Sam’s Story: Week 138

It always amazes me that my sister, who has no kids, somehow manages to stay more informed than I about what’s hot in the world of kids at the moment. It’s like she has a TiVo season pass to Entertainment Tonight –Toddler Edition while I’m stuck with NPR and the Journal of Applied Psychology. This most frequently manifests itself in the baffling presents she frequently sends to Sam. I distinctly remember opening the first of these packages a couple of years ago and asking Sam who the hell “The Wiggles” were and why they looked so happy.

This time around the source of my bamboozlement was the delivery of a DVD and CD by The Laurie Berkner Band. Sam insisted we watch the DVD right away, so I popped it in. The titular band consists of a trio of middle age adults who look like they’ve eaten a pound of Prozac between the three of them, probably on the way to the mall for a shopping spree at Shiny, Stretchy, and Brightly Colored, Ltd. They jumped around on stage with exaggerated expressions of glee and sang songs about spaghetti and dinosaurs. “I kept seeing this gal on places like The Today Show,” my sister said later when I called to thank her. “And kids were going crazy. It was like when people saw the Beatles for the first time.” While she didn’t scream and tear her hair out, Samantha was entranced, as was my mother. So now she doesn’t have to listen to any more Talk of the Nation –Science Friday and Ger can’t get “We are the Dinosaurs” out of her head.

And here are pictures.

A lot of the pictures this week are from a children’s museum where Sam got to play with sand, dump water, buy ketchup, eat pizza, and get electrocuted. Much fun was had.

Another trip (no pictures unfortunately) took place on Sunday. Ger was at some yogurt class (or maybe it was yoga class, I wasn’t listening) so I took Sam to the grand opening of this little train store down the road. Her love for Thomas the Tank Engine is well documented, so I thought she’d love it. I wasn’t wrong. This place was pretty cool, with tons Thomas and other train toys set out for kids to play with while their parents blanched at how expensive this stuff is. In the middle of the place they had what looked like the whole island of Sodor set up, with all the handcrafted trains and buildings just waiting to be mangled by the many little hands who had come to visit. If you’ve ever heard the sound of dozens of toddlers simultaneously pushing little wooden trains around and chanting “Chooooo chooooo!” then you know the voice of madness.

There was also a clown named “Lollipop,” a name which many of the children apparently misheard as “Grothgar the Flesh Reaper,” because she scared the bajeezus out of most of the kids there. Sam, to her credit, just gave Lollipop a few suspicious looks up and down before deciding that the clown just wanted, in fact, to give her a Scooby Doo sticker and not grind her bones for bread.

What was really interesting for me, though, was watching Samantha interact with all the other kids since it’s not something I get a lot of chances to do. For the most part she either played nice or ignored the other little shoppers completely. At one point, though, this newly arrived little girl about Sam’s age deigned to stand in the exact spot where Sam wanted to go. So my little girl, normally the most placid of creatures, reached out and totally shoved this fellow toddler out of the way. It was the first act of aggression or rudeness I had ever seen from her. Granted it was pretty mild compared to the little boy not three feet away who had just used a wooden Percy toy to kneecap another lad, but I was horrified just the same. Sam got a good talking to (she seemed repentant and said “I sowwy” to the other girl, at least), then I decided I would change the scenery by taking her to get complimentary cake and juice.

I think I handled that pretty well. Sam only shoved two other kids on the way out, then asked for more cake.