Car

Drew called me last night while I was racing to buy a blackout curtain for Rachel's bedroom. She is beginning to wake up earlier, and we think it's because it's getting lighter and lighter earlier and earlier in the morning.

"Guess what Rachel did?" he asked.

"What?" I said.

He told me that she pointed to a picture of a car in a book he was reading to her and she said, "car."

"Of course, then she pointed to a train and said car, too," he observed.

I was still impressed. A train is just a grown-up car on tracks, after all...

And the word of the day is...

SHOE. Rachel pointed to my foot today and I said, "that's Mommy's shoe."
Then she pointed to her foot and said, "shoe."

"Did you say SHOE, honey?" I asked.

"SHOE!" she said.

"YAY!" I yelled, wildly clapping. "I think this kid's gonna talk after all!"

Baby Rachel's mommy

Our friend Judy sent me this e-mail today:

Ruthie was "reading" me a bedtime stories the other night from her "My First Fairy Tales" book, and I asked her, where did you get that book? She replied: Lisa gave it to me. She is Baby Rachel's mommy.

I think that "Baby Rachel's mommy" is a MUCH better byline than "Lisa Grace Lednicer." Don't you agree?

Moo, baa, la la la!

This has become my favorite book. It's by the irrepressible children's author Sandra Boynton. There are pictures of animals with accompanying noises, and every night I'll point to a picture of a cow and say, moo!

"Moo!," says Rachel after taking the pacifier out of her mouth. She sits on my lap, with Spot in one hand and ducky in the other.

"Baa!" I say, pointing to a picture of a sheep.

"Ba!" she says.

"La la la!" I say, pointing to a picture of three little pigs.

"lalalalalalalala," she says.

She can't quite manage "quack" or "neigh" yet. But she tries. Her "meow," comes out more as a babylike squeak: "aagghhh!"

We end, of course, with a cuddle.

Itsy Bitsy Spider...

That's what I sing to Rachel after her bath. She gets so unhappy when I hoist her out of the tub and towel her off, probably because the bathroom is so cold -- it fronts directly outside and we have no insulation.

So, I wrap her up quickly in her flower towel and then sing the Itsy Bitsy Spider verrry sloowwwly. She smiles. Then we go faster! And faster! And faster! "OK, Rachel," I say before speeding up. "We're gonna try it a little faster because I think you're old enough, OK?" Ready, set, GO!!!

She ends up giggling by the end of it.

The song brings me back to my time in Africa, in the first village I stayed in called Keetmanshoop. I taught at the "colored" school, and one of the things I did was sing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" to large groups of kids, hand motions and all. "OK, kids, get your spiders ready!" I'd say. Then I'd lead them all in song. There's even a picture of me doing it, in a dress and long, long hair.

And now, 18 years later, I'm singing the same song to my own wonderful daughter. I thought it would happen, someday, vaguely, but the reality is so sweet.

Toddler IIs

Rachel is visiting the Toddler II room; she will officially move there on Friday. Her first report today:

"Rachel had fun playing with pretend food and utensils and was a big helper at clean-up time!"

She really is a great helper, and I can't take credit; it just sort of happened. She still carries her shoes to the drawer in her bedroom every night; tonight, after we'd had a blast playing "ball" upstairs (this consists of her throwing plastic balls around the room that she gets out of a big tub that Doug & Linda gave us last year), she picked up almost every one! I tried to get her to pick up a stray ball that had rolled under the low coffee table; when she wouldn't, I pretended to have difficulty reaching it. She immediately ducked her head under the table, crawled to get it, then crawled back, toddled over the bin and threw it in!

She also is good about throwing food she's finished into the garbage can. I don't even need to help her lift the lid anymore; she does it herself and throws in her mostly-eaten nightly apple.

When I shared my worries about her language development (see previous post) with one of the daycare attendants, she immediately said, "Liz told me that Rachel is super-intelligent. Most of the kids, even those going into Toddler IIIs, don't have a lot of words yet. I wouldn't worry about it at all!"

Tonight she said "hair" and what sounded like "quatre" (French for "four") while she was playing with the crayons. She also loves pointing to noses in books and then her nose, mommy's nose, mommy's eyes, ducky's eyes, etc. It's adorable.

18-month checkup

Here are Rachel's latest stats, and then a long entry follows. I have thoughtfully put the stats first so those of you who don't want to listen to a long worry rant can skip the entry:

Her head measures 18.5 inches, 50th percentile
Her weight is 22 pounds, 1 oz. (lower end of the scale, but I didn't catch the percentile)
Her length (height, it's called now) is 33.5 inches, 90th percentile

So, she is almost off the charts in terms of height. Dr. Rappaport said that may be why she looks so thin -- she is so tall for her age. We told him what we feed her, and he completely approved -- at least we don't give her Cheetos and chicken nuggets, and he liked the Gardenburgers and whole wheat everything else -- but he's still a little concerned about her weight. So we need to bring her back in two months for a weight check.

He also was worried that she doesn't say a lot of words clearly yet. She says mommy, papa, cra-ca, bye-bye, an occasional hi and that's it. So we need to schedule an audiology test, and then she'll also be tested by a speech and early language person, and then an early intervention person who may have to give us exercises that we need to do with her at home...blah blah blah until I quietly started freaking out. A good friend of ours, a mom whom I trust, told me the "20 by 20" rule - 20 words by 20 months. Rachel isn't even NEAR that. She's a kid who loves books, they're the first things she reaches for in the morning, and she's excellent at following directions, but she can't speak. I was devastated. Why are we even in the position of having to test her? I just thought she'd start speaking. I didn't think she'd need any help!

Then I started to feel guilty. We haven't put Rachel anywhere near a TV and when we're in the house we play NPR, jazz or classical music in the background. And we read to her a lot. But I confess that sometimes when I'm alone with her during dinner, I tend to read the newspaper instead of talk to her all the time. (I tried reading the newspaper aloud to her when she was littler but I lost the meaning of the stories because I was focused on reading aloud. So, I stopped). And sometimes when we take walks I just like to walk in silence rather than chatter away constantly. Could that be contributing to the slowness of language development?

"She does everything late!" I wailed to Drew, who conveniently went to Seattle today. "She walked late..."
"She ARRIVED late, remember?" he reminded me.

Luckily I had a talk with my friend Dan, who has raised two motivated, intelligent, well-adjusted children who now have children of their own. He told me his son, Daniel, didn't talk until he was 2, most likely because his big sister, Lauren, was talking so much. Lauren is a high school language arts teacher; Daniel just landed an amazing job with the U.S. Patent Office evaluating patent applications for biotech firms. He has his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Virginia and is making more money than me in his 20s.

So I will try not to worry. Much.