new hampshire

Whew-- well it's been a crazy three months, and I'm not even going to try to fill in everything that happened during that time. In short: enjoyed our farm share from Stillman's Farm; had parts of the house painted; tried to keep up with the garden but didn't really succeed; the usual jamboree of grant- and paper-writing and data collection; went to the park a lot; got a new bikeseat for Sam for J's bike that fits in the front so he can see-- whee!-- and then the two of them went on lots of bike rides; went to Martha's Vineyard for a really lovely week of beach time, biking, hiking, and no work (the first time since our honeymoon that J. and I spent more than a weekend away from our laptops!). Sam is taller and more articulate, and is very nearly potty-trained during the days.

Two fun verbal things that he is doing these days:

1. for a few months now, he's enjoyed substituting the first letters of words-- he seems to find this hilarious. But now he's doing whole songs this way: "the vipers on the vus go vish, vish, vish... all voo da vown" is a favorite (with first consonants randomly varying across renditions), as is "binkle binkle bittle bar..."

2. he's been making up his own onomatopoeia lately. The other evening in the car, listening to the rain on the roof, he said "mommy the rain is plinkering on the car," which was really just about perfect to describe the sound it was making.

We were in New Hampshire last weekend-- J. had a meeting, and Sam and I tagged along for some foliage-viewing and hiking. Sam and I rode a slow scenic train on Saturday morning:


The view was pretty...



... but two hours is a long time to sit anywhere, and Sam was happy to get off and actually see the engine at the end of the ride.



The hotel we were staying at was on Lake Winnipesaukee. (Note change of pants; still working on aim.) Sam's Red Sox cap misleads people into thinking we have a clue about baseball. I mean, we know they're in the Series, but we're otherwise pretty clueless. Sam just thinks it's a "B for Boston" cap.



That evening we met up with J. and the other folks for a dinner. The meeting was on Squam Lake, and there was a spectacular rainbow, a full (and partially double) arc over the lake.


The next morning, Sam and I went to a nature center and saw some animals in semi-naturalistic captivity. Some colorful views, too:



We met up with J. as the meeting ended, right before lunch. In the afternoon, we went on a short but steep hike to get this view of Squam Lake:



Sam cheerfully climbed up and back down the 2.5-mile trail, and did a little bouldering while we were at the top.


I'll try to post pics more regularly in the next months, but no promises-- lots of work as always, and we're still trying to get the house in shape. At least there's no garden guilt in the winter (but for now, there are plenty of leaves to rake!)

Here's a cute image to leave you with: The Stompers (new daycare classroom) started using scissors this week. His morning teacher told me today that when Sam got the hang of it he spent a long time cutting a fringe along a piece of paper, opening and shutting his mouth in time to opening and shutting the scissors (-:

pretend play + pics

It seems like Sam's pretend play has taken a real leap lately. We were outside mowing and weeding the lawn this evening (it's little, but I really just can't keep up with it, nor with the garden in general-- but that's another story). Sam was entertaining himself, and me, with an elaborate series: "Who's at the door? There's the doorbell, do you hear it? Ding dong! it's Uncle D. and Aunt S.! They're here! It's their birthday! Here's a cake. Let's put some candles on it... here's (plucking from the grass) a red one, and an ojanj one... Wanna sing Happy Birthday!"

And then in the bath, the little animals he's been playing with for a year suddenly have relationships. Two weeks ago it was "two turtles! there's one turtle and a other turtle!" and then the turtles went under the tunnel ("a leg tunnel!") or went swimming, and one of them was called Cara (after a sea turtle in a favorite video). Now, though, the smaller turtle is the baby, and the bigger turtle is the mommy, and the baby turtle nurses at the mommy (nuzzling her undershell appropriately-- I figure the talk about which species are mammals and what that means can wait another year or so (-: ), and then following our bedtime routine, the baby turtle says "wanna snuggle", and the two turtles snuggle in the water, and then the mommy turtle says it's time to go in your bed, so the little turtle obediently rolls over. It's so fun to watch.

Potty update: after we got to about 80% trained at home, we decided to send Sam to daycare in underpants yesterday. He only had 4 accidents over the whole day (so it's not as though he was dribbling continuously), but he also didn't pee on the potty there, and his teachers both think it's too early for him-- and also that the upcoming (beginning of September) transition to the next room up will be too disruptive. So we're doing underpants (or nothing) at home and diapers at daycare for a while. No reason to be overly ambitious, I guess, and I have to think that the teachers have done this quite a few times by now, so have some idea what they're talking about.

And now for some pictures of Sam eating:

He likes to eat bagels cream cheese-side down:



Gnawing on a t-bone, having eaten a fair proportion himself of the steak on it: (Note new grill just barely visible in the background. We are now Grilling People, and have polished off the remainder of our 1/4 side of beef in gas-grilled yumminess.)


The joys of summer: first Fudgesicle:




Sam takes watering the garden very seriously.




He also insists on doing it "by yourself." Which is generally fine, though we've had to learn the hard way (i.e. the soaking wet way) not to get his attention by calling his name when he's holding the hose.

Sammy says

House pics forthcoming. In the meantime, some recent conversations:

Today, driving to daycare (we usually bike, but I had to get the car inspected today). It was already warm at 9AM, so I started to roll down the window.
Sam: I want hotter.
me: You want hotter? What's hotter?
Sam, trying again: I want the window UP (motioning emphatically with his hands)
me: You don't want me to open the window, Sam?
Sam: I want to CLOSE the window.

New word coinage: Sam understands making new compound words with novel pairings. For example, a couple of weeks ago he was standing on a book and sliding on the carpet, saying "I riding a skateboard. A book-skateboard!" And the other night, spunky and naked post-bath, he was beating our bed like conga drums, saying "I playing the bed-drum!"

Sam is very attentive to the road when we are driving. He is especially attuned to the red-light-Stop, green-light-Go rule, though his enthusiasm for green (he recently announced, as a light turned, "I love green!") is such that he's not an entirely trustworthy source, occasionally calling out "Green!" to induce rather than announce a light change. As we sat in traffic recently, Sam's monologue went something like this:
"We stopping. We stopped. Gotta watch out for the cars. It's a red light. Turn green later."

And then, heading up the hill after the light turned green, Sam caught sight of one of his favorite types of vehicles:
"Stool bus! Atchally, it's a white stoolbus."
me: "Actually, Sam?"
Sam: "Atchually, it's a white stoolbus."

He's also noting relationships between things. Between familiar items and ones that look similar: Sam points out things that are "Just like yours!" (another bike with a bike seat on the back; a similar car or toy or item of clothing). Between how things are and how they were: spying the CD player off, when the previous day he'd noticed a CD spinning in it, he said "It's not spinning any more." And between two intentions: crawling out from under the table where he'd been hiding, he called out: "Don't bump your head! Don't make peepee on the floor either."

Sam has had naked (pantsless, anyway) time each evening this week, and has successfully pee'd in the potty (which I keep in whatever room we're hanging out in, or in the kitchen if I'm cooking and he's roaming) every time but one. He stops whatever he's doing, warns himself "Don't make peepee on the floor!" and goes and sits down on the potty with an intent look on his face. When he's done he stands up, excitedly, and then we dump the pee into the big toilet, flush, wash his hands, and he gets a Swedish fish or a Pocky stick. He's learning to game the system, though: though I encourage him to sit back down and "let it all out" when he jumps up after a few initial drops, he'll often sit back down post-reward and try to squeeze out another drop or two for another treat. Eh, well, it's working, anyway. I think we'll do an intense couple of days of potty-ing this weekend, and then start with underpants (and laundry) whole days next week. While I'm not looking forward to the cleaning up, nor to needing to know where the nearest bathroom is at Every Given Moment, I am really, really looking forward to being done with diapers! Even just during the daytimes.

new house

Whew! Well, we're moved. I'll send out a new-address announcement soon, but if you don't get it by the end of the weekend, drop me a note-- I may not have your most current email address.

June was a total whirlwind. We had a nice visit with academic parent-friends from J's old stomping grounds (Pton) and their daughter Edith, whom Sam hadn't seen for a year, but that didn't stop him trying the well known "airplane behind the back" creeping-arm trick (smooth!):



We closed on the new place on the 15th, and immediately started moving stuff into the basement (we set up a row of utility shelves and bought some storage boxes to compensate for the relative lack of closet space, compared to the apartment we were moving out of). Then our friend Antoinette and her mum visited for a few lovely days, being very gracious about the chaos that was our early stages of packing. The day they left, Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt L. came to stay with us and attend the wedding of a family friend in Boston; they were an enormous help watching Sam over the weekend while we schlepped several more loads over to the new place. Uncle D. and Aunt S. also moved here in advance of Aunt S. starting a grad program in town; they live very close to our old apartment, and it's very very nice to have them in town (not least because they are two of Sam's favorite people). The movers came last Tuesday, the hottest morning of the year so far, and moved the furniture and books. After that, a seemingly endless series of "one last trips" with the car cleared us out of the old place, and then we began the long process of settling in. I think it'll be very good once we're in, and we'll post some pics of the new place then.

In the meantime, some pics and some Sam anecdotes:

The garden at the old apartment, a riot of columbines and a massive clump of irises (sorry, I can't seem to get the second picture to show up vertically...). I think yellow is the color of early spring (daffodils, forsythia), followed by the pinks and purples of mid-to-late spring (cherry trees, tulips, then columbines, irises, apple trees, eventually peonies), joined by oranges and reds in the summer (daylilies, black-eyed susans, etc.).





The new place has a mostly-enclosed garden, and the first lawn we've had to take care of. My push-mower skills will need to develop; we also waited way too long to mow for the first time, so I ended up flattening the long blades of grass as much as I cut them.

When Antoinette was here, Sam did his customary naked post-bath run out to the living room to say "D'night!" I mentioned to the assembled company how sandy he had been, and so she asked him, "Sam, did you have sand on your body? Was it in your belly button?" "No, my tushy," replied Sam (correctly, as it happens-- he must have lay down in the stuff, and it snuck under his waistband in the back). He then proceeded to back up to her, pointing to his naked tush, saying "This my tushy, right here. This my tushy."

Sam has been a big fan of the Allen wrench, most useful in dissembling and reassembling Ikea furniture:


He also loves loves loves to run. A couple weeks ago when I picked him up from daycare, one of his teachers told me that they'd gone to a park with a playground and an enclosed field with a track around it. Apparently Sam just ran around and around the track-- the teacher guessed 15 times. Whew. Which explains his recent monumental food consumption. He also likes to help carrying things, the bigger the better, including the big blue recycling containers, which he manages by himself all around the house and up the five stairs onto the back porch, hefting them one stair at a time.

After all that work, he surely deserves an "ojanj possidul"


He's getting much better at articulating things, which helps a lot with the dual toddler needs of independence--"Do it by self" has finally shown up, and with a vengeance-- and assertion of preferences-- "don't WANT it" is also very much in evidence, as is "wanna X! wanna X! wanna X!" where X = any of a huge number of things, like watching "mahna mahna" on youtube (usually doable, at least the first three times) or staying at the park, or driving the car (not so doable, though he thrills to sit in the driver's seat-- ignition key safely tucked into one of our pockets-- and move the signal-light and windshield-wiper levers and grab the steering wheel). On car-driving: Sam went through a phase of saying "Wanna do the driver!", which made me and J. snicker like 14-year-olds.

He's also more articulate about how he feels; the other day we were walking behind his daycare, where there's a little unpaved path that connects with the paved walkway heading to our department. Sam slipped on a little incline and I caught him, and then asked him if it was fun or scary. "Stary," he said, holding my hand as he trotted on toward "Daddy's office."

Omi and Opa are coming for a visit tomorrow (barring airline cancellations, of which there seem to be an alarming number these days-- fingers crossed they don't get stuck like they did the last time they were trying to visit).

a soft one

On Monday, as promised, we went to Drumlin Farm. There were sheep, including multiple black ones. We didn't get to touch them, though, so we're not actually sure if they're soft. (The rams were out in this pasture, the ewes/lambs were in a smaller field amongst barns with a sow+piglets ("Mommy pig nursing. Switch sides!"), a cow and calf, lots of goats with kids, and a bunch of chickens.)


The animals were totally eclipsed by the tractor, though, which pulled a wagon with hay bales. This was absolutely the highlight for Sam, though the strutting cock-a-doodle-dooing rooster was pretty cool too. We finished our visit with a picnic on the grass:


And here's an older pic, from Mother's Day on Boston Common:



Recent funny: It had gotten warm outside after a few days of cool rain, and after hearing it from us in the morning, Sam announced "it's hot outside" when we left for a barbecue in the evening. And then, after a bit of reflection, "Blow on it." (like we do to his too-hot food)

And he has taken to saying a very careful "Yesss" instead of "yah". With a wee bit of lisp and drawn-out final consonant, plus a falling tone (so not a rousing "Yess!"), it often sounds incongrously thoughtful ("Sam, do you want a waffle?" "yeesss") or even conspiratorial.

digital snot removal

At the recent first birthday party of the child of a friend of ours, the father of said friend, an avid photographer, took lots of pictures of the kids there. They just sent us a couple of beautiful pictures of Sam... but his nose has just a wee blob of snot hanging out in every one. So last night I spent a Long Time doctoring the nicest photo. Check out my photoshop skillz:

with snot:



with magically disappeared snot:

baa, baa

For the past week or so, if he’s feeling mama-centric (i.e. wants only me, and wants me to himself), Sam has been telling Josh to go away in very specific terms: “Daddy go sleep again.” “Daddy go work again.” This morning as he was waking up as I was getting dressed in the room, J. came in, and Sam crankily ordered him “Daddy go pee on potty.” J., trying to be good-humored, asked, “Is there anything else you’d like Daddy to do?” Sam thought for a minute, then added “Daddy go poop on potty.”

On the other hand, last night when J. was wishing him goodnight and told him “I love you,” Sam replied “I love you.” Melting J’s heart, of course. When asked “Who do you love, Sam?” by J., Sam replies both “Mommy” and “Daddy”, but this was the first time we’ve heard the phrase, even if it was just repeating what he heard.

After his bedtime routine (bath, brushing teeth, clean diaper and pajamas in the big bed, reading books, nursing), when Sam rolls off of the big bed into his own bed with his sippy cup of water, we sometimes sing a song or two. Lately he’s been requesting “Baa, baa black sheep”, and as soon as I start singing, he interrupts. We've had this exact exchange 4 or 5 times now:
me: Baa, baa...
Sam: Wanna go see a sheep.
me: OK, maybe some time soon we can go to a farm and see a sheep.
Sam: A black one!
me: Maybe there will be a black one.
Sam: A soft one!
me: Yup, I bet it will be soft.
He seems satisfied with this and so we continue with the song. I think we’ll head to Drumlin Farm some time soon.

Sam got a pull-string wooden puzzle alligator from India, thereby increasing his pull-string wooden alligator collection to two. Which he spontaneously decided he should pull at the same time. He does this frequently these days, clothed or no...





(The soft focus is not me being artsy, it's me figuring out how to use different flash settings on the camera...)

whip it in the bug

Our (that is, J's and my) friend India visited us this past week, which was a lifesaver because J. was in full-on grant mode, and having another adult around-- especially one who really got Sam, how to communicate with him and entertain him and pacify him-- not to mention one with whom I really really enjoyed catching up on the 3.5 years since we last saw each other-- was very nice. She was preceded by Sam's Aunt L. and by our friend L., both of whom were similarly helpful and lovely to have around. Who could ask for more than guests who bring bottles of wine, cook for us, play with Sam, have ideas for collaborative experiments, do the dishes, help proofread/shorten J's grant, help paint a mural at the daycare, and keep me company? The past two weeks have made communal living seem, well, at least not as far-fetched as it might otherwise.

One of the nights when India was here, I had a bit of a sore throat, so we ordered pizza instead of cooking or going out for something more interesting. I was worrying aloud about the prospect of getting sick, so I. suggested soothingly that I go to bed early and nip it in the bud. Sam loved the sound of that and repeated several times, "Whip it in the bug!" I think I'm going to switch to that formulation from now on.

The next morning at breakfast, Sam was singing nonsense words to himself over his waffle.
India: Is that a song by Sam?
Sam: (pause) Bye, Sam!
India: Bye, Sam!
Sam: Bye, India!

In the week since I posted last, he seems to have gotten first vs. second-person pronouns mostly figured out.

More pics soon; in the humidity we've had recently, Sam's hair gets so curly that he really looks like his daddy.

dribs and drabs

First, some video of Sam playing mattar while singing happy birthday to himself. Let me know if this doesn't work for you (the whole video link, that is).



Sorry for the long silence-- it's been a busy few weeks. We went to a Seder, painted some Easter eggs, went to a couple of 2nd birthday parties (daycare classmates) and a couple of first birthday parties, got a mortgage. J. and I are mostly finished with our teaching for the semester, though there are still term papers to grade, and finals to write, give, and grade. And J. has a grant due later this month and has been working on it during most of his waking hours, which means I pick up just about everything else, Sam and home-wise (so it's a good thing I put off submitting my next grant til the fall). So it's been a bit crazy. But it's finally getting warm enough to spend long days outside, and Sam and I, at least, have been doing a lot of that.

Recent trip to the arboretum:



(Not sure why these are so blurry; I obviously have to read the manual to figure out my new-ish camera.)

Sam likes to point out all the blooming trees and flowers that he knows the names of (Forsythia! Daffodils! Magnolia!). We take lots of walks around the neighborhood, but he's not a big fan of riding on his new tricycle. This is a combination of not being quite able to work the pedals, and apparently not liking the passivity of being pushed on it (so much for the pricy pushbar features; hopefully he'll change his mind). So he can often be seen pushing his trike down the sidewalk, stretching up to reach the handle of the pushbar.

Alligator!
Two weekends ago we went to our town's Science Festival, where most of the displays and activities were a bit over Sam's comprehension level, but petting a baby alligator was definitely not (the poor thing had electric tape around its snout, but otherwise toddlers wouldn't have been allowed near it!):

(You can see he's being photographed; he may have been in a local paper, but I couldn't find a copy anywhere. Oh well.)

Chatty boy
Sam's all about sentences these days, often catching us by surprise with phrases he seems to have absorbed whole (and is often using correctly) from who-knows-where. Example: tonight after I put him to bed but had forgotten to bring a cup of water, so was filling one for him in the kitchen, Sam calls to me "I'm waiting for you!"

This stuck in my mind because he's still very clearly figuring out pronouns. He asks, "Carry you!" when he wants up, but seems aware that there's something tricky going on with "me" and "you"; in cases where it really matters, he uses third-person (Carry Sam! or Need help Sam!). The other night in the bath, Sam was pouring water between bowls, cooking. "Making pancakes," he announced, and I said, "Mmm, can I have some?" And he said, "For me!" so I repeated, "Can I have some too?" And he smiled big and pointed at me (Mommy, that is), and said "For me!" -- he was making them for me, but using "me" to mean, well, me, and not himself.

He's still working on courtesy words, too. He knows, but usually forgets, to include "please" with requests, and when prompted for a thank-you, he often says "please" instead. When he's very motivated, he'll sometimes come out with combinations like "please, thank-you, welcome, sorry!"

Sam's also fond of jokes these days; one of his teachers reports that Sam specifically asks him for jokes. Sam's thought the words "pickle" and "bagel" were hilarious all by themselves for a while now, possibly due to a couple of silly pickle or bagel-focused books at daycare. More recently, his jokes usually take the form of word play; he and J. somehow latched onto a few nonsense words that they play with, like "bedeezle", which becomes "besnoozle" etc. in many back-and-forths, and Sam will randomly burst out "bedoozer!" when he's feeling silly. He also likes to substitute consonants; he cracked himself up for about five minutes while we were walking home the other night, having called out "Daxi dab!" for a taxi cab, and then repeating to himself over and over (and over and over and over again), "daxi dab" and cackling. And recently he's begun pointing and announcing something he seems to see ("(gasp)! Bobcat!"), making me ask where ("A Bobcat? where? I don't see it!") and then grinning and shaking his head, saying "nooo".

This is after a few weeks of picking up the sounds of words he liked and repeating them over and over, interspersed with "funny word!" For example, once I thought he had diarrhea (falsely, it turned out), and asked him if he did, and on and off for the rest of the day he repeated the word to himself: "Diarrhea! funny word."

Wandering snudge
At home, now and then, he'll pick up a bag, sling it over his shoulder, and announce, "g'bye!" while walking off across the living room. He'll announce it again and again, with the same inflection each time, looking back over his shoulder, until someone says, "Bye Sam! Where are you going?" He always gives one of 5 answers: "To Boston!" or "To the museum!" or "Punjabi Dhaba!" (nearby Indian restaurant) or "going to a restaurant!" or, if he's spoken to Grandma and Grandpa recently, "Going Florida!"

Table manners
Sam's getting pretty good at using a "big cup" (i.e. non-sippy), though away from the table we stick to the kinds with the tops.


And he still loves to eat. Here he is shoveling in some beef saag (successful recent foray back into Indian cooking on my part, and part of a recent experiment in prepping a week's worth of meals on Sunday; note the yogurt! he's not allergic to dairy-- or soy or eggs-- after all, we recently confirmed):





And to close...
Sam enthroned in a carved stump near our apt:

hi from FL

First, the promised mattar pics:




Cooking with the cuttable (sliceable?) food:



We're in Flarihdah! Sam at the beach:



At a nature center, in the butterfly garden:


Having just polished off most of two huge meatballs and sauce, some spaghetti, and a couple of rolls dipped in the remaining sauce:

(Doesn't he look at least a year older in this one? weird)

Sam is having a blast with his Aunt L., Grandma, and Grandpa. He's being spoiled rotten by gifts and attention and kisses and zrbtts, loves looking for lizards and pointing out palm trees, has learned at least a couple new kinds of vehicles (tractor-trailer truck is the funnest to hear him say) and is loving the warm, sunny weather.

And briefly, the big news: we liked the condo we saw Friday AM, bid on Monday having heard at least two other people were bidding, and found out Monday night that our bid was accepted!! We're moving in June, pending inspections etc. Pics at some future point. It's smaller and further away than our current place, but has a beautiful kitchen and a nice yard, and is still walkable (ca. 25 min) from work. Whee!

Sam is 2!

Sam is 2!

Omi and Opa didn't make it for the weekend because of the snowstorm that hit us on Friday; they were halfway here in the air when their plane turned around and went back to MN. So we had a slow, restful, somewhat wet weekend, capped by a walk to a burrito joint (Sam loves 'bree-tos' and can eat most of a grilled-veggie-and-bean one, with chips and guacamole on the side). Omi got a ticket to come Monday evening instead, so was here for Sam's actual birthday, but sadly Opa had to work so missed it. Sam opened gifts from them Monday night (we spread things out so he didn't get too overwhelmed, and as wound up as he was Monday night, this proved to be a good plan).

Omi brought a bunch of gifts, and they'd had a guitar sent here. Here's Sam bouncing up and down in anticipation of the opening of the "mattar."



And testing it out, string bass style:



(We attached the strap later, and got video but no still shot yet of him playing it, hands positioned correctly but both hands strumming, bouncing around while singing Happy Birthday to himself. Must take pics to post, and really must figure out how to post video... instructive comments would be appreciated here! this is from a videocamera, not the video function on a regular digital cam...)

Sam's been excited about mattars for a while now, and has been playing guitar on a bunch of his vaguely guitar-shaped toys (push-popper, stuffed giraffe) ever since the music guy started coming to their daycare weekly with his guitar and his fiddle.

The next morning, he opened some books from Omi and Opa, and the pots/pans and wooden cuttable food from us:


He's getting pretty good at unwrapping:


But the trucks and train were still the big winners:



Sam got a lot of truck books this year, including a couple from some friends (thanks, guys! you know who you are). Clearly people are picking up on his obsession... and feeding it, but given that trucks are such salient objects in his life right now-- an outing is totally made by the sighting of a boobozer, for example-- it's not something I was going to fight anyway. It's just: look at him, with his Biiig Truck! in front of his Baskahbaw Hoop! Are we still raising a sensitive, nurturing little guy? He did also seem to like making carrot soup, and likes the general idea of playing kitchen, but cooking doesn't make his eyes light up the way they do when he's scooting along the floor on his knees, pushing a truck in each hand.

We kept Sam home from daycare so he and Omi could enjoy some time together, though I had to be at work for much of the day. Sam opened packages from my grandmother and my aunt, the former including a musical card (ducks quacking "happy birthday" which had Sam entranced for much of the afternoon), and both including Japanese children's books... good for both his vocabulary and mine. Sam knows 2 hiragana (phonetic alphabet) characters and at least a couple of words in Japanese, though with the characters he doesn't seem to get that they're part of a different alphabet: he asks for "ah" letter cookies, for example.

In the evening Aunt S. and Uncle D. came over with another present!


Sam helped put it together (check out the birthday t-shirt):


(This-- the toy, not the shirt-- was the first thing Sam looked for the next morning when he woke up; he was a bit concerned when it wasn't in the living room where he'd left it, but was reassured to find it in his room, cars ready to "yoop-de-yoop" and Little People ready to spin around the Ferris wheel.)

Then we had spaghetti and meatballs, one of Sam's favorites:


... followed by carrot cake with 2 candles. Sam knows how to blow on hot food and how to blow his nose, but since he does the former by making a big "ffff" sound, neither of these two skills helped him figure out how to blow out the candles:



We did end up buying Sam a schmancy push-bar-equipped tricycle, but we're delaying giving it to him until he can use it outside, and there's still a bit too much snow on the edges of the sidewalks for that. So much good stuff: he's a lucky, lucky two-year-old. Another mom on a message board I read noted, of her child's recent birthday, that it's easy to see how one slips into spoiling a kid, given how rewarding it is to see their face glowing with delight. I don't feel like we went overboard this year, exactly, but it just seems like so much stuff, and so much excitement, for one kid. I am glad we didn't throw a friend-party this year; time enough for that in years to come, when he's aware enough to ask for it.

Omi had to leave the next morning-- too short a visit!-- so Sam went to daycare, where he had another birthday celebration. Then yesterday evening he got to open some lovely books from a couple of lovely friends (thank you!). The truck page of the big book, and the two truck books, will get loooots of love around here). We disappeared two of them to save for the airplane, because...

... tomorrow we leave for Florida, for some QT w/Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt L., some warmth and beach-time, and some more birthday celebrating.

But first, we're looking at an attractive-sounding condo in the morning. A longer walk to work and daycare, but still a doable one, and a pretty neighborhood, if a slightly less urban one. One of the nicest features of our current apartment is that we have most of our needs within walking distance-- small grocery store, pharmacy/drugstore, restaurants, bank, hardware store, even a toy store-- even though our street is relatively quiet. We'd lose at least some of these if we move to this new place. But it's listed for significantly less than we bid on our current place, it has a garden, and it's still walkable to at least some stuff... including a path around a small lake, which would be really nice to be so close to. We may have to bid right away, so cross your fingers for us. And in the mean time, we're in the weird position of having our current apartment shown to prospective buyers regularly, when we have no interest in it selling-- in fact, until we find a better option, an interest in it not selling (so that our landlord returns to our bid). Do we change the poop-smelling diaper trash or leave it there for the day? Do we make the beds before we leave in the morning, even if we're running late? But, if not, can we (me, that is) stomach the thought of strangers seeing 'our' apartment with unmade beds and stacked dirty dishes? Gah. We're walking the fine line between sabotaging efforts to sell the place and doing work tidying, etc., that doesn't benefit us in the least.

Back to Sam: someone on the same message board I referred to earlier noted that many toddlers would fit diagnostic criteria for OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder), though different types for different kids: there are the obsessive washers, the ones who don't want anything touching their pieces of food, the ones who wear the same shirt Every Damn Day, etc. Sam's latest is that he wants his bagel half to be all in one piece. He totally lost it over the weekend when we tore his bagel-half into two pieces (to make it easier for him to eat!), and kept crying while trying to push the two pieces back together. And this morning he had another meltdown after he himself tore the bagel-half in half... Not sure whether indulging this is feeding the problem, Josh and I have gotten good at mooshing two chewed-on pieces of bagel back "together" into one. It's really striking, though, how all-consumingly important these things seem (to Sam) at the time, and for now, at least, I'd rather help out with the things that can be fixed, and save the Life Lessons for the things that we don't have control over.