the yellow car

It's funny, you know, the way we try to simplify things for our kids to understand. A few months ago, when Emma knew body part names, we would say "no toes on the books" instead of "no standing on your books". Well, my dear husband was cleaning the house the other day with Emma and he, too, was trying to simplify things for her. We had just bought a new vacuum, and in America, Emma was afraid of our vacuum cleaner. He opened the box, pulled it out, and said, "Look, Emma! It's a yellow car!" Granted, Emma loves cars. This vacuum does look like a car. But the problem is that now, Emma thinks this is her car. She follows it around when we vacuum. In fact, she insists on leading the vacuum herself. She puts her toys (in this case, her beloved puppy) in its "seats" to ride around. She's very possessive of "her" car, but now loves cleaning the house.


In case you're wondering about my friend situation, I'll give you a little update. My "thanks-for-helping-me-cross-the-street-with-my-stroller,-will-you-please-be-my-friend" girl actually came over on Saturday night. I called to invite her over, and she said, "oh, i'm really busy on saturday so I can't eat dinner with you. Maybe I can just come at 6:30 and chat for a moment." I don't actually know if she was being "asian" and trying to let me down gently, or if she was indeed busy, but either way, she came over. We had a nice time chatting, she played with the girls, and she seemed like a genuinely nice person. Except she's a chinese herbal medicine doctoral student. Who does experiments on lab mice. She came to my house in between experiments. On the lab rats. Hmmmm. But I do think she's nice...

It seems I have become "rachel, the befriender" in the last few days. You see, I also met an "about to pop open" pregnant lady that works at a copy shop that I just paid a small fortune to. We made lovely conversation about having babies (and of course, it came up in the conversation that my children are poorly dressed, shouldn't be carried upright in the snugli carrier, and weren't my children too young to be outside anyway?) So...this afternoon, I made some banana nut muffins, and I think tomorrow I shall load up my childrens, go to the post office, give her a muffin (and try to be friends) and then go the market. We shall see if I am being too ambitious.

I'm also going to post some new pics for you guys: we've got Emma and her friend Clara playing the piano, Emma building a tower (which she loves to do - with blocks, with her food, with toys...anything that can sit on something else is magically transformed into "TOWWWWW-ER"), Samantha's
very cute infant booties (and a cute smile to boot!), and a picture from the day she rolled over. Whew!