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Journal Key:

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

4/18/13 (Thursday)

We decided to have dinner out a day early this week, so I drove straight to our "shiny diner" in Menlo Park, and met Ev and the kids there. Owen was wearing his upside-down sunglasses and Cara was playing her handheld video game. Eventually (because as it turned out this was why it had been brought), Cara handed the game over to Owen and let him try the game on it that lets you color a picture. He scribbled around a little with the pen before getting bored.

This morning for breakfast, since he said he would eat some, I heated up some leftover pancakes for Owen. He didn't eat them. For dinner, given several choices, he decided that what he really wanted were pancakes and eggs. He even told the waiter what he wanted. In the end, I suppose he did eat some of those pancakes, but it was a near thing.

Owen seems to be telling outrageously untrue stories about his day lately. Today he apparently claimed that one or more of the teachers at YBR had taken him "into a tree."

4/19/13 (Friday)

After dance class, we all met up at home to have leftovers on Family Fun Night. At YBR, when Evelyn came to pick up Owen, another mother was sitting on one of the outside benches in the back where the kids were playing. Therefore, Owen decided that his mommy had to sit on a bench also. While she did, he went to "look at bugs," and came back to report. There were some ants going up and down a tree nearby.

4/20/13 (Saturday)

Today was Grandmom's birthday! Owen picked out a completely inappropriate card at the store, we got ourselves together and got in the car. Owen slept well on the way down, and was ready for action when we got there. Maybe it was the excitement or maybe it was just a phase, but he really didn't want to eat much. He managed to have some yogurt, but I think he completely faked us out on his desire to have a banana. Soon enough, Griffin arrived! The three kids were put into the kitchen for what may have been the very first "kids table" meal we've had with them. Then they had fun running around the house and outside. There was a lot of hide-and-seek, and some tag. Griffin likes to run out of his hiding place, yelling "here I am!" Owen preferred his own game, which involved having himself and someone else stationed at two tree stumps. "Ready, set, switch!" he would yell, and then the people would switch stumps.

Owen also very much likes the rocks that fill the squared-off area around my parents' shed. He was convinced not to just throw them at random into the lawn, but he made a few trips with rocks from the shed to the back patio. Fortunately he did not have the time or the attention span to transplant the entire rockbed.

4/21/13 (Sunday)

The kids needed to be taken away today so that their mother could get some work done, and Cara just so happened to have a Chuck E. Cheese gift card. It also so happened that we still had a bucket of tokens from previous visits, so I took the kids.

First we hit the pet store. There weren't a whole lot of animals to look at at this particular pet store, but we did find a chameleon, which was interesting and exciting. Owen--who can reliably equate everything to super heroes--remembered an episode of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, where the Spider-Friends and four fellow heroes meet up with The Chameleon, an absolutely terribly-dressed villain who can change shape to mimic any other super hero. I explained the similarities between The Chameleon and his animal namesake.

At some point today, Cara and Owen had an exciting conversation. Unfortunately I can't remember all of it, but the first part of it I can remember was Owen saying, "Spider-Man doesn't have any ears!" To me, this seemed like a completely absurd statement, though later Evelyn could immediately see the logic, since after all you can't ever see his ears when he's wearing his mask.

Cara, however, was of my opinion, and argued (in an exasperated tone), "If Spider-Man had no ears, how could he hear people calling for help?"

Owen proceeded to tell an only partly lucid story in which Firestar (who in the cartoon is a contemporary of Spider-Man's and a Spider-Friend) was a little baby and was crying out "Spider-Man, help me!"

Anyway, we did eventually get to Chuck E. Cheese, and I believe a good time was had by all. We ended up playing a lot of very short-term games that were shiny and fun and always, always gave you tickets back, no matter how many points you got. We didn't do many rides; I put Owen on a sort of moving safari truck that got stuck multiple times, because it kept incorrectly detecting something under itself (as a passing employee explained to me). He seemed to want to try a horse ride that Cara had tried, but when I tried to put him on the horse's back he balked. He also refused to even go on a tiny little carousel ride that Cara turned on, and which went so slowly that even Owen on foot could outpace it.

Owen tried a whack-a-mole game, this one with alligators or dragons of some kind. He also tried a cute little game where you get to throw a tiny football throw a moving goalpost. He was perfectly willing to slap buttons on games that were tall enough that he couldn't even see what the buttons did. We also found a nice large-screen version of Fruit Ninja, an app that we were all familiar with from our devices. That was fun for all of us. At the end, we had enough tickets to get a few trashy little prizes...for Owen I ended up getting a box of Nerds. This was really a terrible idea. I think he may have pointed to them, and it was the right number of tickets.

Nerds, if you don't know what they are, are miniscule little sugary pellets that are incredibly numerous and are all just sitting in a huge, loose pile inside of a box. They may very well have been the worst non-liquid thing I could possibly have gotten for Owen to eat. Fortunately, after I handed him a very small handful, and he got some in his mouth, he didn't seem very interested anymore. Speaking of spilling things, Owen absolutely loved his cup of "treasure." The kids had divided the tokens before they got there, so they each had a jingly cup. Owen insisted on carrying his everywhere, and was much too excited about the sound the cup made when he shook it. Inevitably, I heard the cascade of spilling tokens in the back seat of the car, before we had even arrived at Chuck E's. Now when you shake his car seat, it jingles. Some day I'll get the coins out of it.

On the way home from Chuck E's, we were talking randomly about something or other, and Owen said, "That's because it's Sunday." I made some remark about how I was surprised he even knew it was Sunday--we don't normally point out what day it is to him. He continued, "And that makes me into a animal!"

4/22/13 (Monday)

I was very ambitious today, and I accomplished a lot: Steve and Claire were both due to arrive for dinner no earlier than 6:30, and I managed to go to the library, get the kids, get both of them bathed and into pajamas, and get dinner well on its way by the time they got here.

Library books really help. I handed one to Owen in the car, and it made him very happy. He opened it right up and started asking me what was happening in it. Well, I was driving. Could he tell me what was in the pictures? No.

At ABC, I got him out of the car by suggesting that we go and ask Cara to read it to him. When the kids were getting buckled in, Cara picked the book right up and started reading it to herself. Owen told her to read it. With a lot of back-and-forth I got him to ask her to read it. Then we needed to add one more thing. "To me" I whispered. "To me," Owen whispered.

She was far too absorbed in reading to herself for a while, but I cruelly told her to read it to him. When we pulled up, I got out of the car, unbuckled Owen, went and unlocked the front door, and brought the things in, while the kids sat in the car, reading their book.

Honestly, I don't think the book is that good.

The promise of books, though, got Owen upstairs to take a bath, got him into the bath, and later got him out of it. I got him into his pajamas and the two of them, looking all ready for bed, cuddled up on his bed, reading more library books, while I made dinner.

4/23/13 (Tuesday)

When Owen woke up this morning, the first thing out of his mouth was "Is Aunt Claire still here?" He's been asking for a few Tuesdays in a row, now, and she hasn't still been here a single time.

"Eukalaka!" Owen has been saying, lately. He said it to me as I was getting him into the car after school.

"No," I said, "you kalaka."

"NO, I NOT KALAKA!" cried Owen, much distressed.

When questioned, he has no idea what kalaka means.

The joy of fresh library books is a beautiful thing. During dinner, Owen asked us whether his new library books were still here. They were! As soon as he was done, he and I went up to read.

I forgot that yesterday, as I got the books out of the bag, Owen completely freaked me out by pointing at Chicks Go Wild and saying, "Chicks go Wild!" He has not suddenly learned to read. They have that book at school. I believe that, at school, they read one line wrong. I believe this because when I read it right he corrected me.

4/24/13 (Wednesday)

Miss Vina reports that Owen told her that there was a giant green worm in his back yard. We have no idea what he was talking about. Vina and I are enjoying the role reversal, because usually I hear very odd stories about school.

On the way home, Owen noticed a playground that we've driven by daily all his life. There's a big fence around it. "Hey," said Owen, "what are those kids doing?" He was concerned because of the fence. I told him there was a gate somewhere, so they could get out. He said that there was not a gate; they were trapped. Ok, I said, who will get them out? "Superheroes will get them out . . . Ms. Marvel. She's at the library. She's reading a book about superheroes. No, a book about monsters."

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