It snowed Mother's Day morning

Came down this morning with Sam and we were both pretty excited to see snow falling, and not tiny little flakes, either. No accumulation, but it was still a sight.

What happened this weekend?

Sam got NEW SANDALS. They have little LEDs which light up as he walks, and he couldn't be more thrilled. They even came with a little comic book which he has carried around happily all weekend long.

So you might be surprised to find out that he railed against me Saturday when I changed my mind and decided not to take him into Target where he thought he could wheedle me into buying him a toy. I think because I didn't immediately, when he suggested it, say, "NO, NEVER," he thought there was a chance, and therefore it was his right. Sigh. Hard never to be the guy making the decisions, I guess.

But Sam was a good little helper in buying some roses for mommy at the garden store while 40 mph winds rattled the greenhouse roof. And he surprised me by putting some real elbow grease into dusting the dashboard of the van, the other of Susan's two Mother's Day gifts.

Four is a mercurial age. This afternoon we took him to his first classical music concert at Eastman. Beforehand there was a "craft" for the kids (and where all the over-achieving parents got to eye one another edgily).
The concert itself was great. Selections from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, then selections from Stravinsky's Firebird, complete with a shadow puppet show in the background. They knew their audience, and not only had a stand-up-and-get-the-wiggles-out intermission in the middle of the 45-minute program, but prior to Firebird instructed the audience that if anyone needed to, he or she should find a "big person" to hug if the monsters got too scary.

Afterward I asked Sam which part he liked best and he said "All of it!" and asked when we could go again. :-)

So why mercurial? Fast forward to 7:55 p.m. and a boy who is tired and out of resources knocks over a tower of blocks by mistake (Sam and tower, pre-disaster, shown above), yells at mommy for the injustice inherent in the universe, and yells, "WORST DAY EVER!"

Some days it's hard being four.

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Oh: Sam is shown with a toy he earned doing chores. It's a set of straws and rubber or plastic connectors. Fun stuff.

Each evening at dinner Sam prays for Xochitl, and asks God to "please bear up Joel." Don't know why, but when he spontaneously started saying that both Susan and I had to struggle to keep from grinning. (Not at the subject of the prayer, but at his repeating my phrase.) And as of today, he even knows what that means.

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P.s.: He's now hooked on the 70s TV show Land of the Lost.