Rachael Enjoys Another Summer Day

Another Summer day and Rachael tells us that she wants to go outside and walk! She walked back and forth between the neighbors' houses and our house. She's great with the walking, but still working on the steering. Apparently her cart is designed to go offroading. She can walk twice as far with her cart as she could just a week or two ago.

She tells us that all the toddlers are wearing cool sunglasses these days, and that she simply MUST have a pair. We snapped this picture right before she took them off. She averaged about five seconds before they needed to be investigated. We tried this about 8 times before we decided that maybe sunglasses are more fun than functional.

After exhausting herself with walking and abandoning her ride, Rachael decide to continue with her botany. She found a nice shady spot and resumed her investigations. Every leaf and blade of grass within reach needed careful study. We are working on conveying to her that research does not involve putting everything in her mouth, but that seems to be a losing battle. :)

Hanging Out

This is neat: while we were at our friend Shannon's graduation party (CONGRATS AGAIN, DR. SHANNON!!), Rachael decided to be a baby botanist: nothing green was safe from being plucked and examined. She was very determined to go off on her own (with mom and dad still in sight, of course) and study the grass, flowers, shrubs, and bugs in Shannon and Tony's backyard. Pretty cool. We did make sure she didn't "examine" any of Shannon's flowers too carefully.... ;-)

While we were walking along the sidewalk last night she kept stopping to point at bugs, pick up twigs...as you can guess we didn't get too far on our walk!

So, she's becoming a big girl, but she's definitely still my sweet little baby.

Lil' Fan

Had to post this picture that our friend Tracy took last month....she had Paws, the Tiger's mascot, at her son's birthday party. Paws was so great with Rachael--she was on the fence about approaching a 6-ft tall tiger, so Paws gave her a wiffle ball as a peace offering. It worked. :-)

Racho the Walker

She's not quite steady enough to break into a run yet....but it's true: Rachael walks. She prefers to crawl when she has a certain destination in mind (hey--it's just faster at this point!) but when she wants to show off or is in no hurry, she's becoming a pretty independent walker.

We were not really prepared for this walking business yet, so I'm slowly getting used to the increase in bumps and bruises. She hasn't nailed down the proper way to fall yet, so many of her walks still end up with her falling forward into furniture, toys, etc. Bruise central. I want to wrap her in bubble wrap until she's off the walking learning curve. :-)

Here are some action shots!

So this is what feet are REALLY for, eh?

Here I come!!

Hug from Daddy after the return trip

Racho the Swimmer

Sunday we took Rachael to the pool at our community rec center. I wasn't sure how she'd take the noise, spashing kids, etc...David and I kinda prepared ourselves for what might have been a quick exit. But Rachael, with the help of one of her squishy bath toys, totally loved being in the pool! Below are some pictures of us introducing her to the water, but after that we took her further into the pool where she spashed and giggled. She slept just about 13 hours that night. :) We wore her out!

Look! My feet still touch the bottom!

Floating with mom...it's easy to be brave while chewing on my squishy sun.

Pets are kids, too

We have three cats, and if there's one thing you learn as a pet owner, it's this: pets are your kids too. Nothing makes this more clear than when your furry kids are sick. Frankie, our Siamese, has been sick for the past few weeks and it's heartbreaking. Like a baby, she can't tell me where it hurts, or what's really wrong--so her vet and I keep trying to figure it out without her help. She's going back to the vet tomorrow and hopefully this time we'll find the right cure for her. Until then, she's a prisoner in our half-bath; she's been having accidents so the bathroom is really the only place for her right now.

Frankie is very special to me. My "first born," Frankie was a stray cat who found me while I was living in a big apartment complex about seven years ago. She was around nine months old then, and I remember being astounded that someone would abandon such a beautiful cat. She has amazing blue eyes--I've never seen a cat with eyes like that. Anyway, I adopted her and she has been my most fierce ally ever since (just ask anyone who's ever gotten the evil eye from Frankie...).

Sigh.

On a lighter note, Rachael and I have been keeping ourselves busy this weekend. I took Friday off so Rachael and I did what you'd expect of girls with time on their hands: we went shoe shopping. :) It's so cool to see her taking in what's going on around her; however, I suspect the ladies at the shoe store were less than thrilled to see how driven Rach was to grab at every display we walked by. She seems to understand that Frankie is sick, too--she keeps crawling over to the bathroom door where Frankie is and just sits at the door and babbles. She doesn't bang on the door or try to open it (like she does with all other doors these days...). Yes, I know Rachael probably has no idea, but it's nice to think that she's trying to make Frankie more comfortable during her sentence in the half-bath.

Here are a few sassy pics from this weekend. She's starting to get the hang of this sippy-cup thing, but at this point she still thinks it's more fun to just chew on the handles.