Laughing with Sarah

It's been a heck of a week and a half, so apologies for the tardiness of this post! Here are some pictures for you. 39 weeks - December 23, 2016 - My last regular weekly belly shot! December 27, 2016, 5:00 a.m. - The very last belly shot before heading to the hospital for baby day! December 27, 2016, 8:00 a.m. - Welcome to the world, Eleanor Ann! A cute, chubby-cheeked GIRL, born 8lbs 8oz and 21 inches long. Our beautiful sweetheart. December 27, late morning - Mama gets back from recovery and gets her first real snuggles with Eleanor December 27, evening - Sam gets to hang out with his baby sister. He is immediately smitten. Enjoy the pictures for now. There's a lot more to the story! Still to come are a write-up of Eleanor's birth story (boring for her, a little more exciting for me), and then an account of the last couple days, which have found us up at Mayo Clinic with a sick baby needing emergency surgery at a tender nine days old. We're still...

Huh. I'm not so great at these monthly updates anymore. Especially since Sam turns twenty-two months this upcoming Monday. But there are only a couple left before we hit two years, and then I will proclaim myself free to post (or not) whenever (or not) about Sam's milestones! Besides, we are just all having so much fun together - Matt, Sam, and me - that who has time to stop and write a blog post about it all? Let's start with pictures. Four of them. Eighteen months - May 21, 2015 Nineteen months (and three weeks...) - July 14, 2015 Twenty months (and three weeks...) - August 12, 2015 Twenty-one months (and three weeks...I am chronically late...) - September 14, 2015 Sam, I don't even know where to begin. We are two months away from your second birthday, and in the last four months, you have turned a huge corner. You talk to communicate your wishes. You have wishes and ideas. You understand things like being silly and joking around, and that something ...

Fifteen months (or so) - March 11, 2015 Sixteen (almost seventeen!) months - April 14, 2015 Seventeen months (and one day) - April 22, 2015 Sam, life just continues to move faster and faster and faster...and so do you! It's hard to keep up with taking your monthly pictures and writing up your monthly updates! It is springtime, and the weather has finally started to turn warm, and you are growing and growing up as beautifully as the spring shoots and buds that are peeking through the dirt outside. You are so many things these day, little man. You are talkative: You have a pretty decent list of words that you can say! And you babble to yourself and to us in complete sentences, so even when we don't know the words you are trying to say, we know that you are intentionally working to communicate with us in a verbal way. Your favorite words are ball, box, bath, brush teeth (you have a thing for "B" words), and are especially interested in the multi-syl...

Thirteen months (or so) - January 5, 2015 Fourteen months - January 29, 2015 I'm writing this over breakfast, Sam, a week past your 14 month birthday, a month and a week past your 13 month birthday. You are eating Cheerios off of your tray. You just finished a big bowl of oatmeal and yogurt. During breakfast, you've been practicing your baby signs, which you just figured out in the last couple weeks. You signed "more, please" when you wanted another bite. You signed "milk" when you wanted your cup, even though it's a cup of water and we just started working on the sign for "water" today. You said "all done" when the bowl was empty, and signed "eat" when you wanted some post-oatmeal Cheerios to munch on. We practiced signs for "bathtime" and "sleep" and "kitty" and "mama" and "daddy." You love saying "da-da" like you mean it, but you can't quite get your...

Twelve months - November 21, 2014 Well, then. Here we are. One year, already, little man. You woke up happy on your birthday morning, and cuddled in bed with us and snuggled with Emme. You love the kitties so very much. They love you, too, in their own way. The way that you hug and pet and snuggle with the kitties is the way that you hug and kiss and snuggle with your stuffed animals. These days, your neon green puppy is one of your favorites. He rides in the car with you. When we get into the car, I hand him to you and you give him a big hug, snuggling against me and smiling. I usually sneak you into your car seat while you are hugging puppy. :) You continue to be such an affectionate little man. A few weeks ago, you were sitting in my lap while I was reading you a book, and you all of the sudden stopped paying attention, leaned back, looked up at me, and leaned up for a kiss. Nevermind that you give kisses by lunging forward with your mouth wide open. It is still the sw...

Eleven months - October 24, 2014 Well, I think it is my fault. I blinked. And when I did, you took advantage of the moment to get another month older, Sammy. This has been a month of rapid changes. Every day you are a different kid. You keep moving farther and farther away from being a baby, and closer and closer to being a sweet little boy. Standing up is old news for you by now. It takes very little effort to pull yourself up. You grab the couch, or a chair, or a bookshelf, or mommy's legs, and stand up tall. You have started cruising around furniture, walking very carefully while holding on. We have a wheeled toy that transforms from a sit-and-scoot bicycle to a stand-up walker, and you have mastered the art of walking around the living room while pushing it ahead of you. You aren't quite interested in trying to walk while holding onto mama or daddy's hands, but I'm sure that will happen very soon. You are a boy on the move. You scoot around the house, chasin...

Ten months - September 26, 2014 Well, little Sammy, I'm writing this post with a lukewarm cup of coffee by my side, trying to keep my eyes open after a second night in a row of bad sleeping on your part. It's a good thing that you are darn cute... Cute and kind and funny and sweet, that is. :) You are now ten months old (plus a few days), and you are a little man on the move. You're so busy that you're still hugging that skinny 10th percentile curve for weight. And it doesn't seem matter how many bites you take of scrambled eggs, quiche, muffins, grapes, chicken, shrimp, rice, Cheerios, pasta, bagels, donuts, bread, yogurt, squash, or anything else. You love playing and you love eating. Eating will get easier and easier as you get more teeth. You have two big ones on the bottom, plus a third one that is poking its way through. Someday you'll have top teeth, and then you'll figure out that chewing is the best. You've been a good sport about teeth...

Nine months - August 24, 2014 And just like that, another month has flown by. These days, it's hard to keep up with Sam as he crawls around all over the place. We are in full hands-and-knees territory. He can crawl, and sit, and change directions, and crawl while holding a toy, and bat a toy around and chase it. He laughs and grunts when he's moving at top speed toward something he wants (like when he races over from across the room when mama comes to pick him up from daycare). He shrieks - LOUDLY! - as he chases the cats around. He can pull himself to standing, though he's not quite so good at sitting back down once he's up. This is one mobile kid! Which means that we now have three baby gates and a bunch of corner protectors guarding the house. And it means that he has a few bumps and bruises from random pieces of furniture that he has decided to try to crawl through instead of going around. All this movement means that he's still burning calories like...

Eight months - July 22, 2014 Well goodness. What a big boy we have on our hands these days! For starters, we have two teeth! Both on the bottom, both of them about halfway grown at this point. Teething has been blissfully uneventful, for the most part. He drools more, sticks his tongue out a lot, and has a slightly harder time staying asleep at night, but otherwise he's not too cranky about the teeth-growing process. Just a little confused about what these weird things are in his mouth. Teeth! We've added broccoli, nectarine, apricot, and multigrain cereal to his list of foods, plus a few more sneaks of ice cream, whipped cream, and most recently, rømmegrøt (at this last weekend's Nordic Fest ). Sam has also decided that drinking out of a grown-up cup is the most hilarious thing ever. He'll watch Matt and me at dinner, and his face will light up when we take a drink...and then he'll reach out, wanting to take a sip of his own. We hold the cup up to ...

June 23 - seven months old It's been a big month! First, a big month in terms of life-happenings. Sam started daycare, he was baptized , he went to two conferences with his mama, and came along to St. Olaf College for Matt's 10-year reunion festivities. The adjustment to daycare has been shockingly smooth - for him and  for me. He goes four mornings a week and one afternoon. Within the first couple days that he was attending, we noticed some huge developmental leaps.  After beginning daycare, he started talking more than he ever did before - he spouts off long strings of nonsense words and you can tell that he is actually trying to communicate something. He likes saying "dadadadada" and "lah-deh-lah-deh-lah-deh." He'll shriek and squeal loudly, just for fun, and if he is frustrated but not yet fully upset, he'll start talking in a scolding sort of voice before he resorts to crying. Also, since he sees other babies in daycare ...