Sam’s Story: Week 114

Here it is at week 114 and Sam’s individuality and desire for freedom is definitely starting to shine through. We went to Legoland this last weekend and made the mistake of giving her too much sugar. After consuming her own weight in brownies, ice cream, cookies, and spicy shrimp linguini, Sam took one more look at the vibrant primary colors surrounding her and went completely ballistic. One second she was holding my hand, the next she was shrieking with pure, undulating glee and running full speed while flailing her arms like the pace setter in the 4th Annual Epileptic’s 5K Fun Run.

That aside, Legoland was actually pretty neat. I normally loathe theme parks (paying $125 to get in then waiting 45 minutes for a 27-second ride doesn’t seem like the best use of a Saturday to me), but we had free passes and the park had a delightful play area for toddlers where you just kind up dump them in there and let them run riot. We also squeezed in a few rides, like an airplane ride (“Oooh, I want to ride in the yellow one!”) and a helicopter ride (“Mommy and Sammy go really, really high!”). Legoland’s focus on public transportation also included a train ride and a boat ride, but I’ll put up pictures of those in a separate post. I got a lot of pictures as it is:


I particularly like this one of Sam inspecting a Lego elf sculpture like she were a distinguished Parisian taking a stroll through the Louvre. I guess that when you’re a kid, everything made of brightly colored, interlocking blocks is fine art.

The last thing I thought I’d mention is that while Sam seems pretty adaptive and not prone to having fits when we stumble around outside of her normal routine, she did experience something last night that really upset her. She had taken down this shiny silver piggy bank –the kind actually shaped like a pig– and was hefting it around while Ger ran her bath. The thing was chock full of quarters and probably weighed two or three pounds, so of course Sam lost control and dropped it. Upon impact, the screw that held the two bank halves together came disengaged and the thing split apart, sending quarters everywhere. The sight of her piggie busting open and spraying its silvery guts all over the bathroom really freaked Sam out and she erupted into burbling, hysterical tears. Like I’ve said before, she’s very particular about her things and this really seemed to upset her. Fortunately, she was easily calmed down when we gathered the coins and fit the bank halves back together. The only lasting effect seemed to be that throughout her bath she would occasionally mutter to herself, “My pig broke. My pig broke. My pig broke.” Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if someday some psychologist identifies this as the reason she can’t use spare change to buy bacon from a vending machine.

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