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Journal Key:

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

10/7/10 (Thursday)

I've been a single parent every evening this week and have cooked a full dinner every night. Today, I decided to give myself a break! I was on the fence between going out and getting takeout, but, predictably, Cara had a brilliant idea: Chili's. I carried Owen and the diaper bag; she carried the extra bottle, and we hauled ourselves in.

They had a nice plastic booster seat for Owen. It had no straps, but it was tall enough that I could put it against the edge of the table and be confident that it wasn't going anywhere. He wasn't leaning against anything, but he did great. Steve and I tried him in a high chair last week and he wasn't crazy about it, but that was also later in the evening. He loved this. He played with his moose, and Cara was right across from him. She was very, very funny. Actually, I had been a little concerned about the seating arrangement, because when it's just the two of us she likes to sit next to me. Today, though, I put the diaper bag next to her. "You've got the Bean, Mom," she said, "and I've got the bag!"

She was wonderful entertainment for him. I had brought a jar of food, and the only thing that delayed him in eating it was that he was too busy laughing at Cara. He slowly got it all down, and then he was happy to play with his poor moose and bang on the table with his hands while I ate! I think we got free chips. I'd decided we could live without them and skipped ordering them, but Cara remembered and I agreed that we'd ask the waitress when we saw her next. It took a little while, and I was prepared to wait the extra four minutes until our meals came, but Cara herself, seeing the waitress, called out to ask her for chips. She brought us a perfect little basket. She was a very nice waitress. We all had a good time. Owen was an entirely pleasant baby from start to finish!

Here at home, Cara's fairy sticker book had arrived in the mail. She's probably done a third of it already! With this one, though, she's paying attention to what pages the stickers belong with, which she never did before. I'm not sure whether it's entirely an improvement, because maybe part of the charm was figuring out whether things would fit. On the other hand, this time she'll get everything to fit somewhere!

Cara was a helper when I gave Owen a tub bath. He's really pretty good about sitting up, but sometimes he tries bending over forwards, possibly with the intention of somehow getting a toy that way. He did manage a very impressive face-plant the other day, heading for a toy. Really, this should be encouraging him to learn to crawl! IN the tub, there was a lot of gleeful full-arm splashing. I asked Cara to come and get him a toy, and she spend several minutes digging through the right-hand side of the cabinet. Why don't you just get something from your drawer, I asked. She was looking for the right thing. She turned out to be right. She found the big purple bucket of baby bath toys.

She dropped them all in, one by one, and he got to have the adventure of trying to grab something only to see it float away. He's been getting very excited about toys, so this was perfect. I don't think he gets washed as well in the big tub, since half of my energies are going towards holding him, but I do think they're educational!

When I took him out, I asked Cara to please drain the tub. The toys were all still in it. I told her they'd be fine, but she took them all out and cleaned up anyway!

The sentence Cara wrote today using her sight words was "I do love to play and color and I love my teachers." She drew a nice box around each word. I also showed her how to make a period at the end of a sentence. I felt a small, uncomfortable flashback to Flowers for Algernon.

Steve got home in time to see Owen, and he's reading to Cara. He said that he was getting jealous of the ladies at YBR, because all morning he has to neglect Owen and get everyone ready to go, and they get to play with him and get big smiles. This morning, I took over getting Cara dressed and coiffed and packing her snacks, and Steve got to feed and dress Owen. I hope it was a nice, smiley time.

10/9/10 (Saturday)

Yesterday, at school, the phone in my room showed "no service" on its little display. When I'd taught my first four periods and headed over to the other room for our team meeting, Selover was on the phone. He handed it to me, and then the front desk transferred in a call. What good timing! I'm not sure how Miss Sandy could have reached me, if she had called earlier. Owen was throwing up. Another child also was. Four had stayed home, because they were. I set up a note on the board for my next class, arranged coverage, and off I went.

Owen fell asleep in the car on the way home, and he didn't wake up until around three. I let him have some Pedialyte, but he couldn't keep it down. Eventually I started giving him small sips of it, and that went fine. He was unhappy because he wanted more and probably because he was uncomfy, but he really was mostly a good boy. We let him have a couple of ounces at once when we put him down, and when he woke up at eleven thirty I gave him four ounces of watery formula. He was happy. It was awful when he had to switch from breast milk to soy formula, but now it was an advantage! Babies with upset tummies shouldn't have milk; the doctors suggest soy.

This morning he was fine. He came with me to Metuchen, where we met Cara and Grandpapa, who was dropping her off for her first ballet class at the new studio. She was happy to see Miss Val Ann again, and the new studio, while it isn't quite set up all the way yet, is really a nice place. Owen and I took a walk to Main Street, where we went to a used book store and bought Cara Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angleland, a Math Adventure. It's very punny and perhaps educational; it's popular right now.

Claire came over this afternoon! She got to read a lot of books to Cara in Barnes and Noble, and now she's reading her Sir Cumference.

10/10/10 (Sunday)

I got sick last night, and Owen threw up again. Poor Steve! We took things very slowly this morning. However, once again, Owen is back on formula and doing well. Steve is also feeling a little under the weather. Cara, fortunately, seems to be fine. I hope she stays that way. She very much enjoyed mooching my Jello and taking half of the pretzels I finally felt up to eating tonight.

Quote of the day: Cara: "Chewie and Han are kind of like the Wilder brothers, except that Chewie is a beast." I think it's the world's first reference to Star Wars, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Animal Farm in one sentence. Steve wants to know which of them makes the pancakes.

10/11/10 (Monday)

It was back to work and school today, for everybody. Owen had gotten through the night with no problems, so he went back to daycare. Cara was fine, so she went to school. Ev and I both decided to go back to work and we seem to be back to normal.

Today Cara had an early dismissal from Kindergarten. Since she already has half-day sessions, today's was only an hour and a half long. I assumed the teachers would while the time away explaining Christopher Columbus, but apparently he didn't come up at all. I took it upon myself to try to explain his accomplishment. Cara seemed to think it was a good story, and wanted to hear more. "Did he find spices?" I went on to explain a bit about Magellan as well.

Evelyn had dinner plans with a co-worker who's moving to another state, so I left work a tad early for once and went to pick up the kids. Cara said that, instead of talking about Christopher Columbus, they spent a lot of time working on patterns at school (or, as she says it, "pat-err-ins"). It sounded like a good use of time. Then, when she got back to Disovery Time, it was still nap time! She got to color while the other kids slept. I think she got a kick out of this.

Ev suggested I pick up pizza for dinner, but I have plans to have pizza for lunch tomorrow. Then I thought of Wendy's, but the only thing Cara gets there is chicken nuggets, and she already had some for lunch today (they are "mini" chicken nuggets--Cara showed their size with her fingers and they really seem to be very small). So I decided I would take all the kids to the diner. Owen seemed back to normal--according to his sheet from daycare, he had been given all kinds of bottles and even a bit of solid food, and nobody said anything about any messiness.

Unfortunately, within a few minutes of our arrival at the diner, Owen threw up all over me. Within a few minutes of that happening, we were all back home again, and two of us got to completely change our clothes. Juliana visited to give Owen some pants, then quickly escaped. Ironically, I called the pizza place and ordered dinner for Cara and myself.

Other than the one unfortunate incident, Owen was really a pretty normal baby this evening. He had some good playtime in his high chair, where he loves to pick up his toys and put them in his lap. Once Mommy got home, he had a very exciting bath. Ev held him while I washed him, and he spent a lot of time splashing very enthusiastically. He would soak his face, gasp in amazement, then immediately go back to splashing. He managed to hold a few bath toys as well.

The bean had some pedialyte for bedtime, and we'll see how he does in the night.

Cara has made several claims to being very tired when she gets back from Kindergarten. When we got home tonight, she laid on the couch and asked for a blanket, saying she was going to take a nap while the movie played. (In the event she didn't manage to fall asleep--though this could partly be blamed on Owen, who was a little whiny at the time.) She also told her Mommy this evening that she wants to have her own, individual nap time from now on when she gets back from Discovery Time. She wants to bring a blanket and all the other paraphernalia.

10/12/10 (Tuesday)

Owen slept very well until four in the morning, when he got up and had an entire bottle. He also pooped a mighty poop, had a bath, and relaxed in his bouncer while I started laundry. By the time I left for work, I had bathed a baby, done a full load of laundry, given Cara breakfast, gotten her dressed, and done her hair! She got up around five fifteen. In between everything else and getting myself ready to go, I got to help her with a jigsaw puzzle. Steve got to get up to let out Buster the cat, who had spent the night with us because of some thunder and had politely asked me to let her back in before I got into the shower. Apparently she changed her mind. He also got to fold laundry. Fun morning! Actually, I do like to be productive.

Everyone did fine at school today. The kids and I got home around five, and Cara built a big tent in the dining room. She brought lots of toys to put into it, including some for Owen. He enjoyed it. He bounced while she did her homework. The letter of the week is C. Cara has become unable to write a C. Hers look dali-esque, like deformed, backwards Js. They droop. It's astonishing. I've mentioned to her how important the letter C is. She was astonished. It hadn't occurred to her that her name starts with C.

Steve had to work late again. When he got home at quarter to eight, I am proud to say that Owen was down, Cara and I had had a real dinner, there were leftovers for him, the toys (and the tent) had been cleaned up, the homework was done, and Cara was about to get into the bath. There was still work to be done, but things were in good shape.

. . . are we done now?

10/13/10 (Wednesday)

Yesterday, Cara explained to me that there was something in her folder from school that she was definitely not interested in. I would see it. She would never do that. I opened up the folder. We'd gotten a flier about the township wrestling program. She was horrified. She took it right out and brought it straight to the recycling bin. She held it delicately, between two fingers. She definitely would never want to do that.

I took Owen to the grocery store and he sat in the shopping cart for the first time! He held on tight. He made it through the first five minutes, and then he decided that he would really rather be held, please. While I carried him around, he could flirt with people. A clerk, in particular, was taken with him. It was nice that she was talking to him, but I wasn't too enthusiastic about her touching him. Then she held out her arms. Fortunately, Owen really preferred to stay with Mommy.

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