Sammy's Dancin' Shoes

Since Sammy is moving around (alot!), it was time to buy him some nice shoes. There is a Stride Rite store in town (Schmitts Stride Rite) so we went there and bought Sammy his first real shoes. We got him the the Stride Rite "Sky Lace Stage 2" shoes.

"First he's up, then boom, he's down! The Sky is made for that adorable stage between crawling and walking. Enhanced with our ultra-comfortable Natural Motion System™, these little shoes are packed with features to help babies make the transition from crawling to walking. A contoured landing lends stability and balance, while innovative flex grooves help babies keep their balance. And just for moms, there's a new hourglass shape that make it easier to slide shoes onto those squirmy feet."

The Stride Rite Sky Lace Stage 2...

Sammy can now accelerate faster in his walker...
...due to his new shoes...

Sammy wears socks which match his shoe laces...
...this boy knows his colors...

Sammy's First Pumpkin Hunt

Sammy's first Halloween approaches...

Sammy's first Halloween approaches and it became time to go off in search of pumpkins to carve. So today we drove up to Stillwater where we met Anne, Diane, and Grant and searched for pumpkins. Small pumpkins, large pumpkins, even tiny pumpkins. Basically, we saw alot of pumpkins. But we had a great time in part to Sammy bravely keeping to himself some very bad news.

Sammy has a premonition that the Yankees would lose to the Tigers today...
yet he bravely kept it from the rest of us...

Michele coaches Sammy in pumpkin choosing...

Sammy shakes off the Yankee's disaster to enjoy the pumpkin search...

Michele, Sammy, & Paul

A whole lot of itty-bitty pumpkins(?)...

Sammy and his aunts Diane & Anne...
he's not smiling because he's thinking about A-Rod...

Diane & Grant

Paul, Diane, Grant, & Michele...
the lady taking the picture told us to pose this way...

Paul, Michele, & Sammy

Some people who asked us to take their picture...
we have no idea who they are...
so here is the picture we took of them...
as they asked...
not sure what that really accomplished...
in the end they seemed just as puzzled as we were...

Marlin Perkins had it easy...

Marlin Perkins...

Back when both Michele and Paul were kids they would watch Mutual of Omaha's "The Wild Kingdom" hosted by Marlin Perkins. Each week there was footage of animals in the wild. We never gave much thought to how difficult it was to capture a wild animal on film doing something specific in its natural habitat. Mostly, we wondered why at the time why it was Jim Fowler who had to wrestle the boa constrictor while Marlin just looked on.

Anyway, Sammy has started to crawl. Yes, he's moving all over the floor now. And one would think this would be a fairly easy thing to photograph. Not with Sammy. Getting a good photograph of Sammy is like trying to get footage of Big Foot. Everytime Sammy hears the camera beep as it signals that it is in focus, he stops crawling and smiles at the camera. But with intense perseverence of a natural wildlife photographer, we did manage to get a few fuzzy pictures of the ever elusive Sammy...

The pajama'd Sammy in his natural habitat...crawling along...

Lil' Sammy glances as he glides by us...

The natural habitat of Sammy being encroached upon by laundry...

Two Firsts...

We knew this day would come...only we were surpised to see two of them. Yes, Sammy now has teeth! While giving him a glass of water (he insists on not using a sippy cup but the real thing) we heard something sounding like teeth hitting the glass. So we got Sammy to smile (not hard to do with his exceptionally easy going personality) and saw he has a tooth on the top and on the bottom coming in. Go Sammy!

Sammy needs a little help to see his teeth...

Click to enlarge and see his new bottom tooth....

Click to enlarge to see his top tooth...he really is smiling...

What would Ralp Lauren® do? (WWRLD)

We had dinner again at Sammy's Aunt Annie's last week. This time, we got to see Anne, Diane, Brian, Grant, Rose, Chris, and Mike. The day before we went, Macy's was having a sale on children's clothing. We saw a RL shirt which was a "twin" of one Michele had recently bought. Since Mike works in a high level position for the RL organization, we couldn't resist buying it for Sammy...and so Michele and Sammy showed up as "Bobbsey Twins."

The food was tasty, although yet another scandal erupted when we realized that Diane's hand-made lasagna used pre-made tomato sauce!

So at the end of the evening, Michele and Paul were asking themselves the following questions about Ralph Lauren...would he:

• sneak in pre-made tomato sauce into an otherwise hand-made lasagna?
• line his refrigerator and with what?
• let a stuffed dinosaur drown his sorrows away in alcohol?
  

The tasty but troublesome lasagna made by Diane...

RL Bobbsey Twins...

Rose holds Sammy...and any work secrets she knows about Diane...

Mike and Chris are always fun to visit with...

Sammy's cousin Brian smiles (finally!) for the camera...

Aun Annie's fridge....shelves lined with paper towels!

Sammy's dinosaur drowns his sorrows...
...when he realizes there is no RL line for stuffed dinosaurs.

Sammy "Two Socks"

We are not making this up.

You might say it's one of those things you dread to hear as a parent. And for us it happened yesterday. You go to the day care center and find out that it is your son who is a bad influence on the other children. At hardly over 7 months of age, little Sammy (aka Sammy "Two Socks") caused a bad report to his parents from day care. We are besides ourselves in what to do.

His modus operandi? Sammy delights in pulling off his socks. We're not sure why, but it is one of his greatest pleasures. Put them on him, he immediately takes them off. Apparently at day care Sammy is now "teaching" the other children to take off their socks. Is this how most notorious rascals of history started out? Is Sammy the Roosevelt Franklin of his time? Will Sammy be banned from day care? Will his nefarious ways leave him in the end with a "hot foot"?

Sammy "Two Socks" sans most of the rest of his clothing too...

A very long illness...

Dr. Gregory House

Poor little Sammy was the canary in the coal mine. First he gets a cold, then Paul, and then Michele. This whole week we've been battling some sort of nasty virus. So we're a bit delinquent in updating our blog. The good news is that we seem to be on the mend.

Too bad there isn't a real Dr. Gregory House, MD -- we could have used him this week...

JILL: My joints have been feeling all loose, and lately I've been feeling sick a lot. Maybe I'm overtraining; I'm doin' the marathon, like, ten miles a day,
[House looks tired]
JILL: but I can't seem to lose any weight.
HOUSE: Lift up your arms.
[she does so]
HOUSE: You have a parasite.
JILL: Like a tapeworm or something?
HOUSE: Lie back and lift up your sweater.
[she lies back, and still has her hands up]
HOUSE: You can put your arms down.
JILL: Can you do anything about it?
HOUSE: Only for about a month or so. After that it becomes illegal to remove, except in a couple of states.
[he starts to ultrasound her abdomen]
JILL: Illegal?
HOUSE: Don't worry. Many women learn to embrace this parasite. They name it, dress it up in tiny clothes, arrange playdates with other parasites...
JILL: Playdates?
HOUSE: [shows her the ultrasound] It has your eyes.
[it's a baby]

Mr 101°

Today the Sammy's daycare called us up and said Sammy had a temperature of 101°. So we rushed through the streets of Rochester to pick him up (luckily we did not run into a DM&E train). We ended up taking him to the Mayo Clinic that day to have him checked...Paul had to knock over the gurney that Gerald Ford was to bring Sammy to the front of the line (ok, just kidding on that part). We gave Sammy some children's Tylenol and his fever seemed to break. Which leads us to wonder...is Sammy smart enough to fake illness to get out of day care?

15 minutes after picking up Sammy and giving him a bottle...
...and suddenly he's Mr Personality...
...does he look ill to you?

Update 12:27am-Sammy is having a tough night. He woke up at 10pm and it took Michele 1.5 hours to get him back to sleep again. Poor Sammy! Poor Michele!

Mr 95%

Recently we took Sammy for his 7-month checkup. It should have been his 6th month checkup, but his pediatrician was "volunteered' to work the emergency room for the summer. We could have gone with another MD, but we elected to wait a few weeks...as we really like and trust his doctor. According to the pediatrician, Sammy is at the 95th percentile for height (he's a GIANT!), 65th percentile for weight, and 50th percentile for head circumference. What this means is that Sammy stands tall among his peers but his head has not swollen because of it. Oh, and with everything else the Doctor said Sammy was quite fine...and remarkably well adjusted (just meet Sammy and you'd see what he means).

Speaking of big heads, we bought Sammy a Gatsby cap (it's for infants though) at Baby Gap. It's still a little big for his said well-adjusted-sized head, but since it was cold out today we broke it out. Paul's sister Anne came down today to visit so we went out to lunch at the Outback Steakhouse (which quite possibly has the best hamburgers around) -- so we put the hat on Sammy for the outing. He looked like an infant Robert Redford (link to explain) if we do say so ourselves.

Note: Some people insist the cap is a "flat cap"...but keep in mind that this cap is large on Sammy's well adjusted head, so one can say it is a Gatsby cap for now.

Aunt Annie, Paul, Sammy, and his somewhat large hat...

Aunt Annie, Michele, Sammy, and his Gatsby cap....

Sammy and his Gatsby cap...

Sunday Mornings...

Sunday mornings at our house are usually quiet...we get up, feed Sammy, and watch Meet the Press and Chris Wallace. Here's a few pics of from this Sunday morning...

Veto the cat sleeps over our heads..imagine what it's like when he falls on us...
...yes...those are full size Puff boxes...Veto the cat is a MONSTER!!!

Sammy is all smiles in the morning...

Sammy starts off the day with his reading..."Cookie Kisses" a personal favorite...

But he gravitates towards something more challenging...

How can we keep him entertained?

A real page turner for Sammy....

Like his father, Sammy does calculus but does not like it...

I can't believe you are watching that!

The Minnesota Atheists As They Appeared On Our Television...

Michele seems to believe that Paul has a talent for finding the weirdest thing currently on TV and then watching it. One day she caught him watching the cable public access channel while they were broadcasting "Atheist Talk TV." What follows is a conversation between Michele & Paul:

MICHELE: Paul, what are you watching now?
PAUL: Uh...the Minnesota Atheist show.
MICHELE: Since when did you start watching this show?
PAUL: Uh...I watch this show all the time.
MICHELE: Pray tell...why would you watch it?
PAUL: Uh...the inspiring stories.
MICHELE: Such as?
PAUL: The University of Minnesota Atheists are on now.
MICHEL: And how is that inspiring?
PAUL: They hope to get back up to 50 members this year.
MICHELE: Oh, really...and you think they'll make it?
PAUL: Well, you gotta have faith.
MICHELE: Paul, I've never seen you watch this show.
PAUL: Oh, I do...I watch it religiously.
MICHELE: Give me that remote control!

Note: as can be evidenced by the make of our TV in the photo above (you have to click on it to view it larger), Paul does not believe in buying expensive consumer electronics.

The Mystery of the Eggplant Parmesian

This last Labor Day weekend, Paul and Sammy took a nap on Sunday. While the two slept Diane, Anne, and Michele snuck out and went to Trader Joe's where they bought just about everything the store has to offer. Later Diane (the cook of the family) whipped up Pizza Frit (pizza dough fried in olive oil with sugar sprinkled on it...actually it's quite good) and Eggplant Parmesan. We marvelled at how quickly Diane was able to make the eggplant dish...until the sad truth came out...

Pizza Frit has always been an ethnic favourite of ours...

Eggplant Parmesan which we thought Diane had made from scratch...

Anne suspects something is up...

Careful inspection shows it was Trader Joe who really made the Eggplant Parmesian...

Czar Sammy!

While visiting his Aunt Annie, little Sammy showed that he has a little Russian royalty in him. His Aunt Diane took and placed one of his toys (a kind of cloth bucket) over his head, and suddenly we had Cossack Czar Sammy! And where would our little Russian emporer be without having a comrade of his own to accompany him on the barren steppes of Aunt Annie's berber carpet....

Одежда красит человека
(Clothes make the man!)

Легко досталось, легко и промоталось.
(Easy come, easy go!)

По одёжке встречают.
(Good clothes open all doors!)

Друзья познаются в беде.
(A friend in need is a friend indeed!)

Для милого дружка и серёжку из ушка.
(Among friends, all things are common!)