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Journal Key:

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

11/11/10 (Thursday)

It's sad that we forget things. I was just thinking today how I never want to forget how it feels to hold Owen right now. He's got a routine he does when we pick him up: he likes to thump both of his arms on us, which is a sort of hug-like gesture, in a way, though really I think he's just flapping with enthusiasm, and then he rubs his face on our shoulders. Frequently, he repeats. Both Steve and I hold him on our left arms, so our left shoulders are always baby-marked. We're not going to remember this. I wish I could.

We did a lot with Cara's sight words today. She was supposed, for homework, to practice particularly with her new words, "it" and "is." It's really been brought home to me that these are sight words. She had a tough time sounding out "it" and "is," when she forgot what they were. I made a lot of little slips of paper with it and is on them, and we added them to her sight word bag. I wanted her to make sentences. I was thinking of, for instance, "It is red." The problem was that the sentences Cara thought of were far more complicated than that and often involved making more sight words. She made herself "cats," and then we hit a small roadblock. She used her sight words to make "I see to cats," and then I had to explain about "two." To simplify, I had her make a sight word card with the numeral.

The homework packet suggested a few sight word games. I opted not to mention the one that involved drawing the words in Jell-o powder in the tin foil-covered lid of a shoe box. Instead, we laid out all of her school sight words in a square and played bingo. When I said a word, she could put a coin on it. After she'd gotten four in a row, which did take a while because I hadn't even a list of the words and had to look at her "board" to call them, she wanted to keep playing and we covered the entire board. I let her keep a few coins.

On the way home, Owen was laughing in the back of the car. Cara explained what she was doing. She was looking for "open" signs. She read quite a few. It's really starting to start!

Cara's been feeling better, though she's still mildly sniffly. She had a pile fo tissues in the living room tonight. I asked her to throw them away. She explained that it wasn't Wednesday. Wednesday, apparently, is the day she throws her tissues out. I do recall her throwing some away yesterday, but I expressed several problems with this policy.

11/13/10 (Saturday)

On Saturday we went to Cheryl and Tito's wedding! Grandmama and Grandpapa came to stay with the kids, to Cara's delight.

On a gorgeous sixty degree blue sky November day, we took Cara and Owen for a trip to Swales Park. It was such a nice day that we saw a man on his roof working to put up his Christmas lights! Owen did not seem to notice.

Cara and Janet skipped away from Owen and me, laughing all the way.

At the park, we saw Cara run around, Cara swing on the swings, Cara sit down at a bench for a picnic, Cara running back to the swings, Cara laughing a lot. Boy, can she get up high on the grown-up swings.

Owen looked on, mostly, and had a few turns on the baby swings. He and I then took off for our trip to visit the enormous Public Service solar panel installation, which is located near the foot of Silver Lake Avenue. The sun was very bright so I put up Janet's jacket as a shade. It is possible that Owen dozed on our walk. Not sure. When we returned home, he stirred as soon as I dragged the stroller over the threshold.

When Cara and Janet returned, tired Cara seemed ready for a nap, and we knew that Owen was due for his but no matter what we did, Owen stayed awake. We put him in his vibrating chair, we even put on Star Wars! but it did nothing. He was still looking around, mostly at Janet, or whoever else was in his line of sight.

We gave him a bottle, we heard him burp. We walked around with him. When we put him down, sometimes he was inconsolable; other times he quietly watched us as we mostly sat around and watched Star Wars.

The pizza delivery person came and Cara was the first one to notice him at the door. She was a help the entire day, making clear the gray areas concerning the care of her brother.

As the evening went on, I decided to give Owen a bath. Cara pointed out the bath implement that had to be used. Owen seemed to take the bath well, like it was something he was used to and took pleasure from. When he was nice and clean, I put him in his sleep sack. Then Cara and Janet pointed out that he should have a onesy on underneath so I went upstairs and took care of that. As the time neared eight P.M. , I warmed up a bottle. Janet took Owen upstairs where, I am told, he struggled manfully to stay awake in the dim light, five feet from his crib, the warm loving arms of his grandmama.

Next thing I heard was Janet coming downstairs, with a kind of satisfied look on her face. Owen had given up and gone to sleep. One down and one to go.

Janet and I went downstairs to the jigsaw puzzle (A thousand pieces--Robin Hood and His Merry Men) where Cara helped us for a while. Janet took the lead and prepared Cara for sleep, reading her several books, but not, I am told, The Greatest Christmas Hunt Ever, because grandmama simply could not do it. Next it was my turn--I held the dreaded book (when I saw it, understood the problem) while Cara pointed out the various dwarves, presents and cats that had to be found. "I've read this book before," she said.

At ten P.M., Cara was quiet in her bed, after I'd read two books besides the one noted above, after I'd put on her music, watched her set up her night light, shut the door just so. A few seconds later, Janet had to go upstairs and adjust the blind on her window. Finally, she too was asleep, I hope.

She wasn't. We got home around ten thirty and after a few minutes I went into her dark room. She sat up for a hug and a kiss, and then she was ready to go to sleep for real.

11/14/10 (Sunday)

Today was a boring, doing-chores day. Owen had actually been sleeping through the night for a few nights in a row over the past week, but he has been up the last two nights. He wasn't into napping much today. (He finally fell asleep on the way home from dinner and is now snoozing in his car seat downstairs--not sure how we're going to get him to bed!) However, his babbling is coming along well, and we believe that he scooted a few inches on the kitchen floor this evening! He is definitely working on cruising.

As part of our chores today, Cara helped to go through a huge pile of art projects and school projects that have been piling up in her drawers in her playroom. Much was disposed of, some was stored away, and her bulletin boards were redone. Ev's satisfaction was somewhat tempered by the fact that we now have a "Cheetah Girls" poster hanging in the playroom.

11/15/10 (Monday)

I find it very amusing that several times lately when Owen has been fussing it's turned out that what he's really wanted was a piece of paper to destroy. It really, really makes him happy. The other day, when we went out to eat, we gave in and just let him have a couple of paper napkins. There was a beautiful interlude in which he was mangling one of those and Cara was, literally, beating and berating Puma for having fallen onto the floor. We're awesome parents!

He really wants to touch the cats. I think he got to pet Buster yesterday, because he was sitting on his little car and she walked by. He held his arms out, and he's just the right height. Today he was trying to scoot on the carpet to get her, but she left. Swiftly. Cara, in the meantime, is really going to be the official cat-feeder. Soon they will learn to love her. Maybe they will learn to wake her up in the mornings . . . .

Owen is definitely starting to walk, when we hold him up. He's not particularly focused on it or anything, but sometimes he actually gets places. If only we could train Buster to walk in front of him! I do also think he's also got a tooth coming in. We got his pictures back from YBR today! They're very cute. Cara and I disagree about whether they took him outside to take the picture or just set up a backdrop that looks like the woods. Mysteriously, there's a class picture that doesn't seem to have Owen in it.

Twenty years from now, will I believe that days like this existed? By seven, I'd gotten up and dressed, made a Bismarck, read the paper, had (half of) a cup of tea, woken Cara up, gotten her breakfast, helped her get dressed, gotten Owen up, and gotten him dressed. Between me and Steve we got both kids packed, and then I took Owen to YBR before heading to New Brunswick for what was supposed to be the last day of jury duty. I got out of there at 3:30, to head to Linwood to get sub plans ready for tomorrow. I planned, emailed, and photocopied, getting out of there at 5:15. I picked up Owen, paid for his pictures, picked up Cara, drove home, admired a large leaf Cara found, got everything and everyone through the door in one trip. I fed Owen his dinner while helping Cara with her homework and starting to get the real dinner ready. Steve got home and took out the recycling. Owen bounced in his jumper while we ate. Steve gave Owen a bath while I did this, because I'm hoping to have some actual time off later, after I bathe Cara and read to her, which I'll do while Steve washes bottles and makes new ones for tomorrow. My dream is to have half an hour and maybe spend it working on the jigsaw puzzle.

11/16/10 (Tuesday)

After my very long last day of jury duty, I went to pick up Owen. Yesterday, when I got there, he looked at me blankly and then looked back at the teacher holding him, as if to ask her who this strange woman was. Today, he was sitting and playing at one of his favorite toys, with his back to me. Miss Carol turned him around and stood him up, and I knelt down in front of him, reaching out. He actually took two or three steps towards me (held up, of course)! It's nice to get a warm reception.

We went to the grocery store, Owen riding in his stroller. Now, Steve and I have mentioned that lately Owen's response to most things is to rub his face on our shoulders. Today, I eventually noticed that this was basically what he was doing when people talked to him in the store. He sat there in his stroller, looking up at them, smiling and shaking his head emphatically. An elderly woman caught his eye as we were leaving. "Are you going to wave?" she asked him. No, he answered.

11/17/10 (Wednesday)

This morning I took Owen to the ENT to get his ear tubes checked. He fell asleep in the car on the way there and didn't wake up until he was in an exam room. His tubes looked fine, so we moved on to a hearing test. (In the interim I got a chance to wipe his crusty, snotty face with a paper towel, so at least the audiologist wouldn't be horrified.) The first hearing test was exciting and it was not something he'd been old enough to try last time. He got little earplugs in his ears, and I sat with him in a little soundproofed room. The audiologist was in an adjoining room looking through a window. There were little stuffed animals in clear boxes at left, right and center, and they would randomly light up and start moving a little. (Em explained later that this was a conditioning test--a tone would play in his ear when the stuffed animal went off, to make him associate the tone with the fun animal. Then the tone would play in his ear without the animal, and he was supposed to react the same way.)

This test didn't go perfectly, because Owen was a little crabby at having things plugged into his ears, and having me holding his arms so he didn't pull the things out of his ears. He also may have been hungry. So he had a good response in one ear and an unclear result with the other. Next we did a more basic hearing test, with a tiny handheld gadget and a different pair of earphones or buds. The audiologist tried to keep him calm and quiet and interested by blowing bubbles at him, but her little bubble thing was out of soap. Eventually he got the idea of grabbing hold of the bubble container, which did the trick just as well. He passed that test in both ears! I believe it is the first time he has ever passed a test in both ears at the same time. The audiologist wants to follow up with him, and he still needs to have his tubes checked every few months as long as they stay in there, but this is definitely positive progress.

I didn't realize until I got back into the car with him that I hadn't given him a bottle all morning. He fell asleep in the car again and at YBR I wisely suggested they give him something to eat.

We got a pleasant surprise in Cara's school folder today. Last week she got a prize from the prize box and a certificate for showing a lot of Respect. I'd figured it was just some sort of generic, throw-away award, that everyone was getting a certificate for something, and maybe everyone is, but it seems that this was a special one. The principal is having a pizza lunch on November 30th for all of the kids who showed Respect! We're very proud.

I just put down a sleeping baby. I realized that it was the first time in weeks that I've done that. For a long time, he's been awake, fighting, when I've stuck him in his crib and let him settle himself. Today, though, he didn't nap much, and then he had a busy night at playdate. He ate well, so he was full and contented, and he was also exhausted! By the time we got settled in his sack in the dark with his bottle, he was ready to go.

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