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While role-playing with her dolls, Sam uttered this monologue:
I put the ball under here. Now you listen to me. I’m going to tell you what to do. You go over here and I’ll go over there and then we’ll get the ball…no! That’s not the way to do it. Now I’m going to put you in jail. I’m going to put you in jail for real and you’ll never get out again. But I didn’t know that. Okay, you’ll be okay. Now you listen to me, I mean it. Does anybody want a peanut?
So what did you do at school today?
I did a piece of work before I had snack.
Oh.
Yes. And I had snack with R.
Oh, that’s nice. What did you talk to R. about?
Oh no. I didn’t have snack with R. today, I had snack with A.
Oh, I see. So what did you talk about with A.?
He asked me to marry him.
Really.
Yes. He asked me to marry him so that we could kiss someday and he asked me to kiss him and I did.
You kissed him today, at school?
Yes.
Was that the first time you kissed a little boy?
No.
Oh, really?
No. A. is not a little boy. We’re getting married.
Sam used to sing along with Laurie Berkner. Now she hums along with Beethoven.
For a long time, Samantha thought the word “Zappos” meant “box.”
Our regular babysitter is on vacation so I’ve hired a temp for this week. Zoe won’t eat well with her. Which means that Zoe noticed the difference. Zoe knows and cares that there are different people in her world!
Every once in a while, either Leo or Zoe will get very cranky and I’ll have to soothe him or her. Not often, but it happens. I think they do it just for differentiation so that I’ll appreciate their normal state of pure contentment.
One of Sam’s favorite phrases used to be, “I can’t do it – it’s hard.” Now one of her favorite phrases is, “I can do it – it’s easy!”
It was bedtime and Sammy and I were making up songs. Silly rhymes with funny tunes – anything to get a laugh. I was being very creative but Sammy just kept making up songs about pee and poo and it was getting old. “Can’t you make up a song about something other than pee and poo?” I asked.
“Hmmm, how about a song about Jinxy?” she asked.
I was thrilled. She hadn’t talked about Jinx much since we put him to sleep a few weeks ago, and I thought her feelings might come out in her song. I’m paraphrasing, but it went something like this:
Oh, I had a cat and his name was Jinx.
And he was cute and beautiful.
And he got a shot and it made him sleepy.
And then he got another and it made him dead.
We had to put Jinx to sleep because…
He peed and pooed in the house!
Now who is the creative one?
Sam injured her toenail and the whole thing was peeling away, so Adam had to cut it off. Sam sat patiently through the whole procedure, and when Adam gave her the toenail to look at, she asked if she could put it under her pillow for the toenail fairy.
My neighbors are done bringing me dinners. Tonight I cooked! Pork with peanut-apricot crust and sweet potato fries. The food was good. The cooking was heaven.
This afternoon, Adam and our babysitter took over so I could get out of the house on my own. It was the best three hours I’ve had in a long time. I:
Bliss.
A conversation between Sammy and her Grando (my dad):
G: Sammy, when does your battery run out?
S: I don’t have a battery! What do you think I am, a statue?
G: Where do you get your energy?
S: From all the chocolate!
One surprising joy of parenting a full-day school kid is preparing lunch. I’m absolutely loving putting together Sammy’s lunch each day. Because of the twins I haven’t been cooking at all, but putting a little lunch together gives me a small version of that value. I enjoy trying to make Sam’s lunch just a little bit different each day, and to put a fun variety of things in her lunchbox. There’s a real challenge in doing this day after day, especially when my grocery shopping is a chaotic mess and the choices in the kitchen are limited.
Today, she’s having half a turkey and butter sandwich (one of her favorites), a wedge of Laughing Cow cheese (which she picked out at the market), a few snap pea pods with a tub of leftover ranch dressing from Popeye’s Chicken (I have 2 ounce cups with lids for ranch dressing on order from Amazon but I was pleased to have figured out a way to do it in the meantime), a small plum, a leftover fortune cookie, and a container of shelf-safe milk.
Someday she’ll prepare her own lunch and I’m sure I’ll be relieved, but for now, I love this little way of caring for her.
Adam calls Zoe, “Z,” and I call her “Zo-Zo.” I wonder which will win out as her nickname, if either. We tried to pick two nickname-proof names, but I guess there is no name that can’t be mangled.
Zoe had a checkup at the pediatrician today and I took both babies all by myself for the first time. (Adam had to pick up Sammy from school.) It was easy!
Zoe is now newborn size, at least what passes for newborn size in our family – 6 pounds, 8 ounces – 4 ounces more than Sammy weighed at birth. She’s gaining weight at exactly the right pace and continues to be perfectly healthy.
While undressing Zoe to have her weighed, a potato chip fell out of her clothing, right in front of the nurse. How embarrassing. No wonder she’s gaining so much weight – munching on chips behind my back! (It took me a minute to realize that I had gotten her dressed on my bed, where I had been eating potato chips the night before. Even more embarrassing.)
At the doctor’s office they have a computer for self-check-in. You have to enter the first two letters of the patient’s first and last names. Zo-Mo. Maybe that will be her nickname!
Best of all, we have the first sign of the twins coming out of the blob stage: Zoe is beginning to make her first cooing noises. Up until now, all we’ve heard from either of them has been crying or grunting. Now we’re getting some real vowel sounds – mostly “ah.” And for once, Zoe is first!
Sammy no longer calls our Honda Odyssey, the “Honda-See.” But she still calls hand sanitizer, “hanitizer.” You have to admire her creative contractions.
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