Dad's Home!!!

For the last few weeks, Sam has been greeting Mike at the door when he arrives home.  This is not your casual greeting, or even a sweet hello.  This is an all-out scream of excitement.

 

Mike has to have his hands free when he walks in because Sam will walk right off the top step into Mike's arms.  Who knows how long it will last;  we are loving every minute of it!

Samma-lamma-ding-dong

Here is a sample of a few of Sammy's favorite words.  (Sorry the video didn't rotate.)  At the beginning you can hear him calling "Mom." (In the tone of a 5-year-old tattling on her brother.) "Up" and "Bee" are words I hear many times a day! 
A few more favorite words: "Yiyi" (Lily), "Dada!" (screamed excitedly when Mike walks in the door), "Ah-yi" (Ollie, called in an owner's tone), "bop" (cup), and "bow" (for granola bar).

One more Sammy story:  I was running some bath water for him the other night.  He was playing in Lily's room, so I took the extra minutes to clean up the kitchen a bit.  When I went to turn the water off, this is what I found:

Now, I could have felt guilty for not watching my 17 month old while there is a tub full of water in the house, but instead I grabbed the camera.  Priorities.

Budding Linguists

Those of you who know Lily also know that she spoke early, clearly and often.  This can make her seem older than she is.  But, sometimes she doesn't quite hit the mark with her words, as shown with these recent examples:

Sometimes they aren't even real words:

"'Andvisingly', Sam, you need to get out of my room."

Sometimes they are real words used the wrong way:

"Mom, I am trying to get in the 'limit' of washing my hair really well."  ("habit", I think)
"'Expertly', I don't like these beans."  (okay, maybe that is exactly how she meant it!)

And sometimes the words are all real and in the right order, but they are just funny:

(Sitting on the couch with her shirt pulled up so her belly is showing) "The good thing about tickling yourself is you can stop whenever you want."


As for the other budding linguist in our house, we are probably the only ones that understand most of his language so far.  A few words come out clearly, but we like to say he has an imaginary friend named "Ana".  He calls her name often, sometimes very urgently.  We don't know what this word means yet, but we do know we better hop to it when he says it. :-)