tay-onz

We survived Sam's bout of fever with much coloring and some videos. I got some closets organized during my enforced at-home time, and we took some walks and ran some errands, and he's all better now. Sam really, really likes drawing. They do a lot of art at daycare, and most days there are pages of painting and stuff-glued-on-paper and occasionally Sam's careful pen scribbles to take home. He has progressed from mostly ordering us to draw stuff to mostly drawing stuff himself, though he still does request specific things a lot: buses, suns, owls, walruses, horses, Daddy, Sam (never Mommy, for some reason), various letters, and always the old favorite, fans. Here he is after I was called to pick him up from daycare last Tuesday, his fever having returned after being down for most of Monday (fortunately, the call came just after I was finishing my back-to-back lecture and talk). We hung out at home for the rest of the afternoon and spent much of Wednesday, during which he felt totally fine and fever-free but couldn't return to daycare because of their 24-hour post-fever rule, enjoying the gorgeous fall weather. (Mind you, I'm not complaining about the 24-hour rule. If it saves us Sam catching just one virus from another kid, I'll happily keep him home an extra day when he's sick himself.)



The past few weeks, Sam has been starting to get into pretend play. He's been putting random things on his head and declaring "hat!" (which is cute when it's a bucket, or a ball, or a mixing bowl, but less cute when it's a fork full of saucy pasta). And he's been playing this game in the bath: he takes his turtle (squeezy bath toy) and sticks it under his thigh, announcing "house!" Then he'll pull the turtle back out, and say "There it is!" (Daydis!) Then back under his leg, "house" or, sometimes, "chair." Then Daydis! He can do this 30 times in a row and not get bored, but it's far better if I'm playing along, of course.

I also realized that Sam doesn't necessarily recognize himself when he's saying "Sam!" in the mirror. He must recognize himself to some extent because he points himself out in pictures, but correctly names the pictures of the other kids at daycare. But occasionally, he'll point to an unfamiliar picture of a baby or little kid and say "Ham!" And on another one of our post-fever Wednesday excursions, to get sweet potato fries at a burger shop after running some errands, Sam spied a bust of Elvis and cried out with excited recognition, "Ham!"