Outside! Outside!

Drew reports that after breakfast this morning Rachel toddled to the living room, picked up his heavy, clunky shoes, brought them into the kitchen and set them down with an expectant look on her face.

Drew started laughing. "Do you want to go outside, sweetie?" he said.

"Ow-side! Ow-side!" she exclaimed.

He put on her shoes and coat, and then his shoes and his coat. By the time he got to the living room she was waiting by the door, pink inflatable soccer ball in hand, ready for play.

Rachel does more cool stuff!

Last night, Rachel said her first three-word phrase: "Moe cha-cha, pease!" (this is Rachel-ese for, "more challah, please!")

I was so delighted that I called Drew right away. I put Rachel on the phone and she said, "hi!" When it was time to hang up she said very sweetly with a smile on her face, "bye, Daddy!"

"Oh, my little heart just BROKE!" he exclaimed to me before hanging up.

Then as the bus was going by, she waved her hand and said, "bye-bye, bus!" Never thought I'd be so glad to be living on a bus line!

Taking a walk with Rachel...

is never simple. We set off at around 5 p.m. yesterday for a family walk, and Rachel was fascinated with the curbs on each block. She kept stepping down, then running forward, then running back, then stepping UP on the curb...and so on. Drew bought her a little pink soccer ball and she discovered how to KICK yesterday.

"I have a funny feeling that she's going to end up being a jock," he said to me last night when we were about to go to sleep.

"How can you tell?" I asked.

"I don't know...maybe it's because she's so active," he said.

Her newest words are "mole" for Mommy's mole on her left hand; "coat," and "yeah." She says "yeah" a lot, and over the past week or so she's actually been able to answer us. Like, yesterday I took her out of her crib after her nap and she pointed to her crotch and said, "pee!"

"Oh, you peed," I said. "Would you like me to change your diaper?"

"Yeah," she said.

She's a person! A little PERSON!

She's adding more words!

--"dese" for "these" -- pointing at a pair of light purple pants she wanted to wear to daycare (Drew has taken to referring to daycare as "school")

--"yeah" or "yes" for "yes"

--"cer-al" for "cereal"

--"thank you," for "thank you." She can say it pretty clearly!

She also whined tonight when she saw me putting away dishes from the dishwasher. She calmed down when I gave her bowls and silverware to put on the table. She wanted to help!

Plus she's very generous about giving kisses. Everytime we ask for one, she gives us one. And occasionally, she'll purse her lips to indicate that she wants one herself!

New nighttime routine?

With a little reluctance and some prompting, Rachel picked up her shoes and toddled into her bedroom tonight. As she opened her shoe drawer, she spied a cute pair of pink and white slippers that we put on her feet over the weekend.

She sat down on the foor and tried to put them on! So, I helped her.

Then, as we were passing by the changing table, she pointed toward the basket and said what sounded an awful lot like "bib." So, I got one out and she put it on!

THEN she marched into the kitchen because she was ready for dinner.

Drew goes on a double date

While at the park yesterday, a little girl -- Drew says she was about 2 1/2 years old -- named Emma was on the slide next to Rachel. When they finished sliding, she said, "hi, Baby!" in a very friendly way. Drew said Rachel responded with her usual facial expression that said, "who the h--- are you?" But then Emma went to the low concrete wall where Drew was sitting and patted the space next to her. Rachel toddled over and sat down. Then she patted the space on the other side of her, and Drew slid over.

Then Rachel got up and gave Drew her hand as if she wanted to lead him somewhere. Emma did the same thing with his other hand. He called over his shoulder to Emma's mom, "Um, I think I'm on a double date!"

It ended when Emma indicated she wanted Drew to help her while she tried to use the monkey bars. He told her she should probably get her mommy to help her.

"Bye-bye cars! Bye-bye park!"

Drew called me while I was at the grocery store. He insisted that he heard Rachel say goodbye to the cars and the park as they were leaving Laurelhurt Park. (I had some writing projects I needed to finish up, so she hung out with Drew this afternoon).

Rachel slept quite late this morning, until 9 or so. Guess it's because of the return to Daylight Savings Time, which has left me really, really tired. Think I'll turn in early tonight.

20 months!

Rachel turned 20 months Thursday! Can 2 years old be far away??
She is:

--developing quite the vocabulary. Let's see if I can list all the words she says, some of which are more clear than others -- go, help, purple, ball, cup, hat, shoes, socks, mommy, daddy, please, no, challah (cha-cha), water (wa-WA-dee), yay, wow, hi, bye-bye, uh-oh, car, bus, baby, toddle... You get the idea.

--exhibiting a will of her own, especially at bedtime. She usually has so much fun reading books (or else she just wants to stay up late:)) that she starts crying when I announce it's time for her bath. She usually calms down pretty quickly, though.

--more comfortable with the toothbrush. Now she actually wants to do it herself -- and has a fun time in the process!

--very aware when one of us is gone. So, if she's with Drew, she'll say, "Mommy! Mommy!" a lot. When it's just me, she'll point at the photos on the bookshelf in her bedroom and say, "Daddy! Daddy!"

--really, really, really into books. She'd have us read to her morning, noon and night if she could get away with it. We are delighted and hope it sticks.

--getting more independent. She usually finishes dinner before we (or I) do, and so she hops out of her booster seat (with our help) and runs into the living room to play. She seems to be getting used to the idea that we need to finish dinner before we can join her, so she either occupies herself there or toddles back to the kitchen table with...a book, and plunks herself down on the floor to read.

--discovering new stuff at the park all the time. Drew was with her last weekend and said she tried to climb the LADDER. She managed it with a lot of help from Daddy!

--giving kisses, unbidden. We call them Rachel kisses because they involve putting her lips on ours. She makes sure that if she kisses one of us, she then kisses the other. And two nights ago, she kissed Spot! I heard a smacking sound, so maybe she has mastered it...

--getting large hands. Sometimes she drums them idly on her leg or on the table, and I think with a pang that she's acquiring grown-habits.

--very into cars. She likes a green Matchbox car and a yellow and green plastic car. She likes the sensation of having us run the cars up and down her tummy and back.

--doing more big-kid stuff at daycare: playing with toy dishes, sitting in a pop-up tent, watching the big kids dance.

--trying more adult things, such as marching over to the car after daycare is over, demanding the keys, trying to open the door all by herself and, THEN, climbing into the passenger side of the car!

--getting more and more hair down the back of her neck, but it's still sparse up front. Wonder when I'll be able to tie it into ponytails?

--running! But she's careful not to go too fast or go out of Mommy's sight just yet.

--bothered by open doors and drawers (oh, she's my kid all right). She'll say "uh-oh" if she notices something is open and will immediately move to close it.

--able to pick out her own clothes. The matching part comes later...

--quite popular at daycare, all the little kids line up to say "hi!" to her when she arrives, hand in Mommy's hand. Then one of the attendants scoops her up and she forgets about us.

--a whiz with stairs. Walks up and down them, holding onto the handrail, as if she's been doing so all her life.

--developing manners. Or, at least, the ability to say "more, please!" We are working on getting her to say "no thank you," because "no," however cute and decisive it sounds, is just plain rude when said all alone.

--a gift in this time of anxiety. It's hard to believe she won't remember how worried we were.

Baby sign language?

A bunch of moms in my moms' group were very big on baby sign language. One even rented a video on it for all of us to watch. I tried to memorize a couple of easy signs but then just gave up. The argument in favor of it is to prevent pre-verbal babies and toddlers from getting frustrated when they don't have the words to communicate their needs. But we're pretty good at anticipating what Rachel is trying to tell us, so I never taught her the sign language. Plus, I didn't want it to delay her language development.

Turns out that daycare may have taken the baton away from me. Rachel has started stabbing her index finger into her palm when she wants more of something. We believe it is the sign language sign for "more." (Or in Rachel words, "moe."). Wonder how much more sign language she'll pick up?

I want to wear THIS shirt, Mommy

I've started to let Rachel choose her clothes in the morning, with the understanding that, say, going shirtless or pants-less isn't an option.

She's so crazy for polka dots, I thought she'd choose her pink onesie with the white polka dots yesterday. But no! She pawed through her clothes basket and chose a white long-sleeve shirt with a collar. I paired it with a pair of pink flowered cords, which she really liked.

Soon enough we'll be laying out her clothes for school the next day...

No more cell phone for you, Rachel!

We are, to put it delicately, having a cash-flow problem. As in, the slack in our budget is now gone and we are figuratively scrabbling under the couch for pennies. With that in mind, Drew began studying our telecommications bill with the zeal of an auditor trying to ferret out corruption in a remote Central American nation.

He turned up three mysterious charges from Verizon. Turns out that SOMEONE had downloaded a GPS program, NFL wallpaper (!) and three ringtones.

Anyone who knows my aversion to football knows that this could not possibly have been done by me. And Drew carries a map around in his head and cares nothing about ringtones, so it couldn't have been him, either.

"Do you, by any chance, have a small child?" the helpful Verizon representative asked.

"Why yes, in fact, we do!" Drew said.

The rep said this is usually an issue with teenagers, not toddlers. So this means that Rachel's cell phone days are over until she becomes a whiny pre-adolescent and demands a cell phone with texting ability like all her obnoxious little friends. Oooh, I just can't wait. Until then, she'll have to content herself with my dead work phone, which she loves to take out of her toybox, hold to her ear and say, "hi!" into.

I'm done with dinner, Mommy

For the last week, Rachel has finished her dinner before we finished ours, so we unbuckled the strap on her booster seat to let her run around and play. She usually wants to climb up on our laps while we eat. I am strictly against this, but Drew is slightly more indulgent and hauls her on his lap a lot. To her credit, she's a lot more manageable than when she was a baby and we had to protect our placemats, plates, glasses and cutlery!

Last night we were alone for Shabbat dinner (Drew was in Seattle Thursday and Friday) and I helped her out of the booster seat. When she whined to be picked up I said, "honey, Mommy's not finished with dinner yet. You can play or you can sit in your chair but you can't sit on Mommy's lap until she's finished."

I felt guilty, of course, because I was reading a fantastic story in The New Yorker about Richard Daley (the son) and I didn't want to be interrupted. So, Rachel padded into the living room, picked up one of her small board books and brought it into the kitchen. "Scissors! Scissors!" she said, pointing to a picture of a bicycle. Then she tried to get me to pick her up and read to her, but I again said I had to finish eating.

So, she plunked down next to me on the floor and started "reading" to herself aloud, burbling happily all the time. I was so impressed that I finished my salad, announced that it was time for play, and so we went upstairs to the attic and threw balls around for a while.

To hell with the dishes, right? She's only young once...

Rachel has a memory!

Two nights ago we were reading from a book called, "Ten little fingers and ten little toes," a really delightful book about babies born all over the world and the fact that everyone is alike because we all have...10 little fingers and 10 little toes.

There's a verse that says, "there was one little baby who was born in the hills/and another who suffered from sneezes and chills." And when she was only a few months old and wanted me to read that book to her EVERY NIGHT, I used to pretend I was sick when I talked about sneezes and chills. "Ah-choo!" I'd say, and pretend to look sick. Rachel was quite concerned and used to snuggle against me, as if to comfort me.

Well. Two nights ago, when I got to that page, before I could say anything she said, "Ah-CHOO!" and looked quite pleased with herself. "Oh, Rachel, you REMEMBERED!" I said.

I hadn't read the book to her in MONTHS! How on Earth did she remember??

Polka-dot girl

Rachel LOVES dots! She points them out on a nightgown I have and she also favors the two polka-dot onesies she owns -- one is pink with brown polka-dot sleeves and another is a pink shirt with white polka dots. While I was dressing her in the pink one today, she pointed to the quilt we've hung on the wall -- it has polka dots, too!

Her favorite color appears to be yellow, since she loves her yellow crayon. So, this weekend Drew is going to hunt for more polka dot-covered clothing. If anyone can tell me where I can find a yellow polka dot dress, Rachel would be quite pleased to know!

Noooo!!

Ah, yes. Rachel has discovered the word "no," followed by beak-the-door-down wailing that can make your heart break if you're not a meany like her mommy and daddy.

"NOOOO!" she wails, when try to change her diaper.

"NOOOO!" when we try to put her into a sleepsuit she doesn't like.

"NOOOO!" when I didn't honor her choice of clothing today -- a pink shirt and brown pants. She had worn it earlier in the week and I wanted to dress her in something different. Finally I just gave in. It didn't really matter, I reasoned, since the outfit wasn't dirty and it was appropriate for the weather.

It was eerie how fast she calmed down and burbled happily again.

Big-girl car seat!

After 19-plus months of making do with one car seat and two cars -- which meant that Drew and I were constantly taking stuff out of our trunks and putting it in the other person's car, juggling our schedules so that one of us had my car (which has the car seat) when it was their turn to take Rachel in to daycare -- we finally broke down and got her a bigger car seat.

Drew bought it today; it cost $180 and looks like something NASA designed. It has armrests, a cup holder and it converts to a booster seat so that we won't have to replace it -- she'll just go right to seat belts when she's old enough! It's also forward-facing so she can see everything passing by as we drive home.

We'll replace the seat in my car when she's 2, and that will be last car seat we'll have to buy. Yay!

Of course, this means my little girl is growing up. She WANTS to grow up, Drew reminded me. Still, the day we get rid of the car seats for good will be a sad day for Rachel's mommy.

Moe, pease!

"Moe" is Rachel's word for "more." "Pease," is how she says "please." We started telling her last night to use "please" after "more." As in, when she asks for more challah, we say, "more PLEASE," and she says "pease!"

After telling her a couple of times, she said, unbidden, "moe, pease!" We hugged her and kissed her and told her "thank you, Rachel!"

My goal is for her to have such exquisite manners that she puts other kids in casual Oregon to shame.

Yay for Daddy!

Rachel's latest sweet habit: When Drew sings to her at night, she lifts up her head, says a soft and sleepy "yay!" then snuggles back into his chest for the next song.

"She never does that with me," I said wistfully last night.

Then I comforted myself with the thought that Drew, bless him, can't carry a tune for more than a few bars. She's probably applauding his effort rather than his skill.

It's spring!

Well, it feels like it, anyway. The daffodils are out, the dogwoods are in bloom, the air is slightly warm...it feels as if we've left our very mild winter behind. My worry is, what's going to happen when April and May come around? Will we have a second spring or will it already be summer?

I took Rachel to the park yesterday while Drew went grocery shopping. Doug and Linda came up and generously gave us a revolving egg-shaped chair with a hood that the boys had liked when they were Rachel's age. She loved twirling around in it and pulling the hood over herself to hide. We're looking forward to the day she tries to hide while reading a book and doesn't want to deal with Mommy and Daddy.

I was pretty tired. Between watching the Winter Olympics and recovering from the intense stress of worrying about whether I'd lose my job during last week's layoffs (I didn't, and I feel extremely lucky but sad for the folks I knew who did) I haven't gotten much sleep. So instead of accompanying Rachel up and down the slide, I just watched her as she wandered off to the ramp of the play structure at Laurelhurst Park, climbed the stairs to the slide and slid down, all by herself! She did this over and over and over. I loved watching her, although I also remarked to Linda that it was nice to be able to have a grownup conversation while our kids horsed around.

B-O-P!

Yes, folks, Rachel can actually identify those three letters!

Let's hear it for B! Beeeee!!!!!!!

Let's hear it for O! Ohhhhh!!!

Let's hear it for P! Peeeee!!!!!!!!!!!

You can point to those letters anywhere -- the magnetic ones on the fridge, on the Cheerios box, in a book...and she will consistently say what they are.

We can already tell she's going to be WAY smarter than her parents.

She also knows that "p" is a word. As in, that's what you do down "there." So sometimes she'll point to her crotch and say, "pee." This morning she pointed to Drew's crotch and said the same thing.

I wonder if she's ready to start potty training?