Sam’s Story: Week 131

One of the changes in Sam that I’ve noticed over the last week is that she’s become much more independent. Used to be that she would try to run this greedy little monopoly on our attention –if we were doing anything else besides playing with her, feeding her, or bringing her fruit snacks, we were in direct violation of some parent-child contract she had cooked up in her head. This kind of iron grip on our mind share could only broken by the Power of Dora, or possibly the denizens of Sesame Street, who we called upon for help whenever we absolutely had to. Recently, though, Sam will go off for longer and longer stretches of time –sometimes minutes— and do her own thing without demanding our involvement. She’ll color, play with her menagerie of stuffed animals, or whatever else happens to be in reach. Like the phone or the cat or the contents of the vegetable crisper.

This kind of goes hand in hand with the increased use of her imagination. Sam will now routinely pick up any object at all and announce that it is something it clearly is not. Which is awesome. So a pair of book ends become dogs, a strip of pink ribbon becomes a backpack, or a shallow plastic tray becomes a swimming pool for her Weebles. Apparently this kind of thing can make her little mind snap, though, as one excursion into make believe culminated in her asking, inexplicably, “ARE YOU A BOAT, DADDY? ARE YOU A BOAT?” as loud as she could for like fifteen minutes straight. I tried every answer I could think of –“Yes!” “No!” “Only on Tuesdays!”– but nothing would stop her. We just had to let the imagination fever run its course, at which point she just looked at me and said, “Daddy’s NOT a boat.” And that was that. I remain, to this day, not a boat.

Pictures!

You may also notice that we took Sam back to the pool this last weekend. This seemed like a sensible thing to do, given that the outside temperatures were pushing 5 hoojillion and 100% humidity. We quickly found out that Sam’s previous healthy respect for the water had at some point blossomed into a near psychotic disregard for all dangers of the type aquatic. She went totally bonkers for the pool, to the point of trying to leap in whether or not we were there to catch her and deciding that it was the greatest thing in the world to be thrown high over the waves and drop into a splash-inducing free fall. She was a total maniac for the water, and by the end of the afternoon she was practicing advanced techniques like shimmying around the pool edge and swallowing great gulps of chlorinated water. I’m quite proud and exhausted from all the fear.

Oh, and lest I forget, there is some significant news on the pregnancy front. We ended not having the amniocentesis done given the positive blood test and ultrasound results. The ultrasound technician, who was not as foul mouthed as the last one, did have a thing about hamburgers and hot dogs and revealed the sex of the baby.

In other words, Sammy is going to have a baby sister. Woo!

And actually, I still can’t make any sense at all out of those ultrasound pictures. I think that the baby is actually talking out of her femur in the picture above. Or maybe spine. I don’t know. All those grey smudges look the same to me. All I know is that everything looks healthy so far and I can’t wait to meet her in person.