Sam’s Story: Week 52

I was in a college fraternity, so I’ve seen some pretty chaotic parties. I saw a guy get thrown through a sliding glass door while another guy repeatedly leapt, naked, over a roaring bonfire until the smell of singed, Italian hair filled the air. Someone else went temporarily blind from drinking not too much alcohol, but too much milk. Another party had a group of guys use a pickup truck to rip the Mayor McCheese statue from the local McDonald’s playground, then drag it up to the frat house roof so they could dance with it. …And then fall off the roof to the bushes and have the Mayor land on top of them.

Crazy, but none of that compares to having a house full of toddlers in terms of sheer chaos.

Sam’s birthday isn’t officially for another couple of days, but we had a small party for her on Sunday, to which we invited a few couples with kids of their own. Ages ranged from just a few months to around three years. There were five children and seven adults in attendance. The kids were all well behaved, but I now know that even well-behaved children will, when grouped together, result in chaos and cacophony the likes of which will make you want to go goth. There were toys thrown, a cat molested, fits of chain-reaction crying, cake smeared, and skilled but desperate parents trying to entertain and moniter children while Mommy and Daddy tried to get a bite to eat of their own.

Towards the end of the night we pulled out the BIG GUNS in the form of a Baby Einstein DVD. That worked for a while, but one of the babies eventually saw a toy that was just like the one that she had back home, and we had a total meltdown on our hands. Sam got so messy during the festivities that –I kid you not– I held her over the sink and jiggled her so that little landslides of cake, carrot, and Jell-O tumbled off her.

It was great.

And like any good party, the guest of honor puked all over the place the morning after. Geralyn went in to get Sam this morning to find that the Birthday Girl had yarked all over her crib. Then she rolled around in it. Too much cake and Jell-O Jigglers, we think, and haven’t we all done the same once or twice? Fortunately, we think Sam had just done the deed, as the stuff was still warm and fragrant. Ger wouldn’t let me take pictures, though.

Outside of the birthday party, things have been fairly tame. We think Sam may be having some kind of allergy problems, as she’d had a runny nose, watery eyes, and cough but without any fever or sore throat. We had just introduced her to cow’s milk when it started, so we’re going to remove that from her diet to see if it’s a food allergy. Otherwise, it may just be from pollen or something else in the air, and air is is substantially harder to remove from her life.

Compounding this, however, is the emergence of Sam’s first tooth. I was sitting with her the other night playing “Beep!” which is a game where I tap her on the nose, say “Beep,” and she giggles. Just as my finger was going in for the beep, she lurched forward and bit it like an annoyed chihuahua. There was definitely tooth there, and upon further inspection I found a small white nub working its way up through her gums. So great. Let the teething begin. Bust out the Tylenol and let’s get crabby.

And now, a bunch of pictures:



You’ll notice that Sam’s favorite new toy is an orange, and we’re glad to let her play with it since we don’t actually eat the skin. She’s also quite infatuated with her new birthday outfit that her mommy bought. On the topic of clothes, though, we discovered that the Baby Clothes Superconglomorate refuses to make sleepers (you know, the one-piece outfits with built-in booties and easy, one-zip operation) for kids over 12-months old. Sam has outgrown most of her older sleepers, so the fact that we have to now buy two-piece pajama sets greatly annoys us. Who doesn’t like a nice, comfy, one-piece sleeper? Heck, I wish i had a Jamie-sized one after seeing how comfortable they are for Sam.

Oh, one last piece of housekeeping: I mentioned last week that I was considering doing away with the weekly updates after this one since Sam was turning one year old. But you guys seem to like them, so I’ll continue doing them. And it’s not really that much of a chore, since I enjoy doing it so much myself. So look for Sam’s Story, Vol. II starting next week.

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4 thoughts on “Sam’s Story: Week 52

  1. Happy (early) Birthday Sam! It looks like a good time was had by all. I bet the contents of Sam’s crib were colorful based on the cake.
    The runny nose thing might also be related to the teething. Kids can get some weird symptoms when teething.

  2. I’ve read that there’s not really any scientific link between teething and things like fever, runny nose, congestion, etc. But I’ve also read that there is, so I’m not quite sure what to think. I suspect that kids are just sick a lot, and that it coincides with teething to the extent that those associations form. But who knows and at any rate Sam is feeling better and now has a SECOND tooth coming in above the first one.

  3. As far as sleepers are concerned, don’t you remember the “buggles” which were very popular with a certain member of our household growing up? I’m not sure if they make them lightweight enough for your climate as I tend to remember them as kind of fleecy. Although this was not a problem in the Oklahoma summers as someone in our house wore them until they were about 5 feet tall. 🙂

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