Sam the Ghost

...or maybe Sam the Seraph, it really could be either.

Sam loves to scare himself. We went to a small local library tonight and when we came home, on the way in from the car to the house, he exclaimed, "OH NO THERE'S A GHOST IN THE STREET!" and we rushed in to avoid it. (Turned out there was a ghost inside as well, but these stories always have good endings.)

From Susan:

I tried to convince Sam to be a pirate for Halloween, but I knew he really wanted to be a ghost. I was worried about adapting a pillowcase for the cause: too easy for him to look like a KKK member! Finally I bought a very cheap ghost-type costume, and when he put it on, he was thrilled. (See pic at left.) I'm not letting him wear the headpiece, which is way too creepy; he'll wear a white hooded sweatshirt under the costume. That'll have to be ghost enough. When wearing the costume, he ran around the room flapping his arms in delight.

Back to Tim:

In other news, I asked Sam if he knew how much I love him, and when he said no, I told him I love him up to the moon and back. Then he replied, "Daddy, I love you to Sara's house!" (That's Sara Dill, beloved babysitter.) Then he looked up, thought about it a little, and realized that wasn't very far, and amended it, "way way far to the Play Museum cause that's far away."

And one last Piaget moment: A few days ago Sam told me that a duck is a type of bird. You can see the wrinkles forming on his cranium.

Monsters and incarcerated cookie cutters

Today Sam received in the mail a precious surprise from his Aunt Ruth, a set of new cookie cutters. You may note from earlier posts that Sam's been "helping" Susan make frosted sugar cookies. Well, Ruth heard of this and send along shapes including a pig, moon, heart, and various others, including Sam's favorite, an airplane.

Sam played with them constantly this evening. Even when he was allowed to watch Winnie the Pooh he requested that they watch with him.

When, after dinner, he went to play by himself, he came back, saying he was scared of monsters. (He had gone all of three feet from the table.) Then he said something we never expected to hear:

I'm scared maybe a monster will take my cookie cutters and put them in jail.

Hard to know exactly how to respond to that one! Feel free to add your suggestions in the comments...

Morning at the Raptor Rehab Center

Cold day today, but that didn't stop us from a trip to Mendon Ponds. They have a little center for injured birds of prey, which Sam and I visited for the first time. Saw several red-tailed hawks, a snowy owl, a bald eagle, a barn owl and a horned owl. Would have seen a bobcat if he hadn't been hiding.

I know, it's not a bird. They didn't explain why they made an exception for him. I suppose if you are the kind of society who keeps injured birds you don't pass up a bobcat when offered. Apparently his injury is that he was front-declawed to be kept as a pet. Also worth noting that their enclosures were all significantly smaller than those used by the local zoo.

Despite being non-profit they had a very well stocked gift shop. It was manned by a grouchy old woman who seemed very suspicious that we would "enjoy" their birds without giving a proper donation. We did end up giving $2, but not in the typical denomination. They give visitors the option of, for $1, buying a mouse. They then name the mouse after you and feed it to one of the birds! If you are there at the right time, you can even watch. I bought two on the condition that they not name either mouse after me.

After that, we were wandering around outside the nature center when a man in running shorts jogged by, towards a network of paths they have in the park. Sam was so intrigued that he wanted to follow to see where the guy was going. (Sam is getting more interested in automotive transportation too. Today he asked me more than once to follow one car or another, and he's still trying to work out why, sometimes, when the light is green, I still don't go.) So we followed running guy who was quickly out of sight, and just enjoyed walking down the trails.

In other Sam news, "Little Max"--the hand puppet Max as done by Sam--made another appearance. I looked over at one point tonight to see Sam's two hands engaged in a lively discussion. Couldn't make out what they were saying, exactly. I'm unsure if this is a sign that he is an intelligent boy with a strong imagination, or just a little loopy. As I understand it, that ambiguity remains until they head off for college.

So, to prove that he really does have some non-imaginary friends, I'm posting two photos of them: First, with Lexie, and then with Ethan and Elliot. Good friends, all.

I should mention we made a trip to the Play Museum and visited Sam's friend, Mouse Trap. I was amazed a day or two ago when, having not seen it for weeks, and then only once, he remembered how the marble moves through the trap well enough to correct me on it. Really, we don't sit around and drill him on this. I think he has a really good memory for important things like where marbles go under the power of gravity.

Brief period of fooling

Last night Sam, sitting at the dinner table while Susan and I were getting things ready, said, "I'm sad I'm not sad I fooled you!"


I deliberately left out punctuation because the statement sounded just like that. Our period of concern over his being sad was very short!

In other Sam news, he's become very interested in drawing paths. He calls them mazes, but really they are just curvy paths. He'll even draw them in the nap of the rug, and then ask us to trace through them from start to finish.

So, he's fascinated by paths through space--2D or 3D. (I think he has this in common with his cousin Kevin.) So much so that daily he'll bring me a particular catalog which has a particular "marble race"-type toy (very much like the one in the photo), and ask me to tell him again how the marble rolls down, and where it goes. I love that his imagination's strong enough that he's happy even picturing in his mind where the ball goes. It's unfortunate that these guys run from $80 for the smaller ones to over $100 for the larger! (At least, the wooden ones do.) We're thinking about affordable alternatives to get him for his birthday. Like more catalogs to look at.

[Photo credit: Amy took that great shot of sneaky Sam.]

Pegging the Needle on the Autumnal Meter

Today Susan was more like Ruth than I've ever seen her. This morning I walked in on her and Sam, and she said, "Look! Look at the tricks Sam can do!" She then proceeded to tell Sam to sit and roll over and jump up and down, and after each trick she threw him imaginary dog biscuits. He was having a great time. And that's what I mean by her being like Ruth: No one else has the ability Ruth has of inducing people to do what she wants them to, and somehow making them like it! Okay, maybe this is just a sign that Susan did a lot of babysitting as a kid (and was never overburdened with scruples about others' dignity). I prefer to believe the genetic link is showing itself.

That's not a particularly autumnal pleasure--more year-round. Today's wallowing-in-Fall experience was a long visit to Mendon Pond. Sam and I went, giving Susan time to get other things done. We wandered around the little sensory garden (not a euphemism for anything), marveled at the horses, threw things in the water, played in the playground, watched the geese get alarmed by other small people, rolled down a couple of hills, examined a grasshopper without killing him, got spooked by ghosts which turned out to just be pedestrians, tossed cat-tail fluff in the air for Sam to run through while giggling wildly, and sat serenely watching a family of seven deer graze nearby. This was the kind of afternoon which makes you think, "If Sam dies tragically, I will look back on this with unbearable heartache." That is, if you are a nutcase.

This morning we also went to the Public Market and got a heap of veggies and fine cheese. What a green day! Where are my berkenstocks? Where's my hemp sweater? Why is my hair so short?

The colors must be close to peak. Whenever I think of Fall I think of the movie The Trouble with Harry, since more than most it takes advantage of a Fall New England setting. It's also a hilarious movie. (Shirley MacLaine in a role which won't disturb you!) If you haven't seen it, you orta. Here's a conversation starter: What is inextricably tied to Fall for you?

[And Juli or Andy, if you're reading this: What's Fall like in Blighty? I can't remember! In the absence of sugar maples, do they have any color change to speak of? Do people still eschew the cities for fear of Spring-Heel Jack?]

Western New York's Dolce Vita

More autumnal fun! Susan took Sam along with Sam's friend Ian and Ian's mom Barb to a local apple farm yesterday. (Ian also goes to Montessori's Children's House--or, as we call it, Zeroth Form.) Surely this is the high point of being a part-time at-home parent: getting to wander around in the open fall air during a weekday afternoon! And not on vacation time, either.

I think the picture of Sam and Ian in the cornfield could well be a movie poster. It looks like they are about to enter some sort of Kansas entry into Narnia. (Where all the sows and mares and hens talk about the evil Witch who's running the slaughterhouse.)

Interestingly, Ian and Sam are about the same age--Sam's ab0ve typical height and Ian's below. It says something that I didn't even notice. You get used to that difference when you are 6'5", I guess.

The house of sticks was one of three -- straw, sticks and faux bricks. We liked what we saw but haven't made an offer yet.

Oh, for those following the Max saga, this morning Sam made a hand puppet out of his own hand, calling him "little Max". When asked what Little Max had to say, Sam had him answer "da da da", which I think is the toddler equivalent of "yada yada yada".

Gingerbread Carnage

Almost forgot! Sam's had a couple of books is his rotation where the Gingerbread Man gets chased and eaten. One is a retelling of the classic fairy tale in a Western motif, the other a story in which the Big Bad Wolf manages to sweet-talk the librarian and ends up winning not only her confidence but also a bag of terrified little gingerbread men. (I really hadn't realized until recently that we are supposed to be glad that the Gingerbread Man, fugitive that he is, is caught and eaten. I always thought it was meant to be a sad story.)

So he requested to bake some dough-people himself and Susan obliged, baking some sugar cookies with him, in the shape of people and hearts. He was thrilled to be able to participate in their decoration, and I understand today they will put icing on the cookies.

Ooh, too other unrelated notes:

• Sam was coughing a lot yesterday so I had him use the inhaler. To get him to focus I grabbed the first thing I could find on the internet, an 80s music video for the song Take on Me by the Norwegian rock group A-ha. It has its moments, and Sam was riveted. In fact, he keeps asking to see it again, and asking about plot points in the tiny little plot of the video. Susan's disturbed by this, and if you image Sam with big hair and a Members-Only jacket, you might be too.
  
• I've mentioned the sock puppet Max which Susan made to pass the time with Sam. And I've mentioned that Sam would often rather talk to Max rather than either of us, even when there's no sock present and Sam is just a talking hand. I haven't mentioned that last night Sam, at one point, wanted to talk to Max, and put his own hand up to his face to make Max! It was short-lived. I think the excitement of talking to Max is less when he has to also answer. If this all sounds like the seeds of neuroses, I suppose I ought to mention that Susan, who has grown sick of Max (and Sam's constant demands to speak to Max), is thinking seriously of faking Max's death.

Tim

The Goat Hotel

If you don't live in Rochester, you might not know about the Goat Hotel pictured here. It's at a local gardening-ish store. There are all sorts of other things for the kids, such as a maze of hay bales. Very country, and an awful lot of fun for Sam! And here's a trick--show up half an hour before they close, and you get in for free. :-)