Today is Rachel’s half birthday! She’s 18 months old! And we celebrated by going to Nursery one whole day early!
But first: I wrote last week about her signs. In the last four or five days, Rachel has picked up three new words, probably the most important in a baby’s vocabulary: Mama, Dada and . . . NO. Noooo. No. No. She can nod, but she just loves her new word so much that even when the answer is yes, she says, “No.”
It’s a little annoying sometimes, but as she was protesting getting dressed the other day, I realized that she’s never been able to exercise control like that before. It’s not that she doesn’t want to get dressed (she didn’t fight me at all), it’s that she wants to be independent.
Except for, of course, when she doesn’t. I was a little worried about her starting Nursery since she’s had a bit of separation anxiety lately. Hayden, however, was very excited for Rachel to go to Nursery, so the whole family walked down to the room with her after Sacrament Meeting. With Rebecca demonstrating, we washed her hands with sanitizer.
She was a little unsure of what to do—or whether she liked it—until I showed her to the “hors d’oeuvres” on one of the tables: a pile of pretzels and a pile of marshmallows. I stuck a pretzel in her mouth and she was sold. She climbed into the nearest chair and didn’t care whether we were there or not.
Rebecca still has a month left in Nursery, so we charged her with helping Rachel. The Nursery leader told us afterwards that Rebecca would sometimes look around for Rachel, saying, “Whewe’s my baby?” (At first they thought this was a doll until they saw she meant Rachel.)
Ryan, who normally takes Rachel during church since I’m in Primary, had the same experience, basically—he’d have a flash of panic, wondering, “Where’s Rachel?” and look around for her before he remembered.
Rachel handled it best of all. I had to pop in twice for other Primary stuff and each time, she was busy participating (if a bit timidly). She didn’t even notice me. She even colored her picture.
After church, Rebecca reported that she “‘Tected Wachew and made soy [sure] nobody take her and bees her new mommy” at Nursery.
But I think Rachel herself summed it up best. I asked her if she had so much fun in Nursery. She answered with a very solemn, “Noooo.”