Dear Sam,
You are our comedian, our explorer, and our little love bug. And I can’t believe you are twenty months old!
Summertime has brought with it many new adventures: first visits to the science museum and the zoo, first tractor ride, and first trip around the merry-go-round. You are only slightly timid when encountering new things, and as soon as you successfully do that thing, you want to do it over and over and over again (i.e. the tractor and the big slide at the community carnival).
Seemingly mundane tasks like loading the dishwasher, pulling weeds, and vacuuming the couches are lots more fun with your little helping hands. You have even figured out how to operate the Keurig, which means we have to double check that it is always turned off when we’re finished brewing our morning cups of coffee.
You have loved your Little Tikes car and your giraffe bike this month. And you are so fast on both! You have finally figured out how to more forwards and steer, and you cruise around the house like it’s your own personal racetrack. You also love to have company on your little road trips. You hold Ribbit and Tiger and Baby and sometimes your sippy cup. You’re pretty fast with your lawn mower, too. And you easily go up and down the hills in our yard.
Speaking of up and down, you have officially mastered the stairs. No more crawling up and sliding down, you now prefer to walk while holding the railing and, occasionally, our hands. You can even go up and down the single steps of our sidewalk.
You’ve become a bit more picky in your food preferences this month, which I know is common. You still like bratwursts and bananas and berries and cheese. But dishes I could always count on like eggs and grilled chicken are now hit or miss. And you’ve developed an awful snacking habit. You whine and beg for marshmallows and Goldfish and popsicles. But perhaps your favorite thing this month is sweet tea. The problem is Momma loves it, too, so I have to hide the pitcher in the back of the refrigerator!
Not only have your eating habits changed, so have your mealtime manners. You flat out refuse to sit anywhere but the big chair. Although you often manage to sneak yourself into either my lap or Daddy’s lap. Then you proceed to stick your hands in our food and help yourself to bites, even when you have the exact same thing on your plate. Hey, as long as you get some food in your belly, we’re not going to complain.
Your bedtime and naptime routines continue to work perfectly well. So well, in fact, that you have a very hard time falling asleep anywhere but in your bed (or your pack’n’play while traveling). This means long road trips have become almost unbearable. You snooze for about 30 minutes — when your typical afternoon nap lasts more than 2 hours. And then we are forced to load movies into the DVD player (favorites are Monsters, Inc. and Toy Story) to minimize the inevitable whining from the backseat.
You and Daddy had several opportunities this month for some real boy bonding. You spent a day at Hershey’s Chocolate World and a local pickle festival — chocolate and pickles … two of your most favorite things! And it’s quite common to find the two of you huddled together in your circus tent reading books and giggling. You have always been Mommy’s buddy, but it has been so wonderful to watch your relationship with your Daddy really blossom.
You continue to get better and better at communicating with us. You are constantly babbling and consistently say about a dozen words like no, up, down, go, out, ball, water (wa wa), more, milk, and bye. Sometimes you try to repeat our words, and even if they sound nothing like ours, we still praise your effort. You “read” to us and talk to your stuffed animals and tell us if Lucy is getting into trouble. You “choo choo” and “vroom” to your trains and trucks and “quack” to the rubber duckies in the bathtub.
You are our sunshine, Sam. We love you!
