oh! She's so grown-up!

While Rachel and I were cuddling in her bed tonight, I made sure to thank her profusely for all the grown-up things she did today. A sampling:

--At Oregon Park, a cool new park we discovered off Sandy Boulevard, I lugged her snack bag and the car keys to a table while we raced around the play structure. "I need a REST!" Rachel said, huffing and puffing. We were sitting on a bench when she said she wanted the snack bag. I pointed it out to her on a distant picnic table and she immediately offered to get it. She lugged the whole thing back, plus the car keys, without a fuss. Then, on the long walk back to the car, she offered to carry the bag all the way.

--At home, she sat in the living room paging through her fairy tales book while I made her dinner. Then she ate a whole bunch of chicken, part of a piece of steak, and asked for dessert. I told her I wanted her to finish her rotini. We had a discussion about how many bites it would take before she could get dessert, and I said probably more than 12. She stopped counting at 34! And almost all of the rotini was gone! I gave her ice cream. "I want a lot of ice cream," she said. "What's a lot?" I teased. "A hundred," she answered. "A million!"

--After we finished reading books and cuddling in the glider, she brushed her teeth all by herself and insisted on getting her washcloth out and washing her face all by herself. She let me put soap on the cloth, but that was it. Then she did a great job of washing her hands and wiping them on the hand towel.

--In the bedroom, she took off her clothes, grabbed the basket where her pajamas are kept, dragged it to the middle of the room, searched for her snowflake-covered jammies, smoothed the pink gingham lining of the basket to make it look pretty, then lugged the basket back to its place under the changing table. Then she insisted on putting her jammes on all by herself.

And in the past few days, she has:

--Voluntarily gotten the dustpan and brush after a particularly crumbly meal, swept up the crumbs under her seat, dumped them in the garbage and returned both to their place in the closet. Drew didn't even suggest she do it; she shocked him by volunteering.

--Gotten herself dressed in the morning. Today she told Drew, "I can get dressed myself. Go downstairs and brush your teeth, Daddy." When he returned she had put herself in what he described as a perfectly acceptable outfit. (Of course I never got to see it because she peed all over herself at naptime, which means she's not fully independent. But, oh, she's getting there!)

This is why we call her Rachel the Wonder Child.