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Journal Key:

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

10/4/12 (Thursday)

Usually Owen carries his lunch box to the car after school, but these days he's been carrying his red hoodie. He loves his jacket. He loves his lion and his jacket. He loves his jacket. Mommy, I love my jacket.

He was holding his jacket in one hand and my hand in the other when he fell in the parking lot, catching himself on his jacket hand. All the way back to the car, he was telling me how dirty his jacket was. (Honestly, I don't think it was that bad.)

In the car, after a brief hiatus, we talked about it again.

Owen: Mommy, Daddy will see that my jacket is dirty!

Me: OK.

Owen: He will say, your jacket is dirty! He will be surprised!

It sort of went on. Cara would also be astonished by the jacket.

We got to talking about dessert. Owen wanted chocolate or a donut. I said he could have something after dinner.

Owen: I don't want dinner!

Me: You have to have dinner, and then you can have chocolate.

Owen: I don't want dinner! I am in time-out!

Me: Oh.

Owen: . . . Mommy, am I in time-out in the car?

Me: I don't know. Are you?

I think he ignored that question.

He ate a good dinner, actually, barring some episodes of running away from the table. We probably need to be more consistent about that. Eventually I brought him back, suggesting either time-out or coming to the table. Soon he left again, and this time he decided he wanted a time-out. I explained that he didn't want a time-out, and I brought him back in. After he stood there asking for a time-out for a bit, he ate up his dinner. The boy ate a hot dog, a bun, some asparagus, some red pepper, part of a little bowl of ice cream, and a little bowl of yogurt.

We let the kids put the TV on after dinner. To our horror, Owen chose YoGabbaGabba. Now that he's heading off to bed, Cara got to choose. More YoGabbaGabba. I do love DJ Lance, but he's not there enough to make it worthwhile.

The evening routine, though, has been punctuated by episodes of screaming, which I find somewhat heartening because they mean he isn't getting his way about everything.

10/5/12 (Friday)

I got to YBR and the kids were playing outside. Owen ran over, and I sent him back to Vina to show her how much mulch he had in his hair. The teachers showed me the big tub that he'd been filling with mulch, which he was referring to as "cake" and dumping on himself.

When we were on our way out, Owen explained, "I wanted to put cake in my hair, but Miss Vina said no, because she's a good teacher."

He sort of runs a monologue in the car; I only have to put in cursory answers. We spent a lot of time in the car, driving down to get Cara and then driving to Five Guys to pick up dinner.

Owen: I want my window open. I want my window closed. I want my window open! I want to go home. Can we go to Chili's? I don't want to go to Five Guys. I am SpiderMan! (insert shooting noises) I want to go home! Can we go to Five Guys? Mommy, is this the beach? Mommy, is this the beach? Mommy, I said this is the beach and you said it's not the beach! Are we going to Five Guys? Is that Five Guys?

I wore a skirt today, which I guess I don't often do, and we had to stand around waiting for food. Owen found an awesome game I had to stop him from playing; it involved sticking his head up my skirt or picking the skirt up, presumably to stick his head in.

It was late when we got home, but it was a nice evening.

10/6/12 (Saturday)

This morning, Evelyn and Cara went out to do some clothes shopping, and Owen and I went to the library. We had a very nice time at the library. Owen would take books out, look at them, and then put them back. Then I would pick them back up and put them back in what was more likely to be the right place. What he seemed to prefer was for both of us to be looking at books separately, and for me to not be too close to his book.

After we all got back to the house, we packed up and drove to Claire's house. Her friend Moira was having a baby shower! We also combined this with our annual apple-picking event. First we had to try to feed the kids, but then we got back into our cars and over to the orchards. The kids, as is usual, had a nice time running around, finding pumpkins and apples. Owen helped Aunt Claire to push the big cart (she pulled from the front, he pushed from behind). Owen very much enjoyed the discovery, late in our adventure, that he could sneak between some trees, run down one row, sneak back across, and return to us.

On the way back, the little napless buddy fell asleep. Evelyn, who had just been lamenting over the fact that she wouldn't get to have a child sleep on her again, carried him inside the house and let him sleep on her in a recliner for a while. When he woke up, he was fortunately not as screamy as he can sometimes be.

One of the excellent ideas someone had for the shower was to buy a lot of white onesies, and a lot of craft materials, and get everyone to color or iron-on designs for the onesies. This was the perfect project for Cara. She worked hard on several designs, and the grownups who knew how to iron and use glue guns helped make them a reality.

Meanwhile, Owen spent much of the afternoon looking at his big superhero book. We thought perhaps that he was getting tired of it, but this is clearly not the case. He actually got Tony, Moira's husband, to read him a couple of stories, as well as Casie, who had trouble taking the stories seriously for some reason.

Owen wanted to watch Spider-Man, but lucky for all the grownups there, we didn't put it on; but we did get to watch some Phineas and Ferb, because everyone can enjoy that. Then it was time to go! Tonight was a special landmark because we have run through our diapers and Mommy put Owen into a pull-up. She took him into Cara's room so that he could see himself in his big boy pull-up in Cara's full-length mirror. He posed, in dramatic Spider-Man fashion, with his hands in the web-shooting stance.

Owen has started doing something that, in retrospect, was pretty inevitable for a boy who is learning to love superheroes. Really we should have expected it but it has nevertheless taken us completely by surprise. He has started punching us. We are trying to stop this as quickly as possible.

10/7/12 (Sunday)

A long day for the whole nuclear family. I took the kids off to the grandparents and Evelyn stayed home to do work for her graduate school class. The kids had a good time. Jim, Sarah and Griffin were at the house also. Griffin has a seeming unending stamina for "hide and seek," and Cara hung in there with him for a long time. Owen did some hiding and screaming as well, but was often distracted by his superhero book, or by leaping around on the couch (sometimes with my sweatshirt on his head).

Also Owen was distracted for a while because Grandma and I took him out shopping for his Halloween costume! The first place we went was one of those big Halloween superstores, where we found a few costumes for people in his size range. None of them seemed to really grab any of us; there were some OK superhero costumes, but many of them would have had him sporting fake "muscles" which didn't look very cute or comfortable. Owen was surprisingly unaffected by the scarier costumes and masks. Grandma found a "no-face" mask, which was literally a silvered mask with no features whatsoever. Once she had looked through it to confirm that the person wearing it could actually see with it on, Owen wanted to wear it also. It was hard to get it off of him. He was standing there with his no-face mask, doing web-shooting poses and being very dramatic.

Having made no clear decision, we went to Target, where we found much better (and much cheaper) superhero costumes. We had thought about avoiding copyrighted characters and just dressing him as a generic monster, but neither store seemed to be geared toward that kind of thing for toddlers. Anyway, Owen decided that he wanted to be Batman, so that's what we got.

Back at the house, Cara cut out some nice little paper pumpkins, and also cut out an impressive little string of paper bats all by herself. Meanwhile, our potty training continues. I brought the potty seat from home with us, and got Owen onto it multiple times. Fortunately, he doesn't seem to particularly dislike being on the potty; but nothing really happened. We changed through more pull-ups just while he was there than the usual number of diapers he wears in a day.

He barely slept on the way to his grandparents' house, but he slept a good deal of the way home. When we finally did get home, it was time for a couple episodes of Spider-Man before a dunk in the tub and some stories.

10/8/12 (Monday)

It was an eventful day at YBR. I believe that events played out like this: Owen soiled his pants. They gave him some spare pants, and he got those overwhelmingly muddy. Owen had no more extra pants, so Miss Vina gave him some of Audrey's. Audrey soiled her pants. Audrey had no more extra pants. While both kids were asleep, Miss Vina got some extra pants from across the street, took Audrey's pants off of Owen, and put them back onto her. She stopped to do something and looked up to see Owen, awake, looking down in astonishment at his pantless legs.

When I picked him up he was wearing some very ugly black-and-white checked pants, and he had on lovely white ankle socks with purple bows on them.

10/9/12 (Tuesday)

Owen always wants to try to bring lots of things with him in the morning. Today we ended up bringing his superhero book, and he also got away with bringing his orange hat, because he could wear that on his head and I didn't have to carry it with everything else. Apparently he met other people with hats at YBR--firemen! It's a little unclear what exactly happened, but he did have a firehat, from which we assume that firemen visited.

It's becoming an adventure getting Owen to eat lately. Tonight when it was dinnertime, Owen refused, saying "I'm going to stay here and read my book!" Eventually I got him into the kitchen by picking up his book and dangling it in front of him, exactly like a carrot on a stick. He did actually sit and eat after that, though we also had to get him to put down his He-Man figure, who was at the dinner table for some reason. Then several of us got distracted pretending that we were very hurt when Owen fake-punched us.

I have been reading him a library book that we both like very much: Davy Crockett Saves the World. Owen asks for it by name, except that when he says Davy Crockett it comes out "Crocky David."

10/10/12 (Wednesday)

Juliana and the Loefflers all came over, so we had a full house tonight! Owen was on the couch, and he wanted to put a tv show on. I told him that he could either go downstairs with Juliana or go upstairs with PJ, Casey, and Cara. A few minutes later, I realized that I didn't know where he was. It was lovely. When I went up to tell the kids it was time for dinner, they were in Cara's room with the door closed. I could hear Owen laughing. Everyone was happy (I have no idea what they were doing). Owen was sitting on the bed; he showed me some toys which apparently were very funny. He did not want to come down for dinner.

Cara had to change clothes (dress up had been happening), so I left her in charge and headed downstairs. She came down and reported that Owen had decided to stay upstairs. When I went to get him, though, he came right down. I love it when he tries to tell me about whatever's been happening when I wasn't there. Cara said something and then she went downstairs because he loves her.

It was veyr exciting that PJ gave out napkins at dinner. Owen told me several times that he had gotten one. He and PJ both ate some lettuce out of the salad. After dinner the kids played Twister. Owen occasionally sat down in the middle of the mat, and everyone managed to ignore him.

I read Owen Davey Crockett Saves the World at five in the morning. I read it to him again this evening. After I'd read him three other books, I put him down, complaining that he wanted Davey Crockett again.

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