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).