The Sam Update

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The Sam Update – Twenty Six Months Old

November 10, 2008 in Parenting, The Sam Update | 2 comments

Sam Nov 08 Samantha is an integrating machine. She is working on connections. The associations she makes are astounding, puzzling, and sometimes hilarious.

While helping her to put on her shoes the other day, I named the parts of the shoe, including the tongue. Later in the car, she took off her shoe, held it up, pointed to the hole and said, “MOUTH.”

She learned my name from an old personalized book I had when I was a kid. At the end of the story, my name is spelled out in fireworks in the sky. One day, Sam kept pointing to a spot on my sweater and saying, “AMY AMY AMY.” I finally realized that there was a pattern on the sweater that looked exactly like the fireworks in the book.

When she first learned how to eat fruit, I taught her not to eat the stems and peels by calling them the icky parts. I also recently started letting her peel her own bananas. The other day I asked her what she wanted for a snack and she kept saying, “PEE-OW, PEE-OW.” I asked, “Do you want peas?” NO! “Are you saying please?” NO! “I’m not sure what you are asking for – fruit, yogurt, pears?” PEE-OW PEE-OW PEE-OW. “How about an apple?” Then I saw the wheels turning and she finally came up with: ICKY. Ah, she was saying “peel.” She wanted a banana to peel, and when I didn’t understand, she told me in another way. I’m not sure why she didn’t just say banana but I thought this was quite a leap in her thinking and communication.

I got her an orange shirt with a black Halloween cat on it which she’s worn a few times. While putting away her summer clothes, I was baffled when she began meowing at her orange shorts, until it dawned on me that they are the only other orange piece of clothing that she has.

She loves the color yellow and she loves big trucks and cars. A yellow school bus makes her squeal with delight. But now every big vehicle is a yellow bus, even if it is a white van. And once she says it, I get treated to this song:

YEYOW-BUCH. YEYOW-BUCH. MORE-YEYOW-BUCH. MORE. MORE. MORE. MORE. MORE-YEYOW-BUCH. BYE BYE YEYOW-BUCH. BYE BYE. BYE BYE. BYE BYE. BYE BYE YE-YOW-BUCH. Sometimes I get a bonus of BEEP BEEP BEEP if she recalls the last time she saw one back up.

Speaking of songs, she can now sing three songs that I recognize. She hums Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. (Have you noticed it’s the same tune as the alphabet song?) She misses notes and just keeps going and going and I want to give her a Grammy. She gets a few words of Rock-A-Bye Baby, but it’s mostly ROCKABABY ROCKABABY. Tonight, she sang Ring Around the Rosy. We’ve never sung this to her so she must have learned it at day care, but I actually recognized the tune and her own, minimalist lyrics: ASHES ASHES DOWN! ASHES ASHES DOWN!

Astronaut Samantha has an eye for the sky. I’ve learned not to doubt her when she calls out “AIRPLANE.” If she says it, I follow her sight line. Sometimes I have to look carefully and there is just the tiniest speck in the sky, but she’s always right. Except when it’s a helicopter. She also loves birds, and she adores the moon. The Halloween costume her dad bought for her about a year ago just-because-he-couldn’t-resist-even-though-it-was-way-too-big-at-the-time turned out to be perfect.

I’m surprised she didn’t meow at it.

The Sam Update – Twenty Five Months Old

October 4, 2008 in Parenting, The Sam Update | No comments

Sit N Spin

As always, Sam is both the same and different than she was last month.

She still likes Little Bear, but now she also likes Elmo.
She still likes sausage, but now she also likes ham.
She still gets ear infections, but now she also gets ringworm.
She still likes a lullaby at night, but now she also sings along with us.
She still likes french fries, but now she also likes a Filet O’ Fish.
She still says yellow, but now she also says blue, brown, purple, and green.
She still likes Cheerios, but now she also likes Rice Krispies.

We still love her, but now just a little bit more than we did last month.

The Sam Update – Twenty Four Months, Part Two

September 7, 2008 in Parenting, The Sam Update | No comments

I thought the 2 year update was significant enough to break it up into 2 posts. First of all, here are the pictures! I’m moving from Shutterfly to Picasa for viewing and it took me a few days to figure out how to make it work the way I want it to.

I mentioned in the last post that Sam has developed even stronger likes and dislikes. We were surprised to find out that Sam likes strong flavors. I thought toddlers were supposed to like bland food like bread and pasta and plain cheese pizza, but Sam is bored by those things. She likes steak with Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning, Italian sausage, and pepperoni pizza. She also loves pepper. It must be the Afflerbach genes. She wants pepper on everything and when she’s done, she wipes up the leftover pepper on her plate with her sticky fingers and licks it all off. Then she says “more.”

She loves jewelry and buckles and dolls and pink, but does not like to wear a dress.

Her vocabulary has grown tremendously. She is in a practice phase now where she likes to mimic words just to see if she can say them, even if she doesn’t know what they mean. Of course, she uses many words properly and her most common two-word-sentence is HELP, PLEASE. Her first sign-language word was ALL-DONE and now she can finally say it out loud, which allows me to pay less attention to her while she eats. Some other favorite words right now are AIRPLANE, LATKE, LOOFA, FRENCH FRY, and still number one, JINX. Sometimes she still gets her syllables mixed up. My favorite is when she tries to say BYE-BYE DADDY and it comes out DIE-DIE BADDY.

Sam had her first canoe ride a few weeks ago. She hated the life-jacket but was fearless about the boat and the water. I hope to get out on the canoe a few more times before it gets too cold.

For Sam’s birthday, we continued our tradition of filling her room with helium balloons during the night so that she wakes up to them on her special day. Her grandpa and grandma Mossoff came for Labor Day weekend so we celebrated a few days early. We did a lot of small things – we went to the mall with a fountain that the kids can play in, we had a nice lunch, we grilled burgers and had cake and presents, we went to the park where we rode the carousel and the train and had a picnic lunch, we went to a party thrown by our development where they had a moon-bounce, cotton candy, bubbles and lots of kids. It was low-key and there was plenty of time for the grandparents to hang out with Sam – just a perfect weekend. It was very similar to her first birthday actually, except that Grandee and Grando Afflerbach were the grandparents at that one. Maybe we’ll be lucky enough to have all four of them at her next birthday.

The Sam Update – Twenty Four Months Old

September 4, 2008 in Parenting, The Sam Update | No comments

Samantha Miriam Mossoff is two years old. She’s definitely not a baby anymore, and overall, I’m pretty happy about that. So why do I tear up when I think about it?

There is nothing I can think of that defines her becoming a two-year-old. It’s just a lot of small changes. She says more words every day. She is combining words into simple sentences. She can jump. She knows the color yellow. Her likes and dislikes are becoming more pronounced.

Something that snuck up on me was her ability to finally go to sleep without crying. Until recently, every single time she went to sleep Sam cried for at least five minutes and at most an hour. It averaged about twenty minutes. From what I hear from other parents, this is not normal. But it was normal to us. Sam slept through the night when she was ten weeks old and has always taken regular naps. But every time, there was the crying. I got somewhat used to it. I could watch TV or maybe even read a magazine most of the time. But there were times that she sounded more upset than usual, or it went on longer than usual. This could make me writhe in agony while I willed myself not to go to her. You see, if we went to her it would just reset the clock and we’d have to go through it all again. Crying was Sam’s way of soothing herself to sleep. Besides the pain of hearing it every night, it also added to my uncertainty about whether she was hurt or in real distress. There were times when I would hear something different in her cry and I’d run up to her room to find something wrong: her leg sticking through the bars of the crib, a poopy diaper, or something else that needed fixing. So every night, I’d have to listen carefully to her cry, on red alert for any change in tone. Talk about the girl who cried wolf. And talk about stress.

About six months ago, Sam stopped crying before her nap. And a few months ago, the time she cried at night started decreasing. Adam and I noted at one point that she seemed to be crying only about five minutes instead of twenty. But then it went on like that for a while. And then, it was gone. I think it took us two or three weeks to recognize it. No crying at all. Silence. Immediate, beautiful silence. The most difficult thing about our baby was gone and it had happened so gradually that we hardly noticed.

And this is what makes the emotion well up in me when I think about her getting older. It’s the fear that I won’t be paying close enough attention as she grows up. The idea that I might not notice something, or that it will be gone before I really understand it. Constant change is here to stay, and even though I love the excitement and anticipation this creates, there is some ambivalence in me. I suppose there’s nothing to do but enjoy the ride.

To Be Continued…(with pictures)

The Sam Update – Twenty Three Months Old

August 6, 2008 in Parenting, The Sam Update | No comments

One more month and Samantha will be two years old. She has been busy this past month. Just as with walking, the talking seems to have opened up a new world for her, and she has developed greatly both mentally and physically.

I know Sam is developing her physical skills because she has been hurting herself frequently. Each time she falls or bumps or slips, I take it as a sign that she is trying something new, or just trying to do it faster, bigger or in a new combination. Early this month she got her first really bad scrape on the knee when she was running fast and fell forward. A few days ago she fell into the hot tub because she was leaning over just a bit too far. (Of course I was right there supervising that one!) She seems to always have at least one bruise on her forehead and other battle scars elsewhere on her body. It doesn’t bother her much and both Adam and I are ambivalent; we hate to see her hurt but we love that she is taking risks. She tends to be shy and cautious so we encourage any assertive or adventurous behavior.

She has also finally started climbing and rolling and jumping and squeezing through tight spaces. These things did not interest her a couple of months ago. Today I had to rearrange the living room furniture to make it safer for her.

I was amazed to find that Sam can blow bubbles. I hold the wand for her, but she can aim and blow with the right amount of force to make some very nice bubbles. She can also play a plastic flute, varying the force of her breath to make different sounds.

Sam continues to speak new words, but not at the pace of the first week or so. Quite often she’ll try to say something but her vocal muscles just aren’t there yet. It must be pretty frustrating for her. She does enjoy her favorite words, though: MORE, UP, NO, and DOGGIE. Adam and I both think the way she says NO is so cute. I guess that will change someday, but for now all her words are music to our ears.

We’ve been having a lot of summer fun lately. We go swimming in our hot tub or in the pool here at our development, we spend a lot of time examining bugs and sticks and rocks, and we recently went to the Maryland Zoo at Baltimore with my friend Sara from Michigan, who was in town visiting family. Sam really loves animals and she enjoyed brushing the goats, but I’m not sure she knew they were any different than her dog at home.

The Sam Update – Twenty Two Months Old

July 3, 2008 in Parenting, The Sam Update | 3 comments

Now that I’m blogging the Sam Update instead of e-mailing it to all three million contacts in my gmail account, I feel entitled to start publishing it monthly again.

Sam turned 22 months old yesterday. She can brush her own teeth, feed herself with adult-sized spoons and forks, and use a cell phone. Her teeth are sometimes dirty, her clothes are always stained, and my old cell phone is now a ring-tone-playing musical instrument, but hey, it’s progress.

A highlight of this past month was that Samantha got to meet both of her great-grandmothers. In fact, she met them on the same day. We drove up to Philadelphia where we spent a few hours with Adam’s Grammy, and then we traveled just an hour or so north where we celebrated my Grandmere’s 95^th birthday. Sam quickly discovered Uncle Frank and Aunt Connie’s piano, and Frank dubbed her the mad genius.

At day care they’ve been putting Sam’s hair into ponytails, which turns me into jello every time I see it.

Day care isn’t going so well, though. With all of the chaos in Sam’s life, she needs a lot of comfort and security. She needs mommy. She’s never been so clingy and needy, and it’s very hard to deal with. Dropping her off at day care requires me to fake a cheerful and casual demeanor while she screams “maMA, maMA, maMA!” and reaches up to me with both hands and the saddest face you ever saw. I kiss her and tell her I’ll pick her up later. I try to leave the room with confidence after they pry her off of me, but by the time I get down the hall I’m close to tears. She seems to have a good time, though, and always says she wants to go back. It’s just the mommy-leaving part that bothers her. It’s been three weeks now and she shows no sign of getting over it. I’m not sure if I should be worried, so of course, I’m worried. I’m so stressed out that in the past week there have been three nights where I got less than five hours sleep. Ah, parenthood…will the sleeplessness ever end?

The nice part about the neediness is that she is finally big enough to wrap both her arms and legs around my torso and lock on with a deathgrip. It’s the best feeling in the world, as long as I don’t have to let her go.

The Sam Update – Twenty One Months Old

June 3, 2008 in Parenting, The Sam Update | 1 comment

Click for pictures!

Samantha just hit the big 1.75. Okay, so now I know what people mean about the time going quickly. Sam’s first 10 months went by so slowly, but all of a sudden she is almost 2 years old – that’s crazy!

Walking really jump started Sam’s development. As Dr. Suess observes, walking and thinking are connected:

"You have brains in your head.

You have feet in your shoes.

You can steer yourself

any direction you choose."

Since we moved I’ve been able to entertain Sam just by taking her outside to roam about since it is a new place to her. I enjoy observing what will attract her attention. She likes flowers, manholes, trees, squirrels, any kind of water, and license plates. But I think she mostly just loves the independence of moving around as she pleases.

Sam loves music right now. We know what music to play for her because if she likes something she’ll dance, but if she doesn’t she’ll cover her ears. Her dancing is so cute – sort of a cross between an orchestra conductor and a jazz musician snapping his fingers with his elbows tucked in to his body. If she’s really loving it, she’ll turn in circles until she is dizzy. Even though Sam still doesn’t talk (just a word here and there), she can sing. Adam and I have independently identified certain tunes she will sing, although it’s usually just a few notes. Other times we hear no tune, but it still sounds like sweet music to us. Today we bought her a 37 key electronic keyboard since she is obsessed with the piano.

I’m quite surprised to see Sam playing with figurines in a way that looks like imaginary play. She’ll take two figures, say a horse and a cow, and make one bite the other (while she growls), and then make them kiss (while she makes the kissy noise), and then make them walk around together and all kinds of other stuff I don’t understand. She favors two figures at a time and they always interact, and she seems to narrate the whole thing in her adorable toddler-babble. I don’t know what is in her head, but she loves this kind of play.

Adam is having a great time roughhousing with Sam. He flips her and throws her and rolls around the floor with her. I don’t think there is anything that makes Sam laugh as much as that kind of play with her dad. Oh, and what a laugh! I’ve got to get out that video camera before that laugh changes.

Bumps and bruises are a normal part of Sam’s life now, as we try not to interfere unless there is serious danger. After riding an elephant back in March, Sam rode her first horse a couple of months ago. We continue to try to expose her to new things as much as possible. With a few exceptions (and those are doozies), most everything we do is just so much more fun with Samantha. We spent close to an hour walking a quarter mile with her the other day and we weren’t bored at all. Tonight we all walked around outside in the rain. We’ve been careful not to make a big deal out of getting wet in the rain, and to show her how cool it is to see water coming from the sky, and what do you know – Sam loves the rain and doesn’t mind getting wet. She even danced to the thunder.

We’re thinking about putting Sam in day care a few half days a week so that I can work on my new project – freelance writing. It will probably take me many months to get anything published, but I hope to make this my next career. This blog is my exercise – my way of writing on a regular basis while I’m pitching ideas and hoping for an assignment. When Sam is three we plan to enroll her in a Montessori preschool for three years, and if I can manage to build a solid part-time writing career by the end of that time, I’ll home school her. That’s the plan.

The Sam Update – Eighteen Months Old*

March 23, 2008 in The Sam Update | No comments

I’m a few weeks late with Sam’s 18 month update because we have been very busy. You’ll have to wait 4 more paragraphs too, while I tell you about all the other things going on with us.

As you probably know, we are now in Lexington, Virginia, where Adam is teaching at Washington and Lee Law School. We absolutely love it here. Lexington is an old town at the south end of the Shenandoah Valley with beautiful buildings and a cute, touristy downtown area. We live on a hill in farmland with a 360 degree view of the Blue Ridge and Allegheny mountains. There are 3 horses on our property. They hang out right near the house and we see them every day. We’ll get to ride them soon, now that spring is here. I feel like I’m on a 5 month vacation – it’s just wonderful.

Adam received 3 job offers and since we just can’t get seem to get enough of moving around, we chose the one we didn’t visit: George Mason University! But seriously, GMU is the perfect law school for Adam. I believe that working there is going to set his career on fire and allow him to have a great impact on the law. Of course we feel quite a bit of sadness leaving Michigan and MSU. We both loved MSU, Adam as law prof. and I as student. We will miss our friends there and the absolutely gorgeous spring, summer, and fall (all 6 months of it).

GMU is located in Arlington, VA, so we’ll be living just outside of Washington DC. We’ll probably move some time in May and rent for at least a year to get the lay of the land. I love visiting DC and we’re excited about taking Sam to see the museums and monuments as she grows older. We have a lot of friends in the area too. I know we’ll get a lot more visitors in DC than we did in Michigan. We’ll make sure we have a guest room! I think there is a very good chance we’ll stay in DC for a really long time.

We just got back from a trip to Florida. My parents are working at Disneyworld for the winter and we spent a few days there with them. After Disney, we visited Adam’s parents in St. Petersburg. Sam was sick so the whole trip was very difficult, but it was nice to see family.

So what is Sam up to lately? She is finally walking! I guess she was waiting until she could do it well before taking the leap because she hardly falls at all. Right away, she could maneuver around objects, stand still, carry objects, and look all around her without losing her balance. Now she wants to walk everywhere, so I’m entering a new phase with her. Luckily, spring is here and we’ll be able to go on many long walks and spend time at the playgrounds. She also loves to chase us around the house. We play hide and seek too. It’s a lot of fun and it wears her out, which is good!

She says a word here and there, but doesn’t seem interested in using them regularly. She continues to learn new signs, though, and we communicate very well. A big change is that, along with shaking her head “no,” she can now nod “yes.” This is a huge leap and makes it so much easier to communicate.

Sam is very interested in the letters of the alphabet. We got her a toy that “speaks” the sounds of the letters and she’s been working on them. She can identify many letters in her books when asked. We have no intention of pushing her to read early or anything like that – this is coming purely from her own interest. But that’s no big surprise considering how much Adam and I love to read, and how often we read to Sam.

She can also identify many common objects in her books. I like to ask her “where is the flower” (or whatever object I see) on a page of a book of which I’ve never pointed out the flower. She can find these things most of the time if she’s been shown the object in other forms. I love to see that conceptual faculty developing!

One of the sweetest things is that she now gives us real hugs and kisses. She is so cuddly now! When she was an infant, she preferred not to be held. Now she sometimes just wants to sit close with us, and she’ll even walk across the room just to get a hug. She likes to kiss her stuffed animals too, which is too cute for words.

So, we’re doing pretty well overall. All of this moving around has been very stressful and we’re really excited to move on to the next phase of our lives. I’ll send you all our new address as soon as we have one. Wish us luck and keep in touch!

*Disclaimer: The Sam Update began as a series of e-mails sent to family and friends starting when Sam was less than a month old. To keep the chronology I’ve faked the dates here on the blog to reflect when the updates were actually written. They were really added to the blog in May 2008, with just a bit of editing. All subsequent entries will be posted directly to the blog.

The Sam Update – Fifteen Months Old*

December 8, 2007 in The Sam Update | No comments

It seems like a long time since I last wrote. At that time, we had just arrived in San Diego, and now we’re about to leave for Lexington, Virginia. It’s a crazy time for the Mossoffs, but Samantha is doing just fine with all the changes. We try to keep up with routines and rituals, and to always tell her what’s going to happen so that she has some security. I think it’s much easier to move around like this now than it would be when she is older.

We managed to visit a lot of people we know in Southern California while we were here. My parents were able to spend quite a bit of time with us, too, which was great. We have loved the weather here, and the fires didn’t get anywhere near us. We are now enjoying some high surf conditions and the beach across the street is crowded with surfers every day. A few days ago we had lunch in the park and it felt like a mild summer day – just lovely.

Samantha is so different than she was three months ago, but it’s mostly in the details and hard to describe. A lot of it is communication. She understands so much of what we say, and her sign language helps her talk back. The only words she speaks consistently are mama, dada, and no, which is always expressed as “nonononono.” But she learns signs for just about anything that is important to her. It’s interesting how, if it doesn’t matter to her, she’ll just never pick up a sign. She has strong preferences for all kinds of things now – food, toys, books, etc. When she wants something, you know it! She also points and verbalizes in a way that we, as her parents, understand even if they are not true words.

She took her first steps in mid-November and she’s taking an independent step or two every day now. She can walk with a “push toy” which is just a little thing with wheels and a handle that helps her balance. She can also walk holding on to one of our hands. She LOVES to walk! I think she’ll be walking on her own within a month or two. She likes to scribble with any kind of writing device. She knows what most objects around her are for – when she picks up any brush, she puts it to her hair, when she picks up a tissue she puts it to her nose, she likes to try to mop the floor with the mop, and sometimes she tries to wipe her own bottom. This is a big change – in the past, the objects were interesting in and of themselves but now she is beginning to understand purpose and function. She is also crazy about bath time now that she is old enough for the big tub. Every time we go past the bathroom she signs “bath” and I have to tell her “not now – later.” That’s what we get for teaching her sign language!

Sam recently had surgery on her eyes to unblock her tear ducts. It went perfectly and it was a really easy procedure. Her eyes are much better now so it was worth it. She got her first 6 teeth in the past 3 months, too. She looks so different with teeth. Her hair is coming in but it will still be a while before she stops looking bald. Between her lack of hair and her small size, people usually think she’s about 9 months old.

One of the best things we did recently was to visit a “Candy Cane Lane” – a block of homes that go all out on the Christmas decorations. Since this is Southern California and warm enough to be outdoors at night, it’s designed to be walked through instead of just driven by. We all enjoyed it, but Sam was just in heaven! She loved the lights and characters such as Santa and Frosty. This is her first Christmas with any real awareness of what’s going on around her and it’s so exciting for us!

We’re spending Christmas with friends in Richmond, then heading out to Lexington around New Years. We don’t have time for Christmas cards this year, so I’ll take this opportunity to wish you all a joyous Christmas and a prosperous New Year. Wish us well as we continue our adventures, and I’ll write again in a few months.

The Sam Update – One Year Old*

September 13, 2007 in The Sam Update | No comments

It’s nice to be writing to you all again. We are settled in San Diego and finally feeling a bit normal again. It was a terrible trip which lasted almost 2 months and I won’t say another word about it except to say we won’t do it that way again when we go to Virginia in December. We’ve sold our house in Michigan which is a financial relief but which makes us sad, too. San Diego is nice. Adam is enjoying his “visit” at USD and there is a lot of great stuff to do right near us. We live across the street from the ocean and walk out on to the cliffs to watch the sun set quite often. There is a dog park and a dog beach for Toby nearby. There is supposed to be a lot of great stuff to do with kids, but I haven’t had time for much of that yet.

Now on to the news you’re all waiting for. Samantha is doing great! She seems to get more adorable every day. Since I last wrote, she has started signing about 6 words. (We’ve been teaching her sign language to help her communicate before she can speak.) She verbally says “mama” and “dada” and “ball” and is really working on some others like “Jinx,” (our cat) but I think she’s a bit too ambitious there. She definitely gets frustrated when she wants something but can’t express it or do anything about it. She throws temper tantrums by flinging herself backwards (hitting her head on the floor quite often) and screaming. This may not sound adorable and when it happens I don’t think so either, but I do know that it’s just part of her development and I smile about it at the end of the day when she’s asleep. It’s difficult to know how much to help her and how much to let her be, but I’m enjoying trying to figure it all out.

She is still not crawling or walking, but apparently that is not too unusual. Here’s the interesting part, though. We’re renting a guest house from the Martins, a family with 3 kids, one of whom is just a month younger than Sam. Charlie was crawling like crazy when we got here and Sam was doing nothing but reaching and leaning. She had never even turned herself around or given any indication that she wanted to move. But once she saw Charlie, she started trying for the first time. Now she scoots around on her bottom and slides around on her tummy. She can go in all directions but forward, poor girl, which often leads to the tantrums I mentioned. Sometimes she’ll spin in circles a few times and end up where she wants to go, which is quite cute. She’s doing pretty well with the standing with support, but still hasn’t figured out how to pull herself up or take steps while holding on to things. We put her a bit behind with the travels – she didn’t get to practice any of this stuff for most of those 2 months (would you put a baby on a cheap hotel room carpet…yick!) – but she’s having a lot of fun with it now.

The three Martin kids, Sierra (almost 6), Jack (4), and Charlie (11 months) are sweet, wonderful kids. I feel so lucky that our Sam gets to spend time with them while we’re here. We’ve been doing some things with them here and there – going to the park or to dinner or just swimming or hanging out.

Sam cut her first tooth just a few days ago – I was surprised at how sharp it is, and also at how excited I was to see it. She eats just about anything that is soft, and it seems like I’m feeding her all day long. She’s still a tiny girl, though. I guess she was doomed to be small and slow since both Adam and I were that way as babies.

For Sam’s first birthday, I started a tradition of putting helium balloons on her ceiling in the middle of the night so she would wake up to them. She LOVES balloons. She calls them “baaa” just like balls, although sometimes it sounds more like two syllables: “baoooo.” She recognizes balloons in books, too. We spent her birthday with my parents in Temecula, where they were staying at the time. We swam and opened presents and had cake. It was a really great day.

The Sam Update – Nine Months Old*

June 13, 2007 in The Sam Update | No comments

This will probably be my last monthly e-mail update, partially because this can’t go on forever, and partially because we’re moving to San Diego in two weeks and I’ll be busy. I’ll definitely send out an update when Sam turns a year old.

Samantha is doing all sorts of fun things these days. She can stand up holding on to furniture now, but hasn’t yet started “cruising,” which means walking around while holding on to things for balance. Just seeing her standing without my help blew me away. She hasn’t crawled, so it felt to me like she went from baby to almost-toddler in an instant. Also, she’s so small (fifth percentile) that it looks more like she’s a really advanced 5 month old…kind of surreal. I wish I had gotten a photo of it for this update.

She started eating Cheerios this month, which was a bigger milestone than I had expected. It’s nice to bring a bag of cereal around and know that I can keep her full and occupied so easily. She still doesn’t have any teeth, though.

Sam has been into poking everything with her thumbs lately. I think that started when she learned how to purposefully push buttons. She can work the remote for our ceiling fan and we bought her a toy cell phone which she loves and which annoys us with beeping sounds.

We started giving her instructions and telling her “no” a couple of months ago, and it seems that she is now at the point where she can follow quite a bit. Using sign language along with instructions helps a lot, although she has not made her first sign yet. (We think she is now waving when we wave at her, but it’s hard to tell if she is just reaching.) But now is definitely the time when we need to start giving her boundaries, which is a big change for us. We had started falling into the trap of going the easy way and allowing her to play with anything and touch anything if it interested her, and just taking things away when they were unsafe. But we don’t want to parent that way. We want her to start learning that we have expectations for her behavior. I had no idea when it would be appropriate to begin but I can tell now that she is ready. She is already learning not to pull my earrings (yea – I can wear jewelry again!) or my hair, and she is learning not to put things in her mouth when I tell her no. For now, we give her gentle instruction and no “punishment” and she mostly doesn’t seem to mind being told no, although she’ll give us the occasional whiny scream of frustration and it passes in a moment. It is a wonderful feeling when she responds because it is so clear that we are communicating. And I thought it was great when the dog listened to me!

Finally, the thing we probably love the most is that Sam now turns the pages of her books. The small cardboard books are the best – we pull one page out a bit and she grabs it and turns it. She used to grab at books any which way and sometimes turn pages right to left or just close the book or put it in her mouth. Now, she understands the left to right process and can grab the one page and pull it over. She seems to know when to turn it as we’re reading too. Sometimes she’ll turn the pages throughout a whole book. It’s so amazing!

I’ve started working out again, which is great. I really need the time for myself. Hopefully I’ll be able to continue during our travels. The weather has been great and we’ve been going on a lot of walks. We took Sam to her second wedding last weekend and we had a blast dancing with her. She also attended her first live musical, “1776.”

The Sam Update – Eight Months Old*

May 7, 2007 in The Sam Update | No comments

Our Sam is now 8 months old, and as I’ve probably said each month: This is the BEST age! But I really mean it this time.

The coolest thing Sam is doing now is leaning and looking around obstructions to watch something. Also, when something disappears behind the left side of the sofa or other object, she looks to the right, expecting to see it come out the other side. It’s hard to convey why this is so meaningful, but Adam noted that part of it is that she has had to combine a few new skills to do it. First, she has developed an understanding of object permanence – just because it is out of her sight does not mean the thing does not exist anymore. (She’s way ahead of many philosophers on this point!) Next, she has the physical coordination to lean and twist and tilt her head. Finally, she has learned that moving in those ways gains her a new perspective. It’s so exciting to watch her, and we really have to be careful because she’s trying to lunge out of our arms. She’s surprisingly quick and strong!

No teeth yet, but that doesn’t stop her from being a great eater. She likes everything but turkey so far. And her hair is finally starting to come in. I’m so curious to see what she’ll look like with hair. Her eyes are still blue – it would be nice if they stay that way or just get a bit greener, like Adam’s.

We’re using sign language pretty consistently now (just a few key words) and sometimes it seems like she understands. She definitely understands a few verbal words like “no,” “let go please,” “legs down,” and “arms up.”

Spring is finally here and we have been walking again. Today I put Sam in her stroller facing forward for the first time. Up until now she’s been in her car seat which sits in the stroller facing the back. She’s been ready to sit normally for a while, but she is still really too small for the seat and straps, although we managed okay today. She’s only 14 pounds still – about 10th percentile. She’s always developmentally ready for things before she fits into them, but I told her being short is no big deal and her dad and I can tell her all about how to cope with it.

I graduated this weekend. I was the top student in my major of Applied Engineering Sciences (it’s a combination of engineering and business classes.) Dad and Deb Mossoff came and we had a great weekend.

The Sam Update – Seven Months Old*

April 9, 2007 in The Sam Update | No comments

I don’t have time for my usual long-winded e-mail. We’ve all been sick for the past couple of weeks and we’re just getting better now. I never knew how hard it was to be sick and caring for other sick people at the same time. Thanks, mom, for all those times you did it for me. Otherwise things are going well. I’ll catch up more next time.

The Sam Update – Six Months Old*

February 27, 2007 in The Sam Update | No comments

Samantha will be half a year old on Friday. I can’t believe how quickly the past few months have flown by. It seems there are new challenges and new joys every day. Now I understand why people remember their time with their babies as a blur. It’s hard to just take a moment and digest it. I try to do so as much as possible, but the whirlwind is part of what makes it what it is, and it’s a good thing.

Sam has achieved a few milestones since I last wrote. She has started eating solid food, which she absolutely loves. She’s been watching us eat and drink for weeks now so we started her a bit early. We also help her drink a few sips of water out of our adult glasses occasionally just for fun and she has a sippy cup which she mostly plays with. She can sit up on her own for a few seconds at a time now while leaning forward on her knuckles like a monkey. She just needs to improve her balance and she’ll be sitting pretty (har har). Most impressive to us, though, is that she is now playing what I call “give and take.” She will hold an object, offer it to one of us, and after we take it and offer it back, she’ll take it. Right now, this comes in the form of her putting finger puppets in our mouths and then taking them back out (she’s fascinated with our mouths right now.) I was surprised to see that she was capable of understanding the pattern, but she does and she loves it. She is really a little person now and she is so wonderful!

Our biggest news is that we are moving, at least temporarily! Adam is “visiting” at two different law schools next school year. They are just temporary positions, and he remains on the faculty at MSU, but sometimes these things become permanent. In the fall we will be at the University of San Diego, and in the spring we’ll be at Washington & Lee in Lexington, Virginia. We have no idea yet where we’ll live or how we’ll get there – we’re working on that now. (For you local folks, let us know if you know anyone who might want to rent our house.) I’ll have graduated by then and don’t plan to start working yet, so it’s great timing. We are very excited about the whole adventure!

*Disclaimer: The Sam Update began as a series of e-mails sent to family and friends starting when Sam was less than a month old. To keep the chronology I’ve faked the dates here on the blog to reflect when the updates were actually written. They were really added to the blog in May, 2008, with just a bit of editing. All subsequent entries will be posted directly to the blog.

The Sam Update – Five Months Old*

January 29, 2007 in The Sam Update | No comments

Samantha is now almost 5 months old! The time has gone by so quickly and she is so different than she was as a newborn. We love her at this age. She is so happy when she sees us and we can make her giggle by doing something new and silly. New things are definitely what she wants now, and she seems to get bored if left in the same environment too long. I’ve had a lot of appointments lately and she comes with me everywhere. The only problem with this is that she’s gotten into the habit of catnapping, so I’m now working on getting her to nap longer but less often. That means staying at home more for now but it gives me much more free time. She’s definitely maturing and it’s hard to keep up with her changing needs!

She has started sucking her thumb more regularly so we think that is a habit she might develop. We don’t mind. She has started actually enjoying bath time and splashes around in the water a bit. She also loves to watch TV when we let her, and grabs at the remote and even my computer keyboard. Does she love buttons or is she imitating us? We have fun guessing. She is making more consonant sounds and likes to babble when we put her down for naps.

I am back in school for my final class before graduating in May. It’s an interesting class (manufacturing processes) but a very boring professor. I just found out that I will be the top graduate in my major! I even get a cash award for it, which was a nice surprise.

For his teaching, Adam received his best student evaluations ever last semester (and they’ve always been good). How he did that while Sam was a newborn I have no idea, but he is definitely a great teacher. He is really enjoying his Property class this semester, and is also teaching Cyberlaw.

We’re in the midst of planning our almost-definite trip to Telluride, Colorado this summer for the Objectivist conference, and now we’re thinking of another trip to Abaco in the Bahamas next Christmas. Those two trips will probably preclude any of our usual quick getaways this year.