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Journal Key:

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

12/13/12 (Thursday)

At YBR today, they were singing the dreidel song. At one point, Owen stood up and started to spin around. Everyone watched while he sang the song all by himself.

Picking him up was, as always, an adventure. I sat on the rug to try to get his coat onto him, and Aditi and Audrey both came over. Audrey definitely was tempted to join Owen in jumping on me. Aditi wanted to show me a book. They both like to get attention from "Owen's mom!" Owen, in the meantime, was happily jumping on me. He also got one of my gloves by the time I got him into his coat and out the door. He got his little hand into my big blue glove and walked out waving. I didn't get it back until after we had gotten home.

On the way to the car, Owen told me that it would be his turn to pick a movie first, then Cara's, and then mine. I announced that I might pick The Life of Birds. "No, Mommy, you pick Spiderman!"

Steve worked late again, so the kids and I had dinner on our own. Owen likes to shoot us with "webs" while we eat. Cara shot Owen this evening. He was very indignant. "Mommy, Cara shot me!" he complained. I reminded him that he's certainly had his turns, but that made no difference.

12/14/12 (Friday)

For Family Fun Night, we watched Cinderella. "We are all watching this movie!!!" Owen insisted as the birds woke the heroine. Yes, we were.

He didn't remember the movie at all. The beginning has a lot of animals, and he liked that a lot. Lucifer, the cat, is very bad. Cara said that Lucifer was a mean kitty, and Owen repeated that. Soon, he was ready to take matters into his own hands. "I want to punch you, kitty!!"

There was a thrilling part of the movie in which Lucifer was chasing a mouse. "Daddy," said Owen, "the kitty is under the table!!!!! He's under the table!!!!!" Buster and Shelby, for the record, do go under tables. All the time. It's not that exciting.

After a little while, Owen was up and wandering around. "Daddy, my eyes are blue, and your eyes are black," he told Steve. Steve corrected him. He came over to me. "Mommy, Daddy's eyes are bown, and Cara's eyes are bown, and your eyes are geen!" I asked him what color his eyes are. "My eyes are . . . BOWN!!" He did a celebratory dance.

12/15/12 (Saturday)

This morning Owen made a lot of noises about it being time to "hero up" as he brutally threw his Vengers down the stairs to the dining room. If any didn't make it all the way down, he'd go and get them and and throw them again. They all lay there at the bottom of the stairs. Owen went and picked up a couple and made them start talking.

"What do we do now?" said Hawkeye. (Owen says the "said Hawkeye" parts)

"It's time to hero up!" said Black Widow.

"That's a good job!"

We went out in two cars to pick out a Christmas tree. Everyone enjoyed the adventure. In the middle of the tree lot, we weren't sure why Owen was talking about having a treat. Then it occurred to us that we'd told him we were going to get a tree. The guy selling the trees gave the kids candy canes, though, so, in the end, there was a treat. The candy canes were blue and fairly soft and tasted, according to Cara, sort of like cotton candy. The kids enjoyed them more than I'd ever imagine candy canes like that would be enjoyed.

We drove down to south Jersey to see the family down there. Owen and Griffin didn't actually interact all that much. They played near each other. While they were playing with Star Wars guys, Owen walked over to Griffin and took the R2D2 that was in front of him. They both thought about it. Owen put down the guy he'd been holding, and that seemed to be ok.

The Vengers had come, too, of course. Owen tried to get me to play with them with him. Most of the guys were on the ottoman, and Owen popped Captain America into their midst. "Hello!" he said. I stood Thor up and had him say something benign like "I'm Thor. How are you?"

"No!" screamed Captain America, plowing into Thor and knocking him down. "I'm just minding my business!!" Captain America went back down to the floor where he'd started. "I'm minding my business!" he yelled up.

Later, we had some trouble (as usual) getting Owen to come and put on his coat. "I'm not done minding my business!" he declared.

12/16/12 (Sunday)

Cara got out our super-dreidel, which has batteries and lights and a launcher and even plays music. She and Owen really enjoyed it; he lay down on the hardwood floor on his tummy in his footie pajamas to watch. Soon he discovered that he could scoot himself along backwards with his hands. He went halfway across the house, giggling insanely.

We also decorated the tree this morning. Owen helped me put the lights on: as I strung the first strand along the top, he gathered up the other two strands in a big bunch and put them onto some lower limbs. Then he left, so I was able to actually put the lights on.

I found the paper snowflakes that we used on the tree last year, and Owen and I put them on. Once he'd figured out how to get them to stay, he went to town. He thoroughly decorated the lower third of the tree. Then Cara and Steve got out some other things, mostly not breakable, and they took care of the rest. I found some candy canes later, and the kids put them on. Owen really doesn't understand about the hook part helping to hold them up. Like, at all. He wanted to put them upside down.

12/17/12 (Monday)

While he was in the bath tonight, Owen put a plastic star into my hand and growled. It turned out that that meant he was turning me into a monster. I roared, and he went swimming away. Then I suggested that he turn himself into a monster, too, and so he did a little more growling and became my monster baby.

He's been making a lot of little noises lately, which has generally been fairly annoying, as many of them are sort of lip-smacking things. However, he also makes some very cute little noises, and those were the noises my baby monster made. I told him he had cute little horns and asked him what color fur he had. Purple. Did he have spots? Yes--he showed me where. What color? Purple. Personally, I decided to be blue with green spots. We did not have tails.

When he was out of the tub, we discussed where we should live. A cave? A castle? We settled on a monster house. Would we have pets? Yes, bears. Purple ones. Big purple ones. I wondered what we ate. Grass. Like the Billy Goats Guff. Probably because we had horns.

12/18/12 (Tuesday)

Owen ended up getting a little "delicate" this evening. I had a treat, some donut holes leftover from school, and the promise of a treat did get us through dinner. Owen took out some sugary cereal and chose to have that instead. When it was time to go upstairs to sit on the potty, he was in the kitchen screaming that he wanted a donut.

It took quite a while to get him upstairs, and then he went back down and had to be carried up again. I set him on the potty very briefly--he sits there every night and never does anything--and then I took him off to get him into the bath.

"I wanted a story!" he cried.

"You weren't a good listener; we don't have time," I told him.

He thought about this.

"But I wanted to make some pee-pee!" he wailed.

Sure.

He did some general grousing while I put his diaper on later, and I reminded him that when he learned to use the potty he would wear underpants. Like other kids at school. Like Audrey. Does Audrey wear underpants?

"Audey and I wear underpants! Audey and I use the potty at the same time!!!!!!" insisted Owen.

12/19/12 (Wednesday)

This morning I slept late and there was a flurry of the typical early morning activities as we grownups rushed to get dressed and Cara was made to get dressed. In the midst of all this, unbeknownst to us, Owen located the box of sugary cereal that I bought a week or so ago, got himself a bowl, took both out to the living room, and poured the last of the cereal into the bowl. It was just as he completed the act of pouring--in the process getting little chocolate dust onto the living room rug--that we all noticed what he was doing and wondered how it had all happened.

Owen has become willing to walk into Lindeneau in the mornings, and walk to Yellow Brick Road. This is good and bad. His independence is nice, but his speed leaves much to be desired. Also, he can hardly get into Lindeneau with me, because he finds it necessary to hide his face from the teachers all the time. They really get a kick out of Owen, and he knows it.

Tonight was playdate night! The kids had a picnic downstairs while the grownups did grownup things. Afterwards we were walking home. Owen explained that it was night. He could see the moon, and that meant it was night. Evelyn, rather than argue the point, was willing to agree that most of the time this was so.

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