Last night Samantha would not go to sleep without Tucker. We had to get him off the couch so he could join us in Sam’s room while I read her a story. He is a very good boy and just lies down next to her bed until I open the door to leave. He looks like he would be happy to just sleep there, but I hate to think what Sam would do to him if I wasn’t there to protect him.

Sam had another milestone with the potty last night. She can sort of give or take the potty. Sometimes she is adamant that she will only use the potty, and sometimes she is adamant about her diaper. Oh well. I assume she will get it figured out at some point.

Sam made me cry again yesterday. I was sitting at the dining room table sending off a message to a friend and my eyes were watering. Sam said boo boo and kept kissing my cheek. She is a very sweet and wonderful child when she isn’t exhausted or sick. She has a little cold today, probably caught it from me, or Daddy.

She asked a question for the first time today, Who something. Matt will hopefully write something about that. She has been drawing for hours. Her first word to me this morning was crayons, and it was a toss-up whether she wanted to draw with crayons or watch Tubbies. Right now she is sitting on the floor stacking eight blocks on top of each other, over and over. She's never stacked them before, much less eight at a time.

I don’t know if I mentioned this much, but in addition to reading often, I also sing to her a lot. She is now singing along with me sometimes with “Down in the Valley” and requests “Bushel and a Peck” from Guys and Dolls or “Itsy, Bitsy Spider.” She isn’t always clear on the titles, but we manage to work it out. She doesn’t actually sing the words, but she hums along decidedly off key. It seems to soothe her.

She has her first bad booboo on her lip today. She was banging her head on the floor during a tantrum and got her lip caught between her teeth. It looks awful, although it doesn’t seem to bother her any. I wince every time I see it. I am sure it hurts her more than it does me looking at it, but I hate boo boos just the same. She’s been asking for boo boo kisses, but none of them are on her lip. One spot was the end of her pinky, and her elbow is always a popular boo boo kiss spot.

Just one correction, lest my sister is reading this. The large Moon Bear that has been discussed frequently was a gift from my sister freshman year in college. It is still wonderful and has all its eyes and its nose intact. Sam is getting alot of fun out of it. She lays on top of it and rolls off, giggling. Lots of role playing too, since it is about her height but light enough for her to pick up and move around.

More new recent phrases:

"Ella, leave it!"
"Tucker, come!"
"Good doggies!"

Can you tell that Samantha spends a lot of time with her dogs?

She's a big fan of animals in general. She knows the names of most of the animals in her books -- ducks, chickens, giraffes, pigs, goats, sheep, elephants, cats, dogs, bugs, horses, fish, butterflies, caterpillars, and so on -- and can tell you what sounds each of them makes. She raises her arm up near her face and blows raspberries when trying make elephant noises, and it's hard to avoid cracking up when she sees the rooster in one of her books and comes out with a loud and enthusiastic "cock a doodle doooooooo!"

She's also extraordinarily fond of riding her tricycle around the living room wearing her rain boots and fireman's hat, and of going outside in said boots (which she puts on herself while declaring "Boots on!") to stomp around in puddles.

Like I said before, she definitely has her moments.

Samantha went to the Boston aquarium again today. She really loves watching the penguins, and she was completely fascinated by the sea turtles in the big ocean tank. She kept wanting to run from window to window to see where they were swimming next.

She's really adorable at times. There was a point at which two of the turtles bumped into each other while swimming. Samantha, seeing this, cried out "Oh no! Boo-boo!"

We got her a little stuffed turtle at the gift shop, but unfortunately she dropped it somewhere while we were shopping for a new DVD player on the way home (ours having given up the ghost this morning). Neither Amy nor I saw where she dropped it, and although we looked everywhere after we noticed it missing, we couldn't find it.

The new words come fast and furious, and her sentences are becoming longer and much more complex. She calls the teddy bear that's bigger than she is the "big heavy bear", and the other night when I was trying to put her to bed she insisted on bringing one of the smaller bears with her. She laid it face down on her pillow -- "pillow" and "blanket" are new words -- and said "Bear lie down now, go sleep."

She's also started saying please and the occasional thank you, and really, how can you resist when the world's most adorable almost-two-year-old looks at you and says "Please fire" to ask you to build a fire, or "Pick up, please" to ask you to pick her up. This afternoon at nap time she brought one of her stuffed monkeys into bed, then held it up and said "boo boo". So I kissed the top of the monkey's head, after which she took it back with a very sweet "Thank you, daddy" and lay down with it in her arms.

She definitely has her moments, this kid.

I got Sam's toothbrush ready this morning, and she was trying to get water on it by herself. She disapears on me and I am saying, "Sam, where did you go?" She turns the corner of the bathroom carrying a rather heavy wooden stepstool and says "get step stool!" She proceeds to put it on the floor exactly where she wants it and climbs up and starts getting her toothbrush ready. I was so proud of her.

This morning I was getting Sam dressed in the den. She decided it was time for a diaper, so she ran into the other room to get a clean diaper. She laid down on the floor and handed it to me. I couldn’t ask for a child to be more helpful. When I got her dressed, she ran into her bedroom again and came back with the moon bear, a gift from my college roommate when we were sophomores. It is as tall as she is. Then she ran back to her bedroom again and came in with a diaper. She told the bear “lie down” and gently laid him on the floor. Then she tried to put the diaper on. I asked her if she wanted help. She tried for a bit, then said “help.” I put it on, then she wanted it off, so she said “help get off.” I asked her if the diaper was stinky. She leaned over and stuck her fingers in the diaper, sniffed the diaper, then looked up at me and said “stinky!” very emphatically.

She also told the bear to stand up when she was done with the diaper, which is what I say when I need to put her pants on. It felt weird to see my behavior so closely mimicked. It was also incredibly cute and I found myself really feeling badly that her Daddy wasn’t there to see it too.