Rachel, 10 months and terrific

We sang "Happy Birthday" to her tonight as we were getting ready to lotion her up and put her to bed. "You're 10 months old today!" Drew said. "That means you've been here longer than you've been in Mommy's tummy!"

Rachel is:

--Crawling everywhere. Anytime one of is isn't in the living room with her -- or, say, if I am and she'd prefer Drew's company to mine - she'll crawl after him or me. Tonight when I was reading The New Yorker, she decided she wanted to see what Dad was up to. So she crawled to the sink and started tugging on his pants to lift her up. It's like living with a puppy.

--Practicing her fine motor skills with ever-increasing sophistication. Today she grabbed Drew's calculator and toted it around while she was crawling. "She looks like a baby accountant!" he said. She also loves my car keys, cell phone, tubes of various creams and medications that we give her -- everything except her actual toys. And plastic cups. Did I mention plastic cups? She can spend 10 minutes at a time throwing them to the side, banging them together and knocking them over.

--Babbling all the time, especially "ba" and "mama" and "da" and "dada." She did this a lot on the way home from Eugene two weeks ago and I swear I heard a garbled version of, "Love you." Somtimes it sounds as if she's saying "hey!' or "hi!"

--Really liking other babies and older kids. She'll go right up to the little ones and touch their faces, snatch their binkies and sun hats, or hand them her toys. And she's fascinated with older kids. She can watch them for hours, it seems.

--Eating, eating, eating -- about two jars of baby food at each sitting. Turkey vegetable dinner, carrots, applesauce and blueberries, tomato chicken pastini, cookies and Cheerios (the last two she only gets into her mouth sometimes. They usually end up on her bib, her cheeks, her eyelashes, pants, toes...)

--Adventurous. She loves playing "Flying Baby" with Drew, who tumbles her up and over and down and around and upside down, much to my nervousness; I never do that because I'm still afraid I'll drop her on her head. He thinks she'll be the kind of kid who loves to go on roller-coasters, same as her mommy (was).

--Generally pretty cheerful. She loves flashing her grin, which now consists of four bottom teeth and two top teeth about to come through. When she smiles she crinkles her eyes, which reminds Drew of his sister, Amanda, when she was that age (remember that Drew was old enough when she was born to recall what she was like as a baby). She also giggles at the slightest provocation, especially when we dance around or waggle our heads or bounce her up and down or, if she's in the right mood, when we tickle her under the arms and on the bottom of her feet.

--Napping with some regularity, at least as of this week. She takes at least one gigantic nap a day of 2 1/2 hours or so -- morning or afternoon -- and a smaller one of a half-hour or hour. It's the only time we still swaddle her.

--Sleeping occasionally through the night but getting up way too early -- at 5:30 a.m. or so. We have decided to let her cry through it until 6 or 6:30 a.m. The days of sleeping until 8:30 or 9 or even later on weekends are a fond memory.

--And finally, Rachel is: A constant reminder of how lucky we are.