Busy and Boo Boos

The first weekend Jason was gone Rachel had stayed with my Grandma and Aunt Gail. The following weekend Jason was still out of town, so I took the opportunity to go and stay with my parents on Friday night so they could spend time with Rachel and I could see people other than coworkers and Rachel. It was a lazy Saturday when we got up in the morning and no one really started moving around until about 2:00. I think Rachel liked the change of scenery! Sunday I was completely rested after being asleep so much on Saturday that I was up and worked through her naptime, which I rarely do. In an attempt to keep her occupied I decided we should bake cookies. So I let her try to help. Really all she did was move the spoon around in the bowl, eat as many chocolate chips as she could, and batter once she realized she liked the taste:

Around playing with her and cooking I was also trying to clean up the enormous amount of dog hair that is all over the house. Rachel liked the hose attachment on the vacuum cleaner and took it upon herself to learn how to turn the device on and even wave the hose around:

When Jason got home, he of course brought souvenirs with him. At the Tower of London he bought her this:

She was so excited when she woke up and daddy was home and had presents for her. It took a few days before I was able to cut the tag off of it. He also brought her home a Queen teddy bear and Henry the VIII teddy bear. (I got paper pounds and coins!)

Recently we had a lot of snow. While we didn't get snowed in and thankfully the snow didn't stick around for long, we did have enough that Rachel REALLY wanted to go out in it. Mostly she likes to eat the snow and walk on it. That's about all she needs and she's excited. We have these princess boots that someone gave us and they are about a size too big, but perfect for outside. She loves them because:

1. They have Cinderella on them (which comes out "See-da-lell-ee"....sometimes there's extra "lell"'s in there)

2. She can easily put them on by herself

This means on Wednesday when we got home for the day she REALLY wanted to go outside and play. Her gloves were at school, so I gave her the gloves I had in my pockets:

I've been amazed how quickly her vocabulary is coming along. For about a week there were pictures of animals posted around the classroom. Each child had an animal placed on their cubby and I'm told each child chose which animal they wanted on their cubby. (I'm assuming they had a stack and just let the kids pick a piece of paper because none of them were duplicated). Rachel's was a giraffe. Not long after that I began to notice when we'd watch whatever show she'd picked on Netflix that she would identify most of the animals.....and I was stunned when the word "Alligator" came out of her mouth really clearly. She won't even say her own name! But she can say Alligator? And Lions, Tigers and Bears (oh my!) along with elephant, giraffe and octopus. Lots of safari animals. Today I pulled out a book that shows lots of different animals and seriously she could identify more than half of the animals in the book. I was impressed!

(I forgot to mention that last weekend my mom managed to coax her into saying her own name which is the first time I've heard her do that).

She's also saying "Thank you" in context a lot more and I catch her apologizing now and again. (Of course, not often when I say, "That wasn't nice. Please tell me/daddy/whomever you're sorry).

Today we've had kind of a big day. She got up early (and for some reason I was up even earlier than her) so we spent a lot of time together before Jason got up. We were in her room playing with the magnetic dress up dolls I'll sometimes bring out and when we were done she saw her piggy bank on the counter. She likes to put the two quarters I gave her in and watch them come out. She'll carry it around and play with it now and again. This morning I was pulling something out of the oven when I looked over and realized she'd fallen down in the kitchen with the piggy bank and the pig had hit the tiles. The pig split in two with tiny pieces on the floor. So I quickly picked her up and swept up as many of the small shards as I could with my small electronic vacuum. There wasn't much, and it was cheap porcelain so it's not like small glass fragments that'll get in your feet. I was sad we lost the piggy bank....

She kind of whined in disappointment but didn't act like she was really all that hurt. I mean, the pig DID break her fall. Afterwards she decided she wanted to play in the sink. I was moving all the knives and glass out of her reach like I always do when I noticed what I thought was strawberry on her arm. Then I realized we hadn't had any strawberries that morning and looked closer to see she'd actually cut her arm. Not bad, but enough to draw blood and enough that it was starting to get on her clothes. So I quietly took her into my bathroom and explained we were going to put a sticker on her arm because she had a boo-boo. She seemed to understand boo-boo (as she should.....she's had enough of them and I have the incident reports to prove it). It didn't seem to bother her that she'd cut herself or that she was bleeding, which was good. (Most of her boo-boos are bites from other kids or bruises.....and most of those are on her head where she can't see them). Afterwards she kind of messed with the bandaid because it was annoying, but then forgot about it.

She wouldn't let me take a picture of her arm, so I had to catch it in motion:

I can't remember a time where she's needed a bandaid, other than for shots, ever. So, first bloody boo-boo!

At some point this morning she wanted to play with her hair things, so I got them out. She doesn't always put them in her hair right....

(headband on completely backwards and upside down)....
But I like how she thinks outside the box....

(that's the purple headband on the horse and another around her neck).

When she went into her room and decided it was time for the tutu to come off (as seen in the photo above) I laid a blanket on her floor and we read books. She pointed to her bed and said something about a nap. I asked her if she wanted to take a nap and she said yes. It was close to noon, which is naptime anyway, so I put her in bed, tucked her in and said good night. I had just walked downstairs and given the monitor to Jason so I could take a nap as well when he said she was out of bed and banging on her bedroom door. I get back upstairs and find her in the hallway. This is really out of the ordinary for her. Rachel is really good about going to sleep. She doesn't put up much of a fight and when she wakes up she'll stay in her bed and say "Mommay!" or start talking to herself or the objects around her room. She's really good about staying in her bed until someone comes and gets her. Once in a while she'll be mad about being in there and crawl out of bed....but it's rare. I think she thought I was teasing about going to take a nap because I had hopped in her bed first and laid down. I put her back in her bed and told her it really was nap time and she went to sleep. Her naps last typically anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours. On a bad day she'll only sleep an hour, and the rest of the day is dreadful. Normally if I take a nap while she's napping and she gets up before me Jason will go get her and give her a snack and play with her until I get up. So I was surprised when I was woken up by little hands patting me and a little creature wallering on me and it wasn't Monty. Jason said she woke up after only an hour and half and before he could get upstairs she was out of her room, shut the door and came in to find me. This is a new phase for us and I'm interested to see if she starts getting out of bed on her own and coming in to wake us up or find us. If that's the case, I believe we'll probably not use the monitor as much anymore. We'll keep it around for those occasions where we have a sitter or she's sick. Just another sign that she is really growing!

This afternoon I was struggling to keep her entertained without driving myself crazy (two minutes watching a show, two minutes doing something else, two minutes....two minutes....two minutes....) I get tired of chasing her from one room to the next. So I opted to get us both out in the fresh air for exercise and we went to the park!

It's muddy, the park is pretty crowded as other folks are happy to get their kids out of the house as well, so it was kind of hectic. She seemed scared on the little kid stuff. But I had to keep her from going down a fairly daunting (at least I thought it was really steep) slide on her own. I was afraid she'd go down and not stop at the bottom and land on her face at the end. So I went down with her the first time, then the second time, she was on her own:

It may not look like it in this photo, but that's a pretty big slide for such a tiny kid. There were some kids much bigger and older than her that wouldn't go down it.

At one point Rachel kept running after this little girl and I thought she was saying, "Alana! Alana!" That's my niece, her cousin whom she identifies in photos all the time. I kept trying to explain that Alana wasn't here and that little girl wasn't Alana. The little girl's mother turns to me and asks if she goes to the Goddard school. After some small talk she explains that her daughter's name is Lila and she and Rachel were in the same class before Lila moved to the next class. So she was saying "Lila!" and trying to play with her because she knew her. DUH! Didn't at first occur to me that other kids from the school probably live right next to me, probably play at the same playground, and Rachel probably knows them. *facepalm* I'm so used to the other day care we used to go to where we lived kind of far away for that one and wouldn't ever run in to any of those parents. I don't know as many of the kids at this school as I do the last one as Rachel didn't start out as an infant with those kids and move along with them, so I wouldn't readily recognize them. But I was thrilled that she saw this girl out of context and remembered her name!

As I was trying to get us back to the stroller to go home because she was insistent on running up to the creek and getting as close to the water as she could before I grabbed her and pulled her back (and I was getting tired of running after her) I kept pulling her out of the mud so she'd stay on the sidewalk. We were just about to the stroller when I said for the 30th time, "Stay out of the mud!"

ARGH!!!! She tripped and fell getting mud all over her shoes and her hands. We were so close to getting home without incident!!!