The Sam Update - Twenty One Months Old

Click for pictures! 

 

Samantha just hit the big 1.75.  Okay, so now I know what people mean about the time going quickly.  Sam's first 10 months went by so slowly, but all of a sudden she is almost 2 years old - that's crazy! 

 

Walking really jump started Sam's development.  As Dr. Suess observes, walking and thinking are connected:

"You have brains in your head.

You have feet in your shoes.

You can steer yourself

any direction you choose."

Since we moved I've been able to entertain Sam just by taking her outside to roam about since it is a new place to her.  I enjoy observing what will attract her attention.  She likes flowers, manholes, trees, squirrels, any kind of water, and license plates.  But I think she mostly just loves the independence of moving around as she pleases.

 

Sam loves music right now.  We know what music to play for her because if she likes something she'll dance, but if she doesn't she'll cover her ears.  Her dancing is so cute - sort of a cross between an orchestra conductor and a jazz musician snapping his fingers with his elbows tucked in to his body.  If she's really loving it, she'll turn in circles until she is dizzy.  Even though Sam still doesn't talk (just a word here and there), she can sing.  Adam and I have independently identified certain tunes she will sing, although it's usually just a few notes.  Other times we hear no tune, but it still sounds like sweet music to us.  Today we bought her a 37 key electronic keyboard since she is obsessed with the piano.

 

I'm quite surprised to see Sam playing with figurines in a way that looks like imaginary play.  She'll take two figures, say a horse and a cow, and make one bite the other (while she growls), and then make them kiss (while she makes the kissy noise), and then make them walk around together and all kinds of other stuff I don't understand.  She favors two figures at a time and they always interact, and she seems to narrate the whole thing in her adorable toddler-babble.  I don't know what is in her head, but she loves this kind of play.

 

Adam is having a great time roughhousing with Sam.  He flips her and throws her and rolls around the floor with her.  I don't think there is anything that makes Sam laugh as much as that kind of play with her dad.  Oh, and what a laugh!  I've got to get out that video camera before that laugh changes.

 

Bumps and bruises are a normal part of Sam's life now, as we try not to interfere unless there is serious danger.  After riding an elephant back in March, Sam rode her first horse a couple of months ago.  We continue to try to expose her to new things as much as possible.  With a few exceptions (and those are doozies), most everything we do is just so much more fun with Samantha.  We spent close to an hour walking a quarter mile with her the other day and we weren't bored at all.  Tonight we all walked around outside in the rain.  We've been careful not to make a big deal out of getting wet in the rain, and to show her how cool it is to see water coming from the sky, and what do you know - Sam loves the rain and doesn't mind getting wet.  She even danced to the thunder.

 

We're thinking about putting Sam in day care a few half days a week so that I can work on my new project - freelance writing.  It will probably take me many months to get anything published, but I hope to make this my next career.  This blog is my exercise - my way of writing on a regular basis while I'm pitching ideas and hoping for an assignment.  When Sam is three we plan to enroll her in a Montessori preschool for three years, and if I can manage to build a solid part-time writing career by the end of that time, I'll home school her.  That's the plan.