house numbers

After a good post-vacation Monday, it was perhaps inevitable Tuesday wouldn't go easily. To quote Susan this morning,

Sam was visited by the Meltdown Fairy this morning, closely attended by the Elves of Consequences.

Out of the blue, as Susan was putting Sam down to sleep tonight:

Sam: Mommy, I have to ask you a question about house numbers. Do house numbers ever end?
Susan: Yes, they do.
Sam: How do they know when to end?
Susan: Depends on how many houses there are in that part of town...

So much to learn at Sam's age. Earlier he noticed swervy tire tracks on the rain-soaked road, and was sure that they were made by a bad guy--since bad guys are always doing bad things, like swerving.

Monday morning, bright and early, he excitedly brought up two Lego men and made one into a zombie chasing the other. The one in front originally had a horrified look on his face, but that Lego head has gone missing (and so it begins).

Also shown, the turkey Sam made at Montessori last week. Love the mismatched googly eyes!

One last photo: I promised a shot of the living room which Ruth painted. You can't appreciate the color in this light, but you can certainly see what a cozy place it is now. Thanks, Ruth!

An Abundance of Thanksgiving Photos

A really good visit! Here are many photos. Some highlights:

• Sue reading to Sammy! I will now be looking for books by Arnold Lobel. We'd seen Frog & Toad, but never the Mouse books (such as Mouse Soup). These are the kind of books I will read by myself, even
  
• An amazing Thanksgiving dinner--both food and company
  
• Christmas lights, both at Easton Mall (Columbus' best indoor-outdoor mall--makes Eastview Mall look like the kids' table at Thanksgiving dinner)... and driving around Worthington looking at lawn lights
• Victory against Michigan! Woohoo! Many friends are fans of Big Blue, and I am sorry for their tragic seventh loss
  
• Drawing with crayon and naming about 189 monsters with Sam and, briefly, Emily
  
• ...and, frankly, lots of good time with family
  

Sam's World of Art

We just had the first parent-teacher conference of the year. Among other things, Ms. Mulvaney emphasized his love of drawing and artwork. Just the other day, for instance, he sat focused intently for 2.5 hours drawing and making up narratives to accompany his drawings. She says She's never seen a student with this sort of artistic creativity this young--it's usually 6 or 7.

And we've really been enjoying what he's come up with. Wednesday night Sam and I just sat and drew robots for a long time. Tonight he has a babysitter coming with a book on how to draw superheroes. You can imagine how excited he is. :-)

The first drawing here is a spooky face appearing in a crystal ball. I really like that one.

The second... I am not sure what the ears/wings are on top. But the different "levels" are God's world, the plant world, the people world and the bubble world. At first I thought the flame in God's world was like the burning bush, which he's recently learned about again in Sunday school. Nope, God is wearing a cape! Unexpected.

The third is a house with a piano in the attic. The balls & lines are musical notes wafting through the air. That's all I remember--I am sure there's more.

Five!

Sam turned five last Sunday. The party is a big deal to him, as you would expect. And these days kids are having big parties at facilities with huge inflated slides and other bouncy equipment. (The facilities provide a cake and pizza for the kids after they run around like maniacs for an hour.)

We wanted to have a simpler (and cheaper) party at home, and thanks to Susan's hard work, it went very well. The biggest expense was probably the Scooby-Doo cake (the S. D. pinata, bought at a low-price party store, was a lot cheaper!). It was nice to be able to give Sam some birthday cake, since birthday cakes are never safe for him, so for every party he goes to Susan makes a cupcake or two for him to have which is safe.

Nine friends showed up with about half the many parents. The weather was nice, so they ran around outside for an hour first, and had a great time. The highlight for Sam was a game Susan led them in, where they were blindfolded, given a wooden spoon, and told to crawl around on their hands and knees to find, and bang on, an up-turned stock pot with a treat bag inside. The really enjoyed this. Susan also led them in Simon Says, putting little candy decorations on their pieces of cake.

A simple and straightforward party and a good time was had by all. :-)

shutterbug

Sam has rediscovered his camera, the one Aunt Ruth and Uncle Paul gave him over a year ago.

He took well over 380 photos yesterday, voraciously swallowing every view however humble.

Here are some of them. It's fun see what Sam sees.

His venture into photographic art wasn't without its ups and downs. He happened, in the late afternoon, to see a white-tailed deer in a lawn across the street, but was unable to get a shot off in time. So it was all the more exciting when, this morning, on the way in to school, we happened upon a buck. I rolled down the window quickly and there was time for a couple of shots. We'll see if any of them comes out.

Last night Sam came to Susan, crying. When she asked why, he said he had to delete some photos, so he deleted all his nature shots; he was stricken at the loss. Susan said he could take more today.

Birthday party tomorrow afternoon. We have a little more shopping to do and lots of cleaning, and we have to plan some party games. The party will be at our place. We have a Scooby-head pinata (from Factory Card Outlet, a great place for the frugal partier), and in a coup Susan secured a peanut-safe (we hope) Scooby-Doo cake from the Little Bakery, who do a great job. What fun!

Sam: What did the monkey say to the banana?
You: I don't know, what?
Sam: Nothing, his mouth was full.

I was glad to be back on Thursday after most of a week away. When, on Wednesday, Terra asked Sam if he missed me, Sam said, "No, we skyped."

Have a good weekend!

1,000 bottles of chocolate milk

I am writing from a plasma physics conference in Chicago. Well, the plasma physics conference in Chicago, I guess. Although closer to home, it's a longer trip than the usual California trips, and we couldn't afford to take Sam and Susan along.

So tonight we used the webcams to chat, so Sam could see I am still alive.

He had a very bad morning. His best friend Alicia spurned him. He drew little broken hearts in class, and denied to Ms. Mulvaney that they were his. He spoke little and clung to her for some comfort. Naturally he denied it all to us, and when pressed said he had a great morning. Kids.

Nice to think at this age they get over these things quickly.

An exchange between Susan and Sam after they finished reading a book about the Golden Fish who grants wishes:

Susan: If you had one wish, what would you wish for?
Sam: My own mini-golf course in our back yard!
...and one thousand bottles of chocolate milk and a new house.
Susan: Why would you wish for a new house?
Sam: I've lived in this house for twenty years!

(How time flies.)

Ruth Repaints

We had a visit from Aunt Ruth over the last week. It was a record-setting visit in many ways. First, assuming all goes well today, Ruth will have seen the inside of five airports on the way out, and four on the way back. Nine total. Wow.

It was the first time anyone's ever checked a piano stool as luggage when visiting us.

It was the first time anyone's ever taken us out to Mexican lunch in front of a roaring fire.

And most impressively, it was certainly the first time anyone visited and painted our entire first floor! (Minus the recently painted kitchen.) WOW! Ruth was tireless, working into the night, pushing the scaffold around and getting every corner. It looks fantastic! And is a tribute to her generosity of time, effort and spirit.

Thank you!

Ruth also came with us to small group and Sunday school, hung out with us while Sam and Lexie watched the dvd she gave Sam as an early birthday present, and even joined us trick-or-treating in the cold rain Sunday night.

Ruth also set some sort of record for watching Sam while he took Alex to the vet, as you read in the last post. And presented Susan with a gorgeous and creative scrap book of momentous novel-related events.

And she watched with us a record-setting number of episodes of Big Bang Theory. :-)

Come back again soon, Aunt Ruth!

ps--I'll take an upload a proper shot of the downstairs, now that it's finished...

goodbye alex

Both of our cats have had their share of troubles this year. It took us some time to determine that Zoe likely has cancer. She is on steroids right now in case the problem is something else. Once we had her squared away, Alex started into a decline. The root cause is still unclear. He had a bad infection, and secondary GI problems, but heavy doses of antibiotics didn't bring him back to health. The vet suspects either an infection in the heart or cancer, neither of which is open to treatment without extreme measures.

He's seen the inside of the Vet ER two or three times this year. The most recent time was when Susan was in SD for the Festival of Books and Sam and I were still in Rochester. I came home to find him still, back arched and head cocked as if in pain. After six hours in the ER he was a limp dishrag, but disaster had been averted.

Each time he rallied. A few weeks ago he was his old self again, eeping and trotting up happily to be fed or scritched. By this past weekend, though, he was slowly shuffling around the house and looking very sick--but still eating. Yesterday that ceased, and he simply lay in one spot all day, his head cricked back, unable to move more than a little.

Last night we put him down around 7 pm, while Aunt Ruth fed Sam dinner and showed him funny youtube videos of a dog with human hands eating breakfast. When I held him on my lap at the vet's he wasn't at all scared (he usually shivers nervously--not surprising given the treatments he's had there). Just seemed peaceful and tired.

The vet has given us a pamphlet talking about helping your kid when he loses his pet. Both because it's unreal to Sam, and because Sam's life is mostly parallel but non-interacting with Alex and Zoe, Sam took the news just fine.

Sam has always been good with the cats. We've trained him to be gentle with them, which at this age mostly means leaving them alone. For a while Sam had the endearing habit of putting his head on Alex's side, which I think both of them liked. Susan told Sam ahead of time what was going to happen, and when we returned she did an Andy-Griffith-worthy job of telling him what had happened. At one point later in the evening we were talking and he started numbering the people in our family, making me 1, him 2, mommy 3 and gave me a significant look and made Alex 0. Sam is apparently completed unfazed, which is great.

It's a shame, though, that Sam didn't grow old enough to bond more with Alex before Alex died. The allergist strongly advised us, due to Sam's cat allergy, not to replace the cats. We also would like our house not to be repellent to people with cat allergies, like our family in Mitchell. So when Zoe dies it'll just be us. Us and our memories.