Ribbit, Ribbit

Barbara and Bob sent Samuel this frog towel for his birthday. Here he is after his bath the other night:



In this picture he sort of looks like a Star Wars character:

Visit with Meg and Lilly

This past weekend Meg and Lilly came to visit. Samuel was very excited to see Lilly (or "baby nee-nee" as he calls her.) We had fun going to the playground, playing with toys at home, and having Samuel's birthday party.

Here are some pictures from the weekend.

At the playground:







Lilly LOVED Monty (who doesn't?):




Birthday party ("it's my pahty" Samuel said):










Thank you to everyone who sent such wonderful presents. We tried to get pictures of Samuel with everything, but he was too excited to sit still. If you don't see your gift here, rest assured we do have it and love it.

Wiggles and Giggles

Monday nights I take Samuel to a gymnastics class called "Wiggles and Giggles" at the YMCA. When I first signed him up for this class, I imagined there would be instructors teaching him how to do sommersaults and walk on a balance beam. Instead it's more like open gym time. The kids get to run all around the room, climb on foam shapes, play with balls, jump on the trampoline, and screech a lot. Samuel loves it. Last night I took some pictures of him at class.

Playing with pom-poms on the trampoline:



Rolling around on the floor:



Climbing down a foam wedge:



Running through the rainbow:



And here is his absolute favorite part of class - the instructor giving each kid a happy face stamp on their hand:



They get the stamp at the end of class for doing a good job. The ride back to our house is less than 10 minutes long, and he usually mentions his happy face stamp about 25 times on the ride. He likes the stamp so much that the instructor gave him one on each hand last night. He was one happy kid!

At the Zoo

This weekend I took Samuel to the Fort Wayne Zoo. Everyone we meet here asks us if we have been to the zoo yet. Now we can tell them yes. It was a nice zoo, and Samuel enjoyed (in this order) eating snacks on a park bench, riding the little train, banging a toy drum, and looking at the animals. Here are some pictures:

Banging a drum in the African animals exhibit:



Giraffes:



Which came first? The chicken or the kid?



Playing with a model of the train:



Riding on the train, or as Samuel said over and over "I ride choo-choo!"



And here's a picture of him hanging out with Ernie at home. Samuel likes to take that blanket and say "it's MY blanket" in a teasing kind of voice, so that you will then say "No, it's MY blanket." This is his new favorite game. He can only go back and forth so many times, though, before he starts looking concerned that maybe the blanket isn't his after all. Then we have to stop and tell him it's his blanket. He also thinks it's hysterical if you ask him to share the blanket, he says no, and you pretend to cry.

Old MacNorwood Had a Farm

This weekend I took Samuel to a free Fall Festival at a local farm. There were all kinds of fun farm activities to do: tractors for the kids to sit on, a petting zoo, hay rides, butter making, etc... Samuel was a little young for some of the activities, but he did like the petting zoo, and sitting on the tractors. Here are some pictures:

Barn:



Sitting on an old tractor:



Checking out the sheep:



Petting a baby pig:



I tried to get him to sit in front of these pretty fall flowers so I could take his picture. He looks totally confused as to why I wanted him to do this. It was hard enough to get him to sit for 5 seconds; I think asking for a still kid and a smile would have been too much:



In other news, it will be Samuel's birthday next week. I'm not sure he totally understands what that means, but he does really like balloons, so he will be excited to have some of those. We're going to bring snack in that day to his daycare. Since he is really liking animals lately, I experimented with making some animal shaped snacks:




I think we're going to go with the monkey. He's going to be a monkey for Halloween, if he has decided he doesn't hate his costume by then. When I tried it on him a few weeks ago, he screamed his head off. The costume is a little big, so I guess if he still hates it at Halloween, we can try to have him be a monkey next year. And if that doesn't work, he can always be the kid with the crazy hair:

Fun at the Playground

Yesterday we went to a new playground. It was really cool - there were all these slides and towers and bridges. This picture is just part of it - the whole playgroud is about 3 times this size:




Samuel had a blast. His favorite thing there was a bridge (that I didn't manage to get a picture of) that sort of sloped down when you walked down on it, and then sloped up when you walked up it. Every time he climbed up the steps and saw the bridge, he'd say "I found it!" in an excited voice, and then walk back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

His second favorite thing was the water fountain:



He also liked these cool pipes that made music:



And of course he loved to drive the truck:



He happily ran around this playground for almost an hour and half. All that playing worked up quite an appetite, so he decided to whip up some alphabet soup when we got home (using the magnetic letters that go on the fridge):

Odds and Ends

This past weekend our freezer decided it, too, had a right to to celebrate Labor Day. Apparently keeping food cold was simply optional now, and the freezer opted not to (even though it was only 6 years old!). Since we have one of those side-by-side freezer/refrigerators, we were kind of in a bind. Thankfully Lowes came through for us, and delivered a new one Tuesday morning.

Maybe someday if I am designing a kitchen from scratch, I'll pick something like this:



However, that model costs $2,500, and matches nothing else in our kitchen. (Who spends that on a refrigerator?) We needed something in-stock so our food wouldn't spoil, so we chose this one:



So far it's great! Food is actually cold again.

Here's a picture of a pretty messy Samuel at dinner last night. We were trying to explain to him that you just eat the orange part of the melon, since he wanted to just take a bite out of the rind.



He has become quite the parrot lately, repeating everything we say. When he's not making sure we know everything in the house belongs to HIM, he's a lot of fun to be around. One of his newest things is to look around a room and say " I spy...a car!" or "I spy...a book!" I put the exclamation points in there because that's exactly how he says it. And he's completely obsessed with a show on The Disney Channel called The Little Einsteins. He's always asking us for "more steins?" Ernie and I call it baby crack, and try to limit how much it's on each day because he likes it a little too much. He'd sit in front of the TV for hours if we let him.