Gymnastics

I’m in gym class now. Sam is taking gymnastics. She is a little pretzel during the stretches. Oh so happy to be here. Every once in a while she looks over and gives me a big smile. As Meg said, we don’t know what sport she will pick, but we know she’ll be very good at it when she does.

We put her pumpkin out on the front steps today. She glued on eyes, nose and mouth yesterday and used glitter to make cheeks and eye shadow. She told me that she wanted a girl pumpkin with eyelashes. So I put some very long eyelashes on the girl pumpkin with some paper. When we were out doing errands, she told me that the pumkin’s name was Gordie, but that was a boy’s name and the pumpkin was a girl because her eyelashes were too long. We had to trim her eyelashes so Sam could call her Gordie. This devolved into a discussion about how Daddy had beautiful long eyelashes and he was a boy. Sam said boys have green eyes and girls have blue eyes. When I pointed out that Clara had brown eyes and Grandpa had blue eyes, she figured out that eye color isn’t what sets boys and girls apart. Luckily the conversation drifted off there so we didn’t have to go into more detail about what does make us different.

Sam told me again that she loves gymnastics and school, and she misses being in class. I guess she is really ready to begin!

Perry's Motel and Cottages

This is Sam's story she made up over breakfast today:


Once upon a time, there lived a man, a woman and a little girl in a cottage. Their names were Matt, Amy and Samantha. One day they decided to go to the beach, where it was thundering, and there was Thunder Hill. Samantha decided to climb Thunder Hill with her friends. She and her friends (Gordon, James, Duncan and Captain Soul) were very scared, but she wanted to see what the top of Thunder hill was like. They got really scared and ran down the hill. Sam asked her mom if she could go in the water, but the water caught the thunder. Mom said, “No, you don’t go in the water when it is thundering.” We headed home to our little cottage where there was a pool and a big playground and a place where there was a swing set with a horse that rocks and a swing that has a harness.

Book

We are reading Winnie the Pooh right now. I am Rabbit, Sam is Piglet, Matt is Winnie the Pooh (yes, I tease the poor man about being a bear of ....) Tucker is Christopher Robin, Ella is Owl, Hamlet is Tiger, and Talia is Eeyore. I am the only one who got to choose my moniker. She tells her teachers she is Piglet.

School

Sam started School last Thursday. I had to tell her to come back and give me a kiss, she was so eager to run in and see what was there. Today was the same. She is definitely ready to dive into it all. She has a very bust week this week, more than I realized when I set it all up, really. On Monday she has Swimming for a half hour in the morning, then School in the afternoon. Tuesday she has gymnastics for 45 minutes in the morning, then school. Wednesday is home, usually play time with her friend Oliver. Thursday this week she has an Audobon class about bugs in the morning for an hour with me, then school in the afternoon. It won’t always be like this. She seems to thrive on it. When she comes home from school she is jazzed and wants to know if she can have more fiends over to the house. Er, I *meant* to type ‘friends.’ Friday is grocery shopping day, or day trips out to the Aquarium or whatever.

Sam loves it all, and makes friends wherever she goes. I am amazed by her.

Yesterday she told me it was a perfect day. The sky was pretty, and the clouds were perfect. The baby clouds were dancing, and the mommy cloud and the daddy clouds were all out dancing around in the sky. I am not doing her words justice. It was indeed the special kind of day she described.

The teachersl read a story about a mom giving her child a kiss on the child’s hand. Whenever the child was missing mom, she could hold her hand to her cheek and know that mom was close. Sam has me kiss her hand now before nap time, and I drew a little heart on the palm of her hand today so she knows I love her all through the day.

All is copacetic here, as they say.h

Best friend

Sam is a character. We are reading Charlotte’s Web, which has a lot about death in it. The spider dies, and the pig is likely to be killed when cold weather comes. She is fascinated by the story and eagerly awaits each chapter. E.B. White arranged it perfectly, I must say. Each chapter is a good length, not too long, and has some great action.

Sam has a new friend. Her secret buddy is Captain Soul, somewhat modeled after a Bernstain Bear character who is an old lighthouse captain pretending to be a ghost to protect his now defunct lighthouse. I have to dry Captain Soul’s hair, and he changes size from as tall as Daddy to just Sam’s size. I have to ask Sam first how tall he is so I can make sure to dry at the right height. She had Matt put out pull-ups and pajamas for him tonight too. Captain Soul is a very rich character, sometimes a person, sometimes a pretend ghost with glowing feet. I just try to keep up as best I can.

Jim, her day care person, told me that Sam has very good hand-eye coordination. He said he threw the ball for her today, and she hit it with a stick -- gave it a good whack. Most children her age can’t hit with even the big bat, and Sam was just using a stick she had found on the ground. She did it two more times, missing a few too, but the first whack wasn’t a fluke. We’ll have to get her a t-ball practice set while the weather is still good. Yesterday we played soccer a bit and she was great at headers and dribbling. She loves to do sports stuff. We had a great time.