Lessons from Rachel

I'm coming off eight days of vacation, much of it spent with Rachel. Here is what I learned.

Your head can't fall off. It's glued on to your neck.

When you're four and a half, it's okay to shout, "You can't catch me!", even if you're chasing a boy instead of the other way around.

"Rachel, you're being argumentative!"
"No, I'm not!"

A slight boo-boo can evoke tears, but falling off the bed backwards onto the floor and slamming our head into a wooden restaurant booth leads to a reassuring, "I'm okay!"

At four and a half, you can name your stuffed animal rabbit "Rachel" and your parents are not sure whether it's cute or the height of egotism.

Automatic hand driers are to be feared.

I miss the days when she said, "Purkle" for the color and "Bice-ee-sickle" for a mode of transportation and "pereeter" for the electronic device I'm using right now.

My child knows more songs in Hebrew than her father.

Rachel now knows her opposites, although occasionally, you ask her, "What's the opposite of hard?" and you get the response "not hard."

We like red apples, not green ones. We like red grapes, not green ones.

One cannot be expected to remove seeds from one's own watermelon.

"Isn't that SO funny?" is funny when delivered by a 4-year-old.

"What does Minnie Mouse drive? A Minnie van!" is also funny, even though she stole it off the tv. (Athough she insisted for five minutes she made it up.)

She likes the boy Shaam in her class, because like her, he is smart and funny. I'm so proud to be raising a child so humble!