Version 2.0 - Arriving October 2009

Some readers of our blog already know this news, but for those of you who don't don't...we are having another baby! I am almost 12 weeks along, due mid-October. I had my first prenatal appointment a week or so ago, and was lucky enough to have an ultrasound (I didn't get one of those with Samuel until I was almost 6 months). The reason I got the ultrasound early is because they couldn't hear the baby's heartbeat with the Doppler. But everything looked and sounded fine on the ultrasound, so we are in good shape. My doctor said maybe I was just a day or two shy of 10 weeks at the appointment, which is when you can really hear the heartbeat with the Doppler.

Here are 2 pictures. It's kind of hard to see more than a tiny peanut at this point, but I still think it's super cool:





Samuel is thrilled about being a big brother and talks about it a lot now. In the beginning he was a little confused, and we had this conversation which made me laugh:

Samuel: "I like babies all the time."
Me: "That's good because we're going to have a baby at our house, close to the time of your birthday."
Samuel: "No mommy! I want a drill!"

Note to self: revise birthday wish list. Take off baby and add drill.

March 2009 - Favorite Things

Here are the things that are favorites around our house right now:



Word Girl. Have you seen this show on PBS? Samuel loves it, and it has a funny narrator who makes jokes only grown ups would understand, so it is fun for all of us to watch. Samuel likes to pretend that he is Word Girl and that Ernie is one of the villains on the show called "The Butcher". Then he will randomly tackle Ernie saying "I'll get you butcher!" Hmmmm....I've never actually seen Word Girl do that on the show, but Samuel seems to think it's lots of fun. I get to be the monkey.




Snacks. If we let him, Samuel would eat these 2 things for every snack and meal, every day. Who needs vegetables anyway?




Construction books. Okay, most definitely not my favorite, but Samuel LOVES any book about construction vehicles. I have learned more about bulldozers, cement mixers, tractors, etc.. in the past 3 years than I thought possible.






The clock. This is probably not Samuel's favorite at the moment, but Ernie and I like it because it is making it a little easier for Samuel to know when to get up each morning. We tell him he can get up when he sees a 6 on the clock. We covered up the minutes part because otherwise I'm sure we would be told there was a 6 when it was 3:16 or 4:26 am.





Chart. For each morning that Samuel does not wake up and come into our room in the middle of the night, he gets a sticker on this chart. Also if he wakes up dry he gets another sticker (he's still working on that.) When the chart is full, he gets to pick from a bag of little toys.

All things Diego. Diego is the other show he can't get enough of right now. If you haven't seen it before, Diego is a show about a boy who rescues animals. He uses all sorts of tools - telescope, rescue pack, field journal, etc... We don't have any of those things, but Samuel is quite imaginative and makes his own - he uses that little red video game as his field journal, he uses Ernie's watch as his video watch, etc... Heaven forbid if you try to put any of these things away. They must be accessible at all times in case of an animal rescue emergency. When we go in the car, they must all come with us. And if one of them happens to fall on the floor (which is quite likely as he is usually trying to hold about 10 things), screaming must commence.

Spring Program

Samuel had his Spring Program at school last week. Last year he just sat on the stage and stared out at the audience - no singing, no hand movements to the songs, nothing. I wasn't sure if he would do the same this year or not. In this first video below, you can see that he was quite happy to sing the songs for us at home. This song is called "My God is So Big" and one verse is sung normally, one in a whisper, one in a shout, etc... I'm not exactly sure how the little dance at the end fits into the song, but maybe he is just preparing for a career on stage with Michael Flatley.

In this second video (taken at the concert) you can see that he is actually singing the song. I didn't manage to get it on tape, but in between the songs (his class sang 2 songs total) he said "mommy can you get me down from here?" The people who heard this thought it was very funny.

Doesn't he look so grown up in his little button down shirt?

Tub time fun

We have a book called Kid Concoctions that has all kinds of neat activities. One recipe in the book is for making paint to use in the bath tub - put shaving cream into an ice cube tray and add a drop of food coloring to each section. We tried this 2 nights ago and Samuel loved it. Here he is painting in the tub:








The paint cleans right up with water, so it wasn't very messy. Samuel liked it so much that last night he asked at 5:30 if it was bath time yet.

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Samuel is able to do so many things by himself now - put on his clothes, get in and out of the tub, climb into the car, etc... The other day I said to him "You are such a big boy. You can do so many things on your own now" and he said "That's because I'm Superboy."