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Journal Key:

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

8/13/09 (Thursday)

Cara once again slept quite late this morning; I woke her around 8:15. Our great accomplishment for the morning was that she put the conditioner farther back on her head. Until now, she's been slapping it right in front, which makes rinsing particularly difficult for someone who gets upset when water gets near her eyes.

Today the main subject at preschool was dinosaurs. Cara apparently got to stomp around pretending to be a "big mommy reptile." Everyone also drew "dinosaur landscapes," and Miss Jane told me that Cara's was outstanding. I did get to see it; it's got an archaeopteryx with legs, a head, and wings with claws at the ends. The claws look a lot like fingers, but, okay. There's also some grass and a nest with dinosaur eggs in it.

I have been looking and looking for a long time for a really cool night-light for Cara, but today I gave up and bought one at the grocery store. It's purple and has heart-shaped cutouts. She's excited about it, and maybe tonight she can sleep with that instead of the one we've had on her dresser all her life. We'll see. I've reminded her that she slept in the dark in New Mexico.

One of Cara's library books is called When Cats Dream. It is an odd book. On one page, though, it talks about cats stalking things. Cara asked what that meant. I did my best to both describe and demonstrate, but it didn't ring any bells. It was entertaining, though, as Cara requested a repeat performance last night. Today, we spent some time online, looking at videos that claimed to be movies of cats stalking. I was disappointed in them, though they were amusing. Buster and Shelby are unlikely to be helpful in this regard, so we will have to rely on the cats of our friends and relations.

8/16/09 (Sunday)

Friday was Family Fun Night--in the evening we went out to Friendly's. Then we got Cara some new shoes, which was an exciting excursion. We looked at the Barbie toys they have there and managed to avoid walking out of the store with one of them (Cara is saving up money for a Barbie right now). At some point on Friday, Cara said "Soon we should go see Aunt Sarah and Uncle Jim, and have a Man Day and a Lady Day!"

Saturday was staying home and doing chores day. In the morning there was a lot of weed pulling, and lawn mowing, and weed whacking. Cara hung in there for a while and was vaguely helpful, and for a while she took outside some mermaid drawings I'd made and colored them near us. Then she went inside and played by herself for a bit. Then Em came over and nicely offered to take Cara to play at her house with PJ and Casey! It had been a while. The kids were going to go in the pool, but the pool was malfunctioning. They were going to use our Backyardigans sprinkler toy, but then that got busted as well (due to enthusiastic jumping). In the end they ran through an old fashioned lawn sprinkler, the kind that arcs from side to side with lots of little spouts of water (Cara described it to us in a way that was very understandable). Not too long after she came home and dried off, Grandmama arrived to whisk her away for a sleepover party!

Grandmama and Grandpapa took Cara out to Memphis Pig-Out, which is a restaurant featuring a lot of pig-related decorations. This is in Atlantic Highlands near the water, so afterwards they all walked down to the docks to watch the boats, and Cara ended up with some ice cream as well. As is usual these days, the adults (in this case Grandmama) were enlisted in drawing multiple mermaids, which Cara consented to color. She also drew some of her own.

Evie and I arrived in Middletown in the late morning to see our little girl. Then we all drove over to Theresa and John's house for a pool party! Cara always enjoys a chance to get into a pool. We brought some squishy balls to throw around in the pool, and Uncle John got out a remote control boat and drove it around in there. There were snacks, and then Evie, Cara, GiGi and I took a quick trip over to nearby Deep Cut Park to show Cara the sights. Unfortunately one of the best parts of the park was closed up for renovations of some kind, but we did get to see a couple of bunnies pretty close, and wander around a rose garden which had a lot of little paths and was kind of like a maze.

We had a nice dinner, and Cara watched Cinderella, which Uncle John also seemed to enjoy quite a bit. It was a lovely time.

8/17/09 (Monday)

Cara and I had a busy "staying home day" today. We didn't stay home.

First we went down to Linwood, where Cara colored mermaids. Some were ones I'd drawn on little pieces of paper, which she of course taped together into a line. It's the third such line of mermaids that she's made, I believe. They all have different tails and different hair. I assumed that it was the hair she was talking about when she announced, "These mermaids will all have blue balls on them!" I found out later that she was referring to their, er, brassieres. I'm working on switching Cara's name for that to their "tops." Sometimes she puts straps on their tops, presumably so that their balls don't fall off.

The child also drew me a couple of mermaids on my board, which I will not be able to erase until school officially starts and I know that Cara won't come back in and see that they are gone.

Our real adventure for the day was driving down to Middletown for lunch with Aunt Claire and Grandmama. We ate at the M-HOP, where Cara had a Mickey waffle and two eggs on the side. And a piece of my omelet. And then another egg on the side.

After we hung around for a while, we had of course to head home. We stopped at Wegmans to pick up a few things for dinner, and it was rather more exciting than some of us would have liked it to be. For some reason Cara was either far more effective or just far more enthusiastic about "being the pusher" and I spent a lot of time walking beside the cart, trying to steer and to hold it back just a little. We had gotten a strawberry smoothie, though, because it's very, very hot outside, and that did occasionally, though briefly, distract her. When it was my turn to "be the pusher" Cara got to "be the puller" and walk backwards in front of the cart, apparently attempting to steer it in some way. No one was hurt.

On the way home, Cara was in the back with the smoothie. Suddenly she burst into tears. Copious tears. Brain freeze.

After dinner, I put on Easter Parade. We watched most of the song-and-dance numbers, starting with the pinkest one, in which Judy Garland and some other girls do a little dance number in a bar where Fred Astaire is drowning his sorrows. It lasts about twenty seconds and the camera mainly focuses on his conversation. Then she sings "Michigan," still wearing pink. We went on to watch some classics, like "Shakin' the Blues Away," "It Only Happens When I Dance With You," the two tramps on the avenue, and even "Drum Crazy," which Cara enjoyed even though there was no lady in it and she was very concerned because Fred Astaire was making too much noise in the store. We ended by watching a scene from Singin' In the Rain. Which one? The pink one. Where she jumps out of the cake. What was Cara's favorite scene from Easter Parade? The pink one.

8/18/09 (Tuesday)

Parenting has of course been a wonderful adventure so far, full of surprises. One such surprise is that currently I have found myself the most invested and active participant in helping Cara develop her newfound interest in identifying the makes of cars. This seems to have somehow been sparked in New Mexico, where our rental car, I am told (I asked Steve) was a Honda. Cara likes the H. She has also noticed the very attractive Mazda logo on my steering wheel; it looks like a bird. She enjoys finding it on other cars when we're driving. She can also spot the Toyota sign with some success.

We took a long drive today up to Montclair, where we met Daddy at a baseball game for which his company had purchased tickets. It was a beautiful stadium, and there was a kids' area in which Cara was able to go in a bounce house. We got hot dogs for dinner, in spite of Cara's repeated requests for ice cream right away. We got her ice cream, but she didn't like the pink ice cream she had chosen. We wimped out and got her a pink snow cone. Personally, I have never enjoyed a snow cone. The ice frustrates me. Cara did enjoy hers, though. She liked watching all of the events between the innings, and she got up to go and see the mascot, who got her nose.

We stayed out kind of late. Cara was tired at the end, but she did wave goodbye to all of Daddy's coworkers as we headed for our cars.

8/19/09 (Wednesday)

So, our rental car was a Hyundai, not a Honda. Still, it was an H. This is the real problem with me being involved with Cara's car-company-logo education. I can definitely handle Toyota and Mazda and maybe a couple of others, but if Cara gets really good at this and asks about more, I will swiftly come up against ones I cannot identify. We're still safely practicing Toyota and Mazda, though.

At playdate tonight, Cara got to try PJ and Casey's new Slip 'n Slide! It was pretty cool. The kids took turns running up to it and sliding on their knees; Casey, though, mostly ran all the way up it and sat down in the puddle at the end. Cara did try to slide on her tummy, but she hasn't quite figured out how to maintain her momentum. Perhaps with practice . . .

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