Living in Munchkinland

We've had a long week. Michael's been out of town and we have all missed him. He was in San Angelo all week, but is home today and has the day off! We are so excited. We needed this break to cushion the blow of the news that he will be gone for at least two weeks in October. Sigh. The kids are great. My parents stayed with them on Wednesday while I spent the afternoon at the rheumatologist's office trying to figure out what's wrong with me and the evening at Theatre Action Project's board meeting. Davis had a great time and was disappointed that they weren't there when he woke up the next morning. We also had our first Music Together class on Wednesday morning. We all LOVED it and are looking forward to the session. The CD has been in constant rotation and both boys are starting to participate and sing. Davis will hear a song and say, "I know that song! We sang that song at my Music House.". He's so proud. Sam has said two new words t

I finally got the photos from the boy's dedication at the UU church. I hope you enjoy them. It really was such a special and wonderful day. Love, Amber

Our Sammy is a big boy. Today he is ten months old. That feels so old to me. And it feels like it's happened so fast. He is babbling up a storm these days. He loves to cruise around holding on to a chair or my fingers. He adores his brother and tries to do everything that Davis does. Sam is my little cuddle bunny. He loves to be held and gives big hugs. I love the way he feels when he snuggles up against me. He also is getting really good at independent play. He can crawl around the playroom exploring for huge chunks of time by himself. Sam has learned to wave hello and bye-bye and does it with great enthusiasm. He sleeps through the night and goes to bed awake and usually without any fuss. He naps twice a day for about an hour and a half each. He eats voraciously. We still nurse four times a day and in between we usually manage four full meals. We have moved on to finger foods and while we still do lots of baby food, we have added in a daily helping or two of grown

We had a wonderful weekend. The boys were dedicated at the Unitarian Church on Sunday. So many of our friends and family came to share this with us and we felt so happy and so blessed. The ceremony went well enough. Davis was not especially cooperative, but he did his best. Afterwards we had cake and punch at the reception hall and then had an impromptu lunch at Central Market. My mom took all the pictures and has promised to send me one, but I don't have any right now to show you. I will put them up when I get them. Monday night my parents gifted Michael and Keith a very intimate dinner/picnic on the lawn of the Four Seasons. We ate and ate and ate and then had a private concert by Guy Forsythe. It was beyond fun. It was amazing. The food and wine were both delicious and the weather was beautiful. I am pretty happy girl. Great Family. Great Friends. Good times.

I've been meaning to mention that Sam has started speaking. A little. He has been less inclined to voice his thoughts at this age than Davis was, but slowly, he has been starting to speak. His gibberish sounds something like this: AAEeeeee, Aggle Flaggle Glabble, Do dih, agooo, dih dih dih Dah!, etc. We have also heard him speak a few words that actually seem to make sense. His first clearly spoken, with intention word was Davis. He looked at his brother, smiled and said, "Daaa dih!" Several people were in the room and all looked up in surprise that Sam had just clearly spoken his brother's name. Sam has also been heard to say, dog, DaDa, and yes. He shakes his head no, but has mastered the art of "es" for Yes. It's actually very helpful. I also have a sneaking suspicion that he is saying "do dah" for do that, but I'm not entirely sure. Other than that, he is still working on walking and adores it when Davis takes him for a ride o

Sam took his very first steps today! He walked!!!! This evening we were encouraging Davis to use his potty. He brought it out of the bathroom into the playroom to sit on it and them immediately ignored it to play with trucks. Sam crawled up to it and stood up and then began pushing it around the playroom! I couldn't believe it, since just last weekend I gave him the push walker and encouraged him and he turned me down. I figured he just wasn't ready. He figured he just hadn't found the perfect walker. Then he saw the potty and I guess it was a match. He happily pushed it around for fifteen minutes or so and then I offered him the hippo pushcart. He needed a little help, but pushed that around too. Michael was home and we took lots of video. After a bit, Michael disappeared in his office and I started cooking dinner. Imagine my surprise when I looked up and saw Davis zooming in on his tractor and Sam almost keeping up while walking along pushing the hippo on his

We had an eventful Labor Day Weekend. You may remember that I was frantically planning and cleaning and getting excited for the visit from our Phoenix friends. By their arrival on Friday I was ready. We had hit a small snag when we realized on Thursday that Sam has an eye infection in both eyes, but we went to the doctor and got some medicine for it and hoped for the best that no one would catch it. On Friday afternoon we picked up our friends at the airport and took them to our house. We settled in and then headed for the Waterloo Icehouse for happy hour food and fun with about 15 or so of my closest friends. While there, I was happily feeding Sam some chunky orchard fruit when he turned to me and projectile vomited. I was concerned, but assumed that maybe the antibiotic for his eye was bothering his stomach. I cleaned up as best I could and continued to enjoy the party. Pretty soon he did it again and then again and we packed up and headed out of there. We cleaned up the ki