Animals and Friends

As you can see, I still haven't gotten my act together with the pictures, but we'll hopefully get them up soon. I just thought that I'd make a quick note about all of the cute things that Rachel thinks are especially interesting lately. As usual, she has a major fascination with animals. But this has expanded beyond animal noises, to different parts of animals- especially tails and hooves. We have spent quite a bit of time having her examine our rear ends and laughing because we don't have a tail sticking out of our pants. She then tries to look behind her for a tail as well and then says, "tail" while shaking her head. Bugs (and particularly ants) are also an endless source of amusement and we watch them walking along the sidewalk for long periods of time. She'll say "tiny...ants" and just laugh at how small they are. And, even though we talk about not touching them, she sometimes gets very excited and has squished quite a few while trying to pick them up. The poor neighborhood ants must have nicknamed Rachel the terminator.

She has also been very excited lately about "friends." After we go to playgroups, she lists all of the names she remembers by saying "Peter, friend...Parker, friend...Eva, friend (repeated many times, of course). She has also been sharing very well lately and will relive her glory for the rest of the day by explaining something like, "share, Peter, cookie," and then clapping for herself. We also went to our first day of "school" today (a community program where pre-school kids learn to feel comfortable in a classroom - it's basically playtime at school). She loved it and really enjoyed the play-doh.

Other than that we're excited that Parker and Kelli are engaged and getting married over Christmas break. Rachel likes to say "Aunt Kelli" and we're can't wait to have her join our family. We hope that all is well with you and as always, we'd love to hear from you!