Cucumbers!

| July 20, 2012

Sam loves cucumbers.  She could eat a half a cucumber if I let her.  And frankly, I do give them to her a lot because why not?  They really have very little nutritional value, I think, since there are almost calorie free, but they are better than a lot of things and they are tasty.  We decided this year to try to grow some in our garden.  Mark and I thought she would get a kick out of seeing them grow.  The little plant I put in the ground grew like crazy!  It got huge and so it took us a while to notice the actual cucumbers on it.  When we finally did, wow, they were big!  We showed Sam and she asked almost every day if she could pick them.  She was really good, helping us water them all the time.  She is quite the gardener!  We finally let her pick one.

I love her look – like, this isn’t like the one from the supermarket!

She really was pretty awestruck by the size of the thing.

Enjoying the fruits of her labor!  I have to say, it was pretty darn good!

Once Upon A Time

| July 18, 2012

Sam did the cutest thing today.  My mom has this little book called, “The Night Before Cat-Mas”, which, as you can imagine, is a twist on the old favorite.  She has loved this book for a long time, even when she was only about a year old.  She always asks my mom to read it to her.  This past Christmas, I posted a picture of Analiece reading it to her at my mom’s house. Well, I was picking her up after work and Sam asked for the book, so we gave it to her.  She said she wanted to read it.  She sat on my lap and opened the first page and started to “read”.  “Once upon a time…” and then she would proceed to describe what she saw such as, “there was a little cat,” or, “the mousy had a ball” or whatever was there.  The cutest part is that she went through every single page and each time started “Once upon a time…” until she got to the last page when she said, “The End!”  I never saw anything cuter in my whole life.  I just want to eat her up!

Rainbow

| July 14, 2012

Today Sam saw her first real rainbow!  Ever since she saw her first episode of Sid the Science Kid, which happened to be about rainbows, she has been really into them.  She talks about rainbows, looks for rainbows, and points out everything that looks like a rainbow whether it is by color or by shape.  Tonight I was out running errands and Mark and Sam were outside and the sun came out after the rain stopped and Mark said to her, “You know what happens after it rains and the sun comes out?  Sometimes there are rainbows.”  And he turned around and there was a huge one right above the houses across the street.  Sam was really excited. I just wish I had been there to see it with her.  There are so many things we want her to see.  Rainbows were on the list, and she was up really late one night recently so she finally saw lightning bugs.  We have been dying for her to see those.  It is weird — you don’t want your little one to grow up too quickly, but you want so many things to happen all at once that it is almost like you are pushing time by.  There are so many things that we want to do with her but we think she is too young.  So we want her to get old enough.  But we don’t want her to grow up either.  Ah, the dilemma!

My little girl is growing up so fast.  She talks up a storm now.  She says such “mature” things.  She has taken to saying, “Are you ok, mommy [or daddy]?” when she thinks we hurt ourselves or when she hears a loud noise from where we are, like if we dropped something.  She is so sweet.  When I was putting her to bed tonight, we were lying in her bed together as usual, and she reached across and said, “HUG!” (which is what she often does right before hugging you) then looked right at me and said, “We are best friends.”  She melted my heart.  It is every mom’s dream to hear something like that.  Sadly, I know it won’t last, but at least for now, mommy is pretty darn great it her book.

Grandmom’s Birthday

| July 14, 2012

Last night we had dinner at our house for my mom’s birthday.  Sam was mostly excited about the cake.

Here she is while we are singing. I think my mom was trying to get her to blow out the candles.

Take a deep breath and blow!

We cut her cake (chocolate, at Sam’s request — never mind what Grandmom may have wanted!) and Sam is NOT happy that we are making her wait to eat it until after a photo op.

Ok, now she can eat!

Open mouth, insert fork.

After cake we opened presents and cards. Sam has been really into decorating cards for everyone with her crayons and stickers.  She is making sure that Grandmom sees all of her artwork.

Here’s Grandmom and her favorite girl (next to me, of course, right mom?)

Night #2 – Success!

| July 5, 2012

Sam’s second night in her bed was a resounding success!  Last night after her bath, while Mark and I were getting her pajamas on, she announced, “I think I need to go to bed. I very tired.”  Now, this statement was pretty unusual for her since it was only 6:45 p.m. and I fight her never ending “I’m not sleepy!” tirade almost every day at 7:30.  I took her in my room to watch a little TV because, as much as I would have loved her to conk out early, before 7:00 is a bit much.  We watched some Sesame Street and then she marched off to her room.  She asked me to read to her in the chair and after only one book, she told me, again, “I need to go to bed” so I let her climb in.  I put the bed rail down so I could sit or lie with her and she was adamant that I put it up again.  She definitely knows what it is for and was NOT falling out of bed again!  I explained that I would put it up after she was asleep.  So, I climbed onto her bed (under the covers, per her orders) and read her one more book.  After that, I told her to close her eyes and within 5 minutes she was sound asleep — at 7:25.  I put the bed rail back up, piled some of her biggest, fluffiest stuffed animals next to it as a further buffer, then I left.   I checked on her a bunch of times before going to bed myself and she was all slugged out, comfy as could be.  I woke up so many times last night, I think because subconsciously I was waiting for her to wake up, but she never did!  I didn’t hear her calling me until a few minutes before 7:00 a.m.!  I can’t believe she slept so long and so soundly.  So maybe getting her a new bed is the ticket to us all getting some sleep.  I hope so…if last night was a fluke, I don’t know what we are going to do!