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Journal Key:

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

12/29/11 (Thursday)

This morning I got up with Owen and we eventually put on the neigh-neigh movie. At another time in the day I might balk at showing it to him, but at 6:30 in the morning I give up. He has a slight bruise over his left eye from his fall against the couch, which you can only really see when he has his eye closed.

Cara and Mommy had a mommy-daughter day today, and their last stop was to pick up Owen and bring him home, in time for a session with Karen. Evelyn told him ahead of time, so he was already asking after Karen when he arrived. They had an exciting session, because we were all here, and Cara was trying hard to show Karen all of the tricks she could do while Karen was busy trying to get Owen to do things. One thing Owen was able to do, which is pretty cool, is climb onto Cara's bed! He got a leg up on the wooden frame and once they showed him how to grab and hold on, he was able to pull himself up. Since Cara now has a bed tent on her bed, it was a lot of fun to be up there. Owen could say hi to everyone.

Owen really does hit lots of things with other things when he plays. The train table is his favorite play area right now, and he likes to bring his Playmobil people over to it so he can set them up and knock them violently over. "Ow!" he says. He's very much gotten into the habit of saying "Ow!" a lot. He was doing it in his bath tonight also, in between telling me that he was swimming. Evelyn got him onto this: he gets on his belly in the tub with his legs stretched out behind him and says "I wimming!"

Tonight he found a Scooby-Doo book that we have and was very excited. I couldn't really understand what he was talking about when he walked up to me holding the book so that all I could see was the back, all the time repeating "Reebee!" or something like that, which was what he could manage for "Scooby." Shaggy became "Haddy," and the Carnival Creep, who was the monster in this particular mystery, was shortened to Creep, or "Deep." So even in his bath he was saying "Haddy! Deep!"

12/30/11 (Friday)

On Friday I took the kids to work with me. I had the day off, and was just bringing them in to visit with a co-worker and her son (who is about the same age as Cara). It was nice to show the kids my office. Owen had a little bag of Playmobil people to play with, but soon learned to enjoy having an office to run around in. He played his running-away-and-coming-back game. He found a collection of boxes and had fun climbing onto them and sitting down. There were very few people actually working at the office, which was good because Owen got a little screamy. It was only a half-day at the office, so after a couple hours we said good-bye and had lunch at a nearby Burger King. We ended up sitting next to two old ladies, with whom Owen shamelessly flirted. He decided to tell them about He-Man, since we'd watched an episode or so of it in the morning and he had it on his mind. "Deeee-Mahn! Deeee-Mahn!" he told them. I decided not to bother explaining.

He had a short nap on the car ride home but was awake again at the end, so that was his nap for the day. Aunt Claire was at the house! Evelyn and Claire decided to play Wii, and eventually Owen was so bored with the whole thing that he wandered out of the basement and played quite happily by himself in the playroom. He would come to the basement door every once in a while to tell us something, then return to what he was doing.

In the evening the kids visited with the Loefflers for a little babysitting, and got to have brownies. They seemed ready to keep going all night, but fortunately Owen still loves his routine, and went to bed as usual.

1/1/12 (Sunday)

That may have been the most amazingly lazy twenty-four hours that we've had since before Cara was born. After Owen's nap we got into the car and drove down through the dusk (it was a late nap) to Aunt Claire's house. We ate junk food and hung out and watched too much tv, and Claire and Casie dyed their hair blue and red, respectively (neither ended up with more than a tinge) and sprayed Cara's hair pink, because it was a sleep-over.

Owen did a lot of running around and talking, and he combined the two activities in pursuit of the cats. He learned Tommy's name pretty quickly, but he may still be sure that Morgan is Buster. Steve gave Owen a bath in their wonderful, deep tub, and I put him down in the pack-n-play. We'd thought about putting him in our room (Claire's room), but Cara wanted him in with her so that was where he went. I sat with him on her bed to read, and as I carried him over to tuck him in he told me, "Cawa's bed. Oh-ee's bed."

Cara stayed up with us for another few hours, but before eleven I found a youtube video of New Year's fireworks in Australia and we watched it on my new Nook and blew some blowers and she went off to bed, with a sheet covering the pillow to protect it from her pink hair. We adults stayed up until midnight, watched the ball drop, and then put on a movie in an orgy of irresponsibility. Some of us dozed through most of it, and we all went to bed around two.

I had jinxed Owen by talking about how easy his sleeping at Grandmama's house had been. He went down fine, but he woke up around four in the morning and never went back to sleep. Steve and I took him into bed with us, and I got the Nook I'd bought and we dozed while he watched Netflix until around seven. There were some weird issues with Netflix or with the connection or something, and I was doing my best to stay half asleep, so he watched a couple of episodes of He-Man ("Dee-MAN!") sort of interspersed with Tangled. Fortunately, that held him until seven, when we gave up and all got up.

We all went out for breakfast, where I was reminded to my chagrin that Owen likes bacon. He also likes eggs and pieces of people's bagels, and at the end he picked up a pancake in his hands and started to eat it like a cookie. Three of us took pictures on our phones, so I'm sure we can manage somehow to get one of those.

Back at the house, we played Lego Star Wars on the Wii while the kids ran around and got underfoot. We did read Owen a few books, particularly Scooby-Doo. Mostly, though, he was a feral child. He decided that he liked to climb up over a low space heater (which was not plugged in) and onto the hearth and then stand up and say "Hooray!" Eventually I fed him some pizza for lunch, and in between bites he would have to go and climb up there.

He took a nap at Claire's house, since I figured if we put him in the car he'd nap during the drive and then be done. He got two and a half hours. Then we put him in the car and he eventually fell back to sleep. When we got here and I went to get him out, he talked to me about Karen. He must have been dreaming.

1/2/12 (Monday)

Today Cara and Evelyn were to go back to school and work, and Owen had the day off with me. As it turned out, however, Cara woke up with a fever, so I had both kids! It was a lazy sick day for us. Because Cara was sick, we quickly resorted to He-Man. Then I thought we should have some play time, so I found some He-Man coloring sheets to ease them away from the TV. Owen is still recovering from New Year's, so he slept late today and had a nice long nap. After his nap, I took him downstairs to where we were playing video games, but he led me upstairs and asked for yogurt. It wasn't long before we were back to the Deee-Man. When Mommy came home we switched over to She-Ra, and discovered that Owen pronounces it "Hee-Ra"--which is really very funny, since he doesn't seem to think he can say "He-Man."

Apparently tonight the Playmobil people were beating up Batman, and Evelyn pretended that Batman was crying because of it. So Owen had his Playmobil people come up and ask, "What hurts, Batman?" I lured him upstairs to his bath by promising him he could take his "People" into his bath with him. I put bubbles in the bath, too, and Owen thought it was very funny that the people got bubbles on them.

Tomorrow Owen goes back to his normal schedule, and hopefully it won't be too hard to make the switch! Cara will be off at least one more day, it looks like.

1/3/12 (Tuesday)

Owen seemed happy to be going back to YBR today. He rang the doorbell pretty heavily, at least. When Ev got there in the afternoon to pick him up, he went to a little chair, sat down, and said "I staying." Miss Carol said he was telling a different story before Mommy arrived.

When I got home Owen was up in the living room looking downstairs at me. He was excited to tell me about the He-Man that was of course going on, and he carefully walked down the stairs, all by himself, all the while repeating "Beast monster! Beast monster!" (which is a creature that She-Ra encounters in the Christmas special).

Cara is still under the weather, but she has antibiotics now and Aunt Claire will be staying home with her tomorrow. Owen enjoys playing with his Playmobil people in the bath now. All for now!

1/4/12 (Wednesday)

At YBR, Miss Sandi mentioned He-Man to Owen. He stared at her in awe. Worlds were colliding!

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