Catching up

...we're back in Oregon and (mostly) recovered from our trip back East, to visit Grandpa Oliver and Grandma Sylvie for Passover. Some of the highlights:

--Rachel met her new cousin, Valerie, who is almost four months old! Rachel spent the time touching Valerie's face, patting her on the head and trying to grab her pacifier. I kept having to say, "gentle, gentle, Rachel!" while Daniella echoed with "suave, suave," (Spanish for gentle, or soft). Daniella sang such a sweet song in Spanish to Valerie and Rachel that I had to ask what the translation was. Turns out it involves plucking off the heads of chickens. Rachel was also deemed a bad influence on Valerie because the day after our Seder, Valerie started practicing Rachel's baby dinosaur shrieks. I'm sure Daniella is dreading the day when Rachel teaches Valerie the phrase, "Mommy is a poopy-head."

--At the Seder, Daniella and I recalled a bunch of sad childhood stories, as well as a tragic musical we had seen together as grownups, and we both started sobbing as we told both to Mom and Dad and Darryl and Drew. It was clear from Dad's expression that he wonders if we are, in fact, related to him.

--We tried to keep the babies quiet during the more solemn parts of the Seder, but Dad reassured us, saying, "better the sound of babies yelling than nothing at all." Which is a good way to think about their presence in our lives, in general.

--Rachel slept in a portable crib in our room and kept waking us with her cries. We had to haul her into bed with us a few times and discovered she's a thrasher. She kept bonking us in the nose and she stirred in her sleep. Drew and I ended up having to nap in shifts during the day. Many thanks to Mom and Dad for their patience.

--Mom and Dad had a whole set of beautiful toys for both grandkids -- soft building blocks, a friendly purple bunny and a green bendable frog that Rachel adored. She was standoffish with both grandparents at first but really warmed up to Mom, even falling asleep on her lap one morning! (Could be because of Grandma's soft blue bathrobe with the big, easy-to-play-with buttons!)

--Rachel made all kind of developmental leaps while in NYC. She learned to unzip the zipper on her diaper bag and on Drew's pullover; pull open a drawer; and crawl all over Grandma and Grandpa's white living-room carpet (although thankfully did not soil it). By next Passover, she'll be walking!