Mine!

The past two days when we've left Rachel at school, immediately this little 5-month old show off creeps and crawls right over to her and puts his hands on the toy she's playing with. The first day, I picked up the little bugger, turned him around and gave him his own toy to play with, but he went back to bugging her. (At work they said "Ah, look, dad already fighting off the boys!")

Yesterday, the toy had a handle on it and when he came over and put his hands on the toy, she just lifted it up with one hand so that he couldn't reach it. She lowered it and he reached right over, so she started pushing on his face and when that didn't deter him, she started going whack whack whack on his face. It wasn't hard, I don't think, but it was sure funny to watch. He started crying, but didn't move away. Another caregiver had been watching the entire interaction and moved in at that point to scoop him up and away.

I know we won't encourage our child to fight, but it is exciting to see the mind work as she determines how best to fend for herself. It wasn't that exciting a toy, but it was clear that the little boy only was interested in it because she was playing with it.

In other news, Rachel got her first valentine. Surprisingly, it was from Robert and not Nicholas. I wish we were parents who were cool enough to have stuff like that occur to us... at Christmastime she got a gift from another student. Makes me feel like an unthoughtful parent that we didn't think to give gifts or valentines.

In other other news, Leticia has decided that our kitchen is unsafe for Rachel. We came home to find that in the course of her every-other-week cleaning she had moved all of the cleaning supplies from under the sink in the kitchen to a cabinet high off the ground. (The kitchen cabinets are not secured, though the room is blocked by a baby gate.)