Monday Night Football

MVP: Sam

Coach of the Year: Dave

Watch out college coaches! I've got 17 more years to practice!

Personality

It is so much fun watching Sammy's personality develop. I can't even believe that in one month he will be old enough for Nursery (hallelujah!). Here are some of the new things that Sammy is doing.

Building "Forts" Sammy gets into these creative moods where he will pick a few choice toys and then take them to his special place and sit among them. He is very picky about what toys he takes into his "fort." And we've learned NOT to take the toys away from the fort for fear of retaliation (okay...crying hysterically).

Discovering "new" toys
After building a fort one day - Sammy realized the toy basket was a great thing to play with. He brought it over to me and we sat on the couch with the basket over our heads. The basket is kind of see through, so I would put my hand on the outside and pat it - and Sam would laugh and laugh and laugh and try to poke my hand from the inside.

Later that day - he picked up the basket and put it on his head and started walking around the house. The best part was when he walked into the fireplace and then he couldn't figure out how to turn around - so he kept bumping into the wall. After a couple of minutes of me laughing - started crying. I'm sure it would be frustrating to not get anywhere.

He's always had a love for shoes, especially mom's and dad's shoes. Here he is giving Mom's shoes a try. He didn't walk very far before he fell - but he got a big kick out of wearing these big shoes!

"Demanding" food
His newest trick is walking over to his high chair - pounding on the seat and screaming "Ahhhh!" I guess we taught him this one because we'd try to get him to open his mouth during feeding times by saying, "Ahhh." He also does this to the candy/cookie jar. He knows right where it is in the kitchen and will walk over to the jar and point and scream, "Ahhhh!" What a funny boy!

Feeding Himself
A MeSsY operation! He does great with finger food, but we've been trying to get him to learn how to use a fork and spoon. His cereal in the morning mostly ends up on his bib/pajamas. What fun to develop fine motor skills!


We LOVE this boy so much!!!

Super Halloween Night!

Happy Halloween! We hope that your Halloween was just super. We had a fun night. It felt like we were just running here and there, but all in all it was a good time.

We started the day going to get some shots for Sam. What kind of parent chooses to get their boy his shots on Halloween? Yeah we pondered that question for a bit, but I guess we figured that if you start off bitter the sweet would seem sweeter? Maybe that's just what we told ourselves...

So after some shots, and a quick stop at the community center for an early vote, we were ready to start our evening festivities. Okay so seriously?! Sammy has already had way too much candy and we haven't even started the day. Of course the doctor's office gave him a candy bar, as did the Wal-Mart cashier, and the Quizno's cashier. At least the poll place had some good sense and didn't offer the poor guy some more sugar!

Oh well, let the sugar infestation continue, First stop Grandma's:

Visit to Grandma

I don't know why we didn't get a picture of Sammy with Grandma, but we didn't. Her legs do cameo when we went to go visit grandpa, but for some reason we didn't think to get a picture. I guess we at least had the camera with us, so that is a start. This next threesome of pictures is kind of an omen for how the day will progress: Happily eating candy, and then when it is gone, bring on the whinery!

Ah well, it's Halloween.. Even Superman has his weaknesses, and apparently there are few things worse than coming to the end of a delightful bag of M&M's.

Visit to Grandpa

Next on the flight list for the super man is a visit to grandpa. Grandpa was at work and we didn't want to miss him, so we thought we would take him a couple treats and give him some happy Halloween wishes. Earlier in the day we got him a king size snickers and Sammy was excited to fly in and grant some sweet wishes.

A quick sidenote, Sammy recently got a new pair of shoes that are a size too big. Occasionally he trips up on the larger than life shoes...

As we were running to Grandpa's office, the carpet monster jumped up and tripped Sammy. Yep, he did a little spin and landed hard. So instead of a fun smile with a candy bar in hand to greet grandpa, it all fell apart and he screamed in pain. Don't worry we came prepared, and quickly broke him off a piece of that Kit Kat bar (how many has he had today, ugh we are bad parents!)

Also to cheer the little guy up, Ralph offered him a CEO position. He was only on the clock for a few minutes, but come on, the guys handling our wonderful financial institutions make a Mercedes a minute; so we are trying to figure out the payment deserved... Here is Sammy hard at work -- looking at some plans and relaxing in the important seat.


Here is a video of the Tricks and Treats received from Grandpa.

Next on the flight plan was a trip to our other Grandma & Grandpa:

Visit to Grandma & Grandpa

superman with his super grandparents

At this point in the evening, Sammy has figured out exactly what is in these buckets, a whole lot of goodness! The perfect part in Sammy's mind is that wherever he goes, he has the effect of people wanting to feed him. This is actually not just a Halloween spectacle. I swear day in day out, complete strangers ask if they can give this boy food. Does he look hungry? Or is it just so fun to provide nourishment and enjoyment to cute little faces?

Here is a clip of some tricks and Sweets at Grandma & Grandpa's:

Trick - or - Treating!!

By quarter to 6, we were finally home and ready for some trick-or-treating. We didn't go out with Sammy last year, so this was a first for both parent and child. Michelle decided to stay home and pass out candy, so I took the little superhero around the block. We ended up being out for about an hour, and by that point Sam was completely exhausted.

He did pretty good though. After a couple houses he figured out the whole idea of grabbing a piece from their bowl and sticking it in his bucket. The funny thing is that even though we only hit a few houses, he still made out like a champ because they would let him do the grabbing. Of course he wouldn't grab just one, but because of the before-mentioned phenomena of wanting to feed the child, they just thought it was darling! But honestly like anyone would take it back from a tiny superhero.. a 15 year old hardly dressed up maybe, but certainly not a first-timer who doesn't know the rules yet!

Many times as Sam was about to grab some candy, he hesitated for a little while because of the distracting outfits that everyone was wearing! I guess as a little boy you just aren't expecting a werewolf to be holding out a bowl full of candy.

Here we are getting ready to go:

Dinner & Relaxation

Well finally the night came to a close (and finally this post is coming to a close). We had dinner and relaxed and watched Sam eat yet more candy. When bed time finally came calling, he was completely pooped. What a fun but exhausting day!

Before bed, we took a picture of Sammy with the pumpkins we carved. All of these came from our garden this year!

Happy Halloween!!

Halloween Tryouts

So with the pumpkins growing orange and the weather getting colder, it was high time we found a halloween costume for Samuel.

We were at target the other day and they have quite the impressive collection of halloween costumes. Well Sammy loved holding a little puppy costume, which was completely adorable. We also really liked a Superman costume, because we always call him our super sam. We decided we would get them both and then see how they fit and things.

As we tried the two costumes, it was apparant that Sammy had a strong preference:

Not bad..

Not great..

Horrible!!!

Cool..

Distracted ..

Still distracted (which is a good thing!)

Learning to fly

So yes, the poor little puppy costume went back to the store, and Mr. Sammy Kent's cape went into the closet soon to come out and fly to a house near you shouting "trick or treat!" Okay let's be honest he probably will be saying "ball" over and over because you also have a pumpkin on your porch!

Our Active Little Boy!

We love our little boy! The little Sam-Man is very active. He is loving his ability to run around and play and get into everything. I just wanted to share a couple of his favorite activities. Some of these movies are a bit long, but oh well.

1 -- The Stair Toss or Gravity Game.

What an incredible idea, create a large pit and then surround the top with turrets so that one can bomb the pit! Also, the magic of this game is that when most the toys have been thrown down the stairs, Mom or Dad will go and pick them all back up and we can start the game again!!

I went down a couple stairs to get him in the middle of the action. I love that his good friend Simba is always curious about his games and wants to play along and watch.

Here is the result of the toy toss on a typical day:

#2 -- Bouncing on the Bed!

In the morning Sammy usually wakes up earlier than we do, so we bring him in our room and he loves to play on the bed with us. Bouncing is super fun and a new thing is to dance or stomp around on the bed. He also does this on the couch and anywhere else that is nice and soft.

#3 -- Playing catch.

Sam's favorite things all start with B's. His Ball, his blanket, and his binky. Sometimes these change order of preference depending on how tired or active he is. Tonight on our car ride home we just had to laugh at how content he was in his car seat: He had his passifier in his mouth, his blanket on his one side and his ball under his other hand, and Mom and Dad were close by. His happy little world was complete! Well he loves to play catch and keep away and fetch and all things related to playing with his two little basketballs. Today we had him in his chair and got a kick out of him playing catch with me. It was a cute little progression of me throwing the ball at his belly with little or no response, to him playing catch, to him getting bored!

My favorite part is when I say, "Ready?" and he throws his hands up in the air.

I often pause and marvell at how fast he is growing up. My dad commented, "just wait till they are 6' 7" and have kids of their own!" Hopefully that doesn't happen too soon, but when it does, I hope he remembers fondly the times of playing with Mom and Dad.

Quick Zoo Trip with Daddy

This week Michelle's work did a zoo trip for all the home schooled families in the program. Michelle didn't really go in, but met all the families as they were coming in and made sure they got their tickets and all that jazz. Then all the teachers wanted to go out to lunch. Since I was in between class (I have a 3 1/2 hour break) I came and got Sam. It turned out that they had leftover tickets, so Sammy and I got to take a quick zoo trip while while the girls did their thing. It was such a nice day (Thursday) that all the animals were out pretty good. My favorite was the mountain lion (go cougars!! great game by the way, but I digress..). When we came up to their cage, one cougar was standing on a log right up next to the fence as if he was staring everyone down. By the time I got my camera out, he had left, but the other one was perched on the ledge just surveying the crowd. It was very nice of it to pose for us:

The warthogs were also out having fun and were very close.
One of my favorites were the cute little penguins. The manager was cleaning out their pool so she locked them into a little shed-like place. Anyway, one snuck out and was playing around in the dirt and apparently that didn't go over well with all the rest so finally they all sprung the cage, here they are storming up the rocks! What fun little guys! The manager just shook her head and laughed, I bet they give her grief all the time.
One of Sammy's favorite zoo attractions is the small animals exibit. When we went during the summer with Tanna and Megan's families he loved it too. He really likes being able to walk right up to the cage and see the animals up close. A lot of times they will approach him as well, which just makes him all smiles. The Lemurs in the primate house were great too, they came right up to the windows to check out all the kids.

"Hey Dad, let's play a game. I'll pretend I'm interested and watching an animal and then right before you take the picture, I'll look away.

Ha! Too slow! Man you're getting old! Is that all you got, I was barely in the picture!!

Argghh! You caught me!

Wow, caught me on the first try this time, maybe you aren't such a waste...

And what was Sammy's favorite part about the zoo? Why the grates of course! Nice little metal objects in the middle of the floor. Perfect for touching and if I had a toy I could push it through. How do people come up with these things to entertain. Brilliant!!

Well, we had a great albeit brief time. To be honest, it was my type of zoo trip. We just cruised through and saw most of the animals and then shared a snow cone and a sprite, and the weather was so perfect, I think it was only high 70's that day. Couldn't have worked out nicer!

Sweet drunken parrot

Here is a recent video of sammy.

The drunken refers to his drunken sailor walk. He is doing great with walking and running and standing up without climbing up things. I think because of his height, and the newness of his task, he has a little bit of Jack Sparrow in him. You'll see in the end of this clip as he is running from Mom that he kind of pin balls between the couch and the table. We enjoy watching him, but feel bad when the drunkenness makes him hurt himself. He runs into a number of doorways and chairs and things. In fact if you look at his cheek close enough you can see a little line that might match a bar on our chair.

The parrot part is a new thing of his. Just very recently he is starting to mimick words and phrases of ours (This morning I got a B-Y-U out of him that was darling!) with Uh-Oh being the favorite. He is also mimicking some of the baby signs which is fun, so we'll have to get some of those as well.

Enjoy!