Rachel stories

All day today, Rachel's been telling me about all the people who are coming to visit us.

"Bamba's tomin'! Naanii's tomin' too! Uncon Patwit tomin' too! Damma's tomin' too! Dosie's tomin' too! Uncon Jay-bop tomin' too! Bamba's tomin' too! Naanii's tomin' soon, soon, soon!"

Everyone's names keep evolving. Bamba is Grandpa, Patwit is Patrick, Jay-bop is Jacob...Rachel knows exactly who's coming, although her order is a little sketchy. She is very excited to have so many visitors. I just hope she realizes that "soon, soon, soon!" means 8 weeks away--that's when Naanii, our first visitor, arrives. That's a long time away still, but I'm sure she'll be excited then, too.

We told her Grandma will be coming when it's time for the baby to be born. I'm still not sure she understands that there actually is a baby coming to our house, but she'll understand soon enough. Last night at dinner we were talking about the baby and Rachel said that she was the baby.

"You're not a baby! You're our big girl!" I told her.

"Dacher--not big girl!" she objected.

"Then what are you if you're not a baby and you're not a big girl?" I asked.

"Dacher--little girl!"

I told her that was true; she is our little girl. And then I used the word "compromise" to explain the exchange we had just had, which she repeated almost fluently as "tom-pro-mise." Sometimes the things that come out of her mouth absolutely shock me, and not in a bad way.

Sure, there are the words that we wish she didn't know (nipple, wedgie, gas, among others) but mostly she shocks me with the good things she says. She already forms rather complex sentences that are usually not quite grammatically correct and she ends up sounding like the LOL cats. Still not bad for a 2-year-old.

"What should we have for lunch?" I asked aloud in the kitchen. Rachel was there to answer, of course, since she is my second (and much more painfully full-contact) shadow.

Rachel wandered around for a minute and then brought me a can of dinosaur spaghetti-o's.

"Maybe we can has dis!" she chirped happily, thrusting the can into my thigh instead of my hand.

It was all I could do to not crack up laughing. Not only was her sentence hilarious, but she said it with such emotion. Emotion that communicated quite clearly the underlying mesage of, "If you say yes, I will be the happiest child on the planet. Just a hint."

She has actually been an amazingly happy child recently, playing by herself for hours. All I did was give her a shoebox and told her it was a crib for her baby doll. She has been spending all day everyday taking care of her baby: feeding, bathing, napping, walking, etc. It has been great.

We put her down for a nap yesterday and she never took that nap, but played quietly by herself for a full hour in her bedroom. It was amazing. When I opened the door to tell her that she could come out (since she obviously wasn't going to go to sleep) she said,

"Dacher--not sleep. Playing. I wake up from playing!"

I'm not sure that's something you can really wake up from...but, whatever.

Her attention to detail is sometimes a bit taxing. We just drew a family picture together before I started writing this. She is still working on coloring it but just finished freaking out about something I forgot.

"Mommy! Glasses! On! Glasses! On! Glasses! On! Mooooooommmmmmy!"

I had forgotten to draw glasses on my self-portrait and this was very perplexing. She had tried to draw her own glasses using a purple crayon, but I guess wasn't satisfied with the results so requested my amazing crayon-weilding skills to draw a proper pair.

Other times she's amazingly ignorant of things, like how Daddy went to school today. He's been home so long, I guess she got used to having him around. So, even though she saw him leave, she insisted the whole morning that he was still home. He was just hiding, waiting to pop out from behind something to scare her. She tip-toed around the house all morning, poking her head cautiously around corners, and asking if I knew where he was.

When he didn't show up for lunch she finally realized that he really had gone for the day.

I should probably stop typing Rachel stories soon because she's currently prancing around the house with a basket, scattering toys like some sort of demented flower girl and singing, "Oh, no! Mess up! Oh, no! Mess up!"

And we just swept and mopped the whole house, too, so that's a little depressing and a little less-cute than other things that she does.