Banana Eating Machine

Ever see someone inhale a banana?

Now you can.

A strawberry?

One of Sam's favorite books now is "The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear." In it, a mouse picks a strawberry but is warned by the narrator that the big hungry bear might come eat it, so in the end they split it in two and both eat it all up before the bear can.

Another of his favorite books is called "You can do it, Sam" about a bear who delivers cakes to his neighbors all by himself. At the end, Sam and his mother share the extra cakes and it shows a picture of mice eating the crumbs. The other night we pointed to the mice in the book and asked Sam what they were eating. He sat and thought for a while and then said, "Strawberries?" A very thoughtful guess...after all, the only mouse we read about eats strawberries! We just thought that was very cute, but maybe you had to be there.

Trash Truck Man Daddy!

Sam's newest sentence is "Trash...Guck...Manh...Daddy." The translation: "This is trash, it goes in our bin then into the trash truck which has a man riding on the back and Daddy takes me out to look at it every week." Needless to say, you can tell that he's been enamored of the trash truck recently...

Mama mia!

So for a long time Sam has just been saying Daddy and not Mommy. He started saying Mum at one point and for whatever reason gave that up. At some point he started calling both Dave and me "Daddy" so I went on a "I'm not Daddy, I'm Mommy" kick - so he just didn't call me anything! Well, somewhere around the beginning of September he finally figured it out and called me "Mama." Now, it seems like every other word he says is Mama or Daddy...but it warms our hearts each time. He's such a cute kid and it is amazing to see him starting to try out and master different words.

Potty Training

So we haven't been pushing Sam to use a potty, but yesterday he misunderstood "bring me that pot (for cooking)" for bring me your potty. (He similarly brought me a stool today, when I asked him for a tool.)

Well, I asked him if he needed to use the potty and to my surprise he said yes. So I sat him on the potty and read him the "Wheels on the Bus" about 5 times and then "One Duck Stuck" and finally fed him Strawberries, Cheese and toast. After about 45 minutes, he went! I think it was a novelty thing though - today he went straight back to using his diaper. But it would be SO nice to only have one kid in diapers....

Dave

Stuck!

One of Sam's favorite words, starting around 18 months, was "Stuck"...or as he says it "Guck." He's proved to us just how useful this word can be as he applies it to a myriad of situations: his foot stuck in his pajamas, his head stuck in his shirt, the peanut butter stuck to his toast, a toy stuck under the couch, the buckle stuck closed, Sam stuck in a hug with Mama or Daddy, a sticker stuck to a shirt and my favorite - Mama's eyes stuck behind her glasses. With a vocabulary of about 30 words you'd think it'd be hard to get concepts across...but not if you have words like stuck! --Christine

Here's a current list of Sam's words at 21 months:
Adu = water
Guck = truck, duck, stuck
Buh = banana, blankie, bath
Cucker = cracker, Tucker (his favorite stuffed animal)
Gigger = Tigger (his second fav stuffed animal)
Ga ga = all done (accompanied by waving hands at end of meal)
Bapu = apple, diaper, Grandpa, Grandma, backwards
Dat = cat, light
Bupple = buckle, bubble
Ga = again, pillow
Daddy = daddy
Mama = mommy
Diddy = dirty
Chews = juice
Poh = spoon
Booka = fork
Ahs = ice
Geez = keys
Eel = wheel
Bap = button
Eye = eye
Oh oh = phone
Jews = shoes
Booko = book
Cah = car, avocado
Bwa = blocks
Bah = pillow, ball, sheep
Beh = bear
Bir = bird
Poor = door
Bye-bye = bye bye
Muh puh = more please
Baguh = bagel
Gack = quack (like a duck), squawk (like a bird)
Woof-woof = dog
Kickin = chicken
Bus = bus - he says it correctly!!!