Sam’s Story: Week 127

The big event recently, as I mentioned last week, is that we finally moved into our new house. Now it’s not a mansion by any standards, but coming from the postage-stamp sized houses of Southern California it sure feels like one to us. I keep thinking of those diagrams that show the size of Earth relative to Jupiter or the Sun whenever I can’t remember where I left my wallet. Which is often.

This also means that Ger and I have had to develop some new attitudes about letting Sam roam the place unattended. In California we usually wouldn’t let her stay on another floor unattended, and the place was set up so that we could pretty much keep an eye (or at least an ear) on her this way. Now she can be totally out of the picture at any time and the image of her in my mind changes from her doing safe things like reading to her stuffed animals is replaced by images of her taking an electric drill to the basement drywall or doing backflips off the stairs. But we’re getting used to it.

Sam, too, has had to adjust to the size of the new place. Our second night there we were playing in the basement when I told her it was time for her bath. Sam acquiesced and climbed the stairs to the living room on the main floor where she paused to look around with a confused and slightly worried look on her face. She then turned to me and asked “Where did the bathtub go?” I mean, I climbed stairs, Daddy, and I distinctly remember the bathtub being upstairs, so WHAT’S GOING ON, MAN?

She’s got things figured out now, though. Last night we were playing on the swing set in the back yard when I decided to engage her in conversation about the new place. “Sammy,” I said, “do you like the new house?”

“Yeah, I do like it.”

“Why? What do you like about it?”

At this Sam paused to purse her lips and gather her thoughts. “I like the oveeeen, and I like the microwaaaave, and I like the dishwasherrr, and I like the teveeee, and I like the siiink…” This went on for like five minutes, with her just sitting there on the tire swing and naming off all the appliances and fixtures she could think of, stretching out the enunceation of each one as if to say “Ohmygosh, there’s just so much cool stuff here!” And funny as it was, I had to agree with her –I like the TV, too.

Sam also had absolutely no problems transitioning to a full twin bed, either. The first night we put her in it she gave it an initially dubious look, then seemed to decide that it was okay before demanding that one of us get in there with her and read “Go, Train, Go!” seven hundred times in a row. She slept through the night without getting up once that we know of until about 7 a.m. the next morning when Ger found her halfway down the stairs in search of breakfast. I swear, this kid is so easy going it’s eerie sometimes.

Pictures!

Most of the pictures, you may note, are from a trip to “The Farm,” which is a place out in the country that Ger’s parents, aunts, and uncles own. Sam has been there before. There’s a rickety old barn with a swing, there’s a beach, and there’s a small lake. Sam thought all of the above were increasingly awesome as the day went by and she learned valuable new skills like throwing rocks or slinging wet sand at everyone in sight.