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Journal Key:

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

11/26/09 (Thursday) - Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a lovely Thanksgiving morning together. Evie made a nice breakfast and we turned on the Macy's parade for a while. Then we hurried off to try to make it to my parents' house to see the end of the parade with Santa Claus. I personally think we would have made it just in time, had it not been for the fact that when we were still on route 295, Cara told us she had to go to the potty. Afterwards she was very confused when we turned off the highway to find a potty--she wanted to go at Grandmom and Grandpop's house. They had two bathrooms!

We did make it to the house, and the child had a good time, although she did not get into the feasting spirit particularly. A lot of the time she will put her food away like a good 'un, but today she was either too excited or just not in the mood, because she barely had any of the big Thanksgiving spread. Later in the evening she did do some picking at a plate of leftovers. But most of the time we grown-ups were eating Cara spent watching The Grinch. (Later in the day she wanted to see the Grinch again! But we dissuaded her somehow.) She did have some fun at the table since my mother got out her two little tiny plastic mermaids that can hang onto the edge of a glass. Cara also got a cool turkey-shaped napkin holder.

The afternoon and evening were spent in the typical American Thanksgiving pastime of watching football. Cara is more used to watching live high school football games, with prancing mascots and snacks, so the televised kind is pretty boring for her. Fortunately she had lots of toys to play with. Today she was most interested in playing with the Lego family and their little Lego babies. I was detailed to draw some ballerinas.

At a certain point in the evening, I turned to Cara, saying, "Weeelllll..." She immediately picked up on my tone and said "I don't want to go home yet!" But it was time, and so we made our farewells. Cara had "so much to do!" when we got home, between coloring ballerinas and I don't know what all else. We skipped her bath because of it.

11/27/09 (Friday)

Last night, Cara insisted that, instead of the little "big-girl night light" she's been sleeping with, she needed her old night light, which is far brighter. "I'm too scared," she explained. Bah! When I came up to bed, there were four or five items from her room at the top of the stairs, waiting to be taken down. In the bathroom, I found a bud vase with a fake flower that I'd given her in which to also display the paper flower she'd made at preschool. She wasn't scared. She just wasn't sleepy. She wanted light so that she could stay up.

Our project for this staying-home day was to clean all of the junk out of what will be the baby's room. Now that most of the furniture was out, it was quite evident how much clutter had accumulated there. I got to show Cara her baby book. There were two aspects of it that she truly enjoyed: one was touching all of the interesting stickers and three-dimensional decals that were in there, and the other was a Christmas card that I had stuck in the back. It's from last year; Cara wrote it to Santa and I wrote an explanation on the envelope: "CPUA" means "I need more presents." Once I'd explained that Santa did get it, but we were able to have it anyway, Cara was very taken with it. I believe that she just showed it to Steve.

Clearing the junk out was interesting. Most of it was stuff that used to sit on the book cases, and much of it was vaguely, at least, decorative. Cara now has a book case in her playroom. Therefore, many of the things we had to decide about were spirited away before we could determine their fates. Some things were taken after we'd dealt with them. Among other things, she pulled an old stapler out of the bag we were getting ready for Goodwill and put it on a shelf in her play kitchen. She took a small bottle of glitter, which I have since retaken and disposed of. She took my collection of sun catchers and distributed them artistically around the house, leaning them against windows.

We had a second Thanksgiving today. Cara enthusiastically helped making pumpkin squares, insisting that she was going to eat them and really like them. I also made sweet potatoes, which she declared repeatedly that she was not going to try. In the event, she was half right. She tried neither. On one of the best holidays of the year, eating-wise, Cara ate basically nothing but bread!

Jane Austen came along. Grandmama, it turns out, also has a Jane Austen doll. Hers is clothed. (Steve, at the end of the evening: "I figured out a way to tell them apart!") They got along fine, though. There was much comic possibility, and Steve performed a brilliant sketch in which he held up one doll, the clothed one, who would say things like, "well, it's time for my bath . . ." and then switch dolls. Cara was oblivious.

(We were watching tv the other day. A mother bunny in a cartoon put her baby into a high chair because he was hungry, and then she went off to get him a snack. Each of the other family members in turn came through and gave the baby something to eat. When the mother returned, he wasn't at all hungry. He burped. Cara burst into laughter, because he burped. "He should say excuse me!")

Although she had spontaneously taken a bath before getting dressed this morning, Cara insisted on taking a shower at Grandmama's house. Grandmama supervised. I am saddened to report that, when we heard the shower turn off, we could clearly hear the child say, "But I don't want to get out of the shower! I want more shower!" and then the shower was turned back on. She got another five minutes (literally) out of it. How the mighty have fallen.

11/28/09 (Saturday)

Grandmama claims that she had only turned off the water in the first place because the child had slammed her fingers in the shower door. Hmmmm.

Steve went off for a Man Day today, so Cara and I had a Girl Day right here. Of course, we went shopping! Buying Cara a winter coat was fun. We found a nice warm one that's green with pink fake fur trim, and it even came with mittens. She also selected a new hat, a Dora one, which is blue. We still need snow pants. I'm not sure whether to look for purple or orange. At Michael's, Cara spent some money that GiGi gave her yesterday; she bought materials to make holiday gifts for her family. I'm assuming that her family likes mermaids.

At the grocery store, Cara made a fabulous discovery. She had never noticed pigs in blankets before, and it was thrilling. I was hoping to find a smaller box than the first one we saw, so I told her we'd come back to that section. We had a few other things to pick up. Cara was excited to notice the Christmas decorations. She likes to point out things she sees, so when she exclaimed "piggy!" I started looking around. "No," she said, "in blankets!" Okay. I looked through the frozen food section, but I ended up buying the box of 32.

I baked up nine of them. Cara put four on her plate. She found them delightful. She ate them like a normal human being, but when she once happened to eat the hot dog out of the pastry, she discovered how pleasant it was to lick the inside of the pastry. She offered me a shot at it, too. "It's nice and soft!" She ate six, gave me one, and saved two for PJ and Casey.

PJ and Casey came over to play for a couple of hours. PJ and I spent some time with Cara's Leapster; he played the dragon game that Cara doesn't play. I now feel quite expert. Cara and Casey played together a lot. They played dress-up. They played with a few different types of toys, in the end settling with the Playmobil unicorns from Cara's dollhouse. Cara explained afterwards: "In our pony play, two ponies got dead!" It was the baby and the king. The other ponies were all sisters. Then someone, possibly the sisters and possibly not, was sad and helped them get better. I suggested that perhaps they had never really been dead; maybe they fainted. Cara was willing to buy this. It really does seem to fit the events a little more. Unless they were zombie ponies after they felt better.

This was a day of never-ending fun. Aunt Claire came up, too. She and I made dinner, and Cara ran in circles around the kitchen table a lot. After dinner we hung around for a little while, until Cara could no longer contain her excitement over taking a shower. She really enjoyed it. A lot. So did several of her bath toys.

Cara slept with her baby night light last night; it's my fault. When I was talking to her about it earlier, I'd said that maybe she'd give it to her baby brother because she didn't need it anymore. Last night, she told Steve she was using it because her baby brother wasn't out of my tummy yet. Tonight, in a stroke of brilliant parenting, I mentioned how tired she'd been earlier and wondered whether perhaps she'd slept badly last night. Might it have been too bright in here? She's wonderfully suggestible, poor child.

11/29/09 (Sunday)

This morning Mommy slept late and I annoyed the child by spending a lot of the morning Christmas shopping on the internet. Then we played a lot of Nick Jr. games on the computer. Then Cara "helped" me clean out the gerbils. I did most of it but she did help by showering snacks and food into their cage. Fortunately these gerbils are voracious eaters so it's just what they wanted.

We spent a lot of the morning cleaning the house, and didn't get ourselves out for a meal until the early afternoon. Cara complained of being very tired even before we went out the door. Her corn dog helped a little but when we went over to the Barnes & Noble store afterwards, all she wanted to do was sit and have books read to her. When we got home from that Cara actually insisted on having a nap. She requested that it be a "TV nap," however, and was soon lying on the couch watching a Diego DVD. I went down in the basement to get out our Christmas decorations. This had the effect of completely reviving the child. She was soon helping me, bouncing around, and exclaiming loudly over everything that we pulled out of the boxes. We had a lovely time. Cara was particularly excited to find the tiny little cloth stocking which last year served as Puma's stocking. I think Evie and I had both forgotten about this, and we were soon thinking about what Puma would like to have for Christmas ("A teddy bear--for me!" answered Cara).

We had a look at our stocking holder hooks. There are four. Evie pointed this out to Cara. This year the fourth hook is for Puma's stocking, but next year we will have a new baby. Cara saw the difficulty at once. "We'll have to get another holder!" she said. Mommy pointed out the possibility of Puma sharing a hook with someone else.

In the evening we tried a video conference with my dad using our computers' webcams and some free software. It worked surprisingly well and Cara got to see her grandparents and bounce around in front of the camera. It was like having a little visit, which was nice.

Somehow there has been a shower renaissance. Cara is in the shower again this evening, as I write this. She is even claiming right now that she "love[s] cleaning-up time." Wonders will never cease.

I read Big Sister Dora tonight, on each page of which Dora announces "My Mami's having a baby!" On page twelve or so, Cara replied, "I know, Dora!"

11/30/09 (Monday)

Today it was back to preschool. Cara got up early and was concerned about the weather. She brought the console for our remote weather station upstairs and showed me that the character on the screen was dressed up for rain. This meant that it was okay for Cara to wear her Fancy Nancy sneakers. On most days, Cara will balk at the very idea of putting on her Fancy Nancy sneakers. She has decided that they are only good for rainy or muddy days.

The night before, Cara had already planned out her breakfast: a bowl of Cheerios. With some milk in it. She stuck to this plan very strictly, but afterwards said she was still hungry and was ready for some of the bread pudding Mommy had made. I gave her a piece, and she told me how she was going to pick out all of the chocolate chips, because she does not like chocolate. However her bowl was suspiciously clean afterwards.

It was a busy day for us all. Cara had her gymnastics class at preschool, then got picked up by her mommy so they could go to her dance class. I stayed late at work and arrived just in time to see them going into the house at around 7:30. We had pizza. Cara had apparently planned out that I was going to have two pieces of pizza, and she and Mommy were going to have four. Each. It didn't quite work out that way, but we were all satisfied afterwards. Cara said that her tummy was full--then immediately went wandering around the kitchen, because she wanted a snack.

When I came in the house this evening I looked over at the stockings and saw there was a princess doll's feet sticking out the top of mine. I guess Santa came early.

12/1/09 (Tuesday)

Today Cara and I had a day of Adventure. We Took a Train and we Saw a Show.

By nine o'clock we had made it to Metropark, found parking, and bought tickets. The train was an old-fashioned one, and it was a little crowded. Cara loved the bouncy seats, though, and her aisle seat gave her a great view of the conductor. Things opened up a little bit as we got closer to the city, and we moved over. Cara and Puma both liked looking out the window. The conductor, a very nice (and clearly wise) woman, stopped next to us for a minute. She folded in half one of the tickets that conductors punch and leave on seat backs, and she used her puncher vigorously. When she unfolded the ticket, it had become what looked to me like a cute and friendly monster but looked to Cara like a girl--a girl with yellow hair--in fact, it was Cara. This was the perfect toy for Cara, who later used crayons to give it a blue dress, yellow hair, and a red mouth. It had many adventures.

Penn Station was, as I had told Cara it would be, a very big train station. We got a snack and sat around a little, and then we hopped into a taxi. Taxis have little tv screens in the back, which threatened to absorb the little girl's attention until I turned it off so that she would look out the window. After all, it was her first time in the city!

When we got into Radio City, we looked at the souvenirs. There was a light-up spinny thing, the likes of which I had resigned myself to the idea of purchasing. Cara selected something different: it was a plastic Rockette whose cloth skirt spins and lights up.

Our seats turned out to be fabulous. We were on the extreme right-hand side, but we were in the sixth row! No one was ahead of us in our section, and Cara got the aisle seat. It was perfect. The show started within just a couple of minutes, with the Rockettes dancing as reindeer and then pulling Santa's sleigh as he took off. Next there was a movie of Santa flying to Manhattan and landing outside the theater. With our programs we got 3-D glasses, which worked with the movie. Cara applied them about half of the time, laughing with glee. She also applied them periodically throughout the show, just in case.

Santa came up the aisle right next to us, greeting the children and shaking hands. Cara, of course, just stared up at him. He called her a sweetheart and went up onto the stage to MC the show. Cara did great. She loved it. I had her on my lap for a little while, because she'd stood up to see better at one point. I'd been unsure how she felt about it, but on my lap she was bouncing along the whole time. She had a tendency to sometimes wave her hands in the air, particularly if the Rockettes were waving theirs. When they danced as the toy soldiers, they shot ribbons out over the crowd; one landed near us, and the nice people next to us gave it to Cara. It was fabulously amusing during the show. We brought it home; it's very long and very pink and shiny.

We saw the big tree at Rockefeller Center, had a hot dog in Penn Station, and headed back to NJ. For a treat, we stopped at the mall. We spent a couple of hours there and we looked at a lot of toys. We saw kids seeing Santa, "not the real Santa" says Cara. I asked her just now whether the Santa we saw at Radio City was the real one. "No--that's just a costume on him!" The real Santa, she says, "lives on the moon, with reindeer and a hamster."

It was a long, long day and a good, good day. I'm very tired. I asked Cara whether she'd like to do that again, to go into the city. "Yes, and see a show again!" After all that excitement and all of the things we saw today, her favorite thing was the dancing.

12/2/09 (Wednesday)

Yesterday we started Cara's advent calendar, an Eric Carle pop-up affair. It's got a very intricate tree that stands up in the center, with a pop-up Santa. There are a few gift boxes that pop up around it, and they open. They have, of course, nothing in them, which is a concern for Cara. I offered her three tiny animal toys she has, and she happily put them into the boxes. Now the first two have come out, each being placed on the number of the day it was opened. I'll have to start poking around to find more things, after tomorrow!

The calendar has a little window to open for each day, and inside is a paper ornament that can be hung on the tree. By the end of the month, it'll be a sight to see!

Miss Jane reports that they got a Rockette demonstration at preschool today, so I guess Cara remembered the show! Cara also somehow sat on a blueberry, and there was some sort of mess with paint and another with paper mache. I am delighted that these all happened on the same day.

Cara is very anxious for Christmas to come. I reminded her that her calendar has all the days on it that she has to wait. She counted to twenty for me. She's still somewhat unreliable on sixteen, but otherwise she gets all the way there. Except for twenty. She can't count twenty. It's nineteen, and then back down, but garbled. Sometimes sixteen gets in there!

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