Visit from Ruth & Katie

Sam's aunt Ruth and cousin Katie flew out last weekend for a too-short five-day visit. High points: An almost uncountable number of visits to the mall; dinner at Chang's, where Sam
was enthralled with wiki-sticks; Aunt Ruth played "wrong or right" with Sam; Katie and Ruth FINISHED THE PORTHOLES IN SAM'S ROOM!; Aunt Ruth made CURTAINS for Sam's room!; and many other things. Ruth and Katie, it was so good seeing you! Below are several photos from that visit.

A few items since the:

• Sam's gotten heavily into sidewalk chalk on the driveway. In particular, he's become obsessed with drawing convoluted paths he calls mazes. And there's a new variant: Berry mazes. These are paths with berries every so often for those traversing the path to eat. (Path followers include so far two dinosaurs, a giraffe, a scary giant prehistory spider and a hungry bear.)

• We have Aunt Ruth to thank for Sam's unusual complaint the other day, "Mommy, my instep is hurting!"

• At church the Sunday before last Sam was squirming, so I whispered to him that the pastor was praying. Sam looked confused and whispered back, "This isn't how we talk to God!" Honestly, we do pray with him, and he has been in church before.

• Actually, he has been thinking about religious questions. For instance, he asked Susan the other day if Spiderman was on the cross. Um. No. Why? I think he got a little confused because I was showing him a Batman episode where Batman goes undercover in a homeless shelter to find where some bums are being abducted to. And during this episode Batman has a dream where he weeps for all the people he wants to save but cant. It seemed like a teachable moment, so I talked about that attitude, and parallels to Jesus. But that may have been a little above his head...

• Sams love of knock-knock jokes continues unabated. His version of the classic taught him by Aunt Ruth: Knock knock. Whos there? Duane, save me, I'm drowning in the bathtub!

• After a recent time out, Susan said to Susan, "I'm thinking of hitting you but I'm not going to hit you." She was a little conflicted by this. Good! You are not hitting me! But why is this even an issue?

More later...