Author Archives: Caitlin

Happy Cinco de Mayo

¡Ole!

p.s. More posts coming soon, I promise!

Happy Friday!

One and a half!

Wow!! Sam is 18th months as of 4/6/11. He is really turning into more of a toddler every day. Here are some of his stats:

Weight: 26 lbs, 14 ounces (70th percentile)
Height: 34 5/8″ (96th percentile)
Head circumference: 19.5″ (90th percentile)
Sam continues to learn new words every day. Some are pretty hard to understand (down=”mown” and raspberry=”baba”) but he is starting to improve his pronunciation with some words. Our doctor said that by 2 years old, 50% of Sam’s words should be understandable to strangers. I am putting a list of the words Sam knows at 18 months at the bottom of this post so that I can have a record of it!
Sam continues to get a little bit more adventurous with his climbing but he is definitely a cautious guy. He does not like to put himself in dangerous or tricky situations!! However he has been getting a lot of practice lately at going up and down stairs and is getting better. He would much prefer to walk down stairs holding my hand than to crawl down backwards.
Even though Sam hasn’t hit his terrible two’s yet, he is definitely getting into a more willful stage! When he doesn’t get his way he is quick to throw a nice, big tantrum. One of his favorite new tricks is to swat at our faces! Ouch!
Sam now has his top four teeth, his bottom two teeth, and all four pre-molars. It looks like he will be getting his I-teeth soon. I hope he gets the remaining two bottom teeth at some point! Poor Sam was very unhappy while he was getting his molars and was pretty crabby. But the last week he has been a happy little guy!
Sam is really into learning names right now. My dad, sister-in-law, and mom have all visited in the last 2 weeks and Sam was so excited to learn their names and point to them (Bapa=Grandpa, Beba=Becca, Nana=Nana). Now that they are gone, he likes finding their pictures and naming them. He has a little photo album with his friends’ pictures and he loves pointing them out to whoever will listen. His favorite names are Ella and Chase!
Bubbles, crayons, and stickers are Sam’s obsession right now. He also loooves to read. He will sit quietly for 10 minutes with his books, just looking at the pictures and commenting on each page. Sam loves music and likes to dance. His newest trick is spinning around in circles.
Sam loves to blow kisses at everyone and will sometimes even kiss you right on the lips. The other day I saw him blowing kisses on the video monitor while he was supposed to be napping.
Henry and Sam are getting to be better and better friends. This month we showed Sam how he can feed treats to Henry which is a popular new activity with both of them!

Sam’s vocabulary at 18 months: airplane, all done, alright, apples, applesauce, baby, ball, banana, bear, blueberry, boat, book, bottle, bubbles, bulldozer, bye, Cheerios, cheese, crayons, Daddy, diaper, dirty, dog, down, duck, eat, eyes, garbage truck, grandpa, helicopter, help, Henry, hi, I do, keys, light, mango, milk, Mommy, moon, more, night-night, no, nose, open, outside, pasta, peas, please, raspberry, shoes, socks, stick, strawberry, thank you, there it is, tractor, truck, uh oh, ukelele, up, waffle, want that, water, whale, yes, yogurt.

First Haircut!

Last week we realized that it was time to get Sam’s hair cut. I was a little hesitant but he was developing quite the mullet. And it was getting progressively harder to snap and unsnap Sam’s bib without pulling his hair.

So on Sunday we took Sam to a local barber shop.

At first he was fine, although a little nervous.

But after the first snip came off, he lost it. I tried distracting him by asking him questions (see last Friday’s video). He would stop crying just long enough to answer my question and then go back to crying.

But afterward we were all happy with the results.

Happy Friday!

Sam loves his animal (and other) sounds! Two notes:

1. I think he got moo and moon confused. “Noom” is his word for moon.

2. He learned the mommy and baby sounds from “Wheels on the Bus.” I don’t actually shush him that often!

Messy Eater

Berries are delicious,

but so very messy!

Our Little Helper

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!

The Zoo!

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!

Happy 5th Anniversary!

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.