Our day

Buttoning up the snaps on Rachel's onesie this morning was more difficult than usual. Not only because she was walking around--that's normal--but because when I was halfway finished snapping the final snap she threw a fit. Not just any fit, either. A royal fit. The kind that involves kicking and screaming and thrashing about on the floor. It lasted for about 10 minutes.

"Why don't you just tell me what's wrong?" I finally suggested.

I should have suggested that 10 minutes ago because Rachel thought it was a great suggestion and took it for all it was worth. She jumped off the floor and ran to her armoire.

"Dress!" she shouted, pointing emphatically and unambiguously to the part of her closet that houses her dresses.

"You want to wear a dress?" I asked just in case, because sometimes what I think is the obvious answer is the wrong answer.

"Uh...yessss!" she shouted, again. We're still working on inside voices.

I opened the door and asked, "Which dress would you like to wear today?"

Rachel pointed to the flounciest, frilliest, fanciest dress in her whole closet.

"That," I said, "Is definitely not a play dress."

Technically Rachel only has one play dress. She's worn it for the past 3 days and I finally put it in the laundry basket because you can only rewear things so many times before they must be washed. So apparently we need more play dresses.

I contemplated long and hard before deciding which dress could be converted from a Sunday/Friday dress to an everyday dress. I love her dresses and didn't really want any of them to end up in the sandbox (which is where we were headed for the day). And then I spotted it. Her 12 month purple dress from Costco. It's covered in butterflies and is cuter than cute, but has always been way too wide for her. Even now that she's 20 months old and the dress barely covers her bottom, it is always slipping off her shoulders.

"How about this one?" I asked.

Rachel thought that was a good choice and we finished getting ready to go without any further delays. We were 10 minutes late for playgroup--I need to remember to schedule time for wild temper tantrums--but it was a lot of fun today. Usually Maadi House is empty on Wednesdays but since tomorrow is a holiday and today was, apparently, an early-out day at CAC, the place was completely overrun with children.

We first met up with Fredricka, one of Melissa's friends from Germany, and her baby, Yosef. We sat at a table with a woman we didn't know because every other table was full. Her name is Mona, she's from Sudan, and she has a cute baby Yosef's age, named Victor. And that's one of the things I like about living here. There are always interesting people to meet. How do you run out of questions when you're talking to someone from Sudan and Germany? You just can't.

Then Melissa showed up, and Rachel and Finn took off to play at the playground together. Rachel got mud all over the front of her dress, so I was very happy we didn't choose the frilly, fancy one.

While we were all talking we were joined by Melissa's friend Jenny, who recently had a baby and who was then joined by her friend who also recently had a baby. There were babies everywhere. The place was crawling with kids.

It was very exciting for Rachel. Usually there's just Finn to play with. Finn's great, and all, but having this many children around was absolutely fascinating for her.

We had a quick lunch and Rachel squirted tomato down the front of her dress, making me doubly glad that we'd picked a well-worn and misshapen dress. It will probably be a full-time play dress now. After that, we headed to the pool.

Rachel's always so excited to go to the pool and always makes a run for it the minute she's inside the gate. It makes the lifeguards rather nervous. I'd prefer her not to jump in the pool with her clothes on, but I know that she will be fine floundering around until she reaches the side of the pool or the stairs. She's an absolute water baby.

I just wish she wasn't so independent all the time. She wants to be at the wall the whole time now so that she can be in charge of where she goes. I kept trying to get her away from the wall so we could play some games but she kept screaming at me, so eventually I put her back at the wall and let her do her thing. She was twisting around, blowing bubbles, kicking her legs, and having a great time. I was talking with Melissa and Fredricka, and while I was still watching Rachel I wasn't paying great attention to her. She was between me and Melissa and I had her completely in my line of sight. And then she disappeared and I kind of freaked out and spun around, searching wildly under the water for her.

"Eh...tuh...tee! Bemps!" was the only warning I got before she dropped into my arms from the sky.

Apparently she's can get out of the pool in under 2 seconds, by herself. Apparenlty she can say, "One, two, three...Bounce!" (Or she could have said jump...it's kind of a mix of both). Apparently she was ready to play.

We had a great time once she had warmed up to the water. And, on a not-completely-unrelated note, Andrew came home from school while we were out and cleaned the entire house. He's probably the best husband, ever. Sorry ladies, he's mine.