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.

I Want a Weapon

Christy brought Pete and Sam into the office today for some trick-or-treating.

While we were changing Sam's diaper, I was distracting him with one of those extending pointers that I use in training and sales demonstrations. Of course, he wanted to keep playing with it after that. So he was running around the office with it. He ran past a group of people. Then Pete came running after him yelling "No fair. I want a weapon."

Fresh Water

This is what happens when Pete brushes his teeth before bed:

1. I fill up cup with fresh water
2. Pete brushes teeth
3. Pete dumps out water, fills cup, and rinses

So last night I had to ask about this.

Me: "Pete, I just put fresh water in there. Why do you dump it and fill it up again?"
Pete: "I want it to be totally fresh"


Then about 5 minutes after going to bed, he usually calls me in to ask for a cup of fresh water. One night, he asked me to put in some cubed ice because he was hot (he had noticed that this is one of the option on the refridgerator). Instead of ice, I put in a die from his Mouse Trap game. But he noticed right away when he looked in the cup.

Pete: "No, not cube dice. I wanted cubed ice."

Parent-Teacher Conference

We had our first parent-teacher conference yesterday with Miss Kirsch.

Congratulations to Pete for scoring a 102 on his phonics test, which ties the school record! He also continues to have outstanding achievement in morning work and snack.

Unfortunately, I understand that there is no Spelling Bee for the Kindergarten class. I guess we will have to wait until next year.

Many Petes

If you ever wondered what the world would be like if there were seven Petes, now that he has discovered the mirrors in the bathroom we have the answer.

Boys Week

This week is Boys' Week, since Christy has some sort of event scheduled for almost every evening. So far, it is not off to a great start.

1. (downstairs)
"I asked you once, now I'm telling you. Get my jammies immediately."

2. (brushing teeth)
"Um, I need to do something that's
going to be good for me, but terrible for you."
"What's that?"
"Brush your hair with my toothbrush."

3. (getting ready for bed)
"Give me your head for a minute, I need to do something."
"Ok, what are we doing?"
"Just Tanya's neck-breaker.
It's down, forward, down, forward, high kick."

4. (in bed)
"What is science?"

Sunday Means Eagles

Pete and I did what we usually do on Sunday, which is go to Tom's house to watch the Eagles game on Sunday Ticket with TiVo.

Pete has a soft football that he spikes whenever the Eagles score a touchdown. I bring it over to him when they are driving close to the end zone. Yesterday, the Eagles were running out of time at the end of the first half. Donovan McNabb needed to spike the ball quickly to stop the clock. Tom yelled out "spike it! spike it!". Pete looked up from his coloring book and said "I can't! It's over there on the floor!"

Sometimes it doesn't seem like Pete is watching, but then he notices things. During a commercial, he said "Why is that show called 2 and a half men? You can't have half a person."

Corn Maze

Above is a picture from the corn maze when we went last year. You can see Pete holding the yellow flag. The idea is that you can shake the flag in an emergency, and a spotter will come and help you find your way out of the maze. Apparently, Pete's definition of "emergency" was a liberal one because every time I looked over he was shaking the flag vigorously. Fortunately, they don't do much screening for the teenagers that they hire at these places and I believe the spotter on duty was off in the corner of a shack somewhere sending text messages and organizing the tunes on his iPod.

"Slippers"

On Sunday we were all sitting in the family room. Pete said "I need to go put on my slippers. I'll be right back". I'm thinking that this is strange, since I don't remember him wearing slippers any time recently.

About 2 minutes later he comes sliding into the room, there are several crashing noises, then he lands on his butt.

His "slippers" were two small toy trucks that he was trying to balance on. What made him think this is possible, I have no idea.

Bap

Sam has some words that are all-purpose words. One of these is "bap". This can represent a number of different things, such as:

- jump
- bat
- bed
- bad
- cup

The key is to listen for the inflection. Unfortunately, you can't ask him to use it in a sentence because the whole sentence is just "bap". The only multi-word sentences he does are things like "bye bye night night" when he gets out of his crib.

Hidden Ball Game

Pete, Sam, and I were playing a new game where one person secretly hides a koosh ball under one of about 10 boxes of various sizes. Then the other two participants race to see who can find the ball first. The only problem was that every time Sam hid the ball, he would show us where it was right when we started looking for it.

This led to much laughter each time Sam would prematurely identify the location of the ball. After a while, Pete was laughing so much that he said "I'm running out of laughs."

Pumpkinville

It's mid-October, which means the obligatory photos from the obligatory visit to the pumpkin patch:













Note the last picture, which is Pete and Sam playing for 30 minutes on the playground equipment that they have anywhere.

Haircut Night

Life is funny sometimes. It's a typical evening. You're driving home, sitting in traffic. So you envision how nice the evening will be. You'll give a few hugs, have a quiet dinner, mix up a drink with a little umbrella in it, maybe pay a few bills, catch the end of the game, and knock off early.

Then you walk into the house and Christy says "Hey, let's give the boys haircuts tonight". So Tuesday night this week turned out to be haircut night.

Actually, it went pretty well. During Pete's haircut, Sam and I did some flippy and looked through his favorite book, which is the Super Mario 3 tips and tricks magazine. During Sam's haircut, Pete and I sat in the "gallery". This is the loveseat where two people can sit and make disparaging remarks about the person getting their hair cut. But we had to stop because Sam always wanted to jump in to the gallery instead of getting his hair cut.

The "after" photo is below. The reason Sam is looking off to the side is that I captured the precise moment when he realized that he was interested in the pizza that he didn't want an hour earlier.

Birthday Magic

We had a fun birthday celebration yesterday, with a picnic in the gazebo. Pete got me a magic kit for my present. It must be good, because it is from the dollar store. And it has 15 tricks. This seems like a bit of a stretch, though, since the kit only contains 3 or 4 implements. Also, I noticed the first few tricks are something like "The Disappearing Ring", "The Appearing Ring", and "The Amazing Ring". I have a feeling the next one may be "Schrodinger's Ring". For this trick, you put a ring in a sealed box and wait until the end of the universe.

We are doing one trick a day for the next 15 days. We will post if there are any good ones.

Camp-out Memories

Pete and I had fun at the daddy-son camp out.

The best moment was sunrise, with a mist over the lake and some geese swimming in perfect formation framed between the trees. Unfortunately, I could not get Pete in the picture because he was too cold. We went walking around looking for someone with a fire, but apparently most people don't get up at 6:30 at the campground.

The most interesting incident was when a group of boys stirred up a swarm of bees by the lake and came running up the hill. So Pete starts running down the hill to see what is going on. I said "Pete - no - run". So he turned around and started running. Then I couldn't find him for a few minutes, until I figured out that he had zipped himself inside of his tent.

Below are some pictures of Pete with two glowsticks and Pete fishing. It was pretty chilly that evening, and Pete made it through the whole night in his own tent - I believe possibly the only kid on the trip that did so. Not sure if this was related to his going to the hospital the next week, but he was fine for a few days after the trip so it is hard to say for sure.

Choosing a Costume

Two of Pete's favorite things are
yellow and Batman.

He was planning to go as a bat
for Halloween this year,
but changed his mind yesterday
to some sort of
winged goblin / vampire /
Frankenstein character.

I sent an instant message to Christy
that we should steer him toward
the bat. Later that evening,
he said "I saw what you said about
steering me toward the bat
and my answer to that is NEVER!!"

Note to self: Be more careful with my instant messages.

Sam Throws Things

Driving can be a dangerous activity when Sam gets mad. This is because he will start throwing things from his car seat. He used to just throw things on the floor, but now he is getting better at throwing and he has figured out that he gets more of a response when he throws something into the driver's line of vision.

So driving to Philadelphia and back this weekend, I had various items traversing over my head, hitting the steering wheel, dashboard, window, etc. It's a little bit like those video games where you will be driving and pedestrians and other obstacles will appear in the roadway. Except in my real life version there are pacifiers and McDonalds toys. I think he has a master plan. One day he will clump all his toys into a brick and hurl it at the back of my head. His hope will be that I will pass out and then the car will swerve to rest at an ice cream shop.

Signing Letters in Class

In Pete's class, they do an exercise each day called "Chant the Chart" where they do letters and words together. So they will say "A - Apple", then "B - Bear" and so on.

Miss Kirsch observed that Pete does the sign language symbol for each letter as they recite it.

Pete Does What Sam Does

Usually Sam does what Pete does, but sometimes it works the other way. The other night, Sam dumped out his clothes and started running around with the hamper on his head. Pete said "I'll be right back" and went out the door. In case you haven't guessed, he returned with his hamper also on his head. Then they did the Hamper Dance (which is very similar to the Hampster Dance).

Last night, Pete was climbing the floor. So Sam started climbing the floor too. This activity is hard to explain. Suffice it to say that you end up with a very dirty shirt.

Hospital

Pete and dad had a brief and unexpected stay in the hospital Monday evening. Pete was having some trouble breathing due to a constricted airway.

It is fun to be in the hospital if you are Pete:
- buttons move the bed around
- Playstation 2 (Crash Bandicoot and Jimmy Neutron)
- TV with remote
- unlimited juice
- send dad on food run
- button to call nurse
- machine that shows graph of your breathing

It is not so much fun if you are dad:
- sleep on chair in work clothes next to arctic blast from A/C unit
- turn off football game in 4th quarter ("too bright")
- fill out 12 page patient history at 1am
- wake up to breathing treatments every 2 hours