Desperate measures

Samson's head cold continues apace, and Vicki had to pick him up early from school yesterday because he was running a low-grade fever. So I'm home with him today and doing my best to keep him resting. I can't even type that with a straight face, but I'm trying.

We took a little field trip this morning to get my car's emissions tested. Lots of cool machines making lots of noise. Unfortunately, the woman who helped us looked less like a Michelle [the name on her badge] and more like a Michael. Strahan to be precise. So of course Samson kept noting "Man helping us; that man is helping us." [Sidenote: Samson gets like RainMan if you don't acknowledge he's said something, which makes it particularly awkward when he misidentifies the gender of the civil servant responsible for giving your car a passing grade for the state emissions test.]

After a quick trip to the bookstore and a bit of lunch, we came home for a nap. Selfishly I needed to use the time to catch up on some reading for my thesis, and Samson --- his entreaties aside --- really could use the sleep to help him fight this cold.

Nothing doing. I had just settled down into a chair on the deck with "The Craft of Research" (every bit the pageturner it sounds) when I heard through the monitor: "Daddy. I'm soaking wet." So up I went and indeed he was.

This was not unprecedented. And it certainly could have been worse. But occasionally, Samson will take all the water from his sippie cup and simply spit/dribble it out. Which he immediately confessed to upon my arrival.

So new clothes, new diaper, and new sheets [he was very excited to show me that he'd made "circles" by spitting his water onto the crib sheet]. Sadly, La-La #1 was also wet, and there just is no napping without her, despite the recent memorandum of understanding concerning La-Las 2 and 3.

I could feel the nap window closing, and I knew that putting La-La in the dryer --- which Samson helpfully suggested --- would take too long. So with a promise of imminent return, I headed to the basement for the ironing board. I mean, I spray dress shirts with water when I'm pressing them; why shouldn't this work?

Ok, so it wasn't a foolproof plan. And I think I may have singed her a little. La-La is now warm and not wet but moist. She's also pretty much pleated.

And as I type Sam is still not asleep. But I can take some small comfort in knowing I did everything I could.

Oh, by the way, it's official: I am ridiculous.

Dislikes

Now that Samson is speaking regularly in sentences, he has started keeping us apprised of things he doesn't like. On any given day --- and today was a particularly cranky one because he's got a bad head cold ( and let's face it, it's hard to be pleasant when you're drowning in your own snot) --- Samson will inform us (often apropos of nothing) that he doesn't like something.

Among the things he didn't like today:

1. Me, but only for a little while.

2. The number 99; Vicki mentioned something about this number, and we heard a little voice from the back seat protest: "I don't like ninety-nine."

3. The Holy Spirit. [We've been working on the whole genuflection thing, but when Vicki was practicing it with him, he wanted nothing to do with the last third of the Holy Trinity. Go figure; he was always my favorite --- I pictured him looking sort of like a cross between Jacob Marley and Moses.]

4. Having his nose wiped. This was a continuous theme throughout the weekend. Which was too bad, because it was something we did about 4,000 times between Saturday morning and Sunday bedtime.

5. Seatbelts, jackets, not holding one's cup upside down, cough medicine, sitting down, getting a diaper change, and milk. Interestingly, this medley of dislikes could probably also make it to a "what Samson liked today" list.

I don't like to brag, but my son is really good at being two.

Lewis and Clark: the early years?

Samson and Jacob did a little exploring on Friday. This is a nature trail that is slowly being deforested by the city government in the name of improving the health of the stream.

I can't wait until they burn my street to save our neighborhood...

Sam and Jay are lucky. They don't know about the foolish adult world. Not yet anyway.

For now, they can enjoy a shady trail, a slow-running (and apparently deathly ill) stream, and the cool splash sound a rock makes when it hits the water.

And, of course, snacks.

From the Dept. of Mixed messages

Samson's favorite video right now is Dan Zanes' "All Around the Kitchen." To be honest, Vicki and I really like it as well. For one, it's got good music on it. Updated and kind of rock and rootsy versions of songs like the "Hokey Pokey" and "Polly Wolly Doodle," plus some old classics like "Sidewalks of New York."

We also like it because it's almost the polar opposite of these guys. Something about grown men in coordinated quasi-Star Trek regalia doing the box step just leaves me cold. [Not that Samson doesn't love them too, because he surely does, but it is really nice to have music we can all listen to without gritting our teeth. In the Wiggles' world indeed...]

Of course, Samson's other favorite video right now is a Thomas sing-along that he got from Vicki's dad. This is a bunch of songs about Thomas and his friends. Lots of songs about being dependable and modest and useful and other stiff upper lip virtues. In between songs are stories, most of which concern Thomas or one of the other trains being asked to do something by Sir Topham Hatt.

Apparently, Hatt is the grandee of Sodor and owns everything. You know you're in trouble when Sir T.H. gets "cross." Like the time that Thomas was tasked with bringing a brass band across the island for Mrs. Hatt's birthday party and he lost a tuba player. The errant musician was later found in Sodor's red light district, drunk and penniless.

Ok, that's not true. He actually hitched a ride on a tractor and all was well.

But what's interesting is that Samson moves from watching Dan Zanes and singing along with songs like "Pay Me My Money Down" [he was singing it this weekend when my parents were visiting, and I think they wondered if we were raising their grandson as a red diaper baby] to tales from the Isle of Sodor about making a speedy delivery of eggs so Sir Topham Hatt can have his breakfast.

Mostly, I think Samson just likes trains and singing. And really, who can blame him?

But this gives me something to wonder about when we're watching these things.

And if at some point he asks me why Gordon, Percy, and the others don't organize, I'll know where it's coming from...

School Daze

Samson has now completed his first official week of school. Since Vicki works on Mondays and Tuesdays, his school week is only two days long, but I think it still counts. He did really well. At least as far as I know. His teacher leaves at 4, and we don't pick him up until 4:30, so when I got him today she had left a note that simply covered the basics.

Samson ate well; He took a nap; had a hard time and cried a little. Kind of like a daycare haiku. I'm not sure what I was expecting from a woman charged with caring for five two-year-olds and who probably wrote the note in the nanosecond she wasn't comforting or correcting one of her little charges.

Even so, I'll admit I was a little underwhelmed. I mean, we got a more detailed note from the guy who watched our cat a few years back when we went on vacation. Granted, Dan the Cat Man was a little overzealous in his care for our cat, but still.

Anyway, Samson survived and so did we. It wasn't in the note, but apparently he doesn't like when his teacher, Miss Jacki, takes a bathroom break. He told Vicki tonight: "Miss Jacki bathroom. Crying. Samson stay right there..."


What I would give to be a fly on the wall of his classroom...

Samsonpalooza

Samson's party on Saturday was a blast.



There was running and jumping, singing and dancing, spinning and falling, some crying, and at least one incident of peeing that we know about. Apparently the ball pit is a very relaxing environment. [It was funny to see how quickly the hazmat team sprang into action closing said pit and disinfecting everything in a 10-yard range.]

There was a cool parachute and lots of stuff to climb on, and nobody had to use their indoor voice. What more could you want at age 2?


We gave out recorders as favors, so there are probably a few friends' parents who are either not speaking to us or not hearing much of anything.


Even so, I think all the kids had fun; I know Samson did. Thanks everyone for a great time!

Silence of the lamb

We had a busy weekend: Sam's second birthday party, a trip to the farmers' market, a visit to the railroad museum, but I'll get to all of that later. What I need to tell you right now concerns the cookout we didn't go to. And, as will become apparent, I'm using the word cookout in a literal, if ancient, sense.

On Saturday night, at around 9:30 pm, I heard a knock at the door. It was our next door neighbors. All of them. Ok, just three of the five family members. But they do tend to travel in twos and threes. This is probably because the parents speak very little English and rely on the kids to translate. So the middle son, "A" (older brother to N) tells me his father wants to invite us to their house tomorrow for a cookout. Since my parents were still in town, I told him we'd try to make it but that we had plans to visit Annapolis.

This was true enough and left us an option if we needed it. [Full disclosure: our neighbors are wonderful people, and their friends are all really nice. That said, going to events at their house can be difficult as most of the guests speak very little English, and we don't speak any Bosnian.]

In any event, the next day N came by to invite Vicki to come see what his mom was cooking in their yard.

It was a lamb. Not leg of lamb. Not one of those inscrutable cylinders they carve gyros off of. But lamb.

A whole one, slow-roasting over a bed of open coals in much the same way I imagine Abraham's sacrifice was prepared.

How do I know? Because Samson and I went over and checked it out. Surprisingly, he kept his own counsel on the matter, but he does count La-La among his dearest friends and was probably just trying to play it cool. Or not be traumatized by the spinning animal carcass slowly cooking in front of him.

In any event, we ended up skipping Annapolis in favor of the train museum and dinner out at an Italian place. By the time we got home, it looked like things were all over next door. Which was probably for the best. I don't think Vicki (or my parents) could have stomached the whole thing. Literally.

Of course we didn't get away totally clean. Later that night there was a knock at the door, and two of our neighbors were there with a plate of lamb they'd saved for us. Did I mention our neighbors are wonderful people?

It wasn't fresh off the spit, but it was actually pretty good.

Almost two

Samson turns two on Thursday, and while he's still getting the hang of the whole holding up two fingers thing, I am still amazed at just how quickly our little man is growing up.

[Sidenote: I'm being generous when I say "still getting the hang of" --- his version looks less like a little peace sign and more like a crooked "W." Basically, he's flashing gang signs from his high chair.]

In any event, just thought I'd share a few highlights from the past 12 months.

Happy birthday, Samson James. I hope you always know how much you are loved.

At the zoo

We spent Sunday at the National Zoo. If you've never been, it's worth the trip. [Unless you live in California or Texas or someplace far from DC; in that case you should probably just go to your local zoo.]

In any event, the day was full of discoveries for Samson. We got to see free-range tamarins, watched a pair of seals race around their, er, habitat, and we even saw the famed pandas.

We stood in a tightly packed crowd in the midday heat watching the baby panda lick honey from a plastic milk crate (plastic milk crates being second only to bamboo in a panda's diet).

For his part, Samson was nonplussed. He was pretty interested, however, in the ladder some workers had left on a part of the exhibit still under construction. Our exchange went something like this:

Me: Do you see the baby panda? He's playing.

Samson: Yeah.

Me: Do you see his mommy back by that tree?

Samson: (looking in opposite direction) Ladder. I see a ladder. Climb it? Pandas climb ladder.

Even so, it was a good day. As we made our way around the park and caught snippets of other peoples' conversations, I couldn't help but wonder: Is Jeremy the new Kyle?

On more than one occasion and in different locales involving different families, I head a Jeremy being told to stop doing that, to get down off of there, or to watch his attitude.

And then I thought that while everybody knows that Kyles are bad news, maybe Jeremy is a kind of sleeper cell name for a kid.

I mean, it's got three syllables and is a kind of a nice mix between Jerry/Gerry (minus the cartoon/Gus Van Sant baggage) and Jeremiah (a cool enough name but sadly and forever linked with Three Dog Night).

I bet you never thought about it. But consider some famous Jeremys: Jeremy Andretti, a late addition to the Bradford family on Eight is Enough. The troubled cousin went on to get the bejesus beat out of him by a bunch of spoiled rich kids (led, no less, by the incomparable Billy Zabka), win the All-Valley Karate Championship (and the love of a young Elisabeth Shue), and then somehow lose everything and have to start all over again. In Okinawa.

Next up is Jeremy the homicidal kid from the Pearl Jam song. Enough said there.

I'll grant you that Jeremy Bentham kind of complicates things as far as my theory is concerned. I mean, who doesn't love utilitarianism? But I'm pretty sure most of his friends called him Sandy.

Last, and probably least, is Jeremy Shockey of the NY Giants. Good ballplayer, but not somebody you'd want to go to the zoo with...

Unsafe at any speed

These boots? Definitely not made for walking, but we needed some kind of diversion while the smoke (and smell) dissipated from the baking experiment.

Vicki tends to leave her shoes by the door, and Samson just couldn't resist the giant pink wellies.



Good grief, he looks like he's ready to head out for the Lollipop Woods to do some fly-fishing.


[It's probably for the best that I keep my Paul Stanley boots hidden away.]

Cake

I got home from work last night to find Vicki and Samson in the kitchen baking.

As you can see, Samson is an eager apprentice and definitely not afraid to get a little flour on himself.

Unfortunately, something went awry in the process. We were all in the living room reading a Clifford book (which Samson calls, in UB40 fashion, "Red Red Dog") when Vicki noticed the kitchen was filling with smoke. Not a good sign for the cake.

About 10 seconds later the smoke alarms in the kitchen and the upstairs hallway went off. The kitchen one is no big deal; we usually disconnect it when we've got something on the stove because it's so sensitive.

But the upstairs hallway one has a creepy robot voice that barks out "Warning. Smoke has been detected in the hallway. Evacuate immediately."

Which is great in the event we ever need it, but it must have been really weird for Sam as he smelled burning batter, heard some man issuing commands from a box on the ceiling upstairs, and watched his parents spring into action.

Secondhand

I didn't get there until after it happened, but apparently Samson has discovered --- unfortunately in public, and doubly unfortunately with guacamole --- the power of the fork catapult.

He's getting good with utensils, and we are sure to encourage his use of them whenever possible. But this is something neither of us had even thought to guard against [although the lunchtime juice box geyser yesterday now seems like part of a pattern instead of a random occurrence]. In any event, Vicki said he picked the fork up, put some guacamole on it, and then like a mini-Belushi sent a big gob of the green goo flying.

You should know that Vicki is not a person given to hyperbole, so when she tells me time stood still as she watched this little green meteor head for deep impact on the sweater of the woman seated behind (?!) Samson, I believe her.

The funniest part, and the reason I'm really sorry I missed it, is that nobody else seemed to notice. Vicki sprang into action with a wet napkin but had to first introduce herself and explain why she was trying to wipe this total stranger's arm with a damp square of paper.

Good times, Samson. Good times.

Nirvana

I'm home with Samson today, and we had a very exciting morning. With his birthday coming up, I've been trying to find some cool (and not too expensive) instruments for him to play. Specifically, I've been looking for those little hand percussion instruments that drummers usually carry around in a bag with them (cow bell, claves, that crickety-sounding thing). So yesterday, I did a search online for music stores near us. Wouldn't you know it, there's a huge one just a few miles away.

It has been pouring all morning, but I think both Samson and I were ready for a little time outside, so we headed out around 10 to find this place. I didn't tell him where we were going, given how our last guitar store field trip went, but when we pulled up I knew we were safe.

The place is the size and shape of a Toys R Us, but with huge pictures of the Jimmys (Page and Hendrix) in their display windows. Inside was a wall of electric guitars that stretched about 14 feet high and easily 50 yards long. Samson looked up, blinked, and then smiled.

Seriously, it was like that scene in Wayne's World, complete with a guy trying out a guitar/playing a Zeppelin song. It was not, mercifully, "Stairway to Heaven," but was (I think) "The Rain Song." The staff all looked like superannuated (or never annuated) rock stars --- tattooed, pierced, black-leather-clad, and otherwise rock star-y. Very metal indeed.

I asked the guy at the security gate [Sidenote: is there a real threat of someone smuggling out a bass guitar in his pants?] if they had drums, and he pointed me to the back.

In the percussion room, we got to see all sorts of stuff [and I got to fast-forward a few years and calculate just how expensive this fascination with drums is going to be]. We played some maracas and a cabasa, but Samson was way more interested in the various drum kits that were set up on the sales floor. Even so, I picked up a pair of claves that I thought would be fun.

When I mentioned to the guy behind the counter that I was looking for a small pair of drumsticks so Samson would stop using rulers, chopsticks, pencils, crayons, etc, he had just the thing. And then he offered to let Samson try them out.

I wish I had a camera with me. The sight of Samson sitting on the stool behind a huge drum kit and banging away at the different drums and cymbals must have been something else.

I say must have been because I was behind him making sure he didn't fall off the stool as he reached his little arms across the kit to hit the crash cymbal. [Sidenote: one cool thing about drum stores is that they really don't mind if you make a lot of noise. And we made a lot of noise.]

When he was done, he turned around --- sticks still in hand --- and smiled the way the Buddha must have that morning under the Bodhi tree when he finally figured it all out.

Samson and Jacob's excellent adventure

No, this isn't a new episode in a Talmudic comic book series. And unfortunately, I missed out on all the fun [somebody has to work on Thursdays], but apparently Sam and Jake had the best day ever.

A trip to the mall, a ride on the carousel (sans yelling), and a visit to the state fair.

At home that night, when I asked Samson what he liked best he replied, with terrific enthusiasm, "APPLEJOOS."

Apparently, the boys had juice boxes during their roadtrip.