Sam has been inventing lots of new games lately. He likes to run into the pantry, shut the door, and wait for us to knock so he can open it and say, “Come in!” He also likes to put his Halloween bucket on his head, and he also decided to start picking things up with his feet. I have no idea where he gets that…

Now Entering the Terrible Twos...

Last week Sam turned two, and he received a lot of great presents from his relatives. He celebrated his birthday by not sleeping that night.
Anyway, we can see him making more and more connections every day. Thanks in large part to his grandma, he's learning colors and numbers. We really never know what new words he's going to learn every day, so we have to be especially careful with our language now.
He also is really becoming attached to his stuffed animals. He often tries to carry two or more with him, in addition to a ball. He calls them by name and is very affectionate toward them. He even hugs the bear-shaped honey container.

A Word Is Worth 1,000 Pictures

The other day, Katie wrote down all the words Sam says now, and it’s getting close to 100. His speaking ability is really taking off. It’s funny to hear him say “Bye-bye… Dad,” pausing as he tries to remember what to say next. It’s also a relief that now he can at least sometimes tell us what he wants, whether he needs a drink or wants to go outside on a walk.

Car Wars

We've had some interesting car trouble recently, after having virtually none for 3 years. One of our cars was rendered undriveable, and had to be towed to the shop. $500 and a few days later, they said it was fixed. We drove it home, and the next morning it wouldn’t start again. Another tow and 7 days later, they found that someone had poured sugar (or something similar) in our tank, which had worked itself up to the engine. Before you tout your knowledge of the show Mythbusters, let me assure you that in the right conditions it is possible to mess up a car with sugar. In any event, the repair bill was now estimated at about $2,000. Fortunately, our insurance has agreed to cover it as vandalism, and we are only out the $500 deductible, which we would have had to pay anyway for the first repair. But since the sugar was the cause of that too, the whole shebang will only be the $500. Now we have to take the other car in too, as it is also having some problems. We pray that it’s not the same cause…

Last night Sam figured out how to make a spit bubble when he opened his mouth. So for a while we sat there, popping each other's spit bubbles. It was a true father/son bonding experience.

All right, it’s been a while since I updated this blog. Needless to say, Sam has not ceased to be entertaining. He recently started speaking without prompting. He’ll now say “hi” to us pretty often. We frequently argue over whether he has a globe or a ball (to him, anything round is a ball). And his dancing skills are truly amazing. We were at a wedding reception last week, and when they were playing music he grabbed his mom’s hands and started dancing, without any prompting. The kid has natural rhythm.

[Note: I'm messing around with templates, so don't get weirded out if the layout is different every time you visit.]

Ssssssibling Rivalry

So we are finally sure of our snake's gender. Reggie is a girl. We know because a couple weeks ago there were suddenly a dozen really small snakes in the cage. Let me tell you something that may surprise you: Baby snakes are really cute. It's certainly not something I would have thought about before, but they are.
We released all the babies but one, whom I, in a fit of creativity, named Hannibal. This because he ate one of his siblings and then tried to eat another, until the next day I finally had to help extract the second snake still protruding from his mouth. He's been fine since then, but I haven't been able to get him to eat anything else, presumably because he's still working on a meal as big as he is.

Last night we took Sam up to Millcreek Canyon. He's been up there once before, and all he wants to do is play in the stream. This despite the fact that the water is so cold it continues to hurt my feet the entire time I'm standing in it. We tried to get him to go eat with us, but he just kept running back to try to get in the water. Eventually we distracted him a little bit with a toy football. He already throws farther than I can, and he's not even two years old.

Canned Heat

Sam's latest hobby is getting us to put on Napoleon Dynamite so he can dance at the end with Napoleon. He will sometimes do this six times in a row. He's not even two yet, and he dances better than most adults that I know.

Woo-Hoo!

Last night Sam and I were watching the Simpsons, when he repeated the word “D’oh!” Plus, a couple of days ago, he repeated Nelson’s laugh. I’m guessing people would either find it hilariously adorable or would take it as grounds that I should not be allowed to have children. I’m betting there is no middle ground here.

Here's a picture of Sam that his grandpa took the other day. If you look in the background, there's a little picture of essentially the same thing from a year ago. I was glad to get a recent picture of him, because we haven't taken too many pictures lately.

Last night we went and fed the ducks on 1300 West. They came up and took the bread from our fingers. Sam thought that was pretty fun. We also discovered that they eat flour tortillas. And the people next to us were feeding them potato chips. I would have thought gluttony would make them a little bit picky.

Oh, the Pain!

As far as we can tell, Sam got stung by a wasp the other day. There were wasps flying around, so Katie got him away from them, but a few minutes later we saw what appeared to be a sting on his arm. The funny thing is that he didn't cry or even acknowledge that anything had happened. But he has been hitting his head on things lately to get attention, or so we thought. Maybe he's working on building up his pain tolerance. All I know is that his forhead is looking a little bit like he's a Klingon.

Alternator Ending

Yesterday at work a coworker and I were talking about cars, and he asked how our new car was doing. I told him it was running great. So, in obedience to some inscrutable cosmic force, the alternator died last night.
I'm always fascinated by the timing of such things.

And My Glare at the Red Rockets

I have been sort of dreading the Fourth of July since last year, when our neighbors kept us up until 1 a.m. with intermittent fireworks displays mostly consisting of illegal roman-candle type pieces. I wouldn’t really care about the fact that they’re illegal except that they are really loud and tend to keep anybody in the neighborhood from sleeping.

But we were pleasantly surprised when the pyrotechnics had pretty much died down by 11:30 or so. And we certainly needed a good night’s sleep. We went up Mill Creek Canyon with my family in the afternoon. My dad and I hiked up a trail to an overlook of the Salt Lake Valley while Sam played in the creek (with his mom’s supervision, of course).

Then last night Sam wanted to play with his toy called an Alphabet Pal, which is sort of a caterpillar-shaped thing that sings the ABC song and has a different letter on each foot that you can press to get the name of the letter. He just started pushing on those and then repeating the letter. It was really astonishing. I’m amazed at how fast he’s picking things up all of a sudden.

All in all, we had a pretty good day. Now if I can just survive the noise of the 24^th of July…

Let's Hear Some Chatter out There!

This is Sam.
Most of the time I'm at home is spent wrangling him. He'll be two in October and already has the attitude and energy. He loves balls, especially basketballs, and points out any basketball hoop he sees. Those of you who know me may wonder how we could be related.

Last weekend we went down to southern Utah for a family reunion and stayed with Katie's family. Sam's cousin Aiden, who is two years older than Sam, was there, so Sam got a chance to spend several days with another young child. I think this helped his motivation to speak. While we were there, he started to repeat a number of words. Thus far his volcabulary consists of such words as "hi," "no," "car keys," "daddy," "happy," and "ball."

I can't wait until he's really able to mouth off.

Two Blogs Are Better Than One

It seems silly for me to have two blogs, but I'd like to be able to keep personal entries separate from more general topics. So this blog is only likely to interest those who know me and actually have a desire to know what is going on in my life. Since little changes for me from day to day, the entries will likely be relatively infrequent, but they'll be more interesting that way.