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Journal Key:

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

12/9/10 (Thursday)

I asked at YBR today about how they get Owen to nap. Sandi was surprised that I asked, because he's one of their "best nappers." They just put him in the crib, which is a small, light, aluminum affair, and then they have to sort of jiggle it for a while. He does take a lot of very hard jiggling. She admits that he's wearing a rut in the carpet. Once he's down, though, he's down. So, I have no insight into his weekend-napping issues. Then Sandi explained that he's in a new outfit because he wet himself through his old one: she'd changed him at three, and a little after four he was soaking. She wanted to assure me that it was not an instance of neglect that led to the flood. Although he is one of their best pee-ers. Okay, so she didn't put it exactly like that.

On our way out, Sandi told us that her husband had dropped by earlier, at a time when she happened to be holding Owen. She'd been excited about getting to introduce her husband to the "other man in [her] life." The other man in her life, though, saw her husband and immediately began to wail. Her husband, seeing the other man in her life wailing, ran for the hills. Stranger anxiety, and crying-baby-phobia.

Poor Steve was very late getting home, so Cara and I handled the evening on our own. One challenging part was her homework, which involved short vowel sounds. Looking at a picture, she had to circle the correct vowel. She was sounding the words out, so I wrote them for her without vowels in them. We almost got into trouble, because one of the choices next to "6" was "e."

She helped me make dinner, and we ate, though Owen got antsy. She's getting much more independent in the kitchen. She's very interested in using the microwave. She's also willing to use knives. When I went downstairs to get Owen and brought him up, I found her dishing broccoli onto my plate. She also salted it, somewhat vigorously.

Owen is also getting much more independent in the kitchen. I put him down on the floor by the microwave to help Cara get more meatloaf, which she proceeded to get for herself. I turned away, and when I looked back he was headed across the floor! Somehow, that floor really seems to be the surface he scoots best on. He was delighted with his progress. I took some video of him and of Cara as he almost made a circuit of the room.

12/10/10 (Friday)

Owen is definitely a daddy's boy. He gets very excited when Steve comes home. This morning, Steve got up with him while I showered. When I came down stairs and held out my arms, he was not at all interested. After I took him, he tried to climb back. This has been going on for a couple of days.

He definitely has a tooth, too. He bit me.

Cara was very sad yesterday when I picked her up from DT. I got there a little after five, and five o'clock is movie time. They were watching something new. Today, they let us borrow it. It's a Disney princess sing-a-long. It's played at least three times. Steve and I have managed to stay pretty far away from it. Tomorrow, at least, we won't have to watch it much: Steve and Cara are going to Manhattan to see the Rockettes, and then we want to get our Christmas tree!

12/11/10 (Saturday)

We all got up very early this morning. Owen got up around 4 and actually went back to sleep; he was still down when I got out of bed. Between me and Evelyn we finally managed to get Cara up and going. Mommy was instrumental in herding the two of us out the door and out into the dark morning. We picked up some munchkins, caught our bus and were on our way.

This trip into NYC was arranged by the town: they got our tickets, gave us vouchers for free Christmas ornaments, drove us there and back, gave us some holiday-colored popcorn, and even had a raffle on the way home. We watched the movie Elf on the bus--Cara was not taken with it. The bus seats had no seat belts; Cara noticed this right away, and then spent the bus trip fidgeting and twitching all over the place. I'm glad she's usually strapped in.

The show was fun for us both: I was seeing it for the first time, and Cara had the joy of being able to tell me whenever we got to a part that was the same as last year. After the show, we had several hours to kill in the city, and no real plan on how to spend it. I managed to get us to the big tree and skating rink at Rockefeller Center (after receiving exact directions in a text message from my wife), but did not succeed in purposefully getting us anywhere else we wanted to go. For lunch, we ended up at a McDonald's. This was fine for Cara since she got a pony toy with her Happy Meal.

Back on the street again, we walked past a family with a Build-a-Bear bag, and Cara got her heart set on going there. Even with directions from several different people, I didn't ever manage to find the Build-a-Bear. However, we did stray far enough afield that we ended up at FAO Schwartz. Having nothing better to do, we braved the block-long line and got inside. I explained to Cara very firmly that, because Christmas was coming up, I could not buy her anything at the store, and we held to that. We had a good time exploring and then it was time to go. Cara leaned against me, told me she was very tired, and then gaily skipped the seven-block walk back to the bus.

Even after this big trip, our day was still not done. After only a short time at home, the whole family went out again to have dinner and get ourselves a Christmas tree. At dinner, I heard Owen cry perhaps more piteously than I've ever heard him cry in his short life. The cause? A person at the table next to us was having her birthday celebration, and the staff sang to her. It was absolutely horrifying. Owen took several minutes to recover. I'm wondering if we should sing to him on his first birthday; right now, I'm thinking not.

It was fun getting our tree. Cara was so excited that she had to drive home in my car with the tree. She was thrilled to get out all the ornaments, and determined to get as many as possible put on the tree. Even when we finally started getting her ready for bed and she was brushing her teeth, she came back downstairs to find me hanging one or two more things on the tree, and had to keep giving me more and more ornaments, faster than I was able to hang them.

12/12/10 (Sunday)

In honor of the Rockettes, Cara's barbies have spent today working to form a kick line. The problem is that while their arms will go out to the sides, they can't stretch straight out, so instead of a kick line they inevitably form a tight horseshoe. Believe me, we've had to try it several times.

From having to watch this Disney Princess Sing-Along thing several times, I have deduced that there is a sequel to Aladdin that centers around Aladdin being very sad because of his absentee father. There's a song in which he and Jasmine agree to delay the wedding while he goes off to find him. Won't it be great for your father to be there for our wedding day? There's so much for Aladdin to learn. At first, I thought they were waiting to get married after he went to college.

We had chicken parm tonight, and I gave Owen some plain spaghetti. He worked hard to get some into his mouth, though of course it was a challenge. He's rejected every jar of baby food that had pasta in it, so this was his most successful attempt. I had been assuming that he was refusing them because they were inferior pasta, and so far I have not been proven wrong. He looked very thoughtful when he was eating it. Steve thinks he's very interested in eating the things we eat, so this is really cool.

Last weekend I started trying to get him to nap in his crib and failed utterly. This time, I gave up and, when he fell asleep to a bottle, put him into his bouncer with cuddly blankets. He had some good naps. Oh well.

12/13/10 (Monday)

Cara wore her boots to school today! I shouldn't have been surprised. We bought her new snow boots yesterday, and she has always been a big boot fan. A small part of me is sad. A small part of me is happy. I thought maybe they'd turn out to be too big, but they seem to have been fine all day. Those boots are in a size 1. She'd been wearing size 12 shoes, and the 12 boots fit, but I thought we'd be smart to try something bigger. I expected them to be somewhat too large.

Owen has been enjoying having his baths in the big tub. Steve is a little concerned. Owen sits in the water, splashing himself in the face and laughing gleefully. In the jumper, he's been wild. He jumps so hard you can hear the racket all over the house, insanely jolting himself all over the place. Of course, he thinks that's funny, too. Between those two things, it does raise concerns that he might be more of a daredevil than Cara is.

12/14/10 (Tuesday)

Owen had a really good time today playing in the front room with the toddlers. A teacher described how he stood and stood, messing around with some toy, and once in a while he'd look up at them all and smile. Anyway, he spent the afternoon like that and completely exhausted himself. I could tell right away that he was exhausted, and Camille said they'd been trying to get him to nap, since he'd been awake since two, but he wouldn't.

Picking Cara up from DT was an adventure. It's been a little while, I guess, since I brought him there. There were three little girls left, besides Cara, and they all converged on us. They had to talk to him and ask about him and touch his hair and his coat and, if they couldn't reach anything else, his feet. It took a while before they calmed down. They all plan on coming over to our house, or maybe we're all going over to their houses. It's very exciting. Boy, will their moms be surprised!

He was a good boy and played with his toys while I got dinner started and Cara did her homework. He had a little dinner of his own, but by quarter to seven I'd gotten him a bottle, sacked him, and put him down. Poor little guy! He was done.

Cara, in the meantime, had sight words for homework. Em had given me more Fed Ex envelopes, so I made new words for our at-home collection. Cara was very excited about having new words (mostly duplicates of old ones, so that we'd be able to use, for instance, "it" or "to" more than once), and she made some herself. She's also starting to get better at sounding words out. She knows "mouse," so she figured out "house." We made, and she read, eleven sentences tonight.

12/15/10 (Wednesday)

The past couple of months have been incredibly hectic and tough. This week is no exception. Tonight was Poetry Night at Barnes and Noble, a fundraiser for my school. Tomorrow, I'm not going to be in the classroom because I'll be writing curriculum. Tomorrow night Cara should really go to ballet, because Saturday she'll be decorating a tree at Grandmama's house. She has a present for Miss Val Ann. Friday is also an out-of-school day. This morning I taught four periods in a row, and, just seconds after the bell rang, my phone buzzed. It was YBR.

Owen had a fever, 101.5, and a rash. They gave him some Tylenol while I figured out sub plans for the rest of today, decided to just email in plans for the next two days, and tried to figure out how to set things up for work for the rest of the week! I brought home the books I'd been planning on lending Steve, but I didn't water the plants.

We got home around 12:15, and Owen was feeling somewhat better. He wasn't really into being put down, but he did let me have lunch. He hasn't lost his appetite! We've gone through plenty of bottles. He wasn't interested in being put down, so we didn't get a lot done before his appointment at the pediatrician at two.

Everyone behind the desk could tell he wasn't feeling great, because for the first time he didn't smile at them. Back in the examining room, though, Owen had a great time. His temperature was 100.5, but he was very happy. He scooted around on the table gleefully, both on his back and on his seat, he played with his toys, he cooed and talked and laughed. His ears looked fine, his lungs sounded fine, and his throat looked fine. The doctor did a strep test (results in seven minutes!) and it was fine. His rash had faded. We figure it's just a fever; maybe other symptoms will develop, maybe not.

He'd had two naps in the morning, and I'd thought he was sleepy at home. In the car on the way home, he fell asleep. I was amazed that I could just pick him up and carry him in, sound asleep. He napped in his bouncer for an hour and a half while I did my sub plans and other school work for tomorrow.

When he woke up, he was unhappy. I must be losing my touch, because I thought he might feel a little warm and the thermometer said 102.2! He had some Tylenol, which he seemed to enjoy, but then he was just unhappy. We snuggled and danced and watched Star Wars.

Poor Steve got home a little after five, and I handed him the baby and ran. Cara and I went to Chili's with another teacher. While we waited for her and for the food, Cara did her homework and I did another draft of my poem. Everyone from Linwood was excited to see how big Cara is and how cute she looks in her furry blue coat. I was proud of her because she sat so nicely and listened to all of the poems for an hour. I read mine, too, which was about picking Owen up from the hospital.

We had a cupcake with another teacher and her three-year-old, who has been hearing a lot about the big-girl things that Cara does for herself. Cara is a very important role model. Actually, from what I saw, she doesn't need a role model to make her want to do big-girl things! The four of us went and looked at books together, too, and I read a couple out loud.

Cara and I got home pretty late. Steve said that Owen had had a tough time, staying pretty unhappy until an hour or so after his last Tylenol. He'd had a good dinner, though, and plenty of formula, and he'd gone to bed early. We'll hope that he feels better soon.

Oh, the only other breaking news is that Puma came to DT and the poetry reading tonight, not Marshmallow.

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