| Previous Week | Back Home | Next Week |

Journal Key:

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

1/20/11 (Thursday)

Today Owen went back to YBR, and Ev went back to work. It was Cara and Daddy at home. Cara made it very clear how good a job I was doing by constantly going downstairs to check if Mommy was back yet. But really we had an OK time. We both spent a lot of time on the couch watching TV, but Cara also worked on her bead projects and we did sit down and do all of her Kindergarten homework for the week. Cara decided to work on things for her birthday party. She has various sheets of paper with wands, crowns and necklaces on them, which I presume are going to be cut out and used as costumes for party-goers. (The crowns will need to be copied, so there are enough.) She had me draw a headless Darth Vader body, so that people can play pin the mask on Vader. She talked to me a lot about it, and it all sounded very concrete. But her birthday is still over two months away.

Her temperature was mostly normal all day, but by the afternoon when Mommy came home, it had crept back up above 100. My temperature was very bad in the early morning, but I was almost human for most of the day. Right now, Cara is asleep on the couch. She has been sleeping away for some time now. It's only 7:30. This is not good for our nighttime routine!

It's looking like Cara and I will close out the week at home tomorrow. It's been a pretty devastating few days. Evelyn has been carrying us along.

1/21/11 (Friday)

No one could ask for a better baby than Owen was today--except that I wouldn't mind one who slept later! He was up at 4:15, talking and laughing in his crib, and he was very nice about it although he did insist that I get up, too. He was fun all morning. I put on the Baby Einstein with the zebras, which he's not familiar with, and he talked and laughed and clapped all the way through. In the evening, he was wonderful again.

Poor Cara and Steve are doing somewhat better, but they were at 101 and 102 when I got home from work. Tonight was Family Fun Night. All Cara's done for days is sit around, watch movies, and make bead princesses and unicorns. I asked her yesterday what we might do for FFN. "Make bead princesses?" What I was really hoping for was us all eating a meal together. We haven't had dinner as a family since Monday, if then. I wasn't hopeful. Cara eats sometimes, but when she feels bad she doesn't even want a cupcake.

I was amused, by the way, the other day when I took the kids to the pediatrician. Cara was in tears because she had to change out of her pajamas. In the car, fifteen minutes later, she wanted to know whether we could "go out to eat tonight."

This evening, when they were both feverish again, I thought we had no hope. However, we got takeout and actually all ate together after all. Owen joined us. He's not been into the baby food lately, which could be for one of two reasons. One possible theory of mine is that he wants real food. While we ate, he had some french fries (I know) and blueberries. He liked that! The other possible reason is that maybe he doesn't like the kind we've been offering him.

He got a birthday present today. It's a bath toy; it suction cups to the wall and it plays music and is an octopus-shaped bubble machine. Cara really enjoyed the first bath she's had since Monday, and Owen, who didn't actually get to get into the tub, loved the toy, too. He practically tried to dive into the bubbles. He also really likes to stand and drum on the toilet, too, and tonight he discovered the bathroom trash can. Finally, there's a good way for him to learn the word "no!"

1/22/11 (Saturday)

In a demonstration of how yesterday could have been much worse, Owen woke up at twenty to five and was very upset about being awake. He basically was unhappy about it until I put him back in his crib at seven and he unhappied himself to sleep. It took maybe five minutes. Then he slept until nine!

When he woke up, Grandmama and Grandpapa were here, and Steve and I were out! (We went to take Steve to the doctor. He has bronchitis. He's got some nice antibiotics and a cough suppressant.) Fortunately, having finished his night's sleep, Owen was a pleasant baby. He was even pleasant when it was just the three of them, before Cara woke up! He and his grandparents did some walking and some cruising, and they played with toys.

Cara woke up some time after nine. When she came down and saw Grandmama and Grandpapa, she turned right around and ran to get dressed. I was impressed when we got home; besides Wednesday night at the pediatrician, it's the first time I've seen her in clothes since Monday. Everyone had a good time. They played hide and seek. Owen may prefer seeking to hiding. Hiding by yourself is a disturbing concept. He gave the seekers auditory clues to help them find him.

In the afternoon, after his nap, Owen and Cara and I went out together to Barnes and Noble to give Steve a chance to rest. It was the first time the three of us had been out like that in a long time, and it was a lot of fun. Owen was a miserable baby at home, having apparently once again miscalculated in some way and woken up earlier than he thought he ought to have. Out in public, though, he decided to have a good time! He wasn't interested in sitting in his stroller, alas, but it was nice to have it to put things in. He say next to me on the bench while we had a snack. I let him have a rusk while Cara and I shared a cupcake. I'm interested in letting him eat our food, but I wasn't up for decollating him. He didn't complain. He talked to people and waved his rusk and for some reason used it to hit a certain place on the bench that he had to reach way over to get to.

In the toy section, he cruised on the train table. A little boy gave him a train car, and he happily waved it in the air and told everyone about it. We went back to read some books, and Owen explored the little raised stage-type area and stood at the benches. I read a few books with Cara, and then she sat and "read" some herself while Owen "walked" around. Everyone was happy.

1/23/11 (Sunday)

Finally, we're all basically healthy! In celebration, we went out to the mall to use Cara's Build-a-Bear gift card from Christmas. For an adventure, we ate at the Rainforest Cafe. We hadn't been there in years; Cara didn't remember being there. She liked it very much and would like to go there again. Owen stared around at all of the strange things. The part he may have enjoyed the most was grabbing the back of my chair and talking to the teenagers at the next table. It was loud in there, so he had to be loud to make himself heard. He managed it.

At the end of the meal, I took both kids to see the animatronic alligator that's sort of out in the mall. Then we dawdled in the gift shop, where Cara with great drama and excitement showed me that the face on one of the trees can talk. Oddly, Owen, who had been unimpressed with the other animatronics, seemed fascinated by Tracy Tree and kept staring at her after I'd moved on to other things.

Steve and Cara had looked at Build-a-Bear online and she'd picked out some things she liked and wanted to get, but once we got there, of course she wanted to make a new animal. For the first time, she made an actual bear! It's white with pink and red hearts. It's possible that Cara's too old for the whole routine they do where the new owner has to do special things to the heart before putting it in. She did not want to rub it on her nose to make her bear smell good. Would she like to just make a wish and put it in. She stood there. She didn't know what to wish. The girl made several suggestions and finally asked whether Cara wanted all those to be her wishes. That sounded good!

I think that her favorite part is giving her new animal a bath. She steps on the pedal and uses the little brush; that's what she remembers and talks about. We named the bear Angel. She didn't get any clothes, but she did get a pink sleeping bag.

Owen eventually fell asleep in the stroller. Then he slept in the car. He woke up coming into the house, but all he wanted was to be put into his crib, where he continued his nap.

He's doing a lot of cruising in the living room these days. He hangs onto the coffee table, and sometimes he hangs onto us. He tried to grab Cara, either to cruise on or just to be friendly. She rebuffed him. "I am not a person who likes to be baby-holded or . . . slime-mouthed!"

1/24/11 (Monday)

It was the first normal day we've had in over a week, and today went very well. Cara is tired, though. She's going to be very glad, I think, to go to sleep tonight. It's the first time she hasn't said, when I picked her up, that her day was great. It's not that it was a bad day, she's just that tired. She had a lot of homework, too, poor thing.

She got her first kindergarten project today. It's the culmination of the "All About Me" unit. The kids have to make a poster or a diorama or basically whatever they want that's about themselves, and they'll present it to the class on February 4th, when it's due. The challenge will be not to do it for her; Steve and I have plenty of ideas!

Owen was a big scooter today. He went across the kitchen, fussed until I got him over the threshold, and headed to the writing desk. He may have been aiming for Buster. I went and got him some toys when I saw that he had discovered a nice power cord to play with.

Yesterday, while I was out doing groceries and Owen was asleep, Steve and Cara started reading a new book: The Wizard of Oz! It's really perfect for her. We've gotten back into our old routine and we're enjoying it very much. I have to go to the library soon, and I'm going to see whether they have any of the other books in the series. It's nice that we know the basic structure of the story. That's a big help, because I missed the beginning when I was at the store, Steve missed a little last night when he fell asleep on Cara's floor while I was reading, and I missed some tonight when I fell asleep on the floor.

1/25/11 (Tuesday)

Owen is getting more and more adept at walking around holding onto our fingers. Last night Steve let him walk all around the upstairs in his diaper; he stood at the top of the stairs and laughed at us down here. Tonight, before his bath, I let him walk around naked! He thought that that was very, very funny. He walked out of his room and over to the top of the stairs to laugh at Cara, and then I steered a little and got him to walk to his daddy in the bathroom. My only concern was that he might collapse in giggles on the way.

His adventures with table food have added another exciting layer to our nightly kitchen clean-up job. He likes to pick things up and put them into different compartments of his high chair tray, but he also likes to drop them on the floor. Tonight, he had some broccoli! It was . . . fun. He likes to experiment with whole pieces of it, but he didn't really do much on his own with the part that I chopped up for him. He let me feed him little bits of it, though, like a little bird. So far, broccoli and American cheese (sigh) are his favorite real foods.

1/26/11 (Wednesday)

It's a snowy day! There was already a powdering when we all went off to school, and public schools closed early. Because Edison closed early, there was no kindergarten for Cara; she stayed at DT all day. It was nap time when I got there to pick her up. It wasn't really that bad out, and it was only two o'clock, so the two of us decided to do something silly. We went to the diner for a treat!

I sat down in our booth, and Cara, who had hesitated at the other side, happily climbed in next to me, first handing me Angel, her new Build-a-Bear, who had also come. Cara had said she was going to leave her in the car, but it turned out she was just kidding. So the three of us all sat on one side of the booth. I ordered hot chocolate, and Cara wanted water. We both got waffles, though, with whipped cream, and we were very happy to both get whipped-cream-smiley-face waffles.

While we waited, I taught Cara how to play hangman. The first word I tried on her was "cat," which was easy, and the next was "cafe," which was more of a challenge. Cara actually surprised me by reading "cafe" on a sign at Barnes and Noble the other day. "She can read!" I thought, but when I asked it turned out that she'd just picked it up from Scooby Doo and the Monster of Mexico. I wanted to give her a longer word next, maybe "yellow" or "orange," but I made the mistake of saying that it would be a tough one, at which she promptly quit.

We also spent some time planning out Cara's kindergarten project. Our idea right now is to make a poster with a big bunk bed on it, because Cara likes to draw bunk beds. In the bunk beds we'll put her family and also, since the project is about her and the things she likes, some characters from things she likes. We got Owen and spent some time making a giant mess of the photographs I have sitting outside of albums, and Cara cut heads out of a lot of them. Owen waved the scraps around.

Owen had a very good dinner tonight. He's enjoying a jar of squash that I bought, and he also mangled some bread and actually ate some broccoli. He finished with squash on his front and his sleeve, bits of broccoli all over, and some spaghetti neatly tucked under his chin. I was very happy when I realized that he was wearing a shirt that buttoned, so we didn't have to get it over his head! We stripped him in the kitchen, which gave him a wonderful chance to practice his favorite hobby: walking around half-naked.

| Previous Week | Back Home | Next Week |