Some Old Rachel Stories

I'm working on sending out the holiday letter, which means hunting down a couple of addresses. I wish Google Desktop Search were better about finding things in my multiple email archives, but... oh well. Anyway, while hunting for the address of Dawn's cousin Jill, I found an email dated 8/29/03 to Jill & her husband Schuyler (who coincidentally works for one of my customers) in which I related these three as being recent stories about Rachel.

1- One day, my brother took her to the park; as they were leaving, she looked at him and said, unprompted, "thank you for taking me to the park, Aaron." Two days later, we were having my parents, brother, neice, and nephew over for a BBQ; they arrived during Rachel's nap and when she saw Aaron after she got up, she said 'hi'. A moment later, she said "I'm ready to go to the park, Aaron."

2- My mother was playing the "what's so-and-so's name" game with Rachel. "What's my name?" "Carol" "What's your father's name?" "Daddy" "Well, that's what you call him, but what's his name?" "Dylan" "What's you're mother's name?" "Mommy" "Well, that's what you call her, but she's a person with a name. What's her name?" pause pause "I'm a person too." Today, she actually said to me "Are you a person with a name?" "Yes, Rachel, I'm a person and my name is Dylan." "I'm a person with a name too!"

3- And one not so recent; when she was just crawling, Dawn and Rachel took a nap on our bed; I think she was about 8 months old. Dawn woke up and went to do some things downstairs. After a while, oddly she started hearing VOICES from our bedroom, so she went up stairs wondering how someone could have gotten into the house without her noticing. Well... Rachel was sitting on the bed fiddling with the TV remote; you know, turning it around, looking at it, chewing on it... and, every so often, POINTING IT AT THE TV!