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Journal Key:

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

2/10/11 (Thursday)

This morning Owen was cruising on his little playground thing, and he cruised on over to the recycling container. Cara and I were both a little alarmed, but nothing messy happened, and he returned to the playground. Then he accidentally turned and sat down. At first he was upset, but then he noticed his toy basket nearby and started playing with that. I do think he is progressing in his movement skills! Tonight he was actually kind of shoving his playground along with him, which in an unintentional way could assist him toward walking. He still very much loves to be walked around by someone holding his arms. They do this at daycare, too. I don't like to do too many laps with Owen because it puts one in a very uncomfortable, hunched position, but often it's all he really wants to do. He and I have even taken to going downstairs: Owen thinks it is very funny when he drops down from one step to the next. Even though he is much too tiny to even think about climbing stairs in the normal way, he actually has the movement mostly down.

Cara continues to work slowly through her kindergarten valentines. She has determinedly made personalized cards for almost every child on the list now. Tonight she brought home the list of names from her daycare. Probably they will not get as special a set of cards as the school kids. We are proud of Cara.

We finished the third Oz sequel last night, and we seem to have all determined that Mr. Baum has run out of steam at this point. So now Ev is trying out a new book on Cara (All-of-a-Kind Family), under slight protest.

(Yeah, okay, so there was some protest. Then we kept on going until 9:30! So, hah! And Cara just wishes she had a Daddy as nice as the one in the book.)

2/11/11 (Friday)

Owen is getting more and more mobile. He cruises well, and he can go from one piece of furniture to another. A couple of times now, when we've been walking with him, he has sat down on purpose to play with a very attractive toy he's spotted. One thing he likes is the laptop, which we haven't had on in months, it feels like, but which we got out the other day and have sitting open on the ottoman. Owen likes to go over and bang on the keys with both hands. I was turning him upside down earlier and I noticed that he's got a third tooth peeking out up above those two bottom ones.

We got a call during dinner from Grandmama, because Cara has a loose tooth! I got to talk to Cara for a while. It just suddenly became loose while she was eating, poor thing, and now she's very upset and feeling awfully delicate. She can't eat. I reminded her about the tooth fairy, and I told her about Owen's tooth. The tooth fairy will not be coming to him. I wish I could be there, but I'm glad Cara's got her grandmama to cuddle her.

2/12/11 (Saturday)

Cara's first kindergarten report card was in her folder! The kids are scored on a scale of one to four, with one indicating that they need a lot of support, two that they are progressing toward independence, three that they are developing independence, and four that they are independent. Cara got threes for science, social studies, and reading, twos for writing and language word study, and a four for mathematics! The teachers' comments are that she has a positive attitude toward learning and is moving along nicely. They'll focus on her writing in the upcoming semester. She's a very creative kid, and right now she would rather draw the pictures than write the words. They will focus on having her translate her artwork into written stories. We think that's a very accurate portrait of Cara right now. She's ready, I think, to take this next step, but she hasn't quite taken it yet. They also say that her kindness and positive attitude make her a pleasure to have in class.

I'm very relieved that she is feeling better about her loose tooth. She's been eating all day with no problems. I was worried! She did tell us, in a very pitiable voice, "I didn't eat so many hot dogs last night!" Only half of one.

At YBR the toddlers take one big nap in the middle of the day, and Owen would need to move to that schedule if he were to move up to that room. Actually, I'm not a fan of that schedule, so in a way I appreciate having him in the baby room. I have no problems with a multi-nap child! Yesterday, according to his sheet, he had two very short naps. Today, he was exhausted when I took him with me to ballet, but he still had a good time. He fell asleep in the car on the way home, and he took a two-hour midday nap. Then he was awake all afternoon, though by seven he was really desperate to go to bed. Part of me may be willing to grudgingly admit that he's getting ready to drop a nap. A larger part hopes that this is not really going to happen for months!

One nice thing is that he's getting more willing to sit down. At least three times today, I was walking him and he saw toys and sat on purpose. It's very, very heartening. A couple of times he did it when I was suggesting it, which makes me 20% certain that he knows the word "sit."

2/13/11 (Sunday)

Owen and I got up early today and, after breakfast, we went out and did some errands. We got bagels and then we got groceries, including another giant load of baby food jars. I hate buying baby food jars. We must have gotten thirty of them, and it's just a pain. I really don't remember doing this with Cara. I keep thinking I'm doing it for the last time, but he just keeps going! Frighteningly, I think we met a man who was buying some for his 23-month-old. Owen was great in the supermarket. He stared at people. As always it was great to have someone in line behind us at the checkout to baby-sit. He was an elderly man who did manage to get a smile out of Owen, even though he'd been up for hours and has to have been ready for a nap.

It was a wonderful, wonderful day. Steve and I got to go out to the movies, while Cara and Owen got to stay with Grandmom and Grandpop! They played and colored, and I'm sure Owen made them walk him around a lot. He did take a nap for a while on his grandpop, which I think made them both happy. We got to show them how insanely Owen loves walking down stairs. Steve noticed that he's actually starting to sort of bump down on his tush sometimes, which is much better than maniacally stepping down stairs that, to him, are almost waist-high.

In the afternoon, we had to finish Cara's Valentines for DT. It was a struggle. I think that there were times over the past few days when she'd have done them happily, but I ran out of time and had to strike when the iron was lukewarm. However, every child and teacher in her classes at kindergarten and DT will get an individualized card in which Cara wrote the names. We made two little slits in each to hold a lollipop, and each one has a glitter-glue heart in the middle. The DT ones are spread out to dry overnight all over the living room.

We've spent perhaps two hours today reading All-of-a-kind Family. It's a wonderful education in Cara's Jewish heritage, and I'm really glad to get to share it with her. She claimed, when I told her it was mine, that Passover was her favorite holiday, too. She wants to watch the wine glass to see whether it gets lower when "that guy with wings," the prophet Elijah, drinks from it.

2/14/11 (Monday)

It was very easy to get Cara out of bed this morning. She hasn't been interested in pancakes for weeks, but today she was very excited about flower pancakes! She had a wonderful day at school; at kindergarten they had a party with popcorn, heart-shaped gummies, and juice. Everyone exchanged cards, and Cara's box was nice and full. It wasn't too full, fortunately, for me to pack all of the things she got at DT! Two people gave her heart-shaped cards that had pixie sticks stuck through them with cardboard arrows on the ends to look like arrows through the heart. Fortunately, Cara has decided, for no reason that I can fathom, that she does not like pixie sticks.

Owen also had a good day. Miss Carol says that he responds to his name, and I definitely think that my theory about his knowing the word "sit" is right. He sat in the kitchen while I made dinner, and he industriously scooted himself across the room to the open cabinet where the pots and pans sat. Following the example of generations of babies, he took out lots of things to wave around and bang together.

2/15/11 (Tuesday)

We've really been spoiled for a long time, in a way. Owen's stayed in the potted-plant phase of babyhood for much longer than he ought, so we haven't had to put up gates or worry about leaving cabinets open or keep Cara's toys off the floor any more than usual. Things are beginning to change.

Today we sat Owen on the floor with some toys while I started sorting out Cara's sight words nearby. He played for a while, but then he scooted himself over to where I was working and started to pick up the words and wave them around. While I picked up the words as fast as I could, he progressed through them, waving more and more and dropping them. I ripped up some junk mail for him as a consolation prize.

When he got bored with that, we moved him into the playroom. I let him walk in and then convinced him to sit, which he has been doing more willingly. Promptly he scooted over to a giant toy arrangement that Cara has been working on for days. It's a big compound, guarded by animals, in which Queen Tinkerbell lives with her many, many children. Owen very much wants to explore it, and Cara very much wants him not to. We have reached an agreement that Cara has to leave half of the room open for Owen to play in, so that he has space to play, too, and then she has the right to keep him away from her stuff. She's actually very good. Earlier he had gotten some papers of hers, and instead of screaming and upsetting him she took them and explained that she was getting him something else.

While I made dinner, Steve brought Owen upstairs. Owen got to walk across the kitchen to the cabinet where the pots are, and then he sat down of his own volition and started getting things out to make a mess with. Steve thinks he can see his reflection in the lids.

Cara's kindergarten class is reviewing the sight words they've been studying so far. I made about 18 sentences for her to read, and then she wrote some of her own. She wrote: "I have a robot dog. And a robot girl. And a robot boy. And a robot cat." "Robot" was not one of the official sight words. We had to add some nouns. Finally, I got out Bananagrams and gave Cara a selection of letters that I knew she could use. She had her letter pile, and I had all the rest, and we raced to see who could turn all of her letters into words first. I gave myself the added challenge of making words that Cara could read. She didn't jump with joy when it was time to do her homework, but afterwards she told me she wanted to play that game again--maybe next time I could win, she suggested!

2/16/11 (Wednesday)

Cara: You know what, Mommy? For the next 'All About Me' project, I'm going to do "I love money!"

This is less disturbingly avaricious than it might seem; in kindergarten they've been learning about coins.

Owen is making great progress in going down stairs. We'd noticed that he was starting to sit down sometimes, but now he almost slides from stair to stair! His early intervention starts tomorrow, so he and I will be having some adventures.

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