara would need to reach her current monetary goal ($35, enough to buy a new wardrobe and friend for Deesta from Build-A-Bear), and had the child color in a circle for every dollar she had. When she was done, it was clear that Cara was only about halfway to her goal. We carefully stressed the idea that she would have to wait and save up more money before she could buy a friend for Deesta.

Then, as fate would have it, she ended up at the mall with Daddy. The plan was to use up a Barnes and Noble gift card she had gotten for her birthday, and spend one dollar which we had decided to set aside as spending money on the coin-operated machines in the mall. It so happens that the mall with a Barnes and Noble is the same one with a Build-A-Bear Workshop.

At first, it didn't seem like this would really be an issue. Cara and I wandered into the bookstore, got ourselves a light snack at the cafe, and spent some time reading some books in the kid's section. Cara found a particularly alluring book about "midnight fairies," which contained an actual necklace embedded in the front cover (she has a very similar ice-skating-themed book already). She wanted to buy the book very, very much, but I was firm and told her that we couldn't get it today. Then we went and spent her one dollar of spending money in the coin machines, ending up with a couple of tiny little knick-knacks.

At this point I was ready to go home--we were on the upper level of the mall and we ended up walking to the end to get to an escalator to take us down. Unfortunately I realized as we were walking to the escalator that we were going to pass Build-A-Bear on the way back to the exit. Cara was looking in the other direction as we walked past the store, and caught a glimpse of the storefront in the reflection of a window across the way. "I want to go there!" she exclaimed, but became very confused when the store she was looking at was not Build-A-Bear. It took a bit of walking back and forth and staring into the windows before she realized her mistake and turned around.

Inside Build-A-Bear, we discovered that there were a few animals that were cheap enough that Cara could afford them. She eventually settled on a sparkly snow leopard. Don't worry, I was very firm, a strict Daddy, and I put my foot down. We did not buy any clothes for that snow leopard! We did, however, purchase the snow leopard. (When we got home, Mommy helped Cara empty out most of her piggy bank so that she could pay me back.)

So we surprised Mommy when we came home with a friend for Deesta. Cara has certainly matured since Deesta, since the new kitty is named "Lucy." A perfectly normal, perfectly good name. It developed, however, that Lucy was a boy.

5/31/09 (Sunday)

Lucy is, indeed, a boy, and his name is DJ Skee-Jay. At least, so we've heard. We've been referring to it alternately as "Lucy" and "that boy cat." Lucy and Deesta both came out with us earlier, but they are sometimes a little much for Cara to manage. So I got to carry Lucy. Cara told me, optimistically, to put her (or him) in my purse.

This evening while Cara was in the bath, I sang "Puff the Magic Dragon" to her. She liked it so much that I was able to use hearing the real recording of it as a goad to get her out of the tub on time! I put it on while she picked out pajamas and got into them; once she was warm and cuddly, she bounced around. Too bad it had gotten to the sad part of the song! She hasn't noticed that there's a sad part. I sang her another song while I brushed her teeth, and we tried listening to it, but it wasn't a hit. "Daddy hasn't heard 'Puff the Magic Dragon,'" Cara pointed out, pointedly. He had, but we let her hear it one more time. Utter joy.

6/1/09 (Monday)

I've been going into Cara's room every morning before I leave to tell her I'm going to work and to kiss her goodbye. She's generally pretty much asleep. Today she was asleep, facing the wall. I whispered that I was leaving, and she turned over, still asleep, and hugged me. I just felt bad because I was an awfully cold thing for a nice cuddled up girl to hug!

Cara talked me into making paper dolls this afternoon. I made regular boring girls, but I put baseball caps on the boys. I'm rather pleased with the effect, but I haven't actually seen any colored in yet and I do expect that to turn out "interesting." Cara amused herself with a little board book while I was working on them, and when she had to go potty she took it with her. I later discovered it neatly propped open on the tissue box.

We got pizza tonight. Cara ate two whole pieces and began a third. She decided to sit in my seat and to have me sit in hers. I discovered that it's an awful seat! It's got a very boring view of the wall. Now I'm going to change the way we have the table arranged.

6/2/09 (Tuesday)

I picked Cara up early because, as I explained to her, a package was coming for me. Immediately, she announced that we really should get two packages because there should be one coming for her as well. She swiftly was reconciled to the inevitable, however, and instead decided to just be very excited that a deliverperson was coming and to look out the window a lot and to announce that she would say hi and that she was sure he'd look "very nice." When he did eventually come, she did not say hi. By the time he left, though, she had gone to get Cinderella, with the idea of displaying her in all of her glory.

Cara did plenty of arts and crafts on her own today, but we also did something very special together. Cara got out her Lite Brite, and we did an entire picture on it! It's been put away for a while, because though I was quite excited about it Cara wasn't interested in doing any of it herself. Today she found it herself and chose a picture of flowers. She and I split the work. Once I told her what color went with a letter, she would keep going until she'd gotten all of those pegs in. She did blue, and I did green (I think I messed up and put in an extra peg--don't tell!). She did white and I did orange. It was the best picture we've ever made on there, and Cara has it sitting up on her little table in her playroom, so that she can see it while she works on other things.

6/3/09 (Wednesday)

I am truly astonished to be able to report that Cara put her own tap shoes on today. She buckled them. Those are tiny buckles. Cara told me after class, and Miss Nicole confirms that this happened. Nicole says that Cara herself was astonished and proud.

Next week is the last week of ballet, and Cara started working today on a picture to give her teacher. We did Miss Megan's first. Cara drew herself and Puma and a monochromatic rainbow. I suggested adding Miss Megan, and Cara did. She is very rectangular; she looks like a hockey player in full gear. I showed Cara how to write "Miss Megan" and she wrote it and then she wrote Cara. She was saying "To Miss Megan from Cara," so I showed her how to write that, suggesting that she add the "to." When I looked again, "To Miss Megan from Cara" had been added, slightly garbled, above the "Miss Megan" and "Cara" It's a very interesting picture, full of a variety of other things. There was some white space left, but Cara trimmed it off. Tomorrow we get to do one for Miss Nicole!

Playdate was here this evening, and it was great. Cara and PJ played with some action-figure toys; she had "super-bunny" and he had Batman and some other guy. Super-bunny was flying around saying, "oh no, bad guys!" while the bad guys chased Super-bunny. Casey went to the potty during dinner and, the second or third time she called Em for something, Cara said, "I'll get her, Em" and off she went. Whatever it was Casey wanted, apparently Cara supplied it. PJ got to play Samis with Steve, and they actually made progress. Cara and PJ both seem to be in music-video mode. During dinner, in addition to more creative musical forays, he was standing on his chair and bopping along as he barked "one, two, three, four!"

Cara was a slow cleaner-upper this evening, and I told her she might lose a book. "That's okay," she said, "I only want two." Oh good.

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