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Journal Key:

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

6/6/13 (Thursday)

It should be noted that Owen's famous "acorn," though ignored for most of the morning since he was occupied with his Nook, was remembered when he spotted it on the side table as we were heading out the door. He dutifully picked it up and took it with him in the car. When we arrived at YBR, he fumbled for it and couldn't find it. I dreaded the idea that it had possibly slipped into the innards of the car seat (whence his Chuck E. Cheese tokens), but fortunately it was there. He took it inside with him, where I had to explain why he had a tiny black seed.

The acorn, however, did not come home this evening. Tonight we had another fairly successful dinner. The kids sat at the table with us and ate dinner! We only had to bribe Owen with a brownie to get him to eat everything, but it worked. And at bathtime, we had tea. I'm not sure it was a good idea, but I invented a new game, wherein Owen fills my cupped hands with "tea" from his pot, and then I immediately splash it into my face. Repeat, repeat, repeat...

By the way, it was new library book day! When I got home, the dinner table was covered with library books and Owen had apparently already been through about half of them. I read him one while dinner was finishing up. I believe they were a good distraction from snacking and television. We also read a book while he was in the bath. New library books are exciting.

For some reason, though, when he got to his bedroom afterwards he wanted Evelyn to read him an old classic, The Sailor Dog. Except, perhaps just to challenge her, he insisted that she read it to him while wearing his bath towel over her head. It may not actually have occurred to him that Mommy can't read the book if she can't see it. Or he may have expected her to know it by heart. There are books that we have pretty much committed to memory--for instance, Mommy offered to read Over in the Meadow, which she could probably have recited from beginning to end. Unfortunately, Sailor Dog is not one of those books.

After I explained to Owen about needing to see to read, and we did some more convincing, he was willing to let Mommy take the towel off her face. There he was, patiently waiting to hear the book, with Mommy laying on her back, and Owen sitting right on her belly. I had to further explain that in order to read, Mommy also has to be able to breathe.

6/7/13 (Friday)

For the record, I managed to read the entire Sailor Dog with Owen sitting on my belly; I even sang the song at the end. We then found a somewhat more conventional place to read our next book.

Owen was up at 4:30 for another, though. I read him The Sleepless Little Vampire, which is a lovely book. At the end, all of the night creatures go to bed, because it's morning. Owen was perfectly reasonable and pleasant, and he seemed quite rational, except that he told me, when he saw the werewolf going into his cave, that "the wolf goes into the cave because the octopus can't."

At five he was back down, and I went off to start my day.

6/9/13 (Sunday)

The kids got back from their sleepover around lunchtime. Cara came with me on some errands while Owen was napping--we went to the pet store, among other things, and saw various animals. We didn't buy any of them. But one of the other things we bought was a bag of sand, to use in our sand table!

Cara had some time to play with the sand table by herself before Owen woke up; which was good, because he quickly went too far in Cara's estimation. There was a water side and a sand side, and Owen quickly decided that what he wanted to do was get water and pour it into the sand side. Cara found that wet sand would no longer run through her sifter: "This is NOT FUN," she declared, and soon was inside watching TV.

Owen, however, continued making an absolute mess, periodically informing me "Daddy, I love this." Until I made him stop, he enjoyed getting water from our outside spigot into his little bucket, and would walk it back over to the table. He looks so adorable walking with a bucket of water, because he gets all hunched over, walks completely bow-legged, and hangs his arms low, all in an overly-careful attempt to keep from spilling. Once it was in the table, of course, he felt free to slop it everywhere.

Before dinner his Mommy came and rinsed the sand off of him. We had a nice little cookout on our tiny charcoal grill, and at dinnertime Owen was pretty crazy. I agreed to give him a hamburger bun to eat along with his other food. He became very amused that it split into halves, and instead of just eating it, he would periodically put the halves at each side of his face. There was a lot of growling also.

Afterwards we came back out to toast marshmallows and make smores. We had promised this to Owen as a treat, but as it turned out he did not actually want marshmallows. Instead, while the rest of us were toasting, Evelyn got out some balls from the front shed and let him play with those as a distraction. He decided that he was playing basketball when he threw the balls at the big cloth grill cover that was leaning up against our back fence. He kept asking us all to come over and play "blasketblall" with him.

It was a lovely summer evening.

6/10/13 (Monday)

It was rainy! Aunt Claire came! She and I got to chat in the car on the way to get Cara, and Owen would just gleefully announce, intermittently, that he had seen a splash!!!!

She and the kids played downstairs while I made dinner. They got out several bins of toys, including the hex bugs, the little guys, and the automobiles. Most of the automobiles were in their bin when I joined in. It turned out that we weren't allowed to take anything out of that bin. "That's teacher stuff," said Owen. "It's just for teachers."

Someone cleverly asked him who were the teachers. He looked around. "Just you three," he said, indicating me, Claire, and Cara. We were, grudgingly, allowed to take out some toys.

After dinner, when it was time for Owen's bath, I tried to get him upstairs. Instead, he wanted Claire. I got him into the bath with his tea set and some yellow color tablets, since we're near the end of the jar. I got to sit around and watch while he made Claire "drink tea." She figures this is why the kids will have to take care of her in her old age.

She also had to read a He-Man book to him, which she claims to have accomplished without actually reading any of the words.

6/11/13 (Tuesday)

Mercifully, Owen slept until I got out of the shower today. He headed downstairs to work on the house he'd been building for his guys in the living room. He'd been using the little square blocks, and he'd lain the guys down and built two lines of blocks, meeting at a corner. The lines had gone on for quite a while. In fact, he used up the blocks. Claire and I had both tried to make them turn at least one more corner, but that was forbidden. This morning, I got him another set of blocks. He was delighted, and I was very relieved when he actually made his own corners. He was fairly logical: the lines went on straight until they hit the edge of the rug, and then they ran along it. It was a big triangle house.

It was taco night, which both kids are always excited about, but which Owen really doesn't usually enjoy. He gets excited because Cara's excited. Tonight, however, he wanted a taco. I made him one, and he managed to eat the whole thing. I did have to kind of re-wrap it a few times for him, because he had eaten the sides and a little bit of the bottom. Still, I think it was a big step!

We were cleaning up after dinner, and Cara was doing a really nice job tidying up her stuff in the house, when we heard the ice cream truck outside. I figured it was a good time for a treat, so the kids each got something. The three of us hung out in the front yard. Owen got a SpiderMan pop. He chewed the gumball eyes, but eventually he was persuaded to give that up and return to ice cream. The pop was kind of heavy and drippy, so I ended up feeding it to him. It was nice.

He did end up being somewhat difficult after his bath, which perhaps we can blame on the sugar, though!

In the bath, he was a good listener when I asked him to stand up to be washed.

"Owen," I said, "I love it when you're a good listener."

"Mommy," he said, "I love it when you are a good listener to my teacher!"

6/12/13 (Wednesday)

Cara and I had a walk through Highland Park to pick Owen up, so the three of us had a walk back. It took about four minutes to get there, and it took at least 15 to get back to the car.

Miss Minal had given each kid a mini-bagel. "Cara's eating her bagel!" Owen urgently informed me. I told him that was ok. "No," he said, "we have to bring it home!" He brought his home.

We stopped to look at some plantings and to walk around and around a tree. We stopped to look at the neon Batman, Captain America, and Iron Man logos. We stopped to look at the sign outside Ten Thousand Villages. We saw some Os for Owen! (There can be a LOT of Os for Owen on a sign, especially if it says something like 10:00.) We saw bricks in a brick wall! We saw items for sale in windows! We saw colorful mosaics in the sidewalk. (Two of us had more interest in touching these than was really good.) We sat on a bench. We did not sit on a second bench.

"Mommy," Owen told me, "I love to go home."

At home, the kids came outside to play barefoot in the grass while I swept two gallons of mulberries off of the driveway. (The neighbor actually swept it for us on Monday, so I'm truly impressed at how much fell so fast!) They were mostly lovely. Cara got Owen to roll down the hill. He'd brought out some Avengers. She eventually went and rode her bike around the block. Owen and I played with his guys.

During dinner, though, our idyllic evening did not continue. Owen ended up completely melting down and refusing to eat; naturally, he then spent his bath screaming "I want to eat!" I do think that he ends up feeling contrite after these episodes, so perhaps there will be some small benefit.

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