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Journal Key:

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

9/16/10 (Thursday)

PJ's school store purchases turned up at DT this morning. He got, Em says, "something, something, something, and a kazoo!" "He got a pencil!" says Cara, "and a pencil sharpener!"

Owen and I got caught in an amazing storm this afternoon; I'd had to park about a block from YBR and we both got drenched. It had slowed down considerably by the time we'd rowed over to pick up Cara. It's a good thing, too, because she chose to wear the paper "hat" she'd made in kindergarten. It's a headband with a big paper turtle head colored in on the front. It stands up about six inches above her head. Crayon is water-resistant, but I didn't think it would hold up well.

Once we'd gotten home and gotten into dry clothes and Owen had had dinner, he jumped in his doorway jumper and Cara and I played. Having recently gotten me to get out the dollhouse stuff, she asked today for her other Playmobil things. They're put away with the baby toys, but I got the tub out from under the bed and she was delighted to have everything back. Now there are eleven little beds in the attic of the dollhouse.

In kindergarten, they're starting to study the color green. For some reason, this is exciting. After dinner, we had to go on a "green hunt." We walked around the house, pointing out things that were green. Foolishly, I thought we were done and took her downstairs to read. I also gave her some tough words, and she decided she wasn't interested. "Not in the middle of our green hunt!"

9/18/10 (Saturday)

Cara slept over in Middletown last night while, with a little help from Steve and Owen, I made Star Wars-themed cupcakes. They were moderately successful. As we packed them to take down to Sewell, Cara declared that she would eat all four of the Leia ones we were bringing. I suggested that perhaps more variety was in order. Once I explained what that meant, she decided to just have one Leia, one Luke, and one Han.

We're reading The Long Winter in the car. Cara and I both liked the description of the muskrat house. I asked whether she would like to live in it. She would, she said, if she were a muskrat. It would be nice and cozy, and she wouldn't mind the dark.

Grandmom got out an old toy we'd gotten when Cara was little, the table thing that babies have to stand up at. Owen and Griffin both loved it! Owen has really enjoyed standing up for a while now, but I don't think it ever occurred to him that there were things he could do while standing up. It's an exciting concept. Later I upset Cara by letting Owen knock over the tower of stacking cups she'd built because she wanted to keep them away from him in case he might put them in his mouth. They're a baby toy. Oh well. I might get out Cara's old activity table thing, and I think I'll spend more time building towers.

Owen ate happily in his high chair this evening. He discovered something amazing, though. If he grabs the tray edge with both hands and pulls, he can pull himself up to it. It's astonishing. He's very pleased with himself.

9/19/10 (Sunday)

Owen, Cara, and I went to a YBR birthday party today. It was a Chuck E. Cheese one, which made me nervous, but it was in Bridgewater, at a different Chuck E. It was a lot nicer than the one one Route One. Owen and I sat and schmoozed while Cara ran and played with her preschool friends. We all had a very good time. After pizza and cake we went to play with Cara. She found a really cool game. It's a clear plastic cube with a big bulldog at the back with his mouth wide open. He's hungry! You have to feed him by pushing down on a bone-shaped handle, which makes the canvas floor pop up, pushing balls into the air, some of which go into his mouth. No matter what it says on the sign, no matter how many balls you feed him, you always get four tickets. In fact, if you feed him more, it ends faster. It ends after thirty seconds OR after he's gotten thirty balls. I had a lot of opportunities to watch how this worked.

We also played skeeball. I was reminiscing about how, eight or ten years ago, we used to go down to Ocean City and walk around on the boardwalk and hit the arcades. I loved skeeball; it was the only thing I played. Now, here I was, playing in a Chuck E. Cheese. It was hard to play, with Owen to hold. I had to explain the entire thing to Cara, who'd never done it before. She mastered it to the extent that she was reliably able to get the ball to go over the little hump and down the gutter at the bottom. She was triumphant every time it did that. She liked it a lot, so we got to play several times.

In our various endeavors, we collected a lot of tickets. In a corner, we found ticket-monster machines. They had a little slot to feed the tickets into, which made the monster make eating noises. It counted the tickets and gave you a receipt to redeem at the counter for prizes. Cara came home with several very exciting pieces of plastic jewelry.

Before we left, Cara went up for one more run through the tubes. "Mommy, I'm going to go something, something, something," she told me. It was loud in there. "And you have to go something something something, so you can hear the noises I'm going to make!" I found the prospect somewhat surprising and alarming. I also doubted very much that she'd be able to make noises I could hear. Later, she told Steve that up in the tubes there was a place where you could, like, jump on something and it would make animal noises. That made a lot more sense.

Owen, absurdly, slept for only three or four minutes at the party and then stayed awake for the whole trip home. He was in a very, very good mood. Steve gave him some lunch and changed him, and he thought the whole thing was just hysterical. He enjoyed all sorts of things, even the parts that usually bother him. He got in some good playtime today. Sitting on the living room floor, he played with his moose and his mirror and Cara's old stacking cups. She was even ready to enjoy building him towers to knock down. She helped him, sometimes.

9/20/10 (Monday)

This last week, they took a lot of pictures of Owen at YBR (you'll see quite a few of them on the photos page). This morning Miss Sandi was talking about Owen and all the pictures she'd taken. He was so handsome, she said, she had shown the pictures to her husband and even he agreed.

Cara has been bringing home worksheets from kindergarten and Discovery Time over the last few days. Some of them taught "inside" and "outside" and "left" and "right." But tonight was her first night that she actually took home homework. We get a weekly sheet that has all the assignments written on it, and we have to sign it for every day. This week is the letter "B" so there are assignments that have to do with B words. We talked about B words at dinner. The actual Monday assignment was to read with her for ten minutes. So we tried to actually get her to read words for ten minutes. It is an uphill battle! Ev is right that she enjoys reading whole sentences much more than trying to puzzle out individual words. Cara doesn't want to try to sound out a word by itself, but a sentence is like a story and is rewarding because of that.

Tonight at dinner Cara said that someone at Discovery Time called her a "good eater." She went to the potty before getting into her bath and was explaining to her mother that at Discovery Time, they have a potty with two holes. For different sized people? Mommy guessed. No, said Cara; there was one for people who just wanted to rest. But they didn't have to rest. The explanation went on for a while: very little was clarified.

9/21/10 (Tuesday)

Cara gets to go along with Steve in the mornings to drop off Owen. This morning, as Sandi was putting him into a bucket seat, Cara instructed her to put him in a different one, "so that he can see the leaves." Sandi immediately recognized her error and corrected it. It occurs to me that when he's in school we'll have to ask the teachers to make sure he sits where he can't see the leaves; otherwise he'll miss all of the lessons.

The event of the day, for Cara, was that Daddy's birthday is tomorrow. She told everyone all day at DT. We stopped briefly to visit her friends at YBR, and she told them. We stopped at Rite Aid, and she told the cashier. This morning she asked me, in a whisper, whether tonight, while I was reading to her, I could just whisper to her what his presents were. Actually, we decided to give him his presents tonight. It was exciting. Cara is getting good at writing "Cara and Owen" on cards.

We made pumpkin squares this evening; Cara helped. She says she's going to try them. Just a little bit, I said, to see whether you like it. "I know, Mom," she answered, "that's what trying's for!"

Cara's homework tonight was to find lots of things in the house that start with B. Then she had to select her favorite one and write it on the sheet that we have to sign to show that she's done her homework. Last night, when we talked about it, her favorite thing was Barbie. Tonight, it was her baby brother. She wrote, "I love my baby brother." It's sort of readable. I'm excited because tomorrow is Handwriting day, and we get to practice making strokes only from top to bottom. I care deeply about this.

9/22/10 (Wednesday)

Today I took off work so I could take Owen to the cardiologist on my birthday. This was a follow-up from his last appointment, which was six months ago. He was much smaller then! The morning was interesting because Cara and Owen and I got all packed up into the car and drove the very short distance straight to Discovery Time, instead of into Highland Park and YBR. The Discovery Time people got a look at Owen. They got to tell him how cute he is and a little girl explained that she was saying "Hi" to him because she liked babies.

At home, Owen had a bottle and went down for his long morning nap. He slept in his swing until it was time for me to take him to the hospital. He slept on the car ride, and he slept during my long and circuitous attempts to find a parking spot in New Brunswick. He slept all the way into the hospital and through the hospital, and was still sleeping when we were called back to our room. I finally had to wake him up when they came to take his blood pressure and other vitals. He was really, really not happy to be woken up, stripped, and fitted with pinching blood pressure cuffs. The other things that they did to him were not much fun either.

I had just managed to get him sitting up and happily playing with his toys when the cardiologist came in and started cooing over him. There was something about the way she appeared and spoke to him that made him just start wailing! It was very sad. But soon enough he decided she was okay.

We ended up having an echocardiogram, and it was fortunate for me that I was in the middle of giving Owen a bottle when the tech came to get us. I was able to distract him somewhat with the bottle while he had gel-coated sensors pressed into his chest. The bottom line is, he still has a very, very tiny defect, but the doctor seems very confident that it is going away. We need to go back and see her again, but not until he's two years old! So he did not officially "graduate" from cardiology, but almost.

In the evening, it was playdate night! The Loefflers came over to help me celebrate my birthday. I got a big bunch of balloons, which were pink and white and mysteriously said "Baby" on them. PJ and Casey had a big fight over which one of them was going to give me the birthday card (PJ won). As a result, Ev had the idea of getting Casey to help decorate the "husband" birthday card that Ev was going to give me. I ended up with a card from my loving wife that also featured a drawing of a "fairy guy" on the inside, the words "happy birthday" written by Cara (copied from the message on the card), with "Casey" written underneath, and PJ's drawing of a monster truck which might be covered in hair or bristling with spikes. What it really looked like to me was a pair of men's briefs. It was a lovely card.

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