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Journal Key:

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

12/31/09 (Thursday)

This morning it snowed! It was only a light powdering, but it was pretty. Cara has been very much enjoying watching television and was not particularly interested in going outside to play in the snow. But Mommy eventually coaxed her out. Then Cara wanted to try the sled. We did, and it actually worked, even with so little on the ground. Cara also helped to brush off the cars with the broom. Then she decided she'd had her fill and went back inside.

Today Grandmama, Grandpapa, and Aunt Claire came over to help paint the baby's room. As it turned out Grandpapa helped by minding Cara for most of the day while the rest of us worked in the room. Cara did actually do a little bit of painting on the walls though! She put some water under the window under Mommy's direction. A little while later she came very close to tipping over an almost-full container of paint. Fortunately she got away with only a few blue marks on her back, and when Grandpapa had to take her out of the room to clean her off, it was easy enough to keep her occupied in the rest of the house. Apparently Grandpapa tried to really challenge Cara by suggesting that she build one of her big floor puzzles with all of the pieces turned upside down, so there was no picture to work from. Cara set him straight on that idea. Meanwhile, Grandmama spent some time pencilling in various Disney princesses onto Cara's wall. Next time she comes she may have time to paint them.

It was late afternoon before we managed to clean up and say farewell to everyone. We had had a couple of potential plans for celebrating New Year's, both of which had fallen through. So it was just the three of us in the house tonight. We had a blast. Mommy purchased a bunch of frozen foods at the supermarket which we heated up in the oven. We watched a movie (Monsters Inc.) while having our dinner. Evie had tried to convince Cara that we should watch two movies: one of Cara's choosing and one chosen by the parents. Our choice was Star Wars. Cara really did not want to see the movie. We were going to force her to watch it anyway, but as it turned out we ended up having a party in the dark instead.

Ev got out a bunch of glow sticks she had purchased right after the Fourth of July. We turned the lights off all through the house, except for the lights on the tree, and pranced around. We played hide and seek, and we put on some music, and then Cara devised musical instruments for us out of tinker toys, and we had to play them. I was given some sort of contraption that I had to play like a violin--Cara had to instruct me multiple times on my correct posture. The stuffed animals got to do some limbo-ing. For dessert we had fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies and hot chocolate. Mommy left for a minute or so, and Cara and I had to check the cookies to see if they were still too hot. By the time Mommy returned there were a lot of cookies with finger dents in them, and I was explaining to Cara how we shouldn't stick our fingers into other people's cookies.

After a quick computer game, I counted down from ten with Cara on my lap, and we pronounced it to be the new year. We somehow managed to get her upstairs afterwards with a minimum of difficulty, but I think that it might be tough to finish story time tonight.

1/1/10 (Friday)

A quiet day at home today--we did lots of chores. The sad part was that we cleaned up all the Christmas decorations. This was hard for Cara, who wants Santa to come again soon. Also she was very hungry. We had a nice pancake breakfast, and we got out leftovers for lunch but Cara ate very little. Probably in less than an hour after lunch she was asking when we would have dinner. This continued for several hours, until Mommy gave up and started to make dinner. In the end, I'm not really sure whether this was because Cara was actually hungry, or because she had remembered us agreeing to her idea of toasting marshmallows after lunch and just wanted to do that.

At dinner time we had an interesting experience trying to discover a word Cara was looking for. She wanted to have something to eat. She described it as "That chocolate thing with the skinny cheese." It took a lot of wrong guesses before we parents thought logically about the context of the situation and came up with refried beans. They are a chocolate-colored thing on which we put shredded cheese.

The child has been watching a lot of television and we've been cracking down on it somewhat. She does not like being refused, but she gets over it. She had decided instead to have a tea party (ironically she'd seen some people on TV doing this). Unfortunately before she could really set up the tea party it was bath time! Mommy then performed an incredibly crafty maneuver. She introduced to Cara the idea of having a tea party in her bath, using our recycled plastic toy tea set. The little girl was instantly thrilled and pelted off shouting, "Yay, I'm going to get in my bath!" The plan worked perfectly.

1/2/10 (Saturday)

Grandmom and Grandpop came up today! We were also visited by plumbers. The child busied herself by building a "car" in the basement. She was not driving, since she did not know how to drive; one of her dolls was handling that. Several car seats were also involved. When the plumbers arrived, Cara spent a lot of time hooting excitedly and running about the house. While the plumbers were about their work, Grandpop planed down the door to Cara's room and made some other adjustments, and for the first time since we purchased the house, the door to her room can actually close! It doesn't have a lock, though; that can wait until she's a teenager.

After an exciting and busy morning and early afternoon, we went out to lunch. Amazingly, for the third time in a row, the particular restaurant we visited was out of mini corn dogs. Cara as a result had a very small lunch. Her dinner this evening was lavish and had many stages. Mommy kept giving her something to eat, then Cara would eat it and ask for something else. Cara had squandered her one dessert earlier in the day by eating her Oreos from the restaurant; she seemed to think she should be entitled to another one in the evening since she had only had water to drink with the Oreos. Sadly, this was not the case.

Cara is very excited about tomorrow because she will be visiting Lina and Sarah's house! If she has even half as much fun as she seems to think she will, it should be a pretty great day.

1/3/10 (Sunday)

This evening, Steve and I were working in the dining room, hanging pictures, when Cara, who had been in the playroom, announced that she was heading up to her room and that she'd be "very careful." This, of course, led to mild concern on our part. It came out, eventually, that she was making a circus. The "careful" part was that she'd used her old Elmo couch to make a slide going from her bed to the floor and that she'd gone on it and not gotten hurt.

I ended up helping a little with planning and setting up the acts. I tied the "tied rope" between two chairs. I folded the blanket for the water slide. I told Cara what letters to write for her sign. When she first approached us with the poster she had started, she'd written "D" on it. It was going to say, "D Amazing Girls and Ballerinas Put On D Circus" or something like that. Our final version said "Circus" and had arrows and a rather good drawing of the two chairs with the tied rope.

The circus took place in the playroom and in Cara's bedroom. Her dolls were the performers, for the most part. One walked the tied rope. One balanced on a ball; actually, she stood on it as it bounced around the room. Several were animal trainers. The snake trainer had trained the snake to fling itself around. Another trainer trained a baby to walk: "Here, like this." Another trained a cat to meow: "Like this: 'meow!'"

Upstairs, we ran out of acts before we ran out of performers. Seeing Tigger sitting nearby, we suggested a tiger trainer. The highlight of the evening was seeing a naked Jane Austen berating and beating a Cat in the Hat doll who was being a tiger.

Steve is giving Cara a bath; it's his first Tea Party bath. Cara has really been enjoying these. We just fill the teapot with water and put a color tablet into it. One wonderful thing is that Cara decided after the first night that she wanted lemon tea, so we get to use up the yellow tablets, which otherwise get (probably rightly) ignored. She fills cups and dumps them and puts sugar in and stirs things and sometimes we have to pretend to drink. Her mermaid, Lily got to have some last night. All of the cups were lined up. Lily drank from the first one. Afterwards, Cara picked it up and "drank" a little. "Ugh!" she cried, "Mermaid germs!" She poured out a little and tried it again, with, astonishingly, the same result. The third try was similarly repellent. Lily was scolded. I suggested that Cara try a different cup. I've been getting Cara to get out of the bath, which might otherwise be a problem, by telling her that, if she wants to have another tea party bath, she needs to clean up right now. Maybe I should have told Steve this part.

1/4/10 (Monday)

We plunged right back into our routines today. Poor Cara was sound asleep when Steve went in to wake her this morning. She even mentioned as much to me later. On the way home from preschool, we discussed what snack she wanted before ballet. She wanted potato chips. Her second choice was cheetos. Of course, we have neither. She had goldfish, which, she declared, she loves as much as potato chips. After ballet, Cara got some quarters out of her dance bag and headed back to buy a treat. She came out triumphantly with a bag of cheetos!

Cara is tired. (She's not the only one!) She's said this several times this evening. She's too tired to even hear three books at bedtime. Except that when I went up to say goodnight she couldn't get into bed right then because she was turning her Elmo couch into a slide and had to have a doll try it and maybe she'd rearrange it tomorrow and maybe she wanted to sleep on this for her naps (when she thinks she's taking a nap is what I'd like to know) and maybe this is where she'll sleep when she's sick and she just has to put a blanket on it . . . and that's when I started counting. When I paused after "two" she elected to finish all of this tomorrow and to get into bed now.

1/5/10 (Tuesday)

In the car, we got to talking about when Owen would be born. "Some day," said Cara, "he'll be four, like me!" I wasn't sure whether there were some misconceptions there, so I explained that he'd be one when she was five, two when she was six, and so on. She asked me to continue. I chose to stop when she was ten. "Ten!" she cried, "When I'm ten . . . I'll be able to close my eyes when I sleep!" I was very curious about this idea, of course, and we talked about it for a while. Cara is pretty sure that she can only fall asleep in the daytime, not at night. She's always awake at night. I should just peek into her room to see.

1/6/10 (Wednesday)

We got to play with Cara's girls today; they put on a show. This really means that we spent half an hour dressing them. Some of them got to be boys, while others stayed girls. Several were not allowed to be in the show; they had to be the orchestra and sit under the stage. The best part of all this is the discussions that Cara has with the dolls. She had a high-pitched girl voice and a gruffer one for boys. They talk to her and to me and she responds to them. I can't remember what a boy said, but here's my favorite part of the dialogue: "Hey, you're supposed to be a boy! 'I'm sorry, I forgot! Sorry, sorry!'"

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