Samantha is eighteen months old

At eighteen months, Samantha is very clear in her preferences: her favorite things are stickers--she calls them something that sounds like "dishdish"--and swings, and heaven help us if we ever managed to combine the two somehow. She is verbal and funny and great at coloring. Among many other things, she says "Eh me! Eh me!" when she wants us to "help" her; "Ed it! Ed it!" when asking for us to "get" something for her; and "Is stuck! Is stuck!" when she or something else is, well, stuck. I can no longer count her words--she learns new ones every day, and she combines them more and more frequently: "No more water," "All done cracker," "Away book," and so on."

She adores Marcus, except when he puts his hand on her carseat when she's in the car (in which case shrieking ensues), and she will repeat anything he asks her to or bring him anything he requests.

She is very physical, clapping along to music in the car and dancing little dances of glee or frustration, complete with adorable Irish-step-dancer-like moves, several times a day.

She eats anything, from pancakes to avocado to kale and broccoli to raw salmon temaki to flaky cod and ribs and monkfish.

She could spend hours up on the roof playing with a shovel and the sand and some "babies" (Little People).

We've gone to festivals at Jamaica Pond, to ride on a sailboat, to sail our own model boat at the Christian Science Pavilion, and to playgrounds and museums. In the midst of this month's busyness, we managed to find time to rest, too.

We kicked off the Father's Day season by having "Fake Father's Day" a week before the real one; with Rebecca, Sarah, and Sean, we sampled ribs (mostly pork, occasionally beef) from Sweet Cheeks, Soulfire, and Red-Eyed Pig. We voted for our favorites (no one agreed with anyone else, of course) and ate angelfood cake and watched some of the new season of "Arrested Development" on Netflix before calling it a (fun) night.

Marcus only has four days of school left, then two weeks of daycamp, and then we're all looking forward to our summer together. Samantha is already home with me these days.

One of Samantha's favorite things to do around the house is to dress up like big brother Marcus, "Mah-shuss," wearing his clothes. She loves it!

Marcus himself is alternately incredibly literal and incredibly creative, which I guess make sense together. He's finished up his year of piano lessons with amazing sight-reading skills, and in the last month he's gotten so much better at playing with his left hand.

 

In school Marcus has gotten great at sounding out words, and even better at guessing words given context, and he draws constantly and makes up stories about his drawings.

One night in a restaurant as we were waiting for our food, he drew a picture of an indecipherable orange blob, which he told me was an elephant. He told me the following story about the elephant. I borrowed one of his crayons and a scrap of paper and scrawled it down as quickly as I could while he was talking (and let me tell you, it's darn hard to write quickly with a broken crayon):

Once there was a planet all of elephants, and they asked three elephants to go into space. They had to get special elephant space suits, but they wanted to go out to find some new friends. But they looked and they looked and there was no one in space. So the elephants went to Earth and found many new friends there, and they were happy. But they didn't know what to do with their friends, so one elephant threw a rock into a pond and it sank. Then another elephant threw a rock into the sea and it sank. The third elephant threw a rock into all of the oceans all over the world and this time the rock came back out and all of a sudden it was a special elephant sweatshirt. All three elephants put it on and it could fit all of them at once, and their friends cheered, and this time the elephants were very happy, and very glad they'd gone into space.

Last Saturday we all marched with Bob's church (First Church Cambridge, UCC) in the Boston Pride Parade. Fellow Hunterite Rebecca marched with us, and Marcus rode his bike the entire way. He got lots of friendly comments, compliments on his purple bike and rainbow flag on the back, and a few high-fives (resulting in his first one-handed bike experiences, as he swerved a bit and wobbled but recovered). We didn't quite make it to the end, peeling off around at the Common as he was super tired and about to drop, but we had a great time and were glad Bob let us come out and tag along.

 

After a restorative hour or so at the playground, with shade, water, bathrooms, and benches, we made our way home and went up to the roof to grill and play and relax and eat.

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Created: 6/14/13. Last Modified: 6/14/13.