Dinner Date

...not for Drew and me -- are you kidding? Do you actually think we go out alone anymore? HAHAHAHAHA.

However, we had a lovely evening with our friends Carrie and Klaus and their adorable daughters Ani, 4, and Elsa, 2. They live five blocks away from us and walked over. Carrie and Klaus were the perfect parents, lugging a bunch of toys to keep their kids amused while I finished up dinner (roast chicken, potatoes, salad, chocolate-chip cake -- I go for easy meals these days, alas) and Drew held Rachel, who has become very fussy when we're not paying attention to her.

Rachel really took to the older girls. Drew says that she seems to like being around older kids, which explains why she does so well in the mobiles section at daycare. Carrie kept remarking what a pretty baby she is and so smart; when Carrie tried to hide a ball under one of Rachel's cups that she loves banging together, Rachel found the ball, even after Carrie mixed up the cup with some others. Drew also said this morning, as he was reading to Rachel, that she has a very intelligent face, as if she was trying hard to understand what he was saying. She LOVES the alphabet book that Grandpa Oliver and Grandma Sylvie gave her; each letter reprensents an animal, and each animal has a fuzzy or furry or scaly surface that Rachel can touch.

Carrie also noticed that Rachel crawls a lot like Ani did as a baby. Which is reassuring, because seeing Rachel stick out her left leg, plant her foot and move forward is a little weird. It's not the kind of crawl I expected to see. And Ani is walking and running like a normal child, so I guess Rachel will, too.

It's odd and a bit unsettling that everyone else, including my husband, seems to notice Rachel's progress except me. ("That's because you're waiting for her to be smart enough to get into Princeton," my snarky husband says). I think that's because I see her every day. Or maybe my senses are becoming dull with age. One day I'll wake up and she'll be walking and talking, and I won't know how she got from here to there.