another pleasant valley sunday

Sundays are so long for little Rachel. She invariably misses her morning nap, so her routine is usually way off. Today was a little better than usual though. She caught a catnap on the way to church and on the way home, so she went down at her normal time for her afternoon nap and slept almost 1.5 hours. We visited Lisa, Matt, and Leah this afternoon, and we got to try out Leah's highchair, which Rachel loved. I've been thinking Rachel hates her highchair (she has some strange highchair behaviors), so we might be investing in one like Leah's soon. On the way home, we stopped by to see our friends Glenn and Jessica, and Glenn's mom Kathy. Rachel had fun looking at a funny book and jumping up and down with Ms. Kathy. Glenn calls every once in a while when he's passing by our house to see if he can stop by and "squish the baby." So cute! Of course, we forgot to take our camera with us on these outings, so no pictures of our friends. I tried to take one with my phone, but it looked pretty terrible. Maybe next time!

Yesterday I was able to buy two gently used Haute brand diapers off Craigslist for Rachel, and I LOVE them. I've been wanting to try them. They come in such cute colors and they feel really sturdy. Finding them used is a blessing. We now have three of the fancy cloth pocket diapers, so Rachel should be able to sleep in cloth full-time now. (I was using disposables at night when her one FuzziBunz pocket diaper was dirty.) I'm so excited! I would love to fill out Rachel's cloth diaper collection with more like these, but they are really expensive, and the others seem to work fine for daytime use. Anyway, cloth diapering is becoming a fun little adventure!

Rachel is definitely saying, "mamamamama" now! It's exciting to hear, and I think maybe she does make the connection. Most of the day, everything is "dadadada," but when she cries from her crib, she says, "mamamamama." It's so sweet. A sidenote of interest: she consistently calls the potty, "dadada."

Progress Report

	potty	diaper
peepee	7	7
poop	0	2

cute moment

After Rachel's nap this afternoon, she peepeed in her potty. As usual, I encouraged her to say, "bye bye, peepee" before I left the room to clean up. She usually looks interested and sits politely while I leave. This time, however, as soon as I said, "say, 'bye bye peepee,'" Rachel sprint-crawled toward the door to escape as soon as it opened. She had a big grin on her face because she knew exactly what was going to happen next. So I took her with me. When we got back, I put the potty in its usual spot. Rachel played for a moment and then giggled and looked up at the potty, waving her fist and saying, "dadada." "Yeah, Rachel, that's the potty," as I helped her make the potty sign. She smiled and kept waving at it. "Do you need to use it again?" I sat her down, and, sure enough, she went again!

non-toy toy of the day

I stayed in Rachel's class at church this morning. For the most part, she didn't really care that I was there, nor did she care that I was tending to other babies. Many of the other babies wore shoes to church, but they were constantly falling off. Rachel, who LOVES to play with shoes, was always able to find the missing shoes. Once, I saw her putting a tiny brown shoe in her mouth. I took it from her and put it away, only to turn around and see her with a large white shoe in her hands! I hadn't even seen that shoe! But Rachel did.