Indoor Sandbox

The weather has been so nuts here lately - one day we have temperatures in the teens with snow, the next day it's 45 and thunderstorming. Every time it's warm enough for the snow to melt, Samuel sees the sandbox out back and wants to play in it. As a compromise, we set up this indoor sandbox for him. I filled a big rubbermaid container with 20 pounds of rice. Then we added some measuring cups, dump trucks, and some random other things we had (those things with the feet are actually to bake cupcakes with.)

Samuel calls this "scooping" and will tell us multiple times each day "I want to scoop!" It's a little bit of a messy project, as much as we try to keep the rice in the container, but he has fun. Here he is scooping away:

Finger Painting

This weekend we tried finger painting for the first time. It was fun, but very very messy. Here are some pictures and a video of Samuel enjoying himself:

playdate with Lilly

On Friday we drove up to South Bend and had a playdate with Meg and Lilly. We took the kids to Portrait Innovations to try to get a picture of them together. No such luck. If one of them was sitting (usually Lilly) the other was running around the studio (guess who) and refusing to sit still. After a zillion pictures being taken, we looked at the results on the screen. Not a single one with both kids sitting, looking at the camera, and making a face that wasn't plainly saying "get me out of here!" Oh well. There was one of Samuel by himself that was good, so we ended up getting that. If you read this blog, chances are you can expect to get a copy of that picture in the mail sometime soon.

Here are some other pictures of Samuel and Lilly playing together.

Eating lunch (both kids love shredded cheese):



playing in the tent:



playing in the ball pit:



Lilly looking at a puzzle:

Having Fun

Here are two things Samuel really enjoys doing lately:

watching the garbage truck: (this was last weekend before we got the snow and the 12 degree temperatures)




enjoying cheez-its, in true Jackson style:




He also loves to wear one particular coat of Ernie's. Here he is one year ago wearing the coat, and yesterday. What a difference a year makes!





He has started to say some very funny things. If you ask him if he wants to do something ("want to play with playdough?" He'll respond "I sure do!") Last night at dinner he made a big giant mess with his milk and then said "oh dear!")

Firetruck Bed

Samuel is outgrowing his crib (and he's also decided that it makes a really good trampoline) so we got him a toddler bed. It looks like a firetruck - it's the cutest bed ever! Here are some pictures of Ernie and Samuel setting it up yesterday:








Samuel hasn't slept in it yet. He wanted to last night, but we need to make sure some things in his room are more baby-proofed before that happens. I doubt he is going to be one of those kids who just stays in his bed once we say goodnight. He'll probably want to get out and play, or explore his room in the middle of the night. Since he couldn't get out of his crib on his own, we haven't had to deal with that before. We're going to work on that, and hopefully he can sleep in his new bed this weekend.