happy birthday to my dad!!!! 

my dad

so there are a lot of things i love about my dad.

he is the first person who i ever saw. he was holding me right after i was born, and i looked up, and there he was. it was all kind of blurry, but i know it was him because of the beard.

speaking of the beard, that is a really nice beard my dad has. it tickles my face when he kisses me on my forehead. maybe someday i can have a beard like that, if i am lucky!

he makes the very best faces ever. this makes me laugh, especially in the car when he points the mirror right at me so he can see me, and i can see him, and he makes funny faces to make me happy. this makes car trips one hundred percent funner.

he has the best voice for reading stories. all the people in the book have a different voice, and they are all funny voices!

my dad is the first one to run and make sure i am okay if i fall down or bonk my head or something like that. mom tries to be real calm and mellow, but dad runs up and holds me and makes me not cry anymore.

he lets me sit on his lap while he plays games on the computer. i like to just sit there on dad's lap and hang out with him. he lets me eat dinosaur crackers or animal crackers or raisins and sometimes even little pieces of candy.

sometimes i throw fits. i admit it. i just get so mad i can not see straight! (why can i not have that thing??? i want it!!!) dad handles this really well. he talks to me until i calm down and maybe even smile. i can not resist.

sometimes he can have a big scary voice, but i know that my dad is a big old softie.

he lets me get away with just a little bit more than mom does sometimes. shhhh! do not tell her about this one!

my dad protects me and buys things for me that i need and teaches me things and loves me a whole lot. i am hoping i can be just like him someday. or a fireman. whichever.

two new and exciting discoveries!

ketchup makes everything taste better. everything! one day, dad and i go to the mall to shop for something for mom. we stop to grab a bite to eat at the food court, and dad gets some french fries. mmm, fries!! i notice that he is sticking the french fries down into some red sauce before he eats them, and so i ask if i can please try some. i do try it, and it is wonderful! now i eat ketchup on green beans! i eat it on mandarin oranges! i eat it on lemons! i delicately dip them into the ketchup, and the dipping is half of the fun. sometimes if i do not have any mandarin oranges or french fries or toast to dip into the ketchup, my fingers work just fine too.
hooray for ketchup!

another fun thing to dip stuff into is the air vents on the floor at my grandma and pappy's house. spoons are just perfect for dipping in there, except that i am not quite sure how to get them out once they go in. i do not think mom or dad or grandma or pappy are either. i managed to get four spoons into the vent, but the nutcracker would not fit. i will try harder next time.

i forgot to mention that i got so dirty that i had to take a bath in the big steel sink in the camp kitchen. 

donkey mucous is the best mucous! 

these are the toothbrush pigs. as you can see, i was not too impressed. 

this week

so, this week i went to my very first church camp. mom and dad say, "sam, it is time to go to church camp!" and i run around and play with stuff while they pack up all my stuff. (i hope that this will happen long after it is no longer necessary. i mean, packing does not look like fun.)
anyhow, the camp is full of high school big kids, who love me. sorry, it is hard to be modest when really you just want to tell the truth.
we swim, we sing, we eat. i have at least 15 new scrapes or bruises. here are the stories of a couple of them:
i am running with a roll of tape in my hand, and i fall down, and my finger scrapes the ground under the tape, and a piece of skin comes off, and it bleeds a little bit. it does not hurt that bad, and dad puts this brown sticker over my ouchie! i think he called it a bandade or something.
i also have two skinned knees. these are from backing into the swimming pool on my knees over and over. see, it is a little scary to walk around in the pool, because sometimes you slip and fall and your face goes down in the water (i know this from experience). and so it is more fun and makes you a little less nervous if you just climb in and out of the pool for a half an hour. i did get it down to an art. i would rather have skinned knees than the chipped teeth that my friend JT got. he fell with his face in the water too, and his mom grabbed him, and he fell again, and his teeth hit the side of the pool. he cried a whole lot, but i think he is okay now.

something else fun we did was go to the place with all the animals. we drove in the car, and these big old crazy looking birds and deers and donkeys and monkeys kept looking at us through the windows. the donkey even put nose mucous on the window, and the big cow with big horns tried to rip off the antenna. that was a good time. at the end of the driving, i got to get out and pet some goats and a pig or two! petting the pig felt like petting my toothbrush, but the goat was nice.

i have some pictures to show you!

this is me and my friend carl. he gave me that hat! amandla! 

amandla

so the other day, the three of us (dad, mom, and i) head up to fayetteville to go to a party.

the party is for our friend carl, who is leaving to go back to his country. there were lots of people there, including my auntie amber who i never hardly get to see either! (she is the one who gave me the drumsticks). i did my best to help everyone have a good time, by dancing and talking and just being entertaining all around. the best part of the night is when we watch Mac and Me, a movie about an alien. the alien is very ugly and can never close his mouth. he is about the same size as me, but he is not nearly as cute. mostly i think that the movie is about mcdonalds and coke, but the alien is trying to get back to his family. they call each other by making their hands in a cup shape in front of their faces and whistling. everyone keeps doing what the alien does on the tv, so i do it too! everyone finds this very entertaining, so i keep doing that a whole lot. we all have such a good time that we ALMOST forget to be sad that carl is leaving forever or maybe for a couple years. either way, it is too long.

i will be probably 3 when he gets back, and i will be talking really really good by then. i already know what i will say. "Amandla!" and carl will know what it means, in fact, he will probably turn the jerry springer off and rise up when i say it!

what is that thing?

so today we go outside as usual. the sun is very bright today! i look at the ground because the grass is a little high, and high grass makes me nervous. you never know what could be hiding down there! while i am looking down, i notice that there is a big dark thing down there in front of me. mom asks where the goose is, and when i point, the thing on the ground moves. when i move my arm again, it makes a different shape.

what is that thing?! i tried to get away, but it followed me.

share the bread with the ducks? nah.

so today a friend of mine came over. his name is jon rocket, and he will be 2 in july. i do not know how impressed he was with me, as he did not smile all that much, really. not when i cocked my head sideways and talked funny, and not when i spun in circles. i may need to work on my act before i take it on the road.

the best thing that happened today was that we got to feed the ducks and even mean mister gander and his wife. mom gets a big sack of hamburger buns and says, "come on boys; we are going to feed the ducks now!" well, when we get close to the ducks, and mom throws some bread for them, the goose *ahem* gander comes over and hisses and puts his head down and chases the ducks away and eats the bread! so, we get a little closer to the ducks and throw some to the gander to distract him. mom gives jon rocket and me some bread to throw. john rocket throws his real far, but I say to myself, "Wait a minute! That is perfectly good bread they are throwing to that angry mister goose. I should not throw the bread. I should eat it." So I did.

it is a good time. the gander may even be my friend now. and his wife indeed has some eggs in there, because when she stands up to see what is going on with the bread, and we give her some, we spy some under there.

new toys (sort of)

so, all my toys started making weird noises. some would talk or play the music really slooooow. sometimes they would not come on at all. sometimes they would come on when i was nowhere near them. i thought they maybe were becoming bad, mean toys with minds of their own. but then, mom and dad took all of the metal sticks out and threw them away and put in different metal sticks. now the toys work just fine, and it is like it was my birthday or something all over again! i forgot how fun some of them were! yay for new metal sticks! it is good that my toys all work now, because it rained and rained and rained and i could not go outside. that is kinda a bummer.

in other news, my pacifier got lost, and so dad bought me a pink and purple one, because that was all they had at the store in my favorite brand, Nuk [tm]. i do not mind so much; i mean a pacifier is a pacifier, and i am down with pacifiers. mom says she feels bad for me, though. is there something wrong with pink and/or purple?

okay. so this is the courtyard behind the house. i think i figured out why the goose is mean. he is on the right. there is another goose that sits over in one place all the time (on the left), and the mean goose makes sure that we do not get close to the other goose. mom says maybe the other goose is his wife, and she is sitting on the babies to keep them warm. i think that is a little weird, but i guess it makes sense. if mom was sitting on me to keep me warm, i would like it if dad protected us.  

bathtime is over!!!

yesterday i took a bath. so i am having a great time playing with the duck and the shampoo bottles, when i decide to stand up and splash around a bit. i look down and see that there is a new brown toy down there that i had not noticed before. hooray! a new toy! so i start to grab for it and mom yells out, "sam, NO!" and then whisks me out of the tub real fast.

i learned two things:

1. playing with mysterious brown objects in the bathtub is a NO NO.

2. a good way to end bath time early is to try to play with the brown thing. i enjoy my baths for the time being, but i will remember this in case i get tired of baths some day.

a goose

a crazy thing happened yesterday! mom and i went outside in the big yard behind our house. i had never walked around near the pond and the pool before, and mom said we were going to look at the geese. i did not know what a geese was, but she seemed excited enough about it, so i was all for it as well. we walk to where a couple birds are, near the pond, and mom points and says, "look, sam, a goose!" turns out they are big gray birds, as tall as me, and with black necks and heads. they look nice enough, so i want to pet them! we walk closer to the nearest goose, and he makes a hissing noise like a cat! i think this makes mom nervous because she says, "hmm, sam i think the goose does not like us." well, i am not scared, so i walk a little closer. the goose makes the hissing noise again and walks in our direction! we take a few steps back, and mom says again that the goose does not like us. but maybe he is just trying to talk to us? so i walk closer to him again, and he hisses some more and walks close to us some more and starts putting his wings up in the air a little bit. we take a few steps back and the goose keeps coming! so we turn and walk away kind of fast, and mom holds my hand and tells me that the goose is mean, so we better not try to pet him anymore. why is he so angry? i just want to be friends.

a few of my favorite things

*one time mom put in a dvd with a bunch of farm animals. we danced! we sang! i even walked up and touched the tv. (the current fingerprint count on the tv now is up to i think 146,035.)


*i love the mouse and the keyboard and the power button on the computer. mom and dad really do not like it when i touch that power button, but i can't help it. mom says it is like i am an addict. what does that mean? anyway, it is a good, good time.

*aunt amber gave me two drumsticks. i like to stick the drumsticks through the holes in the wicker chair. the holes are getting bigger! if i keep on with such diligence, it will just be one big hole in no time.

*outside is so fun. i do not even care that mom has to rub some smelly weird stuff all over me every time we're outside. she will not let me get a tan, but that is okay. i like to throw the wood chips onto the slide. i like to yell at big kids when they go by. i even do not mind the rocks in my shoe. why do we ever have to go back inside?

*i like my new seat in the car. it has armrests and a cup holder, and it reclines. what more could i possibly hope for? (except to not have to ever ride in the car.)

*i like to toss things over my shoudlers. i just open up that drawer of dvds, and i get one in each hand, and i throw them backwards. my drawer-emptying speed is down to 3.8 seconds, and i plan to try to break the record today.

the angry face! do you like it? 

yay! basketball on tv at grandpa's! 

i found a blue one! 

easter and angry faces

so the other day, it was easter. mom says she does not know why it is on the day it's on, but it means that Jesus is alive. that seems like a fine reason to celebrate, although i do not understand how the eggs come into it all.....

but anyway, nany and mom and dad and i ride out to where my uncle and aunt and four cousins live. we get there, and two grandparents and two more great-grandparents (nany is also my great-grandma) are there too! so it's a big old housefull. and there are candy, and presents, and lotsa people who want to kiss me. aunt keri and mom mysteriously leave, then they tell us all to come out, and they hand us buckets, and there are lots and lots of colorful eggs laying around! i pick up a few, shake them, and run around. it is most definitely a good time! dad helps me by carrying the bucket, and of course mom takes pictures. i will try to add one to the blog soon.

in other news, my current favorite thing to do is make the angry face. that is what mom and dad call it. i am not really angry when i make the face; i just think it is fun to put my eyebrows down and yell. it certainly gets a reaction! once, i made the angry face and yelled at the lady who took the money and put the stuff in the bags at the food store, and she laughed and laughed and said that i had cussed her out. i think mom was embarrassed. but it was a good time, because i made the lady laugh.

also, and man, my fingers are starting to hurt! mom and i went down to see my grandpa who lives in the woods. well, in a house but in the woods. i learned that when they yell a lot at the tv, it is not because they are mad at me. it is because the people on tv are playing basketball. i think somehow they can hear mom and grandpa yelling, and it helps them play better?