Sam bundled up poolside after a swim
Posted by Kate
Sam has developed hints of a Brooklyn accent from his teachers at day care. Our favorite is his pronunciation of mirror as “mira”. His friend Mercer at school is “Mersa”. He has some other strange pronunciations that might be the same source, but I don’t know…..like a hill is a “he-el”. He also has the standard little kid mispronunciations like “lellow” instead of yellow but overall he’s speaking really clearly and we enjoy our conversations.
He’s also building important vocabulary words since we really often talk to him like he’s a much older kid. Last night Todd was reading to him from a comic book and tried to explain what a force-field is–it cracked me up!
Posted by Kate
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There’s a lot going on in our lives right now as we deal with selling our apartment and switching Sam to a new day care. Unfortunately, that means less time for posting on this blog. To fill the gap a bit, here are some random photos of the family from this past winter.
Random Sam Pictures
Posted by Todd
It was President’s Day on Monday which means we had a long weekend. Our original plan was to head out of town to someplace warm, but instead we decided to stay home (mostly due to flight costs) and kick potty training into high gear. Our plan was pretty simple: have Sam wear underwear instead of diapers and ask him to tell us when he had to use the bathroom. The first day started with a series of accidents that left Sam’s new underpants supply desperately low and Kate and I wondering whether we chose the right way to go about all this. But by the afternoon Sam was confidently telling us when he had to use the bathroom and we were soiled-underpants-free through the rest of the weekend (Save for one incident that occurred during a heated debate about what was for dinner).
Sam on the Potty!
We’ve still got a little ways to go until Sam is completely diaper free, but he’s done a great job so far.
Posted by Todd
The snow over the past month has been incessant–the snowiest January in NYC history! Although it has complicated our commute, especially when travelling with Sam, we are also enjoying the snow when we can. This weekend we went sledding a couple times, and we feel fortunate there is such a nice park right across the street.
Trying to trudge through fresh snow
Many of the sidewalks in the park were stomped down snow…more like luge courses. The park looks deserted but off to my right are where there were hoards of sledders on the steeper hill.
Sledding down a pathway
Posted by Kate
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It took us a while to get this together but we finally uploaded some pictures and videos of Christmas, including our travels. Click on the photo below to take you there:
No snow in NY when we left, but Sam was ready......
Posted by Kate
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Sam’s old enough now to have some strong opinions about things and music is no different. A ride in our car used to mean skipping between various CDs to find either the song that he wanted to hear or skip a song that Kate and I could no longer tolerate. As a solution to all this skipping around, we decided to revive the ancient tradition of the mix tape and put together a CD full of songs that we all love to sing along to. Here’s the list we came up with:
You can check out the mix (with covers of the Beatles songs) using Groove Shark here: http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/Sammy+Mix/41216243
It still cracks me up driving around with Sam singing ‘She Drives Me Crazy’ in the background…
Posted by Todd
Last Friday was the Christmas Party for Sam’s daycare. We got a chance to spend some time watching Sam hang out with the other kids while also talking to his teachers and other parents. It was fun seeing him race around making up games with his friends and giving us a glimpse of who his partners in crime are at school (he was described as being one of the “Three Musketeers” along with his buddies Nathaniel and Seth).
The highlight of the evening was a short concert that the kids put on. They sang a few holiday songs with some choreographed hand movements that would’ve made Napoleon Dynamite proud. Sam was right in the middle, proudly singing, up until the moment that Santa strolled into the room at which point he promptly ran screaming into the audience. We’re not sure where this fear comes from, but Sam warmed up a bit once Santa started producing presents.
You can see a video from his performance below:
Sam and his friends, Nathanial and Mikael
* please ignore the lousy Photoshop job. It’s really amazing how hard it can be to get 3 kids to look at the camera at the same time…
Posted by Todd
The decorations on the main commercial strip in our neighborhood have been up since Halloween (seriously!) but they waited to start broadcasting Christmas music out on the street until this week. It really makes for a pleasant walk through the neighborhood but I’m also glad we don’t live too close to the incessant music!
This past weekend we bought our first family christmas tree, lights and bulked up our ornament selection. We then spent a festive night as a family hanging lights and ornaments.
We found the perfect tree!
The final tree, in all its glory.
Posted by Kate
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One of the fun parts of having Sam around is seeing him discover and enjoy things that I liked when I was his age. His latest obsession is Disney’s Robin Hood movie. It’s been an interesting experience watching this with him and talking about why Robin Hood is doing what he’s doing and why everyone is so angry at Prince John and the Sheriff. Sam is big on quoting the few movies that he’s seen and since watching Robin Hood he often makes Kate walk ahead of him so that he can run after her shouting “Momma, momma wait for me!” similar to one of the young characters in the film. He’s also discovered sucking his thumb thanks to seeing Prince John do the same on screen every time he’s reminded of his long lost mother.
Posted by Todd
