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Week 168: Milestones, Shopping, and Impresonations April 16, 2007

Of course, one of the neat things about having another baby like Mandy is watching her hit all those milestones again. There's the big ones, like holding her head up, grabbing things, and grunting at you in an extremely annoyed fashion because you're not holding her just right. Sam's milestones seem like they're getting further and further spread out, but I've found that they're just more subtle and not quite as flashy as they used to be. In the last couple of weeks I've noticed these firsts for Sam:

Using ordinals, like "the first door, the second door, the third door." There are, by the way, rhinoceroses behind all of these doors.
Using similes, as in "This swing squeaks like a donkey, Daddy."
Throwing a shrieking, hysterical fit because that laser pointer dot that's zipping towards her looks like "SOME KIND OF RED BUG! BLLEEAAAAAAARRAAAAAA!" Actually, I guess that's kind of a simile, too.

I'm now going to gently break my self-imposed moratorium on writing about poop to say that Sam has also hit the potty training milestone, which IS a big one. She's actually been mostly good for quite some time now, but after almost 2 weeks straight without an accident we decided to make the call and take Sam shopping at Toys R Us where she could buy any one toy to celebrate.

I admit, I went into this with some trepidation. Even after slipping in the disclaimer "within reason" (which Geralyn insisted upon after she caught me trying to coach Sam into saying "Xbox 360 Premium System") I was kind of afraid of what Sam would pick out. The event, though, turned out to be kind of fun. Sam ran into the store and started manhandling all kinds of displays and toys, but she would inevitably say "No, I don't want this," and either drop it on the floor or hand it to us, her servants. I held my breath as we passed through the Barbie and Bratz aisles (I think I would have actually refused her if her selection had been too egregious), but it turns out that Sam spent the majority of her time in the so-called "boy's" section. In fact, the single item that held her twittering attention the longest was a Darth Vader / Mr. Potato Head action figure mashup called "Darth Tater." Ger and I stood on either side of Sam while she pondered this purchase, me grinning and saying "You can have that if you want, Sammy" and Geralyn frowning and saying "I'm not buying her that thing, Jamie."

In the end, Sam made a fairly gender neutral selection consisting of a little miniature golf set and a secondary purchase of Thomas the Tank Engine's buddy Edward using the money Nana had sent her for Easter. I was pleasantly surprised that once Sam decided on what she wanted she gleefully accepted the boundaries placed on the rest of the trip and didn't ask for anything more, despite the myriad of merchandising ambushes that awaited around every turn. She's a good kid. And the golf set is neat, but resulted in an almost immediate admonishment about high sticking when she accidentally whacked one of my SLR camera lenses off the table.

Speaking of which, the pictures are kind of bland this week, with the exception of a couple of cute ones of Mandy. I particularly like this one, mainly because her expression makes her look A LOT like my mom. This one of Samantha, on the other hand, makes her look like me.

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Tags: Amanda, Parenting, Samantha