Sam announced to me yesterday that she wants to grow up to be a firefighter. Ooee!

Sam helped me water Grammy's Lilac today. The leaves are drooping pretty badly and I was hoping that a good soaking would make it grow better. She loved making puddles with the hose and spraying the leaves. It didn't occur to her (yet) to spray me. She did very carefully clean my shoe, just the sole. She is such a good helper. She really did a better job than I did at watering it. She was more patient with waiting for the water to sink in before adding more. I missed Grammy right then, very much. I think she would have really enjoyed my little whirlwind.

Matt did not have the Father's Day I planned, but I think it was an okay day just the same. Sam kept getting Father's Day and birthday confused, so she went around singing Happy Father's Day to Matt to the tune of Happy Birthday. Understandable and definitely adorable.

Samantha scribbles on these little peices of paper I gave her. She hands them to you and in great seriousness, tells you this is your invitation. She isn't always clear for what, exactly, but recently, after her firned Abby, Matt and my birthdays and Harold's birthday, she says it is a birthday party invitation. I asked her what daddy had bought me for my birthday, and she said a birthday card, which is all he bought when he was with her.

She has a very active role playing imagination, playing with her dolls and Tucker. Tucker gets a blankie and her dolly when she thinks he is feeling sad. I've never seen him sad, but Sam is probably more sensitive.

Sam is really in the phase of helping. Her favorite things to do are grooming Mommy, picking out earrings that I *need* to wear, feeding me, making sure I have lipstick and a necklace on, feeding me some more, giving my moles 'Angel' kisses, which always makes my heart melt. She also loves to turn on the radio for music, saying it is too loud and adjusting the sound level. She loves helping me with the teapot. She tells me it is 'old water' and I need 'new water.' So I lift the tea pot off the stove and hand it to her. She carries the pot to the sink and takes of the lid and the whistle. I fill it with new water and hand it back to her. She sniffs the new water to make sure it is good, both at the top and at the whistle. She carefully puts the top and the whistle on and carries it over to the stove. Then I put it on the stove under her very satisfied stare. She really cracks me up, especially the sniffing part.

Tonight I had one of those watershed events with Samantha. I came home from work and picked her up, then heard a strange "click ... click ... click" noise coming from the living room. Eventually I recognized it as the electronic metronome, which she must have been playing with. So we went into the living room, and I put Samantha down and picked the metronome up off the floor. Unsure how to turn it off, I started fiddling with the controls. I managed to make it intolerably loud, and to change the frequency from 10 to 100 beats per minute, but not to turn the silly thing off. (I'm going to plead sleep deprivation here, since Samantha's fever has kept us all awake all night for two nights running.)

Eventually I asked myself out loud "Where is the control that turns it off?", at which point Samantha reached up, took the metronome out of my hands, turned it on its side, and pointed to a switch. Then she said "This control turns it off, Daddy" and, as if to prove her point, turned it off.

Two and a half years old and she already knows more than me about something. Why do I get the feeling this is just one of many such incidents to come?

Poor Sam has a bad fever and just threw up all over herself, the black chair and me. She is about as listless as I have ever seen her, and it all happened within about an hour. We are just throwing juice into her and pedialyte and hoping she gets better soon. I hate that glassy eyed look on her face. My sweetie is not feeling well at all.

On a positive note, we found a nice young woman to babysit who not only passed the Ella and Samantha test, she also passed the Talia test, hitherto unimaginable. Yes, even Talia came out to snuggle with Jennifer. Sam had a wonderful morning playing dolls and running around her tent. Jennifer was a nanny for a while and comes with glowing recommendations. She really is quite nice.