Sam's First Joke

This is Sam's first joke. He made it up himself.

ock ock (Knock Knock)
oo Da (Who's there)
Unno (I don't know)

Note, it's not interactive. He does all three parts himself.

Yoga Master Sam

Sam discovered that he can climb
into a plastic container we have
in the basement. He gets stuck,
then he says "dumpy" and someone
needs to come over and dump him
out. Pete is usually happy to
assist with the dumping.
Maybe when Sam grows up, he can
be one of those Yogi masters who
squeezes his whole body into a
small box. Don't laugh - they're
projecting 73% growth in this
profession. Right now, there are
only 11 guys who can do this, but
they will need 19 by the year 2020.

Thanksgiving

We hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving weekend.

Above is Sam's portion of our Thanksgiving feast. There is one item in the picture that he actually ingested during the meal. See if you can guess what it is.

Hint: it's not on the green plate.

Sam is a Munchworm

Pete asked me to post an entry to the blog called "Sam is a Munchworm". This is because when Sam eats an apple he takes a few random bites all over the apple (see picture).

This is the picture Sam kept asking to see when he would grab the digital camera and say "Bam appoo".

Birthday Card

Pete and I do not always think alike. When he was making a birthday card for Miss Kirsch, I thought he should include a poem, or perhaps a thoughtful message. But we decided to go with his idea, which was a picture of him wearing the crazy birthday hat.

Pow-Wow

We went to Pete's pow-wow at school on Friday. Sam came too. It was fun - they did a few songs, then we had some turkey and mashed potatoes for breakfast. We found the picture of Pete holding the vegetables on the wall. His name was Running Deer. If you want to know the native american names of all of the other kids in the class, you can ask Pete.

Tattoo Artist

Sam has become more interested lately in drawing. He doesn't scribble much - he tends to do a series of very small drawings. One thing he likes to draw is little spirals. The nature of this type of drawing is that there are usually several things that you can interpret to look like real objects. It is similar to looking in the sky and finding shapes in the cloud formations.

He also discovered earlier this week that he can use his arm instead of paper. Since he favors a blue or black pen, sometimes it looks like he has little tattoos. I tried to capture this in the photo, of course while he was flailing his arms around and yelling "Bam appoo" (this is because he knows there's his favorite picture on the digital camera of him eating an apple). Notice that this particular formation looks a little bit like the barbed wire tattoo that has been popular in recent years.

Enemies

Most kids have a special item. For some it is a blanket. For others, a teddy bear. Sam's special item is a printout of enemies from Mega Man 3. He walks around with it. If you try to take it from him he says "Nooo! Emenies!"

Our Little Che Guevara

I Think These People Are Related

On the left is Christy wearing a necklace from Pete. On the right is Pete wearing Sam's overalls.

Self Portrait

Here is a self-portrait of Pete. Notice the yellow spots. They are in his real pictures too (for example, see here).

Karate

We seem to have figured out a way to make some positive use of Pete's skills in Mortal Kombat 4, which is Karate class. His staggering ability to memorize the names and combinations of martial arts positions should translate well to this discipline.

Above is the back punch (one of my favorite Pete/Sam photos ever).

Pete says the below are:
1. Back kick
2. Front kick
3. Kwang Yang
4. Front punch
5. Char-yet
6. Regular stance

Beware the Banana

Pete found out one time that when you stick your tongue out and make a noise it is called a raspberry.

So then he did it louder, and said that was called a blueberry.

He decided that even louder would be a strawberry.

Louder still is a blackberry.

Finally, loudest of all is a banana.

It's hard to describe the horror of these sounds. Let me just say that it is analogous to the hurricane scale that they use. So raspberry would be like a category 1 hurricane, and a banana would be a CAT 5. I think only 3 bananas have been recorded in Northern Virginia.

Garage Door

One of the things Pete
would do at the old house
is grab on to the handle
on the garage door
while it was opening.

Until the time he rode
it all the way to the top,
and then didn't know
what to do.

Our neighbor from across
the street came to rescue him.

Time Out

Here is Pete in "time out". Note that it loses some of the effectiveness when his brother comes over to play with him.

Pete is wearing his cool t-shirt from Dominion Trail Elementary. The school colors are not the best, so it is good that we decided to go with the black instead of the other choices, which I believe were something like lavender, teal, and pink.

Halloween

We had triple the fun this Halloween, with a morning party/parade at Pete's school, afternoon trick-or-treating at dad'd office, then of course walking the neighborhood.

After much deliberation and vacillation, Pete finally decided on being a vampire.

Sam was not interested in his cow costume, so he just went as Crank-monster, and subsequently Captain Jammies.
It was fun to walk around the new neighborhood. I think everyone will remember Pete. He is the vampire who would give back any candy with nuts and ask for something else. He spent 2 or 3 minutes at some of the houses -- I was starting to wonder if maybe they had invited him in for dinner.