Playing in the snake pit

Thanks, Aunt Ruth!

A note for Uncle Paul and Aunt Ruth and Jon and Katie from Sam

Merry Christmas!

Off to church shortly, but first, a video of Sam playing on Christmas morning...

Sledding!

Good wintry weekend. Ed Hull and his son Gabriel invited us to go sledding at a local park. Up to this point Sam's experience with sledding has been quite limited.

Sledding has a tarnished reputation in the Collins family. My Mother, cherishing her own good memories of sledding, liked to drag us out each winter to share the experience. Her ungrateful children complained at leaving the warm indoors, and returned whiny and cold and damp.

In one of those mysteries of parenting, I have followed my mother's path exactly, wanting Sam to enjoy everything sledding can be. We took Sam once last year to Mendon Pond in single-digit temperature and before even getting to go down a slope the sled overturned planting him in deep snow and embittering him on the outing.

Yesterday was a tremendous improvement. We spent two full hours sledding down a high, fast slope with Ed and Gabriel. (And, part of the time, with Sam's fearless friend Ian, until he got blindsided by a passing sled.)
Not one wipe-out! And we weren't timid. Following E&G's example we not only went down double-decker (I lying on my stomach, Sam on his, on my back, holding on for dear life) but did three-sled trains which roared down the slope at ferocious speeds. All this while trying to steer around other sledders and avoid the lone wooden toboggan "of death" (as Gabriel called it).

When we left Sam was shivering and ready, but not eager, to go.

The rest of the weekend: A few errands, a pleasant gig as dinner-guest stand-ins for some friends, a tiny amount of shopping, and not enough sleep. Oh yes--made sugar cookies with Sam, which started well and spiraled down into my drying his tears while he sat on my lap out on the back porch. BUT at least there were cookies. :-)

Merry Christmas!

Weekend update

A good weekend. Saturday I was impatient with Sam, and regretted it terribly. There are few things more miserable than the regret of not being patient or loving with your small, vulnerable boy. This is the way I am when I don't get enough sleep. So yesterday was a tremendous balm, and was much better. I was patient the whole day (not the same as permissive), and Sam and I had a GREAT time together. I can't wait for the next weekend to come so we can do it all over again. :-)

He and I mainly just went to the mall and wandered around. (See the photos of Sam in front of the huge Christmas tree at the mall, taken with my phone's Last-Known-Photo™ filter.) Of course, also played at home some. Used static electricity to stick balloons on the ceiling. And I used his hands to hit me, the complained bitterly to Susan that Sam was beating me up. He got a BIG kick out of that. :-)

Sam has been using the Big Potty again, and even when he doesn't, he's good about emptying the potty chair. I happened to be nearby while he was doing this, and he wanted me to take the lid off the back of the toilet so he could see it working--a favorite activity of his. This time, though, he really seemed to figure out where the water was going and what it was doing, and was excited to tell me about it.

He has alternated lately between wanting to be a Scientist or a Policeman when he grows up. Now we can add Engineer to the list. :-)

At the mall (our lesser equivalent to Easton's in Columbus) we rode the carousel and bought some votives at the Yankee Candle Shoppe (Mountain Pine, Hazelnut Coffee and his favorite, Christmas Cookie), and got a few other things we needed. And since I forgot to put the xD card back in the camera, I was forced against my will to be In The Moment.

Sam wanted to bring along a stuffed sheep of his, whom he's named Rosalinda. He told Rosalinda she didn't need to be afraid, since he was protecting her. He said God is never afraid, nor his daddy. He said he is only afraid of two things: shots, and having his mommy and daddy leave him. And he even told Rosalinda that would never happen. (Good to hear he feels secure.)

A good time was had by all. I mean, us.

Only for boys

Okay. This morning we are driving in and Sam's really quiet.

Tim: What are you thinking about?
Sam: It's a secret.
Tim: Can't you tell me? I really enjoy your secrets.
(pause)
Sam: I can tell you because it's a secret from girls. Only boys can know. I was thinking about how much I like looking at what God created.
Tim: Hey, that's nice, me too!
Sam: It's a secret only for boys. So I can't tell mommy or Aunt Sue or Mrs. Mulvaney or...

(The list of insiders and outsiders continued for quite some time.)

He also said today he liked rain. What a good day! Maybe he's forgotten his dream of California.

Eating from the tree of knowledge of good weather

Sam and I were watching a nature program about deserts.

Sam: I want to live someplace else. There's a place that's sunny all the time. That's California. I want to live in California.
Daddy: Who told you about California?
Sam: At school Amelia shared about it. She's lucky. She can see the sun all the time. I want to live there.

Now I guess I have to convince him it doesn't exist and is a make-pretend land. Like the Caribbean.

On the other hand, he was very excited Monday when we got up to snow on the ground. There's hope yet.

The advent of Advent

Sam and Susan sat down and wrote out thank-yous for his birthday gifts. Sam is pictured here sitting at the little desk we got from Stu and Sue long ago, copying down the letters from the fridge.

I should stop there and not tell you that after adding several designs on the page he was unhappy with one of them which looked too porcine rather than canine, so he threw it away. After that, he decided it was too hard for him, so he tried tracing the letters, and when that failed, he went straight to his comfort zone and designed original works of art.

Here are Sam and Lexie watching tv during a play date. Lexie's mom Liz says she loves to photograph kids while they watch tv, since they seem so quiet and angelic. :-)

Sam was a real trooper at several point during our long weekend. He naturally came along when we went to buy a Christmas tree. This year we cut our own, which meant trudging through the fields in cold, windy weather under the failing sun, Sam repeating through chattering teeth, "I'm cold!" Then Sunday after going to a playground I took him out back with me while I raked the trees hiding under the bushes and along the house. The leaf pile was too wet to jump in, so he just entertained himself while I worked. After that, I had to work in the garage, and again Sam puttered.

Then, when it must have seemed to Sam that he would never do anything interesting again, Susan swooped in and painted ornaments with him! They both did a fine job.

For the first year we are putting lights outside. At Sam's urging we are using multicolored lights. ("Multicolor is my favorite color!") We've always been staid, elegant, white-light people, but this amounts to a religious dogma with Sam, so we are willing to be flexible and give it a shot. :-) Sam "helped" put the lights on the bushes, even.

So nice that it was warm enough to play outside more than once this weekend. Yesterday we went to a playground I've mentioned before, in East Rochester. Rochester is mired in a depressed job and housing market--has been for years. And East Rochester makes the rest of Rochester look like it's flourishing. It's like it has its own personal cloud hovering above it. BUT, it has a nice large park, so I am not deterred.

It was worth the time yesterday. Not only did Sam have a great time playing with other kids who were there (they pretended to bake hams and pies and pizza, before deciding they were vampires and chasing me around). But we also enjoying visiting the nativity scene they'd set up. (First day of Advent, and it was the second he'd seen, the first being at the tree farm, which has live animals roaming amongst the statues.) Sam loved exploring it, but was a little alarmed when one of the Oriental kings tried to take a nose dive as Sam walked by. As the friendly (!) Ukrainian (?) grandma explained (about the wise man), "He's tired--he's been walking for a long time."

Come to think of it, it can't be too bad a neighborhood--no one's stolen the baby Jesus. :-)

One last photo: I took Sam to a wooded area behind a local elementary-school playground and we were delighted to find a HUGE leaf pile, clearly assembled by front loader.

Happy Advent!

A little morning chattiness

This morning on the way to school Sam was very chatty. I managed to scribble some of his statements.

When Max asked if there were bad guys in the jungle (a wooded stretch of road on the way to school), he said,

There is such a thing as bad guys. But there's not so many in our world which is Rochester. That'd be a weird thing.

He told Max about birthday parties and then noticed a ghost lawn decoration, and told Max that Hallowe'en happens every day (??) and added something I couldn't quite understand about how trick-or-treaters who are old go up to heaven. I almost expected him to say they ask for candy from St. Peter, but he didn't get that explicit.

He got theological at one point:

Sam: That's a weird thing: how do you go up to heaven? Do you just rise or do you just lie on the ground?
Me, shooting from the hip: You lie on the ground til Jesus gathers everyone, then you rise.

He thought that sounded a little odd.

When he noticed I was writing down what he was saying, he said, Write this down: I love candy.

The big oh-four

The big Sam news this week is Sam's fourth birthday, which occurred over the weekend. Susan did a bang-up job planning and executing it, and our great thanks go to Amy for all her hard work getting the place ready and watching Sam.
The party was a great success! Six of Sam's friends came over: Dan, a quiet boy with a great laugh and pleasant disposition; Isaac, the 2.5-yr-old son of friends Marvin and Nicole; Sam's good friends Lexie and Ian; and two girls from Montessori he really enjoys playing with, Alicia and Ariana. It was a very good group, and the kids all behaved well. Most notably, Sam behaved well, which I don't take for granted: that many kids, the excitement, are all a recipe for fussiness. Get this: his party was in the afternoon (2-4 pm) and we decided he would open his gifts from family after dinner. Well, after getting gifts at the afternoon party, he assumed that was it, and that he wouldn't be getting anything else, and he didn't make a peep. So when we whipped out the family presents later, he was overjoyed!
The simplicity of the four-year-old birthday is delightful: The children had a whale of a time playing Duck Duck Goose and London Bridge. Both games had some fun pathologies. For instance, at one point in London Bridge Ian decided to run the wrong way, eliciting loud warnings from the parents as he almost crashed into all the other kids. And many kids got so caught up running around in circles during Duck Duck Goose that they neglected to sit down! I think they would have happily run all day. That's the point, right?
Two other activities were planned. First, Susan procured a cardboard castle. She then strewed crayons and markers about and many of the kids spent quite some time coloring it, while others puttered around perusing Sam's toys.
The kids also played a fishing game in which they cast a line behind a corner desk and pulled out little prizes. The prize hysteria grew greater and greater until finally, when they had each had their turns, they swarmed forward, storming the desk. Only calm thinking on the part of Amy and Susan saved me!

Happily, the parents also had a pleasant time. I can only speak for the men. We did the next best thing to vanishing outside for cigars--we sat around talking about electronic gadgets. Both Marvin and Martin showed off their iPhone apps while I looked on enviously.

Thanks to all who sent gifts! And thanks also to Amy not only for her hard work, but for the multitude of great photographs.

A good game of "Pride"

First, the Hallowe'en report: I carved a pumpkin, with face designed by Sam. As previously mentioned, Sam dressed as a jaguar for the occasion proving that the free hand-me-down costume is better than the store-bought one, especially if it is more comfortable. Trick-or-treating was great: It was cold and gloomy, befitting the occasion, and everyone was hospitable.
In fact, even the kids who came to our door were well behaved and we have none of the teenagers dressed as teenagers (which I despise). Sam was in heaven for the whole experience. And thankfully, as he was just getting over what was likely h1n1, being outside in the cold for a little while didn't seem to exacerbate things.
Shown here is Sam organizing his loot. We did the usual: he collects candy, then we switch it (with his knowledge) for a peanut-safe batch we'd already bought. He did just fine in the trade and wasn't bothered at all. He's still plowing through it all, since we generally don't give him candy except early in the day, and if he's eaten well. And lately he's eaten like a bird.
Sam was helpful today in raking leaves, both during the bagging and in dragging bags the last dozen feet to the curb. And he had a great time jumping in the big piles. It hasn't rained for several days, so they were perfect for jumping. Shown is a typical three-picture tumble.
Unrelated to these activities: Sam announced yesterday that he wanted to play a game of "pride." What's that? You describe, and if possible demonstrate, what you are proud of. In his case: (a) choosing books (he chose a dinosaur encyclopedia at the library which he loves); (b) shooting (imaginary guns); (c) fighting (karate--his own personally invented version). We add to this things like coloring and painting. And he wants us to play as well. Always interesting to see what he comes up with.
On the subject of pride, he's just transitioned to pull-ups instead of diapers with his pjs at night. When Susan put them on him the other night, she tells me he looked shy and even ashamed, and said they didn't make him proud. She asked what would, and he said "underwear." She assured him that would come soon enough as he learned to go through the night without urinating. I know we're from the generation that tends to overpraise and artificially inflate egos, and we are always trying to counteract that tendency. And having read articles on emotional IQ, we try to praise him for hard work rather than innate ability.

Then he comes out with something like this. And we just want to hug him and tell him not to worry about his pull-ups or diapers or whatever, because we love him. So nice to be able to do that.

Our trip to Atlantis

Yes, Atlantis, or so Sam called it. Having heard about Atlantis in various cartoon shows, he was happy to hear he'd finally be visiting. He didn't seem too disappointed when it turned out to be above water.

The last week we three went to Atlanta for the annual American Physical Society's Division of Plasma Physics meeting. It was a real treat being able to go as a family. And we feel blessed it worked out--after all, Sam's doctor thinks he came down with H1N1 last week, and got over it quickly because he received the vaccine 1.5 weeks before.

Unfortunately, Susan came down with something shortly after our arrival. She's taken it like a trooper, though.
Some highlights of the trip:

• The hotel, a Hyatt, is built around a huge, light, 22-story atrium: The rooms all circle the atrium off of balcony-corridors and look out over the huge interior. And, to quote Susan,
  

  One of the cool things about having a little boy is you can ride the super-cool glass elevator to the top floor, then all the way down again, and act excited the whole time, and people just think you're being a good mom.

• Atlanta is home to the Georgia Aquarium which bills itself as the largest in the world. It has a huge tank containing two huge manta rays (the only in captivity in the U.S.), and four gigantic whale sharks, in addition to numerous other large fish, such as several hammer-head sharks. Susan asked whether they all eat one another, and was told they are kept well fed to avoid this; but as is only natural, the bigger ones do snack on others from time to time. The colorful and aptly named "porkfish" are considered the snacks of the tank! In fact, the docent said she had recently seen a hammerhead shark swim by with a fin sticking out of its mouth, not looking at all guilty.
• The Aquarium, however, was not free. It cost over $100 for all three of us (ugh). This included a 15-minute movie with 3-D glasses (the polarized-light kind, not the blue-red kind) in which cute fish preached about the importance of not killing the oceans, etc. etc. We were delighted to see they nonetheless sold tuna fish sandwiches in the cafeteria. The movie, in an attempt to drive home the 3-D effects, even sprayed the audience with water and blew puffs of air at us when appropriate, and dropped streamers on our heads at the end. Shown here is Sam standing with Domino the Whale Shark. Sam was truly delighted to hug Domino, and confided in me afterwards that Domino had stepped on his foot. I said, At least it was a soft foot, right? Nope. A valuable lesson learned: sharks are dangerous. (Btw, only grainy photos from this trip: forgot the real camera. So this is what it's like to be "in the moment" and not see the world through the view-finder!)
  
• A legacy of the Atlanta Olympics is the pleasantly sculpted Centennial Park in the center of town, just a few blocks away. We made several trips there to avail ourselves of the play equipment, run through the programmed water jets (stayed mostly dry!) and enjoy the stream and waterfalls. Sam also made some new playmates. Tonight it was a pair of Hispanic kids and their family. Sam asked them if he could play with them and they ended up chasing one another around pretending to be tigers. At one point Sam changed into a T-Rex and the other boy happily told him about T-Rex's "talons" and how they can sink into you.
  
• Also within a few blocks is a little children's "museum" (i.e. creative indoor play area) called Imagine It! It was, again, quite expensive. More expensive, in fact, than Rochester's Museum of Play, and a tiny fraction of the size. Susan wants to raise money to fly school groups from Atlanta up to Rochester's PM. Her goal is to forever spoil them for their own children's museum. Once you've tasted the real thing, you can never go back.
• We didn't go to the Coke Museum--not enough time, I suppose--but did enjoy the tower-sized coke bottle with the spectrally shifting lights. Maybe next time. Seemed cruel to take him there and not just let him chug caffeinated liquid, which I think might not have been the best idea.
• Even more than the aquarium and the other sights, Sam enjoyed a game of his own invention called "vomit" (we used parental discretion to change it to "bomb"). In this game two opponents try to toss a repurposed suction cup at each other. (There are more rules--you can't be too close, etc.). Yes, Sam's a three-year-old boy.
  
• The weather. While it was rainy/snowy/40s/cold/cloudy (i.e. "seasonable") in Rochester, we were enjoying mid 60s and sunny. Ahh...
  

This evening while taking the elevator up to the room, a plasma physicist remarked that we need more energy like Sam's in plasma physics. (I added that his is a non-thermal energy source. Ha! Ha! I should take it on the road--literally.)

Next year, Chicago.

Why *did* God create criminals?

Today Sam revealed to me (Susan) that he has three babies. I said, "Well, you must have a wife. Did you get married?" He said, "Yes, I married a girl named Hannah." As the conversation progressed, it developed that Hannah was twenty, and that she watches the babies so Sam can play with sisters and brothers (not clear if they are HIS sibs or the babies' sibs). Sam, however, gets up at night if the babies are sick, because Hannah is young and needs her sleep.

Hannah, by the way, is a real sport: she puts the babies to bed, but the babies hate bedtime so they play tag instead, and Hannah loves to chase them. Uh-huh. Yup. I kept quizzing Sam casually the whole time, because I was just lapping this up, and he had an answer for everything I asked.

He and Hannah both work. What is Sam's job, you may ask? "I am a boy, and I am a waitress at the Cafe." I explained that a boy waitress is a waiter. Turns out Hannah is also a waitress at the Cafe. They have lots of money: $5.20.

There also appears to be older kids in this family, and the older kids are good sleepers but the babies, unfortunately, are not. Many of the family members have allergies. Hannah herself is allergic to milk and eggs, but just the "oak" of the egg. :-) One of the babies is allergic to eggs and fire. Some are allergic to smoke.

The three babies, Amelia, Hannah (after his wife), and Sean, were later downgraded to just one baby, Amelia. This is because when we first saw Sam, he was just one baby.

Boy, they do grow up fast! I always like that Hannah, though. By the way, there's a real girl named Hannah in Sam's Montessori classroom, and I know he likes her. :-) More than I'd realized!

* * *

Tonight Sam asked, "Why did God create dangerous things, like criminals?" Before you know it, I'm trying to explain free will to a not-quite-four-year-old.

* * *

Sam's been complaining lately at bedtime. Like his Nana, he believes sleeping is boring, boring, boring. He's also worried about bad dreams, of which he has had a few of late. This evening he asked us to pray to tell God about a bad dream he just had in which a giant banana with peels for arms and no eyes or legs swung in a door, in which I think must have been a menacing way. The whole room, he says, was packed full of people who turned into monsters.

But also, there was a pink polka-dot monster with yellow spots and multicolored eyes.

No wonder he doesn't like sleep.

* * *

On the weekend I (Tim) took Sam to the Play Museum, from which these photos come. The "Whack-a-Foe" game is from an exhibit on superheroes. And Sam is lying around the ground with two girls in front of a device where you place wooden balls on a conveyor belt and turn it, sending the balls onto a xylohpone, thus making music. Or noise. And if you are Sam and the girls you lie on the floor and watch the balls tumble into the hopper, and giggle wildly when they do.

The leopard suit is, btw, a hand-me-down costume from friends, which Sam prefers to the skeleton costume we purchased for him.

And that's all the news that's fit to print!

This morning Susan picked up another book to read to Sam...

Sam: "We've already read that."
Susan: "No, we read a different one last night that looked similar."

(Sam looks at it more closely)

Sam: "Oh, this is by the same author!"

Yup! :-)

What's Samliness next to?

Okay, this anecdote may be fascinating only because it involves a child voluntarily cleaning things.

Sam got in trouble for something we need not go into right now. Afterward he was very much in the mood to gain approval from his parents. First I had him help clean up the mess he made. He enjoyed it enough that he asked to keep cleaning--so I suggested:

Tim: You want to clean the kitchen floor with me?
Sam: Yeah! Why would I not? [You could here the "duh!"]

As he scrubbed he said with enthusiasm, "This could be sparkling! It's sparkling like diamonds!"

And while asking me for the container of wipes he said, "you know, the yellow cylinder!" I think I've ascertained that he has the spiritual gift of "syllables."

* * *

Yesterday Susan told Sam a great story about a boy who is naughty and buries his sister's favorite corn-cob doll--only to have his transgression revealed to all when corn grew on the spot.

Sam, never one to miss the point, said at the end, That was really bad. I could never do that. I don't know how to dig a hole.

Susan then said, "I hope there are other reasons you can't do that!"
Sam replied, "Yeah, there sure are: we don't have a corn-cob doll!"

“Pumpkins aren't scary 'cause they don't walk on their own. You walk on two legs and carry them.”

—Sam, reassuring Max

The annual pumpkin trip and other tales

This weekend was both fun and productive, and earned Susan some hazard pay. Saturday afternoon we had over a friend of Sam's from school named Ariana. Her mother is a dentist from central America. (For the longest time they had a nanny and we were under the impression the nanny was really Ariana's mother.) This was the first time Sam and Ariana got together for a play date, and there were a couple of surprises. First, when they arrived Arian's mom just ushered Ariana to the door, poked her head in, and said she was going to go work out and would see us in a couple of hours! OH! One of THOSE play dates! Susan expects she will reciprocate, but it was still a surprise. Second, we learned that Ariana is FULL OF EXPLOSIVE ENERGY! She made Sam look like Sam Waterson in a PBS movie about the Library of Congress. For quite some time Susan couldn't leave them alone for fear that bones would be broken. Fortunately once she had a Playmobil(tm) castle to focus on she calmed down a little.

A good time was had by Sam and Ariana, and I got to take out a glass shower door and install a new overhead light. Woohoo!

Also this weekend:

• A trip to Shutt's Apple Farm to get pumpkins. In the new house we are now just ten minutes away. It's always fun to visit there, and we came away with not just pumpkins, but fresh donuts, a "home-made" cherry pie, and dried soup. Yum!
• A trip to Bounce-It-Out to (1) reward him for elimination successes, despite the danger of recidivism (sorry for all the potty talk); (2) wear him out; (3) expose him to BOTH the seasonal flu AND H1N1. Three birds with one stone!
  
• A complete viewing of Disney's retelling of Exodus, Prince of Egypt. His request. More than once he said a scene was scary but he still wanted to watch it. The crossing of the Red Sea and the Passover were the scariest. Once we finished that we cleansed his mind with some Max & Ruby (a world where life is simple and the worst worries are about Ruby's finishing her BunnyScout craft project in time).
  
• May seem minor, but Sam and I watched a local home improvement tv show together. This is an important milestone--not only did he sit and watch something *I* wanted to watch, but he ended up enjoying it! Didn't hurt, I am sure, that I kept ooing and ahhing over the log cabin they were working on.
• Many games of Hisss, a simple card game where the players build snakes. Mark Geary introduced it to us, and it's perfect for his age. And I learned this morning it's straightforward to palm cards onto his pile to orchestrate the flow of the game if it's 8:15 a.m. and you need to leave for school. (Not that I am not usually content to let him lose when he loses.)
  

That's our news. A pleasantly quiet week lies ahead... I hope. Oh--the second photo shows Sam with his friend Ian. Ian is wearing Sam's Hallowe'en costume, which Sam picked out but now doesn't want to put on. Don't ask.

p.s.: anyone have any flu vaccine we could bogart?

Rochester--the middle of nowhere

From Susan:

Sam and I were coloring, and he was sort of muttering to himself. Then he said, "God didn't do what I told him to do!" I said, very amused, "What did you tell God to do?" Sam said, "I told him to sharpen ALL these crayons." Well, I tried to explain that God doesn't just do what we command, but that God had given US the means to sharpen our crayons. I flipped the crayon box over and showed him the sharpener, which he already knew was there.

I wondered how often we feel that way about God, without admitting it so honestly! Why doesn't God do what I (nicely) tell him?

* * *

Last night we were in the grocery-store parking lot when Sam announced happily that we were in the middle of nowhere. I suppose sometimes there are worse places to be.

* * *

This morning Susan played some of a toccata by Bach on the piano. After she said how much she liked Bach and went off to the kitchen Sam went to the piano and tinkled around on it for a moment, then turned to me and said, "Is this Bach?"

I don't care that he probably doesn't know what a composer is; it's still fun to have your 3-yr-old ask you that.

Columbus week before Columbus Day (go figure)

A very pleasant week of family vacation with the Columbus kinfolk. The week included trips to playgrounds (despite occasionally cool and rainy weather), the Zoo with Uncle Stu, volleyball for Tim and Stu (woohoo!), dinner in Westerville with Sue and Stu and the beloved cousins, a day at the magnificent outdoor/indoor mall Easton's (and lunch with AA at a Turkish restaurant), German Village in downtown Columbus to see Mom's beautiful butterfly painting followed by lunch at Schmitt's (and a marvelous Bahama Mama), an afternoon at the Franklin Park Conservatory, lunch at Aunt Amy's... a very good week indeed.
The afternoon with Mom at the Conservatory was very enjoyable and photograph-worthy. Shown is Sam in a "whispering cave" in an outdoor bonsai garden boasting trees over 100 years old. Also Sam in the most beautiful room, a jungle room with streams burbling through it and huge coy. And throughout the conservatory, among the plants, were gorgeous, bright and colorful glass sculptures by a sculptor named Chihuly.
While Sam enjoyed the whole place, a highlight was an area for children. Sam was the only child there, where one could play with pieces of plastic which looked exactly like the priceless pieces of glass in the sculptures. And the best part were the looks of horror on the faces of the elderly visitors wandering by who thought we were letting him play with the real thing!
Stu was, as usual, a big hit with Sam, for his willingness to rough-house with Sam. Here is a typical shot of Sam gaffawing with Stu.
We also had a great time eating lunch at the Worthington Inn while Aunt Amy and Nana watched Sam, today at lunch. You will understand why there are no photos of that!

Each morning he got up much earlier than Nana and Grandad, and often I'd have to find some way to get him out and use up some energy. One morning I suggested to him that we go to a playground and he looked alarmed and said, "What about Nana and Grandad? Why are you not going to let them come?" (I explained they were welcome to, but were currently sleeping...)

The day at the mall we took Sam to a matinee of Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs. I am sure it would be a fun movie for someone older, but it was too scary for Sam. He was reluctant to admit it, since he knew this was His One Chance To See A Movie, but finally it got bad enough that we left. That was when a main character with a peanut allergy was going into anaphylactic shock. Ugh!

All in all a great week, despite some cold weather. Always great to see family! Sam was his usual talkative self. One evening we were playing around on his bed, and he plopped down on his back and told me unselfconsciously that his bed was "inhumanly hot" (as usual, I quizzed him and indeed he had a reasonable definition at hand). At the end of our Conservatory visit we sat in their cafe eating ice cream which Sam described as "scrumptious." And his brain was as fertile as usual--one morning he told me that he wanted to rename our cats, currently Alex and Zoe, as Norman and Ginger. We may never know why.

Weekend update

The weather was cool (60s) and overcast, like a visiting friend who has a headache but wants to try to make the most of his last day here.

And I was determined to make the most if it. So Sam and I went to Mendon Ponds in the afternoon for a few hours. First we hiked some trails. These trails have stations where, if you brought your own bird seed, you can stand with your hand outstretched and chickadees and nuthatches may land on your hand. Sam and I both tried this. I got two visitors, but they weren't too confident of Sam. So he put some seed on a bench and one of them sampled that.

Eagle-eye Sam spotted a bee hive while hiking, also shown here.

Enough for now--need to post photos from the past week...