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: