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Journal Key:

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

9/30/10 (Thursday)

This morning it was really raining and Cara was determined to make full use of all her rain gear. I had to go out to my car to retrieve her rain boots, left there from the last rainy morning. Cara found her raincoat, and she also dug through the coat closet until she found a large umbrella with frogs on it. I had a much more understated blue and white umbrella in my car, but this would not do. In fact, Cara was even the one who held the umbrella when we got out at Yellow Brick Road. (As a result, Owen got a little moist.)

Tonight's homework had to do with sight words. We have a bunch of sight words written onto separate pieces of posterboard. Cara can read many of them, even some of the more unusual words she requested. In fact tonight she wrote "sight words" on another piece of board, I think with the idea of labeling the bag we keep them in. True, it looked more like "sieghtw ords," but it was impressive nonetheless.

Cara also spent a lot of time playing with Owen in his high chair today. She played a sort of peek-a-boo game with his little stuffed football toy (which he apparently acquired as a party favor from a YBR birthday), which he found very funny. Owen spent a lot of time sitting up in the play room tonight, and he took a real tub bath sitting up in the tub. His mommy was apparently able to wash him without keeping a constant death grip on him. When I took over, I got to see him splash frantically at the water with his hands. He splashed himself in the face multiple times, probably unintentionally, but he kept doing it.

10/2/10 (Saturday)

Yesterday was Friday and a sleepover night for Cara. Owen and Evelyn and I went out to our local Thai restaurant, where Owen was a bit more...vocal than we would have thought ideal. The wait staff seemed to adore him, anyway. He slept all night and until seven in the morning, which was pretty impressive. Today Evelyn went to a bridal shower, so I was scheduled to be in charge of the kids until the afternoon. Ev's parents nicely extended Cara's sleepover; initially, it was supposed to involve a trip to the Monmouth Museum, but closed roads cancelled that idea. Instead, George drove the little girl to the Twin Lights light houses, and they climbed to the top of one of them! Cara was excited to report this to me when she returned home at around midday, along with a "mixed media" piece of a team of ballerinas, a male ballet dancer, and a dancing cat. Owen had napped for much of the morning and through a trip to the library, but was awake when his sister got home.

We piled back into the car not long after and drove into Metuchen so that we could register Cara for another year of dance classes! Miss Valerie's school has moved to a new studio. I discovered that their registration day was coincidentally chosen on the same day as a Metuchen town fair--Main Street was closed and we were forced to park on a side street and walk into town. Owen was a very good baby and just sort of stared at everything. Cara was glad to see Miss Val Ann and Miss Valerie, and they were glad to see her.

After that I enacted the second part of my plan, a perhaps ill-advised trip to Friendly's for lunch. As it turned out, having both kids at a restaurant worked out just fine, but I did not count on the unusually large crowds--no doubt attracted by the nearby town fair. We did get a seat and lunch, and Owen was very good. True I ended up holding him in my lap for most of the meal, and he was vocal, but it was a happy sort of chatter.

At home, Owen had his own meal. After one false start, he chowed down on a whole bottle of "squash." He is really handling his toys now, especially the collection in his high chair. He likes to fiddle with the rolling bug toys, the tray toys, his stuffed football, and this time he grabbed hold of a pacifier and stuck that in his mouth.

Usually when I get home from work during the week, it seems to be just the time when Owen is getting tired and cranky. This afternoon the tables were turned and Mommy got home just when Owen was ready for another nap. He got one finally when I took Cara out to the supermarket. Cara and I together in a supermarket before either of us have had dinner may not be a situation we want to repeat too often. We had a nice trip but didn't exactly come home with a lot of nutritious items. The child convinced me to let her ride inside the cart, because she "wanted to sit down." The groceries managed to fit around her. I got away without having to give her a ride on the tiny coin-operated fire truck outside the Pathmark (which I doubt she would fit in anyway). And we rolled right by the coin-operated toy machines by the exit. We did end up with a box of multi-colored popsicles. They're the kind with jokes on the stick, so it will be interesting trying to explain the jokes to Cara.

Cara requested we get out the Halloween decorations tonight, so we did. Actually putting them up will be a project for another day.

10/3/10 (Sunday)

Thank goodness for plain old staying-home days! We really needed this one. At the end of it, we're exhausted but happy (at least, I am!) and we've gotten almost everything done.

Steve mowed the lawn this morning, while the kids and I took care of things in the house. Owen sat nicely in the playroom while I cleaned out the gerbil cage. I left Cara in charge of him and the gerbils, who were in their big paper bag, while I took the cage out. When I came back, she'd left Owen in charge of the gerbils and himself. She'd gone off to look at some big cardboard tubes in the basement, which I'd planned to ask Steve to saw into usable lengths for gerbil-houses. She explained how responsibly she'd shoed the cats away from the door when she came back in. Owen and the gerbils, in the meantime, had all successfully taken care of themselves.

Next, I did some vacuuming. When I got to the dining room, Cara shut the playroom door. She, the gerbils, Owen, and Buster were all inside. Buster was lurking under the little table, trying to be inconspicuous. I turned the vacuum off to move some chairs, and I heard Cara explaining, "It's not safe out there!"

Today Cara continued to play with a set-up she'd made days ago by moving her table into the middle of the playroom and managing to seat a lot of dolls around it. They all had food, of course. Jane Austen was naked, because another doll had borrowed her dress. It was Halloween, though, and Jane Austen got to wear a great cat costume. I was invited to come see it. Puma was sitting in her place, and the actual Jane Austen had been hidden over in the corner.

Owen is really doing great things with his hands. I'm noticing him doing some of the things that he didn't do when he was tested last week. Sometimes, he'll hold two toys, one in each hand. He also is very interested in having his hands work together. For instance, when he's in his high chair, he uses them together to scoop up his bug toys, which he promptly drops. One funny part from the tests last week: the woman wanted to see whether he understood object permanence. She got him to look at a little rubber duck and slowly moved it downwards until it was below the high chair tray. He would follow it, and then, she second it was out of sight, he'd snap right back to looking at her face. She tried it several times, always with the same result. Another test was to see whether he was interested in reaching into a container to get a toy out. He's not. I've suggested it. Actually, when I was cleaning house earlier I left him with an open, full shape sorter. Some shapes ended up out of it, but I think the odds are good that it's not because he took them out. I remember Cara sitting by her toy box, happily taking things out of it. She was around eight months. I think that he can pass for term, as far as sitting goes, but he's definitely closer to his gestational age, hand-wise. He's catching up, though!

He loves to stand up. For a little bit today when Steve was holding him, he moved his feet as if he were walking. I'm thinking about buying him shoes! Actually, that's because the other eight-month-olds at the hospital last week had them. I think it made them look grown-up. I may not actually do it. He wore socks today! My Aunt Nancy bought him some really cute little socks that look like sneakers, complete with a bow for the laces, and now that it's cool enough for him to wear them, he's grown into them! It's perfect. He's going to wow the ladies at daycare.

In the afternoon I ended up clipping a blanket to the railings on the stairs to make a curtain, and Cara and I set up nine dolls as an audience to watch her rock show. She dismantled their meal in the playroom. I got to be the announcer and put the curtain up and down, and I got to serve food. Cara brought up a bucket of prizes to give to the dolls, but I didn't get one because I was just the food person. Miraculously, all of this has now been cleaned up.

I think that I must often say to Cara, "If you don't do X, you can't do Y." She has adopted this terminology. "If I don't get to watch another cartoon, I won't eat breakfast tomorrow!" I'm hoping that if she continues to find us unphased by her threats, she'll give up. I wonder how long it'll take.

10/4/10 (Monday)

Today was a cold, rainy, gray day, and it was a working-late day for Steve! Either I'm an awesome parent, or the kids are naturally fabulous. Owen sat and watched while Cara rearranged the furniture in her playroom, blocking the door to the outside completely but, as I asked, leaving the bathroom door accessible. She was using her table and all of the chairs to build a giant car in which she could drive all of her baby dolls around. They were going to a sleepover that also involved costumes.

Eventually, Owen got hungry. He was a snippy-snappy crocodile and ate up his dinner, and then I gave him part of a jar of apples and blueberries for dessert. I'm going to get him some Phase 3 jars, next time I have to buy any! This isn't the first time he's asked for more. I was somewhat concerned, when he took a bottle afterwards, about bursting, but nothing bad happened. He jumped in his jumper while Cara and I had spaghetti, and then he sat in the basement with me while I tied up the newspapers. Cara came down and discovered that I had apparently forgotten to turn the sound on on the toy I'd given him. Oops?

She did a really nice job keeping him happy while I got the recycling out and then finally crazy glued the many tiny Polly Pocket items that had ripped over the past few months. She had a popsicle while I got him down. He took another entire bottle. (There was an episode of The Monkees where one of them was sick and this elderly woman made him drink so much tea that he got very sloshy and almost drowned . . .) Then he was sleepy and snuggly and I cuddled him for a while and then just put him down. He got himself off to sleep.

Cara had put herself into her pajamas. She did her homework while I cleaned up from dinner. She had songs to sing about how to spell pink, purple, brown, black, and white, and she had to circle the color words in the songs. She got them all circled, and she also wrote a note: "I love my teachers." She's hoping they'll write back. Steve got home, and she gets to have her daddy read to her. It's a happy night.

10/5/10 (Tuesday)

Today was the book fair at kindergarten! I sent Cara with $20, and she came home with three books. (For the record, my average will be considerably better at my book fair tomorrow.) She is very, very happy about it. The whole class went, and those who bring their money tomorrow get to go back tomorrow. Cara would like some more money. She got Goldilicious, one of the several sequels we've seen to Pinkalicious. Strangely, she elected not to hear that one today, even though it seems to have a dancing unicorn in it. She got a book that's from the same series as Click, Clack, Moo, but she's not interested in hearing that, either. The one she's most excited about, which I had to read to her earlier and Steve is reading to her right now, is Eight Spinning Planets. "It's a math book!"

It's a lovely hardcover book with pretty plastic planets, interesting facts, and some laborious rhymes. Cara even used a projection kit she has to create a picture of an astronaut and an alien and a planet. The planet is red, and those red lines are the alien's breath because it's so hot on Mars. She wants to take it to school tomorrow to show off.

I discovered that the reason we had such a nice evening yesterday was because Owen was cheerful. I don't know what they did to him at daycare today, but he was tired! Under "Activities," his sheet says that he jumped in the exersaucer and clapped his hands a lot. It must have really been a lot, because he was so tired he fell asleep with a bottle at six thirty, still in his overalls. When he woke up at seven twenty, I had to give him a bath. I really had to. He was happy when he was finally all snuggled up in his sack and heading for bed.

Steve got home in time to do Cara's homework with her and eat a meager leftover dinner. While I was giving her a bath, she told me something interesting. She had to flip her card at kindergarten today! That means that from a green light on behavior, she went to amber for a while. She says that during calendar time they were playing. She wanted PJ to sit up, and he wouldn't. She also wanted him to hold her hand. I have to assume he wouldn't do that, either. Mrs. DiSantis told them to stop, and they didn't. They had to flip to yellow. Then they remembered and got to flip back. She claims that they were not talking while all of this is going on, so I have to guess that it was a very elaborate pantomime.

10/6/10 (Wednesday)

Today at school I ended up singing "Beasts of England" to all of my classes, to the tune of Clementine. I got it in my head and kept singing it all evening. By the end, Cara was joining in on the chorus. I may have scarred her for life. On the other hand, she knows other tunes to that song and did sing some of those, too, so maybe it won't stick in her memory.

Playdate was pretty great tonight, except for that someone kept singing a really annoying song the whole time. Owen was a little shy and clingy, but he did let Em feed him (what a sacrifice on his part!) and mostly sit nicely during dinner. Afterwards, he jumped in his doorway jumper. Then he jumped some more. Then a little jumping. Steve got home before eight and for the first time this week got to see Owen awake in the evening. It was nice because he was very happy on his changing table, playing peek-a-boo.

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