So I'm giving Samantha her bath tonight, and as usual she lets the water out of the tub, then climbs out of the tub so I can wrap her in a towel and dry her off before she puts on her fuzzy purple bathrobe (which she refers to as her "purple anemone", for reasons I cannot begin to fathom).

This time as she gets out of the tub she looks at me with a bit of a scowl and says "I'm cold! Mommy wraps a towel around me in the water. Why can't you do it that way?" Well excuse me! I didn't know that's how Mommy did things, but you can bet I'll be sure to do it that way from now on!

After her bath she was sitting in the big 4-poster bed with us watching a few minutes of TV, and a word appeared on the screen that started with "s". She pointed and said "S, that's for me! Sam starts with the word s." (She's a little confused about the difference between letters and words at this point.) I asked her what letter some other words started with, and she shocked me with the number of letter names she could match with their sounds. She knew that Matt and Mommy started with "m", that girl started with "g", that roar and rabbit started with "r", that LaLa started with "l", and probably four or five more. I had no idea that the combination of reading to her, Amy working on letters with her, and her using her new LeapPad was having such an effect.

Samantha, for her part, understands that she's taking the first steps in learning to read now, and she's very excited about it.

Re Entry

Sam had a rough start to the day yesterday. I picked her up at Becky's and she was totally nochalant, then wouldn't let go of me all during her Tumble Bumble class. She wanted me to skip around the room while holding her. She is an extra 35 pounds! So she cried, and cried some more. We left the room for a bit and got some water, then I tried again for her to join them. Not good. She did do fine during swimming and also during lunch. Reda and her son Steven and Sam and I went to Krazy Karry's for lunch, a high end burger joint. My wee one was good as gold, but very sleepy. I tried to get her to sleep when we got home, but only managed to put myself to sleep. When I woke up, Sam was asleep on the floor of the den with a towel under her head and a quilt over her. She is very resourceful when she wants to be. She didn't even wake up when Hamlet walked over her and started kneading her shirt. I left her to clean the kitchen with Tucker curled up on the bottom of the quilt and Hamlet curled into her back.

She went to bed very sweetly last night, kissing the pink daisies numerous times, saying "I love you's" and "sleep well" to the pot. It seems to be a very sturdy plant, since it stood up well to all the hugging and kissing.

Sam is sitting at the ottoman now with about 10 books in front of her reading bits of them out loud, very happy. She loves her books, this one. We are going to kids playground today with Oliver, Trajan and Lucia, and their mom, Sue. I am borrowing Oliver from Angelica for the morning so she can take her new baby for her checkup. Should be a fun way to spend a soggy day, yet another soggy day.

Amy

Sam was adamant that she stay overnight at Becky's house tonight, so there she is. Becky said she was fine with Sam staying. The house feels empty without Samantha, very quiet and big. Tucker has been wondering where she is, sort of wandering around a bit and sticking close to my side.

We went for a long walk int the woods this morning, and Sam copied everything Ella did. When Ella peed, Sam followed suit. She is very good at peeing in the woods now. It takes a bit of coordination and skill to do that. Every once in a while Sam would step off the path and scrape leaves around with her feet. Ella scratches leaves to spread her scent around, and Sam thinks this is the funniest thing. So she followed suit. We also found a balloon floating next to a log off the path, and I told Samantha the woodland elves were loaning it to her for the day since she had been such a good girl about not hurting the ladyslipper flowers.

Becky took Sam to a florist and had her pick out a beautiful pot of Pink daisies? Not sure about the flower name, but very pretty. Very sweet of Becky to have done that. Becky said it took Sam quite a while to pick just the right set of flowers, and she kept saying what she would really like was a balloon.

We went to Lynn to visit Emily's, Lee's and Matt's grandfather's grave. I brought some beautiful flowers with us, things from our backyard. I had lilacs from a tree that had been in Grammy's yard that Pat gave me, and some of Sue and Audrey's lilacs as well. Sam had found a really interesting branch with a knob on the end on our walk that I also incorporated into the bouquet. I wanted to show my respect and to say, yes, Emily lived and we remember her.

Snail Vendetta

I am now on every snail wanted poster, dead or alive. I am sure they have posters of my face plastered on the inside of every snail shell on Castle Hill Island.

Let me explain. Sam and I went to the beach last Tuesday for a romp in the sand. I wanted to see how she did if she got to just run, run, run for the whole day. She did really well, no yelling, having a very good time. We wandered next to the waves a bit and poked around in the mud. There were lots of tiny snails and some hermit crabs and lots and lots of old sea shells. Sam started to collect all the little snails and we got some crabs in too, by accident. When we went to the playground, Sam didn’t want to leave her friends behind, I didn’t think, just took them along.

Matt, at this part of the story, interrupted me. “You took the snails with you? What were you thinking?” Indeed, I wasn’t. You see, I thought I could just put them in some water with a proportionate amount of table salt and that would be it. As I read on-line about snails, I discovered they, like any other ocean creature, require a salt-water tank. I was not going to go to the pet store and plunk down hundreds of dollars for a tank and saltwater environment, water filter and who knows what else they eat. So we put them in a glass vase and Sam helped me put them to sleep on the porch before she went to bed. She leaned in and sang the alphabet song to them for bed time, then she went to bed.

The next day, first thing, she had to go downstairs and say good morning to them. After she came home from Jim’s and had lunch, we gathered up the bowl and set off again. It was about 2 in the afternoon, pouring rain off and on, and I was not about to travel on 93 through the heart of Boston in beginning rush hour in the pouring rain to return snails to their beach. So I told Sam that we would release them in Mystic Lake and they would find their own way back to their families. The only way I could convince her to let them go was to say they needed to be with their families.

It wouldn’t have been so bad, but she sat in her car seat on the way to the Lake talking to the snails, telling them how happy they were going to be to see their grandparents, aunts and uncles and mommies and daddies very soon. It broke my heart to hear her say that, knowing I was carrying them to their certain deaths. It’s amazing how guilty I can feel about silly little snails when my daughter is sitting there talking to them like they are talking back. I guess this is one of those black marks I get to have on my mommy record for all time.

So, I now refer to rule number one in wildlife walks: always leave wild things where you found them, no matter how small.

When Samantha isn't busy stomping in rain puddles, or chasing after frogs and caterpillars, or sitting in her bed at 10 pm with her light on and three stacks of books piled up around her (something she's been doing a lot lately), she loves to help out in the kitchen. Today she helped me measure and pour ingredients for bread, and she peeled carrots with the vegetable peeler while we were making lunch.

She's also very worried about the fact that I've wrenched something in my back again. Every time I wince when standing up or bending over she looks at me with an expression of great concern and says "Does your back still hurt? Do you need a hug? Maybe you need your crutches."

On a less happy note, she's getting fixated on pacifiers again. We got rid of all the pacifiers, but she found an old nipple from one of her old bottles in a drawer and has been chewing on it for the past day or so. Last night we had a middle of the night screaming fit because she couldn't find it again. I really don't want her becoming dependent on those things again. She knows she shouldn't use them -- she even reminds us that her dentist said they would be bad for her teeth -- but that didn't stop the screaming and crying last night.

Hallelujah, weblog publishing is working again! Sorry it's been such a long time since updates, but it's taken a while for me to iron out the problems with ftp access to RCN. All should be well again.

Too many things have happened since March for me to try to recap them all now. For the moment, here are some pictures of Samantha from our recent trip to San Diego. Don't bother providing an email address and registering with Kodak Gallery unless you really want to. You can just click on the image to view the album.

Samantha is very excited ab0ut starting preschool in the fall. She went to an open house yesterday and has been talking about it ever since. She tells me that Sister Bear (from the Bearenstain Bears books) doesn't like her school, so she wants to invite her to come along to her school, because (as Samantha puts it) "my school is lots of fun!"