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Journal Key:

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

7/9/09 (Thursday)

This morning I got to tag along when Cara was dropped off at preschool, and also be there when we picked her up. She pointed out to us the room where she did some gymnastics, and encouraged Mommy to come to the potty while she was there: "They have pink soap!"

In the evening we took a scenic trip through New Jersey and arrived in downtown Lambertville, where we met Grandpapa and Grandmama for a nice dinner. The restaurant was a very pretty waterside, outdoor place where we were seated next to a (probably defunct) set of railroad tracks. Because Grandpapa had a detailed area map, I was able to point out to Cara the railroad tracks, the canal, and the restaurant we were at. It was not a big enough map to be able to show her our house, though. She had a fancy-looking grilled cheese sandwich, which she enjoyed.

Afterwards we strolled over the bridge linking Lambertville with New Hope. A lot of the adults were concerned that Cara would balk at this, since there was a very clear view on one side of the pedestrian walk to the river below, and noisy traffic rumbling by on the other side. But Cara loved it. She ran along the walkway, taking occasional breaks to look out over the river.

On the other side of the bridge we stopped for ice cream, and Cara, being the strange child that she is, decided she didn't want any. In a nearby bookstore, however, she found something that she did want: a ballet-themed book of paper dolls. If one of us had been carrying a good pair of scissors, we would probably have been busy cutting out dolls on the drive home. Fortunately we did not, so the dolls have to wait for tomorrow.

7/10/09 (Friday)

Cara came out of her room this morning carrying her Nutcracker paper doll book; we had a hug, she went on the potty, and then, right there, I got to cut out the doll and the favorite outfit, which was the one on the cover. Utter delight.

We drove down to Red Bank and had lunch at the M-HOP with Claire and Casie. Cara got a Mickey waffle again, but she mentioned wanting a Minnie one. I asked the waitress whether she could put a whipped-cream bow on top, and she did! Actually, she whipped-creamed up the whole face and kind of turned the ears into a bow, with a line between them. Cara loved it, but she also suggested that it looked like Bert, who of course has a unibrow. This was not a distressing thought.

Casie got to sit next to Cara, and she got to take Cara to the bathroom. What fun! Cara, she says, is the first person she's known who claps her hands over her ears when the toilet flushes.

Reading our new library books to Cara has been a lot of fun. Cinder Edna is a wonderful example. It's about Edna, Cinderella's next-door neighbor, who is in the same situation but instead of being very pretty is very spunky and self-reliant. When the ball comes, she has a dress on layaway. Cinderella's godmother wonders why her charge can't figure anything out on her own, but she makes her the pumpkin carriage. Cinder Edna takes the bus. She meets the younger prince, who recycles and runs a home for orphaned kittens. There's a double wedding at the end, during which is probably Cara's favorite page because she can point out how much prettier Cinderella is.

7/12/09 (Sunday)

Yesterday afternoon the grandparents swung by our house after their very brief vacation (in which we had somewhat joined them anyway) and picked up Cara for an extended sleepover! Grandmama had exciting plans for a trip to a pool or the beach, or perhaps a trip to a park or some other adventure. But in the end I believe Cara was happy enough at the house. When Evie and I drove down this morning, we found lots of drawings of mermaids, and I contributed to a few more.

It's worth noting, although we do sometimes try to make this a good-parts journal, that Cara gave the grandparents a bit of trouble last evening. She threw a tantrum over something or other, and took some time getting to bed. She's been giving us some grief as well. The typical child behavior is to test the limits of her parents and generally be slightly better behaved around more distant family and friends. Cara has not always followed this pattern and it is at least a little comforting to think that her being difficult with us is an indication of normalcy. Yeah...

Today once we had arrived in Middletown, we took some time thinking about what we were going to do with the day. In the end, at my suggestion, Cara and Grandpapa and I went off to a local mini-golf course. Grandpapa and I being men who believe in sportsmanlike performance, we showed Cara exactly how to hold her club and how to swing. (Admittedly, we also gave her incredibly generous handicaps in the area of ball placement, and allowed her a lot of leeway after the first swing on a hole.) By the end Cara was gripping the club quite well and had produced what may have been the only hole-in-one of our game! It was a tough course but it had a lot of interesting layouts, with tubes and ramps and jumps and turning things. Cara seemed red-faced and tired by the end, but as we left she said she was sad that we were not doing more mini-golf.

After that excitement we joined up with Grandmama and Mommy and went off for lunch, where Cara had pancakes for the second time that day. After that Cara convinced Grandmama to fill up the kiddie pools, and they had a blast with the bath toys and the hose. Cara is very active when it comes to pool playing, because she has to take lots of breaks to go run and lay on her towel, and go visit the people who are not in the pool, and spray Grandmama, and then get sprayed by other people. She also had to run off and make bubbles and chase bubbles.

By this time Aunt Claire and GiGi had also arrived, and we got together for dinner. Cara did not eat a whole lot of dinner, having snacked before the meal, so she wandered off a bit early, but she was good.

Last night, Grandpapa George became very excited that the movie The Mouse That Roared was on TV, and got Cara excited about it, too. It being a satirical political dark comedy starring Peter Sellers, it was not perhaps the ideal children's film, and it additionally started playing at 8 pm, and so was not even remotely finished by Cara's bedtime. This afternoon, Grandpapa found us the Tour de France. Men! Riding bikes! In France! The child fortunately did not ask for any alternatives, and we all watched the exciting conclusion of the day's racing. Cara was concerned for one rider who had a bad fall off his bike and was covered in "boo-boos." (Fortunately he was well enough to have gotten back onto his bike to complete the race.)

The child slept on the way home and snacked once here. She was excited to see the small reorganizing we had done to the basement while she was gone. "This is really cool!" she enthused when I took her down at her request to show her (all we had done was to remove a set of shelves). She did a good job getting ready for bed and got to see a little piece of Peter Pan, and now she is being read to by Mommy. On other nights recently we've been having to go back up to her room a lot after saying good night, to address various grievances (a broken fingernail, the child's professed inability to turn on or turn off her fan, etc.). Part of this we think might be the disruption to her nightly routine, since she's not getting baths anymore now that she showers in the morning. We may have to find some other way to reinforce routine at bedtime. I'd better go up to get my good night kiss--and hope I'm not going up there too many more times tonight!

7/13/09 (Monday)

Cara and I had a nice staying-home day, even though, to Cara's disappointment, no one was coming over. We hung around the house in the morning, getting things done. Cara took a bath, somewhat to my surprise. We wrapped all of the coins that we've been accumulating for the past couple of years. Well, I wrapped them; Cara helped me sort out foreign objects. She also enjoyed washing her hands in the pile of coins and stomping through them. We played a three-way game of hide and seek. Cara helped Puma with her turns.

I had happened upon an overdue library book, which should have gone back the last time we went, so we went to return it. Cara got to circle twelve on her chart and got her reading medal. It's awfully nice; it has books on the front and on the back says "Creativity Award, Edison Library, Summer Reading '09." We also went to the bank and traded our coins for cash. I am disappointed to report that there were no lollipops in evidence. I was expecting them.

I think that Cara's drawing has turned an interesting corner. Today she drew at least two pictures that she was not in in any way. We spent some time watching the gerbils, who were working with some new materials to make a nest. I was in the kitchen when Cara drew their cage, with a little house in one corner and two gerbils in the middle. The gerbils are a mommy and a baby instead of two boys, but that's okay! The house has little flags and such coming off of it, as things seem to right now in Cara's art. She added two or three other little houses, which belong to the gerbils' friends or perhaps to the gerbils' friends' pets. She drew a big slide coming out the top of the cage. We colored the picture in together, and then we stuck it behind their cage for them to see.

After dinner, Cara showed me a new picture. I really had no idea what it was. She told me, fortunately, that it was one of the ball-and-cup games I had bought for Independence Day and which she had just been playing with. She very accurately drew the sectioned handle with the cup a different color, and inside of the ball she drew some geometric shapes representing the electronics that make it light up. I admit that I had thought it might be a microphone with a balloon, but this makes a lot more sense. I think that up until now her art has been princesses, ballerinas, and mermaids, abstract things of fantasy. She seems intrigued by the idea that she can draw things she sees right here. The last thing she drew today, of course, was a princess with sleeves so puffy they took up half of the page and flowers on her dress and flags coming out of her head. So, we're still really pretty normal!

7/14/09 (Tuesday)

In the car this afternoon Cara broached the idea that we should get curtains for the back seat for when she wanted to take a nap. I was very accepting of the idea, but I also explained that, as the driver, I needed to be able to see out that window if, for instance, I wanted to change lanes. I had to see whether there was another car there, so that we could all be safe. Well, said Cara, if that other car stopped moving, then we could just get some curtains.

We had a ladies' night out this evening. We parked at Barnes and Noble and walked to my pharmacy. Cara sang a nice walking song and exhorted me to join in, telling me I wasn't being a very good friendly person by not singing happily. At the pharmacy, she browsed all of the aisles of summer toys and then got hung up on a display of toy cars on the way out.

Dinner was at Panera, a place Cara claimed not to remember. As soon as we went in, though, she started talking about soup. I ordered her some, and she remembered the pink "soda" that she likes there, too. Generally, the problem in a restaurant is to keep the child busy after she has finished and no one else has. Today, I finished. I had ripped up Cara's bread and she was dunking it into her too-hot soup. I checked the time. She kept on eating, gradually progressing to actually eating soup with a spoon. It took at least another twelve minutes before she decided she was done.

We stopped at Barnes and Noble, of course, where we looked through a sticker book, paged through an entire anthology of how-to-draw-this books, and then read at least five picture books. By the end, Cara's legs were tired. Very tired. We headed out. On the sidewalk, she was skipping along. "Gee, I'm glad your legs feel better," I said. Instantly, we were once more dramatically fatigued.

At home, I thought we'd curl up and see part of a movie. I was tired! Instead, we got to tape two very large pieces of paper together so that we could draw Cinderella and Snow White in poses slightly different from the poses they have in the coloring book that she hasn't finished coloring them in. I'm not really clear on why we had to do that, but clearly it was a very wonderful idea.

I had a busy day. My great triumph is that I bought Cara a nightgown that has no Disney character on it. It has no one's face on it. No Hannah Montana. No princesses. I've been talking to her about taking her nightgown shopping, but I'm glad I did it myself. They're really scary. The one she has has hearts and peace signs. She loves it.

7/15/09 (Wednesday)

The other night, Cara had a horrible tantrum over brushing her teeth. We let her go until she finally wore herself out and stopped, after a good twenty minutes, off and on. The next night, she started to get mad about it and then stopped. This morning, she decided she wanted a bath instead of a shower. She went into her room instead of coming to brush her teeth. She came and brushed, eventually, and I mentioned that her bath, if she got one, would be very very fast. Back into her room. I got into the shower. In three minutes, she showed up naked and jumped in.

This afternoon, she didn't want to buckle her seatbelt; she wanted me to do it. I explained the consequences of not doing it herself, and then I shut the car door. I stepped aside and waited a few seconds, and then I went and got into the car. She was buckling herself. At home, we were going to paint her nails. I wanted to do it inside, but she wanted to do it outside. She decided to go to her room over that one. When she came out I offered compromises and she decided maybe we just wouldn't do her nails.

She's still testing, but I feel like, well, like we're not failing.

It was a great playdate. The kids all drew with chalk on the driveway. Cara drew an entire castle bigger than she is, complete with a princess. Casey draws circles, if Ron draws circles first with dashed lines. She wanted to make one into a happy sun, and once he showed her how, she went to work. Her sun had more lines coming out of it than any other one did! Actually, it looked kind of fuzzy. After dinner we had ice cream outside and the kids played with chalk some more. Then they dragged a plastic sled out of the garage and somehow managed to play with that for a good half hour. Cara and PJ sat in it a lot, and they carried it around. They played hide-and-seek under it. They were aware that there was one traditional element of sledding missing.

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