Mother's Day 2007

We went to New Hampshire to visit Amy's family and for her high school reunion this mother's day weekend. Samantha and Joshua were the hit of the reunion. Surprisingly few people brought kids -- maybe most of the people who come to reunions are all old enough that their kids are grown. Sam and Joshua were big hits with everything there. The young woman who planned the event kept wanting to "borrow" Joshua and carry him around the dinner event last night, and everyone commented on how cute he was and on how intelligent and well-spoken Samantha was.

Joshua has progressed to pulling himself upright and trying to stand. That means he's gone from nothing to sitting up to scooting along the floor to crawling to trying to stand in the space of about three weeks. I suspect he'll be walking before much longer.

At the hotel pool this morning Samantha swam for the first time without some kind of floatation device. She just dogpaddled back and forth across the width of the pool, never putting her feet down on the bottom. Then she laid on her back with my hands under her while I taught her the basics of the back crawl. This from the girl who used to be afraid to get her hair wet! She's quite a marvel, Sam is.

This afternoon we visited Amy's sister and her family, and went to lunch with Amy's and brother in law and Amy's mom. After that we went back to Amy's sister's house, where Sam wanted to go fishing in the little stream that runs behind the house. Damned if she didn't catch a baby trout -- just a tiny little thing about 5 inches long. Sam wants to have it for breakfast tomorrow. Ick.

Her reading is progressing by leaps and bounds too. This evening at dinner I was writing down new words for her to try to read. Words like octopus and napkin and elephant and brook trout. She doesn't really even have to sound most of them out anymore -- she just looks at them and reads them, at least if they're phonetically regular.