"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??