Rachel the Chef

In the past couple of weeks Rachel has been insisting on helping Mommy cook. Any time I head to the kitchen to start cooking, Rachel quickly follows saying, "Rachel cook". Usually she's pretty satisfied by opening, closing, and pushing the buttons on the microwave. Recently though she has wanted to become more involved. So, here are a few pictures we caught. It's too bad I forgot to put her apron on while she was cooking. She loves her little apron! You can definitely tell that she takes cooking seriously. She wouldn't look at the camera - she needed to stay focused! :)

Dutch-Style

The weather is not warming up anytime soon here in the Netherlands, so I've had to do some shopping. Rachel's pants are starting to look like she's waiting for a flood! :) I didn't want to spend a lot of money, since I'm hoping the weather will be warmer by June. I figured I would just buy a pair or two of jeans to get her by. So, after searching around quite a bit, I finally found a pair that wasn't too expensive and had an adjustable waist. The only thing about the pair of jeans is they are so baggy! Rachel looks like a little gangster. She could probably fit both of her legs in one pant hole. The picture doesn't really do it justice, but here's Rachel sporting her first pair of Dutch jeans:It took forever to get a picture of her. Finally I just put her on top of our bed and she was somewhat cooperative! As I was looking for jeans I did find a cute pair with slimmer legs, but they were by Esprit. So, they cost around 30 euros ($45). I don't even spend that much money on a pair of jeans for myself, let alone my toddler who is going to grow out of them in 6 months or less! :)

Rough morning...

Is it possible for a toddler to wake up on the wrong side of her crib? If so, that certainly happened this morning. Rachel slept in this morning and wasn't all that thrilled that I was the one greeting her. She wanted her daddy. Can't blame her though, her daddy is definitely a lot of fun. Once we got over the trauma of Daddy not being there, she then was quite reluctant about giving up her binky. I was finally able to coax it away from her, but she still wasn't a very happy camper. So, I just walked out of her room and allowed her to wallow while I got some laundry started. After the laundry was started I asked her if she wanted pancakes for breakfast (she's still crying) and I told her that she could eat them wherever she wanted to. So, here are Rachel's two dining choices this morning:Rachel ate about half of the pancakes on the kitchen floor and the rest in the family room. I guess a girl has to have options! :)
Luckily Rachel's grumpiness wore off, especially once I pulled out a new pair of shoes for her to wear today. We headed to the grocery store and she was so good about being in her stroller. By lunchtime she was much more willing to eat in her chair at the kitchen table. The life of a toddler... :) Mornings like this morning make me grateful for the opportunity to get out once in awhile. Andy was home from work last night in time for me to head down to Enrichment at church. It was a nice night out. I'm sure Rachel had fun with her daddy last night and wanted the fun to continue this morning! Mom isn't nearly as fun... :)

Back to normal...

After having Andy traveling quite a bit the past 3 weeks, he's home! Rachel was so excited to see her daddy yesterday. She was very giggly and wouldn't let him out of her sight. She even let Andy put her down when she napped and went to bed for the night. And of course, Andy loved being so loved. :) Unfortunately Rachel didn't get to see her daddy today. By the time she woke up, he was already at work. When I went to Rachel's room this morning she said, "hold you, Daddy" over and over and over again. Poor girl! She probably thinks he's taken off again, but luckily he hasn't. We are lucky because Andy hardly ever travels. But when he does, we miss him. The month of April will most likely bring some late hours, but Andy's told me it won't be as bad as it was in Houston. We shall see... At least he'll make it home each night, eventually.

We finally caught up with the U.S. and did Daylight Savings on Sunday. So now the sun comes up around 7:15 am and sets around 8:15 pm. In the middle of the summer, we'll have some long days (5 am - 10 pm), which should be interesting. :) A few weeks ago I got a little creative with the tin foil and did this to Rachel's bedroom window:I guess I am pretty spoiled. Once the sun was coming up around 6:30 am and Rachel was waking up earlier, I decided to take matters into my own hands. This was the cheap way out, but I didn't really want to invest in blackout curtains for a home I do not own. So, Rachel is sleeping much better and so far the tin foil has worked out well. However, I think Andy and I are just going to have to get used to the sunshine. We have too much window to cover and I doubt our neighbors would appreciate it (our windows are in the front, unlike Rachel's which face the back).

But hey, if you're tired enough, you can sleep through sunshine, right? Last, but not least, here's a picture of Rachel this morning. I was vacuuming and she was watching her favorite (babytvchannel). Doesn't it look comfortable? The couches are right there, but I guess the floor was where she wanted to be. She was busy playing with her belly button and watching TV.

To Clean or Not to Clean

On Tuesday or Wednesday this past week Rachel insisted on having the top off of her sippy cup. So, I took the top off and let her drink away. She's actually does pretty good drinking out of a regular cup. However, this time she didn't do so great. Before we both knew it the water was all over her and the floor. Curious what she might do, I told her to clean it up. So, Rachel walked to the bathroom, got a towel, and proceeded to mop up the water spill. It was priceless and of course I didn't think of taking any pictures. So, this morning when Rachel thought it would be fun to shake her sippy cup and make it mess, I pulled out the camera to video her cleaning it up. Of course she's more interested in the camera than cleaning up, but you get the idea. And Rachel did a pretty good job of just spreading around the stickiness, so of course I had to do a little of the cleaning up myself.

Here's another video taken about 30 minutes after the first one. At least this time it was water, but there was a lot more. And all she wanted to do was play in it. It reminded me of last year when she played in the water on the sidewalk after a summer rainstorm in Houston. :) Rachel had asked for the top off of her sippy cup, once again. So, I took the top off and she proceeded to try to put the top back on - that's how this spill occurred. And this time I ended up doing all the cleaning - I guess the cleaning bug wore off! :)

Chattering Away...

Okay, so this might not be the most exciting video you've ever seen... But I love it when Rachel chatters away after waking up. I know she's gotten a good nap when she is content to just chatter away. I don't exactly now when she started this chattering after napping business, but it was probably shortly after her first birthday. Recently she can go for a good 30 minutes before she sweetly calls, "mommy, mommy". I have definitely learned that it is best to let her chatter and not rush in to get her right away. She likes her alone time and I'm also able to have a few more minutes of alone time as well. Each day it varies what she talks about. Some of the things she was chattering about today were flowers, Papa, Lexie, Whitney, and her binky. Sometimes I can understand what she's saying and other times it's just gibberish. I love when she just breaks out laughing. It's absolutely precious! Sorry about the not so exciting video, but if I tried to go in the room to get video of it, the cute chattering would stop. :)

Spring or Winter?

The official first day of Spring was March 20th, but I think the Netherlands missed the memo! We drove home in snow yesterday. As soon as we hit the Netherlands border, we were greeted by snow. At least it wasn't snowing in Paris. :) This morning I decided to let Rachel play out in the snow. I think it was her first official time playing in the snow. She was being pretty silly. She wouldn't touch the snow, because she didn't want to get "dirty". She's quite the girl! Rachel was still in her pajamas and boy was it fun to get her back inside to eat breakfast! :) I'm glad I let her play though, because most of it has already melted. It was still lightly snowing when we headed outside, so the first thing Rachel did was look up at the snow falling down.

Easter 2008

The Easter Bunny dropped off some surprises for Rachel, so once we got home yesterday Rachel was one happy girl! She even did pretty good at finding her Easter eggs. The grocery store here had dyed Easter eggs that you could buy, so we took the easy way out this year. Maybe next year Rachel will dye her first Easter egg. Here she is enjoying Easter:

Paris, France

We went to Paris this past weekend. Andy had a 4-day weekend and we had to take advantage of it! The trip started off a bit rocky, but we ended up having a great time. We drove down Friday and pretty much spent the whole day traveling. It's normally a 5-hour drive, but it ended up taking us 8 hours. Andy was flying in from Dublin that morning as well and of course his plane was delayed because of weather. So, we finally took off around 11:30 and arrived at our hotel around 8 PM Friday night. We certainly have learned a few things from this past weekend. :) Once we got to Paris we parked the car and used their metro system to get around. Paris has a great metro system! On Saturday morning we headed out on the metro system to get to the Louvre Museum. Instead of making a transfer, we decided to get out and walk the rest of the way to the Louvre. It was only about a 15-minute walk and luckily it wasn't raining yet. Here we are taking some pictures along our way to the Louvre:

So, the first stop we made in Paris was the Louvre Museum. Of course you could spend a whole week there, but after a couple hours we had seen enough. It was super-crowded; however, we did get to take a peak at the Mona Lisa over the crowds! :) Here are some pictures of us in the Louvre: I took this picture from a window in the Louvre. And up above you can see Rachel checking out the painted ceiling in the Louvre. After the Louvre we headed over to Notre-Dame. There was a horrendous line to go inside, so we just took a picture from the outside. I'm sure we'll get back to Paris some day and get a chance to see the inside.

After Notre-Dame we hopped on the metro system and headed over to the Eiffel Tower. I don't think I have ever waited in more lines. We were probably at the Eiffel Tower for about 3 hours and we spent about 5 minutes at the top. We had to wait in line for the tickets, for the first elevator to take us up, for the second elevator to take us up, for the first elevator to take us down, and for the last elevator to take us down. It was crazy, but it was quite the experience. Rachel had no fear! :) It was freezing cold once we got all the way up, but at least it wasn't raining. And you can see all the pictures of Rachel being so patient as we waited in line after line after line...

On Sunday we headed to the Chateau de Versailles. We had to check in Rachel's stroller, so she had free reign. She did pretty good though! Rachel loved climbing up and down the stairs. As you can tell, we were pretty lenient with Rachel's binky this past weekend. But considering the lack of sleep and going places she wasn't really interested in, you couldn't blame us too much! :) Down below is a picture of Andy and Rachel in the Hall of Mirrors, which is where the Treaty of Versailles was ratified at the end of WW I. Rachel's favorite part of the Chateau was playing outside in the gardens. We should have headed there first!

Rachel loved riding the metro system. She always wanted to get "up" on the "train". Although once we would get on the train, she'd want to get off at the next stop. She made plenty of friends on the metro. After spending most of the day in Versailles we headed over to the Arc de Triomphe. It was cold and rainy, so we didn't stay long. Here we are in front of the Arc:
We enjoyed our little getaway to Paris. I'm hoping the next time we make the trip it will be a little less crowded (if that's possible) and a bit warmer! :)

Just Singing Away...

In the past couple of weeks Rachel has been really good at filling in the blanks while we sing songs to her. Whenever we pause she'll simply sing the next word or two. Rachel has had quite the obsession with the alphabet. The "ABC's" have to be sung to her every night before she goes to bed. So, it's only fitting that the alphabet was her first song to sing on her own. Last night Andy simply asked Rachel to sing him a song and away she went. :) Soon after singing the alphabet she also sang "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star". I was able to get her on video during lunch today - it's easiest when she's stuck in her high chair. So, here she is singing her "ABC's" and "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star". I love how it really sounds like "tinkle". She's not quite sure when the song actually ends, but it's still so cute! :)