men's bodies

I was just asking Sam when he thought his new baby cousin would be born (he's due tomorrow, so we're all eagerly waiting). He thought about it a bit, then said:
"For women I think having a baby is really hard, but for men, it's easy."
me: "Why do you think it's easy for men?"
Sam (again, after thinking for a bit): "Women's bodies have to do more than men's do. Men's bodies just have to do the sperm loving. That's all they have to do."

Ha. Not sure where he got that particular phrase, but he has a point. In fact, there's a bunch of evolutionary theory that's all related to this exact point, where mammals are concerned...

On Tuesday, Sam and Frida went to the beach with Stephanie and a couple of her friends. After they were back, tired out, happy, and not at all sunburned, I asked Sam what his favorite part had been. He liked kicking down all the sand castles they'd made (apparently they'd made a lot). He told me they kicked them down because kings are bad. Why, I asked. "Because they make bad rules." This is what happens when kids hang out with folks with anarchist tendencies. Hee hee. As long as it's kings they're talking about, and not our president, I'm not complaining.

summer

I had food poisoning on my birthday. But Sam and Stephanie decorated for me, including with our birthday ring on the table, and our banner:



(You can see that he's started chewing on his t-shirt again; there was a couple of weeks early in the last kindergarten year when he was doing this, along with several classmates, apparently, and recently it started again. Yuck. Like most such habits, though, I think it'll go away faster if we ignore it; certainly bugging him about it hasn't seemed to help.)

Last Saturday, with summer Farmer's Market/CSA bounty in its full glory, this was our dinner. 5 different vegetable combinations, dressed just with salt, pepper, olive oil, and vinegar (ok, and a couple had been sauteed in butter). With bread and cheese. SO YUMMY.



Frida is acting like a toddler these days. Today, she was delighted to discover that her soccer ball fits into the napkin&towel drawer in the kitchen. She is into systematic relocation of stuff, and has a longer attention span about it than she used to. All of the CDs she can reach go onto the floor (from the CD racks); all of the books on a shelf go onto the floor; all of the things on the living room floor over the baby gate:



And she initiates games. Where's Frida?



There she is!



(Note highchair tray with dinner remnants; she ate a surprising quantity of roast pork chop, along with some rice and peaches. She's been eating a lot more lately-- ever since a Fried Chicken Breakthrough on July 4th (girl LOVES fried chicken) and seems bigger in all dimensions.)

from 2 weeks ago

wrote these down and forgot to post:
Sam, two days ago after being chastised for the nth time not to prevent Frida from going where she wants to go (he has been doing a lot of hauling her around, frequently against her will, and is chided about this many times a day, with regular discussions about respecting where she wants to go and thinking about how X would feel for her): "I wish Frida was a robot and we could do whatever we wanted with her."

Sam, this morning at breakfast, apropos nothing: "I bet I’ll be invited to Frida’s wedding."

jokes

...Sam's getting better at them. Well, riddles, really.
Two he came up with today:
What kind of ant fights off germs? An ANT-ibody.

What park is named after one of my uncles? DAN-ehy park.
(So I asked, what about the -ehy? and he said, there must be another park named SARA-e-her.)

Over dessert tonight, he said: "I don't believe in fudge. They think it's fudge, but really it's just a kind of chocolate."

walking Bean

Here she is walking with the wagon, a couple weeks ago:


And here she is Wednesday evening, walking with NO WAGON:


And here's a random funny thing: we have these Quercetti tubes that Sam links into funky horns. She's clearly figured out what they're 'for', and crawls around hooting into one (looking like she's about to go snorkeling):


I haven't yet captured any of Sam's bike riding. We put the pedals on his bike about 3 weeks ago and he pedaled off gleefully, and has barely looked back since. No training wheels. The pedal-less balance bike approach has another house full of converts.

In the car today, driving back from Manchester, NH (where we met a friend and her lovely family for a picnic and park date): Mom, there's something I'm concerned about.
me: Really, Sam? what's that?
Sam: I'm concerned that if we have the windows open in the back, Bean will throw a toy out the window. I don't think we should have the windows open in the back of the car. I'm concerned about that.
(I failed to share his concern. We moved on.)

end of June Bean

She's not quite walking, but she's pushing a wagon around. And she LOVES it:



(video to follow soon.)


Polka dot pajamas!

misclassifications and career goals

Sam has revised his career goals. He now wants to work in a prison, or maybe be a kind of bounty hunter (a concept he learned from a Star Wars book (!)), but not someone who hurts people, instead someone who teaches them not to do bad things so they can be out of jail.

And today, in the closing circle on the last day of class, they were going around being reminded of the hopes and dreams they'd written down for the year on the first day of school. Sam's was that he hoped there would be lots of bugs in the classroom. There had been! They talked for a minute about the various bugs they'd had, including one whose classification they weren't sure about. “I think it was a daddy long legs, which is a bug that looks like a spider, but it’s not a spider. It’s like some things that we think are vegetables are really fruits? Daddy long legs are not really spiders, but people think that they’re spiders.”

We've all been dealing with Fifth Disease or some other virus-- Sam at least had the characteristic rash, though no other clear symptoms, but the rest of us have just felt exhausted and generally ill, Stephanie included; Frida's been especially sick, with a fever the past 3 nights. Non-stop nursing... it's been like having a newborn all over again. (And hopefully not a preview of the first year of daycare, with its parade of parasites.) Aunt Liz visited and hung out with us in our dysfunctional sleep deprived states; the last time she was here, F. was a newborn, and we were similarly dysfunctional. Hopefully that won't be the case the next time she comes, to celebrate the arrival of Aunt Sara and Uncle Dan's new baby later this summer!