Toddler IIs

Rachel is visiting the Toddler II room; she will officially move there on Friday. Her first report today:

"Rachel had fun playing with pretend food and utensils and was a big helper at clean-up time!"

She really is a great helper, and I can't take credit; it just sort of happened. She still carries her shoes to the drawer in her bedroom every night; tonight, after we'd had a blast playing "ball" upstairs (this consists of her throwing plastic balls around the room that she gets out of a big tub that Doug & Linda gave us last year), she picked up almost every one! I tried to get her to pick up a stray ball that had rolled under the low coffee table; when she wouldn't, I pretended to have difficulty reaching it. She immediately ducked her head under the table, crawled to get it, then crawled back, toddled over the bin and threw it in!

She also is good about throwing food she's finished into the garbage can. I don't even need to help her lift the lid anymore; she does it herself and throws in her mostly-eaten nightly apple.

When I shared my worries about her language development (see previous post) with one of the daycare attendants, she immediately said, "Liz told me that Rachel is super-intelligent. Most of the kids, even those going into Toddler IIIs, don't have a lot of words yet. I wouldn't worry about it at all!"

Tonight she said "hair" and what sounded like "quatre" (French for "four") while she was playing with the crayons. She also loves pointing to noses in books and then her nose, mommy's nose, mommy's eyes, ducky's eyes, etc. It's adorable.