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Journal Key:

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

 

7/15/10 (Thursday)

It was a tough night with Owen last night. He us both up for about an hour and a half. It seemed at first like he was going to go right back to sleep but something wasn't quite right. Hopefully tonight will be back to our new, better routine from Monday and Tuesday night--maybe we need to keep him up until 10 again!

Cara is happy because her short four-day week at daycare is now over. Tonight she was wearing a robe and a pair of knit slippers around the house. Owen had some good tummy time today (see the latest pictures) and ate a whole lot.

Not a lot to report. Tomorrow Cara gets a sleepover.

7/16/10 (Friday)

Owen decided to sleep last night! I know that Evie went off with the kids down to Middletown. Owen went out shopping. Cara stayed at Grandmama's and Mommy and the Bean came home.

We parents just had a very nice evening with the Bean. When he got home, he seemed fairly happy, and we decided it was a good time to give him bananas. He chugged right through those and still seemed like he could use some more, so I tried a bottle on him. He was very chatty and just had to go on and on, cooing and squeaking, with the bottle in his mouth. He didn't seem particularly interested in drinking it at all, but he seemed very happy gnawing on it and squeaking away. After that he played a little with his jungle animals arch thing, and then we did a few minutes of pretty good tummy time.

He was very good and quietly bounced away in his bouncer while Ev and I ate dinner and watched TV. He just sort of sat there and bounced; I still find it surprising. Then Evie gave him a bottle while still in the living room and prematurely put him to sleep--she had to take him upstairs, change him, put him in a sack, and put him back down just now. It was all very pleasant. I hope we get to sleep through the night, too!

7/17/10 (Saturday)

Grandmom and Grandpop came up today, and they got to spend some time playing with Owen and hearing how much he talks. We offered him some pears for lunch, but he's not interested in eating more than two meals a day, it seems. Cara showed them her sticker books: there are several. They all make her feel safe. She's run out of clothes, though, so her ballerinas are wearing non-clothing items. Some have the word "nutcracker" as miniskirts.

In the afternoon, we decided to implement a plan we'd put off a few weeks ago. We drove out to the Bridgewater mall! The Lego store was pretty awesome. Steve found a cool thing for Cara to do: she got to put together heads, legs, torsos, hair, and accessories to make three tiny Lego people, which we could then put in a box and buy. We thought we'd get three girls, but we brought home only two girls and a policeman.

One of the girls is a doctor and the other is a rock star. We used blocks to build a structure for each of them before bedtime. The policeman sat at his desk and watched tv after he got a shot from the doctor. It was one big shot. It was eleven. But he got one sticker. The rock star stood on her stage.

7/18/10 (Sunday)

Today we celebrated Grandmama's sixtieth birthday! (It's tomorrow. Today Owen is six months old. On Tuesday, Steve and I will have been married for eight years. It's an eventful few days!) In the morning, Cara and I baked a cake. The part that she was the most invested in was the licking of batter. I pointed out to her how lucky she was to get everything to herself; I'd always had a sister to share with. Then I proceeded to take one of the two beaters for my own and do a better job than I ought to at scraping out the bowl. Oops!

So, on Owen's six-month birthday, he's a big boy! He's eating stage one fruits, mixed with rice cereal, enthusiastically. He talks and talks. Then he talks some more. It's very cute; he squeaks and squeals. He spends a lot of time with his hands in his mouth. He seems to like the teething blanket I bought him. He spends time grabbing his tiger and holding it and messing with it. He may almost get it into his mouth. He's doing better at tummy time. He'll hold his head up for a sustained period. He rolled over once, a few weeks ago, but he shows no signs of doing so again. He's getting better at supporting himself when we sit him up, but he's not quite ready to sit on his own. A lot of the time he needs minimal support. According to the Wii, he weighs a little over fifteen pounds.He's been doing a really impressive amount of drooling, which explains the mild rash I'd been noticing on his chin. He's a little sneezy, so we're wondering whether he has a cold. He loves his bath and his bouncer. Owen loves looking at trees. He loves looking at people. He loves to watch his sister play. He loves to be talked to and to talk back. He laughs a lot.

Everyone arrived in the early afternoon, just as I finished icing the cake. Cara explained to Grandpapa: "Mommy made two cakes, and she stuck them together." Truly, my skills are amazing. It was great to have everybody over: my folks got to spend time with both kids, which doesn't happen often. Owen drooled on them. I was mostly in the kitchen, but people played with the Wii, because we're the only ones who bought it recently enough to have the Sports Resort. Fortunately, Cara likes watching people play.

To make it a special birthday, we had FishFest. I'm glad I bought a lot of lobster, because that was what Cara was excited about. She was very excited. She vividly remembers the one or two times she's had it before, and she knows it's a treat. She likes shrimp, too, of course, but she drew the line sharply at mussels. Her loss. Owen conveniently fell asleep on Steve, which he did at least twice today, and napped in his swing through the meal. Unfortunately, we ate in the mid afternoon. Cara therefore counted the meal as lunch, since she hadn't had an official lunch. For most of us, a giant feast in the middle is enough. Cara, though, believes we're supposed to have dinner anyway. We gave her some sugar snap peas.

When Grandpapa dropped Cara off yesterday, he gave her two jobs: she had to make a birthday card for Grandmama, and she had to make another one for him to give Grandmama because he hadn't bought one. She made one with a mermaid on it. When Aunt Claire arrived, she hadn't bought one, either. So Cara made another. It has a cat on it, and it says "meow." Cara wrote it going up and down, though, but she started at the bottom and went up. The result is fascinating, since M and W are so identical. WOEM? MOEW? It's awesome.

Now the kids are almost in bed, the dishes are almost all done, the dishwasher is full of clean things, and the drier is almost done. The house is clean. It's a perfect end to a wonderful weekend--at least, in half an hour or so it'll be the end!

7/19/10 (Monday)

Cara was telling me earlier how much she'd like to be Wendy, in Peter Pan. She's love to go to Neverland, and she'd go to see the mermaids. I was curious about this, because of course in the movie Wendy's very charmed by the idea of mermaids, who turn out to be vacuous and jealous and who try to pull her into the water. Was Cara still full of romantic ideas about mermaids?

No. "I would say, 'Don't my nightgown! Let go of me! Don't you do that!'" It actually went on a little longer than that.

7/20/10 (Tuesday)

When I wake Cara up in the morning, I like to tell her something about the coming day that can get her motivated. Today, I explained that Daddy and I had been married for eight years: it's our anniversary! That really did it. Cara has wished us happy anniversary several times, and she insisted on bringing a very nice outfit with her to change into after Splish-Splash.

Cara's toothbrush timer is a little hourglass, and when the sand runs out there's always a little left. When she taps on it, it runs down. It's very exciting. Most of the time, if I tap it, I get in trouble. Today, she let me. Because it was my anniversary. At Yellow Brick Road, on Owen's side, we have to ring the doorbell to get in. Most of the time, Cara gets to ring it. Today, she told me that I could. Because it was my anniversary. It was really nice of her, and I genuinely enjoyed doing both of those things.

Owen, meanwhile, has really been enjoying eating bananas, apples, and pears with his rice cereal. Yesterday I tried him on sweet potatoes. He definitely, soundly rejected them. I tried them again this morning, when I was sure he was in a good mood, and he'd have nothing to do with them. I dumped that and got out some fruit, and he had a great breakfast. This evening, I tried carrots. No, thank you, Mommy. I've decided to back off from veggies for a while, I think. He has his six-month appointment tomorrow, so the pediatrician can weigh in.

Cara does a really nice job making Owen happy. She has actually made up a couple of songs that she sings to him. One is, "What Will Owen Wear?" The song asks what Owen will wear in a variety of different circumstances and then answers, in Owen's voice. It rhymes. In a second song, the topic of which I cannot determine, she rhymes "dance" and "romance." It is possible that the song is about Owen's future as a dancer. I'm not sure whether he's a ballerina.

Cara's nose is a little runny, but I'm not sure I've heard anything about her "nozzles." I think she just says that her nose is leaking. Just before bed this evening, she was coughing. "Something went down the wrong drain!" she explained.

At bedtime, one of the books Cara chose was a lift-the-flap one about glittery Easter eggs. I got to open the flaps. Because it was my anniversary.

7/21/10 (Wednesday)

Taking Owen to the pediatrician was, of course, a lot of fun. I'd put him into one of my favorite outfits, but when I picked him up he was in a onesie I don't like (I leave them the ones I think are ugly); daycare had changed him because he'd drooled all over his outfit and they wanted him to look nice at the doctor's office. He was sitting in a high chair when I got to YBR, watching the other kids. It took him a while to notice that I was there, and, when he did, he really wasn't that interested. There were kids to watch! I took him anyway.

He got restless in the waiting room and I let him sit up in a chair and look around. While doing so, he chewed on his hands and talked a lot. He really likes looking at new things and places. He'd had a dirty diaper earlier, so I was surprised when he pooped. The technical term the nurse used when she brought us back was that he had "made a boom-boom." I had to strip him anyway to get him on the scale, and I left the diaper for last. When I'd gotten it off of him, while I was getting out a wipe, the kid used his legs to scoot himself and his dirty little tushie away and make a mess on the nice crinkly paper!

He weighed in at 14 pounds and 9 ounces, which puts him in the tenth percentile for weight. (I think he's got to be more like 12th percentile or something, since he'd just pooped twice and was hungry, so his weight was at its lowest ebb.) He's 25 and 3/4 inches long. If we connected the dots on the chart that tracks his measurements, his line would be much steeper than the line that the average numbers follow. I like that.

I got the sheet back that I had filled out last time to track Owen's milestones. It was really cool to see how different he is! Last time, he wasn't even definitely laughing at things! I wasn't sure about some things, like how many degrees he'll turn his head or at what angle he can hold it up when he's on his tummy, but a lot of the things were things he does every day, like play with his hands or talk. Basically, when I looked it over, the sheet seemed to indicate that Owen is a well-functioning five-month old. The doctor, having examined him, agreed with me. He's not a six-month-old, really, but he's several weeks ahead of where he would have been.

The doctor also says that the heart murmur is getting fainter, which is nice to hear. Owen, as is his wont, seemed to enjoy being examined. At one point the doctor, who did seem to be doing some very intrusive things to him, asked me whether he cries. Yes, he does. He demonstrated. After seeing the doctor, Owen needed four immunizations, one of which was oral. He didn't like it. The nurse explained to him that the other babies had all thought it was nice, but that did no good. I can only assume that he's a genius baby who remembers that shots happen after he gets that.

It was fun to bring him to go and get Cara, and then we had a relaxing evening at home; it was leftover night. After Owen ate I put him on the floor on one of his blankets, and he started scooting away. He's been doing some scooting for a while, but I think that now he may have realized how it works. He's making a break for freedom! Several times I retrieved him just before he scooted his little head right off of the blanket and conked his noggin on the hard floor. I'd love for him to learn to creep on his front, though, for a couple of reasons: then he could see where he was going, AND he wouldn't rub all of the hair off of the back of his head. Other than that, I think this is pretty cool!

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