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Saturday, May 31, 2008

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Ten long months of watching the world with wide eyes has certainly paid off for Rachel. She's become quite the little copycat lately, mimicking everything she sees Mommy and Daddy (and anyone else she watches) do.

She's taken to helping us get her dressed and undressed. Often she forgets which one we're doing and will pull her arms out of her sleeves while I'm trying to put them in, or will gladly push the arm I just got out of her shirt back into the sleeve while I'm working on getting the other arm out. It's helpful when we're working in tandem, but not so helpful when we have conflicting agendas.

Sometimes she'll even help pull off her diaper if we aren't going fast enough. She has this pee pee dance she does while we unpin her diaper that lets us know that we need to move a little faster. Often she'll step out of the diaper after we undo one pin so that she can get to the potty on time.

She actually knows quite a lot about getting dressed. She knows that pants and skirts somehow go on over her legs and that shirts and dresses somehow go on over her head. Hats are easy, those go on heads. And socks are also easy, those go on toes. I was impressed that she knows where hats and socks go since she hardly ever wears either article of clothing anymore.



In addition to getting dressed, Rachel is showing much more interest in personal hygiene. She's always loved to brush her teeth, but now she also likes to try to brush her hair.

She's been eating a lot more big people food lately, too. We still give her baby food, but she prefers to eat off our plates, ever interested in what mom and dad are eating. Sometimes I mix some of our meal into a jar of baby food to feed her. She finds baby food a little bland and loves the spicy meals we eat. She also likes to chew a bit, so we don't completely puree her food anymore. Instead we just cut it into really small pieces.

The other day she saw a banana on the counter so I gave it to her whole and unpeeled.

The little monkey turned it over in her hands a few times and then tried to peel it, just like she'd seen mommy and daddy do.


When that failed she bit through the peel and started sucking out the banana.


Rachel is just so curious about everything and studies everything around her, constantly. We went outside yesterday and Rachel became fixated on the fence. After feeling around the boards for quite sometime she found a knot that was loose, so she pulled it out, examined it, and tried to put it back in.



I'm not sure I will ever get over the speed at which Rachel processes information. One thing's for sure though, she keeps me on my toes.

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