22 months old!

As usual, I'm late. So, what else is new? Here's the Rachel birthday update for this month:

--She now wants to "read" to herself, so the other night as she sat on her little red plastic chair "reading" "Go Dog Go" -- which she has memorized to the point of being able to correctly say, "Big Dog/Little Dog" -- I pulled out a Wallace Stegner book and read right along with her until she indicated she wanted me to haul her on my lap and read aloud to her. I'm already dreaming of winter nights with her in a beanbag chair in front of the fireplace, buried in some book, while I read a magazine nearby and Drew reads the latest book he has to review for The Seattle Times. Ah, bliss...

--Her newest word is, "cuddle" although it comes out sounding like "cu-yul!" She likes us to cuddle her while she's eating, when I pick her up from daycare, and any other time she needs a hug. I'm mastering the art of putting my arm around her and pulling her close to me while she eats challah and I try to eat salad and read the paper.

--She LOVES being chased. She'll run into the living room or her bedroom, collapse on the carpet and exclaim delightedly, "All fall down!"

--She also loves being sung to. Her favorite songs that she requests over and over: "Baa baa black sheep," "Twinkle twinkle little star," and "You are my sunshine."

--She drinks a lot of water, especially after daycare. I think it must be dry in there.

--She has started to tell us when she's gone "pee pee" and "poopy" but hasn't indicated any interest in giving up diapers. Maybe later this year?

--She's still dependent on her pacifier when she's eating, if she's mad that we won't race to feed her or that we won't spoon food into her mouth. She also uses it at night and during the day on weekends. We are about to begin the weaning process.

--She has begun to pick up TRASH. Usually she makes a face and says, "yucky!" What a good little Oregon girl!

--She can identify where "mommy cah" lives (in the garage); "daddy cah" (out front) and "rachey cah" (near "mommy cah" in the garage). If we could take Rachey cah to daycare, we would, because she LOVES it.

--Now that she has all her letters, we've moved on to colors. She can correctly identify blue, green, pink, purple, yellow and brown. We're still working on burnt sienna (ha ha).

--She now has a nightly routine of covering her three rubber duckies with the washcloth, turning to Drew and saying, "sh! sh! sh!" The duckies go nie-nie, just like Rachel.

--She has the best laugh -- it's so infectious. I think it'll turn into a full-on belly laugh when she's older, just like her mommy....

--Speaking of mommy, she still looks nothing like me. Her face is still all Drew, as everyone constantly points out.

--She's got a strong sense of herself. If you ask her if she's a baby or a toddler she'll say, "toddle" very emphatically. Also, "no baby shoes" -- she wears TODDLE shoes (which are really a pair of cool-looking purple Converse high-tops that Drew bought for her one weekend. What, you thought I would buy such a thing? But she looks really, really hip in them!

--Every night that I pick her up from daycare, we get home, I take off her shoes, we go to her bedroom, she drops them in her drawer and pulls out her slippers (see-poos, in Rachel-ese). I take her in my lap and put them on her, then we go into MY room and she gets MY slippers from beside the bed and hands them to me. It's the sweetest thing you can imagine!

--She can unzip her windbreaker and take it off without mommy or daddy's help.

--She loves playing with miniature blocks. She's especially fond of the cylindrical ones -- she takes them out of the box and arranges them very carefully on the coffee table in a pattern that only makes sense to her.

--Friends of ours say she looks so intelligent. That's probably because she has a habit of really concentrating on something when she's thinking or trying to puzzle out how something works.

--She takes her nightly fluoride drops -- the ones she used to hate and shut her mouth and cry about -- quite willingly. Even eagerly -- she'll remind me to give them to her by reaching for the container.

--She says "I love you" almost every time I say it to her. I can never hear enough of it.

--Her favorite food to ask for is, "cookies?" which she says in a hilarious drawn-out way, as if she's trying to get away with something. It's hard to resist.

--She is such a wonderful daughter that I constantly ask myself, "what did I do to deserve her?"