Berries are delicious,

but so very messy!

Sam has recently acquired his mother’s love of organization. He is a good little helper who loves to put his toys, books, and clothes where they belong. The only problem is that sometimes they already are where they belong. No problem! Sam just takes them out and puts them back again.

Here he is putting his books on the bookshelf right after he pulled them all down. I like that he doesn’t feel constrained by traditional rules like “books should be right side up” or “displayed with their cover facing out.” He’s really quite the budding artist 😉

Here he is pulling his shirts out of his drawer and stuffing them back in. Sometimes he likes to pull dirty clothes out of the hamper and put them in his drawer with the clean clothes. That’s fun!

Last Friday we went to the National Zoo with Deirdre, Evelyn, and Evelyn’s grandpa. Sam and Evie had so much fun checking out all of the animals. They saw cows, goats, and pigs in the petting zoo and chimps, lions, and alligators in the main part of the zoo.

Ready to go!

When Sam saw the cows, he shouted “woof woof!” I guess real cows look different than the ones in his books! When he learned they were actually cows, he moooed appropriately.

What are you looking at, Sam?

Yikes!

Long day at the zoo. Time for a nap!

It seems like I should say “I can’t believe it’s been five years!” And in some ways I can’t believe it. Weren’t we just slicing the cake at our wedding? But when I think of all we’ve done in five years, it’s not so unbelievable. Here are some highlights.

*We got a house.

(and all that entails)

*We got a dog.

*We got some good news.

*We got a son!

*We got to celebrate our son’s first birthday.

…and lots of fun in between. I can’t wait to find out what the next five years will bring!!

Happy anniversary, Ben. I loooove you!!

I was just going through a recent batch of photos and thought these pictures formed a pretty good snapshot of Sam right now.

Falling:

Trying to sit in the basket with his firetruck:

Peek-a-boo:

Silly Sam:

Sam is always making up his own silly games these days. Yesterday he made up this one. (Sorry for the bad pictures. I only had my phone).

Step 1: Grab a pair of nail clippers (any small object will do).

Step 2: Throw the nail clippers into a huge bag of legos and shake.

Step 3: Fish out those little clippers (this is the tricky part!). Make sure to give yourself a big round of applause and then repeat.

Sam had a mystery word and for the longest time we could not figure out what he was saying. It sounded kind of like “ah broosh!” and he said it all the time. Then a few days ago I figured out he was imitating me saying “all right!” I had no idea I said that so often!

Last Monday we had some beautiful, warm weather. I think it was up to 70 degrees by 10:00 a.m.! So we met our friends Deirdre and Evie for a morning at the park. They had told us about this great playground with a weird name. It’s a perfect park for little ones because all of the equipment is ramped. Our two toddlers had a blast running up and down, and we could easily chase after them. They also had swings, a maze, and fun little things to climb in and out of.