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.