Sunday afternoon/evening

We went to a kids' party today -- it was a birthday celebration in honor of Lukas, a kid in Rachel's class who is turning 5. Most everyone from St. James was there, including one of the day care staff members who just gave birth to a little girl, Harper. They almost named her Harper Lee after the author, but in the end just stuck with Harper. Their son is Vicente, a kid around Rachel's age who is pretty aggressive -- after Ben, he's one of the most aggressive hitters/biters in the class, but he doesn't seem to bother Rachel much.

Afterward, Rachel, her friend Devin and Devin's mom, Linda and I headed to the Hanna Andersson outlet store in Lake Oswego. Hanna Andersson is a line of adorable and overpriced Swedish clothes, but I found a couple of bargains (including a floaty white lacy tutu-y thing that Rachel may wear for Passover when we go to NYC in a few weeks) and Linda and I had a good talk. We are facing similar issues at work so it was interesting to see how the world of architecture is similar to the world of academia.

Then after we got home, Drew and Rachel went grocery shopping while I read the Sunday Times, and then we all headed over to our friend Sarah's for dinner. Rachel really likes Sarah's son, Noah, who is almost 6, and they had a quite the time running through the house, pummeling Drew (a role he seems to enjoy), playing with plastic swords, screeching, etc. This is what life would be like if we had two, which gives me pause; after a while the noise and roughhousing were hard to take. Could be because I was tired out from catering and from the switch to Daylight Savings Time. Also was feeling a little gloomy because of the rain and cold, although it's entirely normal for this time of year. We ended the evening at 8:15, Drew just got Rachel down after reading her books and giving her a bath, and I am almost ready to conk out.

***

"OK," Rachel announced today. "I'm gonna marry Lukas."
"Why?" I asked.
"Lukas wants to marry me," she replied, "I want to marry Noah, and Noah doesn't want to marry me, so I'm going to marry Lukas. If he agrees. When we grow up."

***

This tells you all you need to know about our daughter and her personality: This morning she knocked softly on our bedroom door after Drew had gotten up and was showering. I opened the door and Rachel started crying. "I can't go to the party because I threw up in my bed!" she cried. "I can't give my germs to all the other kids!" It turns out that she had been dry-heaving and threw up some liquid and mucus, but not much else. "Did you throw up when you were a little kid?" she asked me, and I took her in my lap and we rocked back and forth in the glider for a while.

"I woke up and my tummy hurt, and I read some books and my tummy still hurt, and I tried to take a nap and my tummy STILL hurt!" she said. "I didn't knock on your door because I didn't want to wake you up."