she's making leaps

Rachel continually amazes me with her thought processes. On Monday, I babysat another baby girl, Kyler, who is just learning to walk. As she crawled around, I caught her almost crawling into our fireplace. I picked her up and showed her the rocks, and told her that's a no-no. She stared at me blankly and then fled the scene. Later, I got out Rachel's walk-behind toy, and Kyler strolled back and forth for a while. Rachel was eying that toy, and, as soon as Kyler let go of it, Rachel dashed to it, grabbed it, and rolled it over and onto the rocks. She then pointed back and forth from Kyler to the toy, as if to taunt her. It was hard for me to believe she was baiting Kyler, but it was SO deliberate, so I can't deny it either. She's a nut.

Earlier that day, Rachel was trying to climb onto our coffee table, something she knows is a no-no. I reminded her a time or two, and then told her she would get a time out the next time she did it. She nodded yes and went over to get a floor pillow, placed it in her time-out corner (she knows the procedure), and sat down, laughing. "Okay," I said, waving my finger in her face "you will sit in time out for one minute because you were climbing on the table." She sat there, solemn, while I moved away and pretended to ignore her for a minute. I came back and told her she was all finished. She went straight over to her Elmo, who she carried to the coffee table, where he proceeded to climb. She scolded him, "No, no--out!" She placed him on the time out pillow. "Minute," she said, waving her finger. She walked away briefly, and then returned, "All finished." Well, Elmo was quickly back to the table, climbing again. This time, though, as Rachel began to scold him, she had a thought. She dropped her Elmo, went to her toys, and pulled out the giant red foam finger Jarrad brought home from a game last year. She came back to Elmo, wearing the finger. She stuck it right in his face and waved it around saying, "no, no...no, no." HA! That must be what I look like to her when I'm waving my giant finger in her face. I got a great laugh out of that.