who is she kidding?

Rachel was contentedly playing today when I said to her, per routine, "Rachel, I'm going to count to five, and then we need to go sit on the potty." I counted, expecting to be met with objection, but at the end of the count, she dutifully stood and headed toward the bathroom, where she cooperatively allowed me to sit her on the potty. "Wow," I thought to myself, "I didn't think she'd agree so easily"--she had been so focused on her task. Almost as I was having that thought, Rachel looked down and said, "Pssss, pssss, pssss, pssss. All done." She squirmed off the potty, and I rolled with laughter. It seemed as if this had been her plan all along, to somehow appease me so she could get back to her play.

Just an FYI, and because I haven't blogged about pottying in a while, Rachel does a pretty good job telling me when she needs to go, but she's not 100%, so I still try to preempt her when I can. She wears undies during the day (the kind with a little extra padding, just in case), but she does wear a diaper for sleeping, partly because I don't know when to believe her when she hollers "POTTY" from her crib--it's her favorite delay tactic. Sometimes I go to her, and she usually just grins, as if to say, "gotcha!" and then she says she does not, in fact, need to potty. It's been a long adventure, and still going!

love a freebie

Today was Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry's, so, since there's a shop right down the street, I took Rachel at 11:55am and waited for them to open. My poor baby is currently suffering from Hand-Foot-Mouth Disease (don't be alarmed--it's just a virus), so I was glad to get to spoil her with some yummy strawberry ice cream. She didn't mind either...

sleep talker

A couple of nights ago, I had been asleep for a while, and Jarrad was just turning in, when we heard on the baby monitor, out of the silence of Rachel's room, "OKAAAAAAAAY!" followed by silence.

Rachel is apparently dreaming more now. We've caught her talking in her sleep on more than one occasion, but the "okay" incident was the funniest to date. Rachel uses this excited expression fairly often (ex. "Rachel, do you want to go outside?" "OKAAAAAAAAY!"). It is usually followed by dancing around in circles and trying to figure out which direction to go to make the suggestion a reality.

This afternoon, she took an unusually long nap. Forty minutes into it, she said "Elmo, Elmo, Elmo." She mumbled and grunted a bit more and stirred some before falling silent again.

She's getting funnier and funnier, that girl, and she talks so much now! She seems to narrate everything she does, even when no one is listening. She entertains herself well, so I find myself often forgetting to put her in her room for morning quiet time. I am able to get a lot done while she either follows me around, imitating everything I do or while she plays by herself with whatever toy interests her at the moment.

It is also most fun to see how she sees me. Last week, I was going through my closet and pulling out clothes to donate. Since then, Rachel sometimes goes into my closet, where she thumbs through my lower-hanging clothes, thoughtfully saying, "nooo...nooo...nooo..." She's so helpful. She copies my words, my inflection--everything. She even recreates our routines when playing alone with her stuffed animals and dolls, and I hear her tell her little friends things I say to her. As her vocabulary grows, life just gets more and more interesting...

boys and girls

Mommy: Maybe when Daddy gets home, Mommy will go to the grocery store!

(Rachel points to herself)

Mommy: You want to go to the grocery store?

Rachel: Mmm hmmm!

Mommy: What's at the grocery store?

Rachel (looking up toward the ceiling): Ummmm...boys!

This conversation had me in stitches. I don't know what made her say boys, except that she does seem to like the sound of the word. The funny thing is that she knows all her girlfriends' names, but boys, well, she just calls them "boys." In her world, the only boys who have names are her her daddy, her grandfathers, Uncle Trash (Travis), Cousin Tyler, and our good friends Chris, Bob, and Koeny. When she plays with a group of kids, like at church on Sunday, she always recounts the play time by naming all the girls, and then she just says, "boys."

I guess they are all the same, eh?

the emperor's wipes

Rachel is suddenly talking up a storm--even putting multiple words together to make primitive sentences. Since she's relatively intelligible [to us] now, it's fun to listen to her imitate us in her play. She's learning a lot about pretending, and has developed quite the sense of humor, believing herself to be the funniest kid on the block.

Rachel likes to play with wipes. I don't know if it's the crinkle of the package, or what, but she'll carry around a pack of wipes, opening and closing them. She is understanding plenty now, that I feel confident giving her complex instructions, like, "You may open the wipes, but do not get any wipes out," and she listens well. Tonight, she was playing with her new favorite friends, Ducky and Monkey. She brought over a pack of wipes, and I reminded her not to get any out. She opened the pack, glanced over, then reached down with her index finger and thumb pinched together. She poked at the wipes and then jerked her hand back up and patted Ducky on the bottom with the imaginary wipe she held. She looked at me, grinning, proud of her invention. Jarrad and I laughed, and we ooo'd and ahh'd at her game, so it continued. By bed time, Rachel had bathed herself, her daddy, and me completely with imaginary wipes, and she even ate a few, although she was laughing so hard I'm surprised she didn't choke.

Who needs TV with this kind of entertainment??

Speaking of TV, but totally unrelated, here's a video of Rachel hunting pine cones a couple weeks ago...