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.