Stories and Photos of My Kids

This page is an index of stories about my two daughters, Samantha and Amanda, including the long-running "Sam's Story" series and stories about my wife's pregnancy. I post a new story and collection of photos to the front page of the blog every Monday.

August 19, 2010: All summer long I've been meaning to put up some pictures of the girls, and all summer long I've been letting it slide. So instead of not doing it at all, I thought I could at least just do a huge photo dump. So here it is. This covers a...

June 27, 2010: It's been a while since I posted anything about the girls, so I thought I'd throw up a few pictures I've taken during "carnival season 2010." About this time of year the local churches and municipalities call in carnival companies employing people with more cigarettes in their mouthes than teeth...

April 25, 2010: Just a quick multimedia sampling for you this week. Sam had her operatic debut in her school's production of "The Three Little Piggies Opera," which I was disappointed wasn't sung in the original Italian. Sam played the part of "Brick Vendor #2" and while it wasn't exactly a headliner role,...

April 6, 2010: Okay, ask me how much candy my kids ate. Ask me. Infinity! They ate infinity candy! Well, at least they had a good time. We dyed eggs on Saturday, but the girls' hearts weren't in it because their neighbor kid was having a birthday party at the same time, to...

March 29, 2010: We got a bit of a head start on Easter as you can see from the pics below. This was at some little Easter egg hunt at a local park, but they had a massive turnout. The kids were all segregated by age group, but over in the "Ages 1...

March 16, 2010: As you can probably see, we celebrated St. Patrick's Day a little bit early at our church's annual ...whatsitcalled. Thing. Carnival. Event. There were games and food and beer. The girls partaked of two of the three. Mandy has generally been on good behavior, but one event does bear...

March 9, 2010: As you may be able to see from the picture above, Sam's latest mania is Batman, fueled by our semi-regular evening sessions of Lego Batman. Like any good geek, she immediately clued into the fact that the best part of the whole Batman thing is the rogue's gallery. Pictured...

March 2, 2010: The girls dug into one of the cabinets the other day and decided to ROCK OUT. And in this case, "rocking out" involved Sam's bellowing songs about princesses and Batman while Mandy beat the ever living daylights out of a tiny toy piano. Rolling Stone has been notified....

February 24, 2010: Slow week this time. We're all ready for Spring so that I can usher the kids outdoors and they can do something more physical than playing Lego Batman. The kids are so starved for exercise that they ask me to "play chase" just about every evening, which usually involves...

February 17, 2010: Boy, some delightful behavior out of my girls this week. Geralyn made a big batch of chocolate-covered strawberries for Valentine's Day and the leftovers were put in a large tupperware container for future enjoyment. That evening after we had retired to the basement I went upstairs to investigate suspicious...

February 10, 2010: Busy with other stuff this week, so here's two quick pictures just to keep the chain unbroken. I think they're making hot chocolate or something after playing in the snow that a vengeful Mother Nature dumped on us. Also, tattoos. I have to say, I'm thinking about bringing this whole...

February 3, 2010: Oh, hey, that's right. Pictures! Not much happening this week. I did get to spend some one-on-one time with Mandy thanks to some overscheduling of Daddy-Daughter classes, and Yoga. We went to the former. This is nice because I often feel like I didn't get the same foundation with her...

January 27, 2010: Of course, the big news is that Sam turned 6 recently. Six! Geralyn was in charge of the birthday party, and she opted for a more girl-friendly activity like crafts. The party was on a Sunday, though, so I somehow found myself standing at a table full of five and...

January 19, 2010: Had a bit more going on this week. Sam finished up her pom pom class with a flourish, amid a gymnasium full of parents looking at each other and saying things like "Yay! She's shaking a colorful thing! And shouting stuff! Yay!" Sam had a blast, though, and received a...

January 12, 2010: Snow! I mean, more snow! I've noticed that Sam is being a lot more empathetic lately. I think all kids learn to read emotions, like they know when you're pissed or when you're happy and they react accordingly, even if it's usually in a self-interested way. But Sam seems to...

January 5, 2010: We had a pretty slow week this time around, so not much to report. One thing I have noticed it that since Mandy has grown up enough for Sam to play with, they really do play a lot together. In fact, they will often now elect to omit me and...

December 29, 2009: We had a great Christmas again this year with my sister and mom in town to help celebrate and tame the girls. Photo dump! See you next year....

December 22, 2009: Man, Mandy is three. Three! That's hard to get my head around, but I'm told these things happen. She's certainly been looking forward to her birthday party, even if it was low key and we just had Grandpa and Geralyn's godmother over for dinner --chicken nuggets and mac and cheese...

December 15, 2009: Short update this week, but I'm sure I'll have lots to talk about in the following weeks. Here's a couple of pictures to keep the 307+ point combo going: If the children look more ...stained than usual, it's because I took these at the end of the day. All bets...

December 8, 2009: I mentioned last week that I had elected to let Sam start watching the Star Wars movies, starting with Episode I. We finished watching this first movie the other day, and Sam made it through just fine until the end when Qui Gon Jin was killed (OMG SPOILER!) and she...

December 1, 2009: We had a great week last week since my sister and mother came in to visit for Thanksgiving. The girls love seeing their aunt and Nana, and we love looking up to realize that someone else is going to give them a bath or read to them. (Also, seeing my...

November 24, 2009: Man, what is it with Mandy and her hair? Not only did she hack a good chunk of it off that one time, but any time you try to do so much as comb it lately she completely freaks out. If I suddenly hear shrieks of absolute horror and rage...

November 17, 2009: One of the lessons I've had to learn about being a parent is how hard it can be to play the bad guy and how necessary it is. I love my kids and want them to love me, but I often have to do things that REALLY piss them off....

November 9, 2009: Just a quick update this week, but I do feel compelled to mention one incident which has so far set the high water mark on my children's miscreant behavior. The other night I was watching the kids when I turned my back just long enough to watch a short segment...

November 1, 2009: We had a pretty good Halloween this year. As you can see below, Mandy was a fairy type thing complete with wand/cudgel, and Samantha was Supergirl. The best thing about Halloween was the pose Sam struck below, which pretty much captures every picture of Superman I've ever seen. She's surprisingly...

October 25, 2009: Man, week 300? I've been doing this for three hundred weeks? Doesn't seem like it. Sorry I don't have anything special planned. I guess I could dig up some sparklers here somewhere... Actually not a particularly eventful week all told. One cool thing is that Sam has started to sound...

October 20, 2009: Mandy has gone through a couple of big milestones in the last few weeks. She's 100% out of diapers (woo! it's like getting a pay raise!) AND we've moved her to the big girl bed. And by "moved her to the big girl bed" I mean "took the gate off...

October 14, 2009: Human psychology is a weird thing. Under strange and sometimes contrived circumstances it can lead us to do bizarre things like paying $50 for a $20 bill or lose all our fortunes on an obviously lost cause. It can also cause us to take our children out in the freezing...

October 6, 2009: When I recently decided to change jobs I thought it would be nice to take a couple of weeks off to be unemployed and have a "staycation" where I sit around the house eating cheese puffs and watching television. I ran out of cheese puffs after the first day, though,...

September 29, 2009: I'm on a stay at home vacation (a staycation, as my wife calls it) so I'll be brief again. This is one of my new favorite pictures of the two of the girls together. Sam got it into her head that she wants to read to Mandy, which is nice....

September 22, 2009: Short week this time. I'm getting into a "time off" kind of mindset. But here are some of those pics of Sam's trophy that I talked about last week....

September 14, 2009: It seems like the thing to do around these parts is to have a carnival when things get slow, and given how much the girls like them that's okay. This weekend we took them to the latest offering of this type, which I think was supposed to have something to...

September 9, 2009: Short update this week. We went out to The Farm for Labor Day weekend, and although the weather was lousy we did fit some fun stuff in. Sam and Mandy went to visit a guy up the road who had puppies, and Mandy learned to deal blackjack. A productive weekend...

August 31, 2009: This last weekend our neighborhood had its annual block party, which starts with a bike parade for the kids and ends up with the adults sprawled all over someone's yard and thinking about going back for another hot dog. Along the way there are also some games for the kids,...

August 24, 2009: The big news this week is that Sam started kindergarten, thus initiating her long years of toil in one educational system or another. Being the fearless person she is, though, Sam was extremely excited about this event, though the most important thing to her seemed to be letting her ride...

August 17, 2009: Fresh off our vacation in Tulsa, Geralyn swept up the kids and took them out to The Farm for a girls only getaway. I stayed home by myself to play lots of video games so I didn't get to see any of the antics at the farm, but Geralyn did...

August 12, 2009: Wow, big week. And there's a lot of pictures. Here's some! After a pool party on Sunday, we all piled in the car and drove down to Tulsa, Oklahoma to spend a week visiting my mom and sister. There are a lot of things to do in Tulsa if you...

August 3, 2009: Generally I'm not one of those parents that obsesses over his kids' milestones and deadlines on some developmental timetable. I figure if I keep them from being eaten by hyenas, the rest will sort itself out. That said, I did get a little concerned a while back that Sam couldn't...

July 28, 2009: Mandy has penetrated deep into that developmental territory where throwing fits to test the boundaries of the world around her is an hourly occurrence. Though her emotions occasionally fly out from underneath her and she really loses it, she can generally flip these fits on and off the way you...

July 21, 2009: I must say, I'm very proud of little geeklings. Allow me to explain why. Last Saturday we celebrated a certain toilet-related milestone for Mandy by taking her to Toys R Us to buy a new toy. Of course Sam didn't want to be left out, but having long ago mastered...

July 14, 2009: Here's an insider tip: you can always tell the weeks when I forgot to take pictures of the girls until he last minute because they'll feature bath time pictures from Sunday night. Look! Bath time pictures from Sunday night! Actually I don't have a whole lot else to talk about....

July 7, 2009: Per our annual tradition, we packed up and headed out to "The Farm" this last weekend for the 4th of July. We left Thursday night and came back Sunday afternoon, learning in the process that this is just about Sam's limit for unwashed country fun. We did have good enough...

June 30, 2009: After hearing Sam proclaim that she saw a commercial for "a real life light saber" I decided to create a little guessing game for her called "Real or Make Believe." You can probably intuit the rules, and the first round went like this: "Okay Sam," I said, "What about Jedi?"...

June 23, 2009: Had a great Father's Day weekend. According to ancient tradition, Sam crafted me a hand made gift at her pre-kindergarten thing that she's been going to. The gift in question is a little photo frame with a picture of her in it, ringed by various sports paraphernalia that are taken...

June 16, 2009: The big event this weekend was that Geralyn went on a little mini vacation with some of her family (a girls only kind of thing), and my initial suggestion that she take the kids with her was firmly rejected. So I took a half day on Friday and started waiting...

June 8, 2009: Quick update this week. Here's some pictures from the botanical garden. The only thing I have to note this week is that Sam called one of her stuffed animals an "infidel." I'm so confused....

June 2, 2009: Every now and then, your kids do some really crazy stuff, and some of the time it's all right. The other day both Sam and Mandy got it securely in their head that they were going to be ROCK STARS --just like that, with all caps. They put on sun...

May 26, 2009: Mostly pictures this week since I'm behind. We spent Memorial Day weekend out at The Farm, and despite the soggy weather the girls loved it. One day we all went down to the dock and went fishing. Not only that, both Sam and Mandy actually caught fish! There is photographic...

May 19, 2009: I am often confused and frightened by the things that Sam picks up. I came home from work the other day to her excited announcement that she "has a devil on her shoulder." Noting the lack of an actual imp on her person, I took her to mean it metaphorically,...

May 12, 2009: Mother's Day was this last weekend, and while it was kind of low-key, everybody seemed to enjoy it. It started with Mandy's wishing me a happy Mother's Day, then after a short correction and new instructions, she wished Geralyn a happy Mother's Day. I made breakfast and dinner (not at...

May 5, 2009: Not much going on this week. We went to a combo First Communion / 8th grade graduation party (one kid for each event) on Sunday, and Mandy proved her ability to climb playground ladders and to dodge between moving swings like some kind of futuristic gladiator navigating Thunderdome. Sam was,...

April 28, 2009: We had a spate of great weather over the weekend, so one day Ger and I took the girls to the park. Actually, it was more like they repeatedly demanded to be taken to the park and we had to go along with it. At any rate we took the...

April 21, 2009: I was talking to my mom last night and realized something alarming: Sam is getting to be the age at which I had my own earliest surviving memories from childhood --random stuff from when I was 5 or 6 years old that I can remember to this day. This is...

April 14, 2009: Man, we had one heck of an Easter weekend. Lots of pictures. We started on Saturday by going to an Easter egg hunt at a local park. It was free and had been put on by a local realtor as a way to market herself. After we each got a...

April 7, 2009: Kinda busy this week. So here's some pictures!...

March 31, 2009: So, we've learned a lesson this week: Mandy shall not be left unattended, even in the company of her sister. Last Saturday the two girls were playing upstairs while Ger and I ran down to the basement to do some stuff for a few minutes. When I came back up,...

March 24, 2009: Reading and haircuts this week! The book being read here is this GINORMOUS tome of Disney Princess stories. It weighs like 20 pounds. Sam had originally discovered it at the library, and she loved it so much I looked it up on Amazon.com. Surprisingly, it was like six bucks, which...

March 17, 2009: It definitely seems like Sam and Mandy are switching places again on the Aggrivation Index. For a while, Mandy was the sweet, compliant little one while Sam ran around trying to find every boundry to slam up against. Now, Sam has mellowed a bit and Mandy is acting like, well,...

March 10, 2009: Too busy to do much more than post a few pictures. Lots of stuff going on, and the girls are typically great. I particularly like the picture of Sam doing her ferocious cat impression. She did her and Mandy's face painting during a few seconds when we weren't watching her...

March 3, 2009: We had another incident this week that furthers my belief that Mandy is more than capable of plotting a nice, cold dish of revenge. I was downstairs vacuuming while Mandy and Sam were playing upstairs. Upon turning off the vacuum I heard muffled yells coming from overhead. I ran upstairs...

February 24, 2009: Busy week this time, so I'm going to take it mostly easy and just post a few pictures. Here's some I took: We also recently had a session with a "real" photographer who came over to our house to snap some shots of us and the girls. This woman is...

February 17, 2009: As you may know, I'm trying to turn Sam into a video gamer. So far, this has met with great success, as the chimes of her Game Boy Advance can usually be heard downstairs breaking the morning silence most weekends. I did have one hiccup the other day, though. For...

February 9, 2009: We've developed a new family tradition that I think is kind of fun. One night at the dinner table Geralyn suggested we play a game called "High/Low" where we would go around the table and say what the high point of our day was, and what the low point was....

February 3, 2009: I'm taking it easy this week. Here's some pictures of the kids playing in the snow! Mandy actually did pretty well on the sled. She held on and made it all the way to the bottom. She wouldn't keep her gloves on, though, so after not too long she was...

January 27, 2009: Sam's birthday, which is an event we're starting to think of as an end to the year-end holiday frenzy, was this weekend and we apparently did it up right. Rather than having a nice quiet time at home we arranged a party for all her classmates at a local establishment...

January 19, 2009: Sam has definitely started to hit upon an age where she wants to do things for herself. A lot of times, this is welcome, since it pars down the number of things in the universe that I'm responsible for. Other times, it's much less of a relief and more, what's...

January 13, 2009: I think we can officially say that Sam is a bit competitive. This is a conversation I had for her the other morning: "Daddy, I like the key lime yogurt the best." "Yeah, I like that one too." "Well, I like it MORE than you do." "Sam, it's not...

January 6, 2009: Most worrisome thing I heard all week, from Mandy: "Sister tried to kill me." There were, unfortunately, no credible witnesses. Most amusing thing I saw all week: Geralyn running through the living room and up the stairs holding a spatula heaped with butter cream icing, followed closely by a gibbering...

December 29, 2008: If it was Mandy's birthday last week, that means it's Christmas time this week and I've got the pictures to prove it. With my sister and mother in town to visit this year things have gotten a little off schedule, and of course they went completely overboard with the gifts....

December 22, 2008: The big event his week was that Mandy turned 2. On the one hand, I'm kind of shocked by this, since it seems we just brought her home the other day. On the other hand I'm not shocked, because she's been acting like a 2 year old for almost 6...

December 16, 2008: It's funny how lies to your children can spin out of control. Most often for me it stems from making some kind of joke that I thought was funny, and when Sam ends up believing I just can't seem to stop. For example, I now have Sam solidly convinced that...

December 9, 2008: Another busy week, so mostly just pictures this time around. This last weekend we all went to this Christmnas tree decoration exhibit set up to benefit some sick kids or something. Here's a parenting pro tip: taking two young children where you have to constantly shout "NO TOUCHING! NO TOUCHING!"...

December 3, 2008: Mandy seems to like books as much as her big sister ever did, but while Sam's interests always ran to dinosours, princesses, and the 50 US states (no, I'm not kidding), Mandy's three favorite books seem to be, in order, the following: Geralyn's old first communion book A Gideon's Bible...

November 26, 2008: One of the things I liked about living in San Diego was that it was very multicultural. Our immediate community included folks who were Vietnamese, Australian, Filipino, Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, and whatever our neighbor Raju was. It was nice having Sam growing up in that kind of environment, but alas...

November 19, 2008: Sam seems to be backsliding in her television. Used to be, we could count on her watching Sesame Street, then she moved up to Curious George. I liked both of these shows, since they were educational and had bits of humor scattered throughout them that adults could relate to. Best...

November 12, 2008: Woah, Week 250. Hard to believe I've written that many of these updates.I wonder how many pictures of the kids I've posted. I would guess somewhere around three klatillion. Here are a few more: As you can see, Sam is now in possession of "feety pajamas" which are basically suits...

November 5, 2008: I do believe Halloween was this last weekend. I also believe that Sam and Mandy enjoyed it immensely. Ger's dad and godmother came to stay at our house and answer our door for us so that we all four could go out trick-or-treating. Sam insisted on trying to hit every...

October 28, 2008: Like last year, Sam's preschool class had their annual "Bring Your Dad for This Halloween Thing We Do Each Year" day. Sam dressed up in the cheerleader costume I described last week and we took a pumpkin to carve. Sam's arrival at the party (fashionably late since we had to...

October 22, 2008: It's Fall in the midwest, and that means one thing: leaves on the ground. Maybe they have trees in other parts of the country. I don't know. I try not to think about it. This has meant that we went through the annual tradition of my repeatedly raking up a...

October 15, 2008: As I've mentioned once or twice recently, Mandy seems to have been hitting the "terrible two" milestone ahead of schedule. She's gotten to the point where if she's denied anything, she'll actually lie down on her stomach and flop aroudn, screaming and flailing her limbs. Sam never really did this,...

October 8, 2008: Busy week, so I'm taking it easy this time around and just posting a bunch of pictures. Enjoy the shots from our company picnic, in which Sam climbed utility poles, went up in a bucket truck, and perhaps most frightening of all, braved a porta potty. Mandy had a good...

October 1, 2008: I think we have finally passed over some line that separates people who have "one kid and a baby" to people who have "two kids." This is sometimes good, as when Sam and Mandy play together, and sometimes it's bad, as when Sam and Mandy play together. Mandy has developed...

September 24, 2008: Another week, another dozen new things that Mandy has done, approximately half of them cute and half of them "oh, geez, not this already." For example, she has gotten quite into mimicry, particularly things that her sister does, but also things done to Sam. The other day Mandy picked up...

September 17, 2008: As you may have noticed from the post last week, Geralyn's mother passed away. While Mandy was oblivious due to her tender age, we weren't quite sure how to approach this with regards to Samantha. Joan had been in the hospital since May and Sam knew something was up not...

September 9, 2008: Though still generally sweet and, appropriately enough, childlike, Mandy has started to explore some areas of behavior that are shall we say undesirable. The other day I was lying on the couch when Mandy walked up to me, gave me a beautiful smile, and then slapped me as hard as...

September 3, 2008: Okay, really short update this week. Closes I've come to missing one, probably. Here's some pictures! Ger's mom has been in the hospital pretty much for the last few months, and things don't look good. Part of the reason I've been so short on time is that Ger has been...

August 27, 2008: Well, we've hit another important milestone. Mandy's verbal skills have developed to the point where she and her sister can have "She-said-she-said" type moments. The other night I was cleaning up in the kitchen while Sam and Mandy played in the living room. There was a pause in the sounds...

August 19, 2008: Had a pretty fun weekend this week. Sam has resumed her swim lessons, but the thing she was really looking forward to was a block party that our neighborhood put on. it started with a bike parade, which Sam participated in by slowly accelerating on her bike, then slamming on...

August 13, 2008: We still read to Sam (and Mandy) as a betime ritual, but occasionally Sam will want to forgo the books and ask me to tell her a story that I make up off the top of my head. The experience is much akin to going in for a big job...

August 6, 2008: I've heard that second children tend to get away with a lot more, simply by virtue of having older siblings that are still alive and so the parents think that maybe they were a bit too overprotective and so let's let baby play with a butane lighter. Case in point:...

July 30, 2008: The latest thing that Mandy does to crack me up is identifying the location of whatever she's talking about. Or trying to talk about. It may not sounds like much, but when she says something like "Ka-loon!" and you respond with a dim-witted "Huh?" she'll straighten up, stab a finger...

July 24, 2008: So, want to know Sam's newest thing? She's discovered the wonderful world of insults. Sometimes these are coherent verbal barbs, like "You're a stupid head," sometimes they straddle the line between sense and nonsense, like "You're a baby head," and sometimes they're just gibberish, like "You're a goo-gaa-gab-gab." But there's...

July 16, 2008: Once again, I feel it is my duty to report how quickly Mandy is coming along. She's really quick to pick up new words, and she seems to understand everything I say unless I purposely obfuscate my message. By, say for example, using the world "obfuscate." Surprisingly, Mandy has even...

July 9, 2008: First off, I would like to share with you a brilliant innovation in the field of parenting that Geralyn and I have come up with. Feeding time in our house has always consisted of troublesome chewing and clumsy sitting in chairs. Earlier this week we hit upon a solutoin to...

July 3, 2008: A lot of the literature I've read says that the speech of second children is slower to develop, mainly because their older siblings speak up for them, thus robbing them of the necessity to actually tell you to bring them their freaking cup, NOW. Oddly, this doesn't seem to be...

June 25, 2008: As you can probably see from the pictures, we had a pool-filled weekend thanks to Ger's godparents. Samantha continues her psychotic disregard for the danger of water when gathered in massive quantities, and has as her new thing jumping into the pool. But actually with the life vest on she's...

June 19, 2008: Quick update this week. Mostly pictures. What with gas being $4 a gallon and all. Father's Day was last weekend, and I had a GREAT time of it. Besides a couple of nice shirts, Geralyn's main gift to me was on Saturday to gather up the various children living in...

June 12, 2008: Since Sam is out of preschool for the summer, we have endeavored to pad out her social calendar a bit. Last week Geralyn signed her up for a kind of Bible camp held at one of the local churches. Since I grew up a Southern Baptist in America's heartland, I...

June 3, 2008: Summer is officially here, as evidenced by how I get sunburned if I stand too close to an exterior wall and the arrival of local community carnivals. Our church had the first of the latter this weekend, and we had to make an appearance. Sam had a blast. She started...

May 29, 2008: Last weekend we spent Memorial Day out at Ger's family's place in the country, "The Farm." This gave the kids a chance to run free, play in the lake, and accumulate an impressive collection of ticks. Samantha also tried her hand at fishing. This rapidly bored her, so she decided...

May 22, 2008: Brief update this week, oddly enough since last week was so eventful and I'm still catching up. Lots of pictures, though. Last Wednesday we loaded up the car and drove down to Sulphur, Oklahoma (yee-haw!) for a family reunion. This involved more hours of driving with two young children than...

May 13, 2008: Mandy finally got her cast off earlier this week, and I'll let you in on a little secret: small children are terrified by strange men attacking their leg with huge (relatively speaking) buzzsaws. Fortunately the ordeal passed quickly, and we now have the cast sans Mandy for a souvenir. Mandy...

May 6, 2008: One thing I've noticed about Sam lately is that she has gotten very talkative. I mean more so. The other day when I called Geralyn at home to ask her something, Sam demanded that she hand over the phone and then proceeded to spend the next several minutes telling me...

April 29, 2008: Light update this week. Mandy is doing fine with her little pink cast, and we're enjoying the freedom to park in the handicap parking spaces at the mall. One odd thing that she's been doing lately, though, is to be really clinging with Geralyn. If even I try to pry...

April 21, 2008: More and more often, I feel like I don't have anything to write about on this blog. Many of the stories about Mandy feel like reruns of Sam's stories, and sometimes I just feel like I don't have anything new to report for that week. Occasionally, though, something happens and...

April 14, 2008: I actually don’t have much to say about the kids this week, mostly because I didn’t really pay much attention to them. Not that I could have if I wanted, seeing as Geralyn and I were in San Francisco while the kids were not. I was in the city for...

April 7, 2008: It has become apparent that one of the big differences between Sam and Mandy is their predilection for television. When Sam was Mandy's age, we had already started her down that tube-lined road, and now she would watch a LOT more than we does if we'd let her. Watching two...

April 1, 2008: I'm taking it lightly this week. Too burned out and too much to do. And if I don't at least put up this note and these few pics tonight I probably won't get to it. Not much really happened this week, anyway. Sam was sick all weekend and I don't...

March 26, 2008: The big event this week was, of course, Easter. We actually did some stuff last weekend, but we had a lot planned here, too. These plans, for a reason I will never understand nor care to understand, always seem to include new clothes. Mainly in the form of matching dresses....

March 18, 2008: It's noteworthy this week that Sam has reached an important developmental milestone on the road towards maturity: learning to lie. She has, however, not quite reached the milestone marked "learning to lie convincingly." The other night when Geralyn was out, Sam decided to throw a series of interconnected fits when...

March 12, 2008: Not much to report this week, except that I wonder if these pictures are future portents of how my two daughters' reading preferences differ (click through to see the full images): And, you know, I'm not really sure which reading selection I'm more proud of. I guess this is why...

March 6, 2008: Much like myself, this week's post is short and late. Sam and Mandy are playing a lot together lately, but you really gotta watch them. Well, not you, but me and Geralyn. Sam seems to be at a stage where she wants to play rough, with tackling, pulling, and, um,...

February 27, 2008: I tell ya, the weather is really getting to us here. We've had a few weeks of pretty much unbearably cold weather, replete with snow if Mother Nature is feeling fancy, else just HUGE SHEETS OF FROZEN WATER FALLING OUT OF THE SKY. The result has been an awful lot...

February 20, 2008: Mandy has continued to rapidly develop, as though she's in crunch time against some deadline that only she knows about. She's not only walking, but saying a few words. She's pretty consistent about declaring that she sees a baby, a ball, a book, a boy, a doll, or that she...

February 12, 2008: I've mentioned before that Mandy has had a really mild personality for a baby. She started sleeping through the night as soon as we brought her home from the hospital, she's never been more attention seeking than seems necessary for a baby bent on survival and the occasional game of...

February 6, 2008: Too burned out, too busy, too tired. But I didn't want to totally skip this week, so here's some pictures. Sam played in the snow, made some snow angels, did some sledding, and has become a shutterbug with her new camera. Mandy tried too, but mostly she's just delighted in...

January 30, 2008: Big event this week was Sam's 4th birthday and ensuing extravaganza. Much like Christmas, she has gotten old enough to go completely ape over everything, yet young enough to insist that her birthday spanned the entire weekend from Friday morning to Sunday night. When told she could choose where we...

January 23, 2008: Here's another milestone marker: Mandy stood up by herself this week. As with most great accomplishments in the history of mankind, she did it by accident. She was using one hand to lean against something while holding a toy in her other hand. She then let go with her supporting...

January 14, 2008: Sam and I have recently modified our weekly Saturday ritual to include the swim class that Geralyn signed us up for. Well, she really just signed up Samantha. I just sit there with the other parents and hope nobody drowns. Or, if someone absolutely HAS to drown, that it's that...

January 8, 2008: Some days I can't believe how quickly Mandy is changing. I swear that she literally looks a little different when we go to get her out of bed in the morning than she did when we put her in there the night before. I can hear stretching and popping sounds...

December 31, 2007: The big even this last week was the whirlwind of Christmas. Being almost 4, Sam was at a great age to really get into things this year. She kept talking about everything we were going to be doing, practically building out a itinerary for everyone with the clockwork precision of...

December 24, 2007: Sam had a couple of bad days this week. The other night we heard her crying about midnight, and Ger went in to find that Sam hadn't quite made it to the bathroom before throwing up. She spent the rest of the might barfing (no pictures, sorry), drinking some water...

December 18, 2007: The big even this week was Mandy's birthday --one year old. That's just ...inconceivable. I don't know when this happened. The event was largely low key, with just Geralyn's parents and godparents coming over. And we invited Samantha, who actually did a fairly good job of not inserting herself into...

December 10, 2007: Talking about death with kids has always been awkward. In one aspect, it's unavoidable, so it has to come up sometime. Sam still sometimes asks about my dad who passed away last year, and we're straight forward with her about him. And it's everywhere else. Sure, Elmo may not meet...

December 5, 2007: Okay it's going to be a super short update this week, because I don't have time to do anything more but if I don't do something I'm going to miss the whole week. Wah. So here's some pictures: Let's see, stories? I've started encouraging Sam to play on the computer,...

November 27, 2007: In which my mom teaches me how to mentally manipulate Sam, we go to a room full of inflatable bouncie things, and Mandy helps put up the Christmas decorations.

November 19, 2007: Short update this week, since things are busy. My mom is in town visiting for Thanksgiving, and given that I still have to work most days this means that she's really less visiting me and more visiting her grandchildren. Which I guess is just fine since they seem to enjoy...

November 13, 2007: In which Sam gets out in the yard and helps earn her share, Mandy stands up, and Sam starts to forget things the way we all do.

November 6, 2007: In which Sam and Mandy get decked out for Halloween, Sam learns a new joke, and Mandy starts to stand up.

October 29, 2007: In which I learn the irrational joy of a child's performance and Mandy signals that yeah, she pretty much gets what we're saying.

October 22, 2007: In which Sam sends animals into space and then gets sick. Also, I have baby proofing mishaps.

October 15, 2007: Sorry, folks, things have been very busy lately. And also, there has been Team Fortress 2 (look for me as "jmadigan" on Steam!). So it's mostly pictures this week. Sam and Mandy went to two pumpkin patches this week. Actually, it was the same one once. They went during the...

October 8, 2007: In which Sam learns to cook, goes up 80 feet in the air for no good reason, and cheers when her sister Mandy starts to sit up.

October 1, 2007: In which Sammy sees a skwarull and Mandy discovers her voice.

September 24, 2007: In which I ponder different towel routines, Sam embarks on a career of theft, and Mandy cheers us all on.

September 18, 2007: In which we visit Tulsa for my sister's surprise birthday party.

September 10, 2007: In which Mandy discovers the scientific principle, and Sam negotiates for desert.

September 3, 2007: In which we return to the farm, Sam makes a quantum leap, and Mandy decides not to let herself get pushed around.

August 27, 2007: In which Samantha deals with dissident dinosaurs and helps Mandy cope with the threat of choking.

August 20, 2007: In which Sam asks us to define many things, goes to the donut shop, learns about science, and plays with baby sister.

August 13, 2007: In which Sam takes a stab at dressing herself, shoots for "Duh!" but misses by two letters, and plays in the sprinklers better than I ever did.

August 6, 2007: In which Sam asks many questions and Mandy sits up because it's a better vantage point for throwing things.

July 30, 2007: In which Sammy takes swimming lessons, commits fashion tragedies, and starts to get along with her sister.

July 23, 2007: In which Sam gets some new literature on how not to be bossy, Mandy heads for the pool, and I try to make my kid understand the concept of the future.

July 16, 2007: In which Mandy works on her conversation skills, Sam has a poolside freakout, and I get a pumpkin upside the head.

July 9, 2007: In which Mandy gets her first baby sitter, Sam dominates her, and I see which of them appears the most patriotic.

July 2, 2007: In which we take a trip to visit family in Tulsa, Oklahoma and learn to make the best of it.

June 25, 2007: Long time readers of this series of posts will know that I don't sweat it too much when it comes to tracking milestones. Should Mandy be talking or driving a stick shift by now? I dunno. She seems happy, though, and things seem to be going fine so who cares?...

June 18, 2007: In which Mandy has a major dietary paradigm shift, Sam hits the pool again, and I have to institute the "one why" rule.

June 11, 2007: In which Sam makes things out of cardboard tubes and Mandy helps me paint the deck by just sitting there.

June 4, 2007: In which Mandy takes shrieking to a new height, Sam gets bossy, and the little girl next door shows us all up.

May 28, 2007: In which we go out to "The Farm," and learn to fear the wildlife again. Also, Sam is deprived of frozen treats and Mandy shares her charms with the world.

May 21, 2007: In which we all get soaked in the rain, Mandy practices her kung-fu screams, and Sam displays a little bit of political awareness.

May 14, 2007: In which Sam devours some donuts, goes nuts, calls everybody Elizabeth, and comes down hard. Also, I share some advice for card shopping on Mother's Day.

May 7, 2007: In which I take Samantha on a world tour, encounter a stereotype, and reminisce about Mandy's rapid rise to size.

April 30, 2007: In which Sam uses mass media as a springboard for her own homegrown play and Amanda gives laughter a chance to grow on her.

April 23, 2007: In which I notice how fast both Sam and Mandy are changing, Sam gets sick again, and Mandy tries to eat her hands.

April 16, 2007: In which I note some of the minor milestones of Sam's recent weeks, we take her shopping to celebrate the training of the potty, and both kids do some neat impressions.

April 9, 2007: In which I describe three days of attempts at Easter fun, including a rather disappointing trip to an Easter "village," frozen egg hunting, egg dying, and candy overloads.

April 2, 2007: In which we pay someone else to get our kids to do what they won't do for me and then take pictures of it. Also, Samantha attempts to correct some of our beliefs about death and divinity.

March 26, 2007: In which I discover the sudden dilemma of having too many children to watch, Mandy gets more interactive, and Sam learns some new games.

March 19, 2007: In which Sam delights in spouting gibberish when she's not asking what every character in every book is saying or thinking. Also, Mandy powers up to Super Saiyan 2.

March 12, 2007: In which Sam separates pine needles, celebrates St. Patrick's Day, and gets lost in an inflatable vinyl maze.

March 5, 2007: In which Sam declines to give us a moment to ourselves and inadvertently gets subjected to a movie where bunnies die gruesome, horrible deaths. Also, Mandy poses for a photo op with other people's things.

February 26, 2007: Mandy sleeps through most of her own christening and Sam offers some uncharacteristically sage advice on accepting the way things are and appreciating them.

February 19, 2007: In which Mandy does her best to warn us of immanent danger and we take Sam out to the mall just to get out of the house.

February 12, 2007: In which Sam's imagination starts to get out of control and we're faced with an infestation of monsters.

February 5, 2007: In which I go away for a week and find myself stupefied at the reminder of what it's like to have more free time than I know what to do with.

January 29, 2007: In which I expound on the scientific virtues of Curious George, discuss Sam's 3rd birthday party, and note how Many has begun to beam.

January 25, 2007: In which I share my annual e-mail to Samantha, wishing her a happy 3rd birthday and describing the big picture of her last year of life.

January 22, 2007: In which Sam tris to get out of punishment by redefining the terms, expresses an interest in forbidden photography, and plays in the snow again.

January 15, 2007: In which a number of factors make Samantha a bit of a pain to deal with and I present a historical timeline of her favorite TV shows in a graphic format.

January 8, 2007: In which I discuss what Amanda was almost named, the eminent end of Samantha's naptime, and a new and revolutionary method for making sure the only one who clutters up the house is me.

January 1, 2007: In which I remember how powerful instincts can be when triggered by an infant's cries, Sam scores lots of Christmas loot, and Mandy helps facilitate some very basic biology lessons related to nursing.

December 24, 2006: We all return home from the hospital and total one more than we did before. Mandy starts out as the perfect baby and we hold our breath to see how long it will last while Sam tells her Nana to shut her word hole.

December 18, 2006: The last Sam's Story entry in which Samantha gets a little fever, then cautiously introduces herself to her new little sister and tries to get a grip on how this will all work out.

December 11, 2006: Samantha learns to fear "that red man" who we keep trying to tell her is Santa Claus, plus lots of pictures of her wearing Christmas hats and a story about her scaring the bajeezus out of a dozing Geralyn.

December 4, 2006: Sam enjoys her first real winter snowstorm, attends a largely worthless "Super Siblings" class to prepare her for sisterhood, and learns to get her own self out of bed.

November 27, 2006: Sam enjoys Thanksgiving at The Farm out in the wild lands, plus she develops new cognitive skills that are both hit and miss.

November 20, 2006: Sam goes out for her very first movie since infancy, plus she decides to put us all in our place. I also share a movie of her singing her ABCs.

November 13, 2006: Sam returns from the land of the grandparents with a new bad habit, then returns from the park with a new appreciation for freezing temperatures. Also, the manipulator becomes the manipulated.

November 6, 2006: We all take an ill-fated trip on the tiny train tracks, but Sam doesn't seem to mind. Also, Samantha takes to Halloween trick or treating like a duck taking to dark waters where an unknown horror lurks beneath.

October 30, 2006: Samantha makes her first big Halloween appearance, part of which involves flinging her fairy-winged self at other kids with much wrecklessness. Also, she and I have a showdown involving a toothpaste and a pair of pink jammy bottoms.

October 23, 2006: We have an unfortunate failure to communicate over a request for (Winnie the) Pooh, plus Sam goes furniture shopping and I discuss how hypnosis fails to inject pain killing medicine into one's spinal cord.

October 16, 2006: Samantha dines on kitchen sponge and earns a runny nose. Plus, we visit the pumpkin patch for some tense moments and Sam learns to play (with) chopsticks.

October 9, 2006: In which we venture into the depths of a used baby product swap meet in order to replace that which was befouled beyond redemption. Also, Samantha picks up Geralyn's tastes in light reading, but with a slightly different interpretation.

October 1, 2006: In which Sam visits the zoo, then greets some of her favorite PBS characters from afar. I also discuss how Geralyn and I make different assumptions about an unhappy Sammy and how best to remedy things.

September 25, 2006: We hire a new baby sitter, who works out much better than the old one. Sam displays questionable fashion sense, but knows how to get what she wants out of me.

September 18, 2006: Samantha stays hip with the help of Aunt Shawn and visits the super dooper train store where she learns the value of shoving people who get in her way.

September 11, 2006: Samantha goes off to pre-pre-school for the first time and seems to take it better than I and my overactive imagination do.

September 4, 2006: Sam learns the power of No, then the greater power of the time out. She also devises a method for impromptu chrch hymms. It's also another swimsuit edition as we go to both the pool and the lake for Labor Day weekend.

August 28, 2006: Sam wants to know what you're doing, and she'll stop at nothing to find out and then ask again. Also, bubbles!

August 21, 2006: Sam has three increasingly odd conversations with me, plus she signs on to become my one-person Guitar Hero fan club, complete with cheering and sing alongs.

August 14, 2006: Samantha learns the perils of being a penguin, but on the plus side she can tell you about the point in time where she learned about the frailty of life. Also, I realize that it looks like this kid eats a ton of junk food.

August 6, 2006: Sam has more power plays that don't quite work out the way she wants, plus she remains steadfastly optimistic regarding the chances that every cardboard box in the world contains toys.

July 31, 2006: Sam learns to play nice by herself, using just her imagination and common household objects. Plus we go back to the pool and reveal the big twist: is Sam going to have a baby brother or sister? You decide!

July 24, 2006: Samantha greatly accellerates the complexity of this entire parenting curve. Plus she makes polite dinner conversation of a sort before turning her attention elsewhere.

July 17, 2006: Samantha explores her world by seeing how far she can push the boundaries before we snap. Also, I present my accumulated evidence regarding the Phantom Coloring Ghost in hopes that Scooby Doo-esque hijinks would ensue. They do not.

July 9, 2006: In which a big announcement is made regarding Sam's upcoming status as a big sister. Also, Sam demonstrates her Jedi mind tricks.

July 4, 2006: Sam learns to appreciate her new house, despite the size and initial confusion over there being more stories than she's used to. She also makes a trip to "The Farm" where she learns to throw rocks and sling wet sand at everyone in sight.

June 26, 2006: I link Thomas the Tank Engine and the potty in Samantha's mind in an effort to further her training. Sam also visits the botanical gardens to play in the water and I discuss another big change coming up in her life and ours.

June 19, 2006: Sam discovers the joys of vibrating massage chairs and we're hard pressed to bring her back to reality. She also helps wash my car in celebration of Father's Day, which was really sweet of her even though she couldn't reach much higher than the tires.

June 12, 2006: Sam hits the pool twice in one week and I discover how to employ her developing social skills for fun and profit (except there was no profit). Sam also learns how to pronounce the name of the ancient priest-king who blessed Abraham after the seige of Sodom and Gomorrah.

June 4, 2006: Sam enjoys her first baseball game, despite the heat and not being all that interested in baseball. Also, I notice more spastic tendencies and count down my 10 new favorite things about Sam.

May 28, 2006: Sam reveals her formula for the perfect gathering and displays a healthy respect for swiming pools despite wearing enough flotation equipment to save the Titanic. I also discuss the unholy terror of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, which is Sam's latest toy-based fascination.

May 21, 2006: I present the Samantha Alert System, a handy chart for telling when you should be on the alert for a potential hissy fit event. Just follow the cues and you should be fine. Also, Samantha reminds us that words are like boomerangs with a toddler around --what comes out often gets thrown back at you.

May 14, 2006: Sam learns the intricacies of object classification when she notes that I am not an animal. Also, she plays a game of "let's not snort the bubble bath," which she loses.

May 7, 2006: Sam entertains with a stream of childish consciousness, making up stories about her toys and surroundings. They often end with her foot crashing down on all the little people involved. Also, she comes near to ruining a Mother's Day surprise.

April 30, 2006: Wow, what a week. The majority of it, though, was spent sans Samantha as Geralyn and I trekked halfway across the continent with our last carload of possessions while Sam stayed safely stuffed away at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Spending six days without Sam was kind of weird after all...

April 24, 2006: So, anyway ...have I mentioned that we're moving? Leaving sunny Southern California? Trekking over halfway across the country to take a great new job, be closer to family, and stay one step ahead of all the stalkers* out there on the Internet? No? Well, I've been meaning to mention it...

April 16, 2006: Happy Easter! This morning we learned an important lesson about this most blessed of all holidays: Don't let your toddler eat her weight in chocolate as soon as she wakes up. Actually, we didn't mean to, but she was just so fast. We set Sam down in front of her...

April 10, 2006: I've mentioned before about Sam's possessiveness, and it's a trait that seems intent on persisting. The other night Geralyn was baking a cake for her "Mom's Night Out" club, a delicious cake that Sam and I had been forbidden from even thinking about touching. This didn't prevent Sam from sitting...

April 3, 2006: 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,...

March 27, 2006: Kind of a slow week, actually. Sam continues to chat us up, and things are getting to the point where you can actually have rudimentary little conversations with her. Sometimes she'll actually get the ball rolling by making spontaneous observations like "I like cheese" even though cheese was nowhere on...

March 20, 2006: It's been a few weeks since I've raved about Sam's developing language skills, so I think I'm due. They have, as you may have guessed, continued to rocket upwards, with complete sentences now being the norm. She's also making deft use of pronouns, which I thought was kind of unusual...

March 14, 2006: As I've mentioned, Sam has become quite possessive of her things lately, and we're working on getting her to share with others. And I'm sorry to say that this week she took the lessons to heart --or rather, to stomach-- and decided to share some kind of horrible flu bug...

March 7, 2006: I've written before about how I thought Sam was getting into the "Terrible Twos" a little ahead of schedule, but it now appears that my pronouncement may have been a little premature. I apparently had no idea what "terrible" really meant. Sam is still sweet as aspertane and I love...

February 28, 2006: Not much to say this week given that Sam's "Papa," my father, is gravely ill and in the hospital. Sam has handled things much better than the rest of us --I'm constantly surprised by her easy going nature and adaptability. Here's some pictures: One of the things I love about...

February 20, 2006: Valentine's day was earlier in the week and Sam seemed to enjoy it. There was a heart-shaped cake, gifts from both sets of Grandparents and one Aunt, a Valentine's Day card exchange at the Mommy & Me class (Elmo, Dora, and strangely enough that stoner Spongebob Squarepants seem to be...

February 13, 2006: I know I've gone on and on about this in recent weeks, but every week I'm amazed all over again at how quickly Sam's language skills are growing. And I doubt it's just her --from what I've read, most kids go through a linguistic blitzkrieg at this age. Sam continues...

February 6, 2006: One of my favorite things about parenthood is watching my kid evolve and turn into a bona fide little person capable of reason, emotion, curiosity, empathy, humor, and desire. And now I get to add one more word to that laundry list of traits: guile. Sam has become quite the...

January 30, 2006: This hasn't been a very good week for Sammy. When I left for work this morning she standing in the middle of the living room, wailing like a baby banshee and wiping at the hot tears that were streaking down her cheeks. She was inconsolable, no matter what we tried,...

January 25, 2006: Dear Samantha, Today you're two years old. Nice job! Like I did last year, I thought I'd write you a letter and tell you how things went this second year. Again, I don't think you can read this yet unless you're some kind of super genius and are just...

January 24, 2006: The big event this week was Sam's 2nd birthday part, which you can see pictures of right here and read a little about over here. It was quite fun (Ger worked hard to make sure it would be) and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. And Sam scored some phat loot....

January 23, 2006: I put some pictures from Sam's second birthday party yesterday on the Photos Page. And because I like you, I'll save your tired mouse clicking finger some work and post them here, too: We had a great turnout, with just about everyone we invited being able to make it and...

January 17, 2006: Sam is almost two years old, so Ger and I have been busy preparing for her second birthday party. We're keeping things relatively simple --no scary clowns or inflatable buildings to jump around in. Given her peculiar culinary predilections, we're not letting Sam pick out the menu for the event....

January 9, 2006: Christmas has come and gone, but I'm still playing with my new toy --a new camera. One of the things I love is the "burst mode,", which lets you take like 4 pictures a second. We were at the park and Ger put Sam on this thing that spins around...

January 2, 2006: Sam has become tiring. And I'm not talking about losing sleep --if you spot me the first 8 weeks, I can count on one hand the times she's failed to sleep through the night. Sleeping is one of her core competencies. Instead, her brand of exhaustion inducement has lately stemmed...

December 25, 2005: Welcome to the Centennial Samantha Celebration. ...Or what would be if "centennial" meant "100 weeks" and not "100 years." It's hard to believe that I've been doing these weekly updates for 100 weeks --more if you include the pregnancy updates. To celebrate, I've put together a little retrospective on the...

December 19, 2005: Before Sam, I used to never get sick. Often, I'd climb atop things and announce this by saying "I never get sick!" Lately, though, I often can't make it past "I never ge--" before breaking off into a wet, hacking cough that leaves me doubled over, helpless, and exposed to...

December 12, 2005: Christmas is almost here, with lights up tree erected, and wonderfully wrapped boxes just asking to be ripped open. Or at least according to Sam. Ger and I were out at the mall the other day when we wandered into one of those stores that looks like Holly Hobby exploded...

December 5, 2005: I love my wife dearly, but one of her personality traits is that she can be particular and often has to have things just right. One might even go so far as to call her "persnickety" though don't tell her I said so. For example, she cannot stand it if...

November 28, 2005: The big event this week was, of course, Sam's second Thanksgiving. Ger's parents were here to help celebrate and make a huge meal with all the standard accessories. This year Sam ate the same things as we, though she was the only one who had a plate sporting a picture...

November 21, 2005: Short update this week. Sam's grandparents (Ger's parents) are in town for Thanksgiving this year and she is enjoying the visit immensely, since it gives her some new people to read to her and to blow bubbles for her. The bubbles, in fact, are Sam's new Favorite Thing In The...

November 14, 2005: Slower week this week without any incredible outings to theme parks or new toilets. So let's start off with the pictures: As you may notice, Sam has begun mastery of the fork, which is cause for some stress. Because, you see, once she learns to stab things, you've got to...

November 7, 2005: It's been quite a busy week for Sam this time around. Let's get started... Early in the week we decided to take that leap and introduce Sam to Professor von Potty, "Potty" for short. Sam was quite excited about her new plaything and took right to it. While we certainly...

October 31, 2005: The more things change, the more they stay the same....

October 30, 2005: I don't think that I need to tell you that when you become a parent it changes who you are and what you talk about with other adults, but perhaps an illustration would drive the point home even further. The other night Ger and I were sitting at the dinner...

October 25, 2005: For a while there, I was wondering if Sam would be behind the curve a bit in terms of language. She actually understands a lot when you say something to her, and has been successfully following one- and two-step instructions like "get the ball and put it on the table"...

October 17, 2005: I like to think that I rank somewhere above average on an imaginary parenting curve, and that Samantha will be better off for it. But apparently I needn't bother, at least according to the authors of Freakonomics, the book I mentioned finishing earlier this week. The economist authors spend one...

October 10, 2005: Slow week this week, so let's start off with the pictures right off the bat: As you can see, Ger and Sam went pumpkin hunting with their play group this week, and they returned triumphant with a big orange gourd. Sam has become quite attached to the thing, actually, and...

October 3, 2005: Sam hit a couple of unfortunate milestones this week, sometimes literally. The first is "Baby's First Hacked Up Wad of Phlegm," which she produced on account of having a little chest cold this week. It was almost comical on account of the way she had no idea what to do...

September 26, 2005: I mentioned in last week's update how I prefer Sesame Street over Blue's Clues because of the kind of subtle jokes they slip in for the sake of adults. I was reminded of this fact during one episode of Elmo's World show this week. Every week the little red guy...

September 19, 2005: It's been a long couple of weeks lately, and I'm way off on my schedule. Sam, Ger, and I went back to Tulsa to visit my family while my mother recovered from knee replacement surgery. This was great, as my folks hadn't seen Sam since last Thanksgiving and as religiously...

September 12, 2005: Sorry, I don't really have anything to write about this week. Sam has been up in St. Louis visiting Ger's parents since last week, so all I've got are these pictures of her playing with "walk chalk" in the back yard. She totally loved the stuff, even though she can't...

September 5, 2005: Not a whole lot to report this week, other than Sam has reached one of those monumental milestones usually associated with toddlers: she has learned the "go limp" tactic of nonviolent resistance when we want her to walk one way and she wants to go the other. I was pulling...

August 29, 2005: Contrary to popular wisdom, Ger and I do sometimes get out of the house and go to parties. It's just that these days we tend to take Sam with us. Such was the case last weekend when a friend of Geralyn's had a massive house warming party. There were a...

August 22, 2005: Sam has learned the joys of bellowing. Not screaming, shrieking, or shouting, but bellowing. Early one morning Ger and I were dozing in bed when we were suddenly awakened by a very distinct and surprisingly booming "MAMMA!" from Sam's crib. And it wasn't a one-shot kind of thing, as she...

August 15, 2005: While coming back from the zoo on Saturday, we passed a little girl sporting a tee shirt that read, "I'M THE BOSS!" Parenthood has given me many wonderful gifts, one of which is the urge to throttle any parent who buys their children shirts like that. You don't need to...

August 11, 2005: What a difference a 54 weeks makes. Man, I wonder what she'll look like this time next year?...

August 8, 2005: Gah. We're sick again. I used to sometimes go years between getting sick, but Sam seems intent on breaking any wellness streaks I may get going by giving me whatever malady she's having. I'm pretty sure that she picks stuff up from the child care area at the YMCA where...

July 31, 2005: Back a few years ago, before Sam was born, a friend of Geralyn's came to visit us. She brought along her husband and one of their children, a boy somewhere around 1 year old. I remember very clearly when we went out to dinner how amazed Ger and I both...

July 25, 2005: I'm sitting here about to lose my mind, mainly because I can't get the freaking Elmo's World theme song out of my head. Sam has been watching a lot of Sesame Street lately, which means I have been watching a lot of Sesame Street lately. The show's cross-generational longevity is...

July 18, 2005: Apparently, discipline is a laugh-out-loud riot, at least according to Sam. We've been doing the whole "time out" thing for the last couple of weeks, fully aware of the fact that Sam is too young to completely understand, but wanting to get into the habit and curb certain behaviors through...

July 11, 2005: Sam isn't even 1 and a half years old yet and I thought I was supposed to get a little more time than that before she settled on "No" as her favorite word. Foul! She hasn't adopted any of the hallmark tantrums of the "terrible twos," but that single, two-letter...

July 6, 2005: You can still ask for your money back if you want, but what this week's update lacks in timeliness it will make up for in long-windedness and aww-inducing pictures. We're late, of course, because we just got back from a week-long trip to St. Louis to visit friends and family....

June 26, 2005: Guys, this is how it starts: GERALYN: Sammy's getting so big... ME: Yeah. Well, she can't stay a baby forever. GERALYN: We need another baby. ME: What? Woah, woah, woah! Let's not get ahead of ourselves. GERALYN: Well, don't you think so? ME: Look, if you just wait another 14...

June 20, 2005: I've been some research, and I've come up with some disturbing suspicions about Sam. I think she's a zombie. The other day I was sitting on the floor playing with her when she suddenly turned to me, spread her arms, and stumbled towards me and into my arms. I was...

June 12, 2005: As I've been saying for a few weeks, Sam's verbal skills are steadily improving. But while she's constantly surprising me how well she understands (e.g., yesterday she understood and followed the two-step command of "Go get the ball and take it to mommy in the kitchen"), her actual spoken vocabulary...

June 5, 2005: The really, really cool thing about watching a kid grow up is seeing her do things or figuring things out for the first time. There's the huge, hulking milestones like first steps or first homemade shiv, but for my money (and I did pay for her, so she's mine) the...

May 30, 2005: Sam is feeling much better this week, having put whatever illness she had behind her. She's down to only an occasional wet, hacking cough instead of a constant stream. Her appetite has returned along with her health, so much so that we had to strip her down after one overenthusiastic...

May 23, 2005: Bad news, Sam Fans. Sammy is sick again. It's not that bad this time, but she's got some kind of chest and throat thing that has her hacking up gobs of stuff like a two-pack-a-day smoker. And I know she doesn't smoke anywhere near that much. She seems okay most...

May 16, 2005: Sorry, short update this week. I have a couple of projects going on that have leeched away most of my free time. Just as well, since this has been a largely uneventful week. The only thing out of the ordinary is that Sam is being a bit of a pill....

May 9, 2005: Bath time is one of Sam's favorite times. Or at least it was before I brought the Silver Snake of Horror into the house. Let me explain. We had been using a bucket to rinse the soap from Sam's hair, but she hated getting all that water dumped on her...

May 2, 2005: When Ger and I decided to become parents, there were 4 things I vowed never to do letst I slip into a cliche like a head trauma victim slipping into a coma: Own a minivan. Show off wallet-sized pictures of Sam to strangers. Do that little apirplane trick with the...

April 25, 2005: A momentous, sad milestone has passed. The kitchen is closed. No more milk on tap. Sam has been weaned from nursing. No more boobie. Unlike our breast feeding class instructor who was still nursing her oldest child at over forty months, it was always a question of "when" and not...

April 18, 2005: Calamity! Sam has become what we've dreaded most: a finicky eater. I can't really blame her, since cream of wheat and steamed vegetables would probably wear thin on me as well. But while I would have the cunning to pretend to pack a healthy lunch and then go out to...

April 11, 2005: Sam's new favorite thing? It involves her finger and her nose. Rather than taking a thousand words to spell it out, here's a picture: Hopefully this won't be a habit that persists into her middle age. In other news, Sam is a little soccer hooligan. While at playgroup last week,...

April 3, 2005: In my grade school science class the teacher taught us how rivers were formed by taking a wide, shallow box and filling it with sand. She then poured little rivulets of water through it so they carved paths on their way to a drain at the far end. I'm reminded...

March 28, 2005: Sam is totally walking now. If she goes from place to place, she generally does it by walking instead of crawling. Or tries to, at least. There are still frequent contacts between her rump and the ground. My new nickname for her is "Tipsy" because when she walk she does...

March 21, 2005: Grandma and Grandpa Sommer are visiting! At first Sam didn't seem to remember them and was a bit leery of these strange (and honestly a bit loud) people, but they brought her gifts and paid her lots of attention so she quickly decided that they were all right. Ger and...

March 14, 2005: I think we can officially say that Sam is walking. She's actually been taking unassisted steps for a couple of weeks, but my high journalistic standards wouldn't let me report it here until she was really walking from Point A to Point B. Point B being wherever she finally takes...

March 7, 2005: I talked last week about how some "people" would ignore Sam when she waved to them. It occured to me this week that problems lie on the other end of this specturm as well. While some people blithely ignore babies, others seem drawn to them and will do things that...

February 28, 2005: Okay, now what kind of person doesn't wave back to a baby? A cute little kids waves at you in public and you just ignore her? I mean COME ON! Yes, Sam's newest thing is waving. She waves at me and Ger pretty much whenever we step more than 5...

February 21, 2005: It's been a busy weekend. As I mentioned, Sam has been sick last week with some kind of stomach bug. It started with projectile vomiting, but quickly moved on to explosive bowel movements. At one point she somehow managed to get the stuff up between her shoulder blades and the...

February 16, 2005: For those of you playing from home, Sam has been sick with some kind of stomach bug. I went in to check on her yesterday morning to find a big puddle of half-digested peas next to her in the crib. Which, you know, kind of explained the retching sound I...

February 14, 2005: Swear Jar funds this week: $2.50. It would have been less, but the vending machine at work stole my money. Sam's big thing this week has been using her walker, so now she has something in common with old people. I showed her how to push it and walk behind...

February 10, 2005: Ger and I were arguing one day about what kind of cheese Sam likes better, Cheddar or Swiss. Yes, we argue about these kinds of things. Before we had a kid we debated politics, philosophy, and the ontological mysteries of the cosmos, but now it's pretty much "How much did...

February 6, 2005: Swear jar funds: $0. Ger and I have started a new program to help clean up our language around Samantha. It's not like we curse like longshoremen or Dick Cheney on the Senate floor, but we have occasionally use language that we don't want Sam repeating. To end this, we've...

February 2, 2005: The Internet is both wonderful in its brilliance and frightening in its stupidity. Witness the man who sold his forehead as advertising space to the tune of over $37,000. This was immediately followed by an auction for forehead popup blockers, proving that the Internet givith and the Internet taketh away....

January 30, 2005: Ger and I have started watching this reality TV show called "Supernanny." Each week the titular nanny shows up, crisp British accent in hand, to give succor to troubled parents. The first quarter of the program is devoted to what horrible little monsters the children are and how the parents...

January 25, 2005: Dear Samantha, Today you're one year old. Congratulations! I thought I'd take this chance to look back on your road leading up to this milestone. I don't think you can read this yet, but maybe someday you will and there are a number of people out there on the...

January 24, 2005: 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...

January 16, 2005: As I mentioned in the pic of the day yesterday, Geralyn had two of her wisdom teeth taken out on Friday, leaving me to play the better parts of both parental roles while she recovered. Luckily, the most stressful thing I had to do was take Sam with me to...

January 10, 2005: Man, we're getting close to one year old. I don't think I've ever even kept a plant alive for this long. Sam hasn't made any vast developmental strides this week, but she has been a chatterbox. She constantly engages in what childologists call "jargon," which is this babbling kind of...

January 8, 2005: It's 7:04 and you notice that your baby has a dirty diaper. Not just wet, but dirty. Thing is, at 7:15 it's going to be time to take her upstairs and give her a bath anyway. What do you do? What do you do?...

January 6, 2005: TiVo occasionally records some really weird stuff for us. The other day Ger was looking through its "TiVo Suggestions" and noticed something called "Go Baby!". It's this little 5-minute mini-show about a little baby and the disembodied hand that raises him. Baby does things that babies do, like going to...

January 3, 2005: Three hundred thirty-nine days. That's how long we were able to keep Samantha from eating cat food. I actually don't think that's that bad a record. I would have liked to have gone longer, but one day this week we left the kitchen gate open. A few seconds later Sam...

December 28, 2004: Geez, where to start? The holiday, I guess. At 11 months old, we really weren't sure if Sam would be old enough to enjoy her first Christmas. Boy were we wrong. We three opened our gifts to each other and from my family on Tuesday night before leaving for St....

December 20, 2004: Ug, sick again. I'm not sure if this is the same thing Sam has had for the last week or so, or if she just smoothly transitioned from one malady to another, lubricated as she was with phlegm. And I'm sick too, so I have to say that the guy...

December 13, 2004: Sammy's still a bit sick. I'm not sure if this is the same malady as last week or if she just smoothly transitioned from one to another, but either way it's not as severe. She actually doesn't appear to feel ill most of the time, but her head is full...

December 12, 2004: Sam's weekly update will be delayed until tomorrow. I'd do it now, but I have to finish a review for GameSpy. If you like, though, you can see the new pictures here to tide you over....

December 8, 2004: Whee! I had a bit of fun today over my lunch break with a picture of Sam in her frog outfit from Halloween. Click on it for a larger version. A version of this is now my new computer desktop wallpaper. If you're a Sam fan I can send you...

December 5, 2004: Sammie's sick. She's almost over it now, but I think she picked up something on the flight back from Houston, as she was running a fever, had a stuffy nose, and her throat was sore. If you use those symptoms to describe just about anyone else, like Aunt Ethel or...

November 30, 2004: Blogging Baby, one of the websites I read regularly, had a contest to give away some really nice diaper bags from Skip Hop. All you had to do was tell a story about a particularly horrendous diaper change. With such a fertile (ha ha) subject, I had to give it...

November 29, 2004: BIG week this week. The kind that make for great mini-series on the Lifetime network if they'd ever return my calls. As I mentioned last week, we took Sam on a three city World Tour this week, covering San Diego, Houston, and Tulsa. The first leg was the easiest, even...

November 22, 2004: This week I finally managed to catch Sam in the act of standing up. She actually stood there for like 30 seconds, just kind of looking at me like "Hey, check me out, I'm a biped!" while I snapped pictures like a gibbering idiot. I shouted for Geralyn to come...

November 15, 2004: Not a particularly busy week this time. Sam's only got one new trick for the week, but it's a big one: she's starting to pull up. For non-parents this may evoke images of Sam blasting her lats on the chinup bar while a drill sergeant yells at her, but everyone...

November 11, 2004: I love doing Samantha's weekly updates. In fact, I often consider ditching the rest of this site and just making it a blog about Sam, but I always come back to the fact that it's nice to have a clearing house for anything else I might want to post. Other...

November 8, 2004: Somewhere, right now, Sam is pointing at something. This is her new thing for the week, and she enjoys it immensely. When you bring her into a room she'll start systematically pointing at everything, including the cat, the ceiling fan, the light, the floor, the sofa, the television, the magazine...

November 2, 2004: Anyone else think that Sam looks kind of like an anime character in this picture? Personally, I think the resemblance is almost eerie....

October 31, 2004: It's a Halloween blowout special this week. If there's one thing Sam is to us, its a little doll we can dress up for our own amusement. So we've been looking forward to Halloween, plus two people from Ger's playgroup were kind enough to lend us costumes this year. So...

October 25, 2004: Thirty nine weeks. This is a confetti-worthy week because it means that Sam has now spent more of her life outside of the uterus than inside of it. Despite initial reservations, she seems to prefer it now and I think she'll stay. Sam has also seems to prefer getting into...

October 18, 2004: New this week: "finger foods"! Followed shortly by "tarp time!" We started giving Sam little bits of non-mushy food, like Cheereos and a few grains of steamed rice. Mostly she has succeeded in smashing said food up and throwing it on the floor, which is where the tarp is going...

October 14, 2004: NOTE: Most of last week Geralyn and Sam were in St. Louis, leaving me without much to talk about for Sam's most recent update here. So Geralyn wrote something up and asked me to post it. Here it is: This week, Sammy & I flew to St. Louis for Jenny...

October 10, 2004: I got nothin' this week. Sam and Geralyn have been in St. Louis for almost the whole week, visiting family and attending a wedding. I'd have gone, but I lack the vacation time. But in a way, spending a week by myself is like a vacation. I'll ask Geralyn to...

October 3, 2004: This week's story is subtitled "Sam's Craptastic Trip to the Emergency Room." Sometime Friday afternoon Sam started to run a fever. It was mild and Ger's call to the pediatrician only yielded advice to keep an eye on it and give her Tylenol. So we did, but by early Saturday...

September 27, 2004: The mobility has begun. Panic is sinking in. While at work on Friday I got a phone call from Geralyn that went like this: "Hello?" "GUESS WHAT?" "Ah! What?" "SHE'S CRAWLING!" "Who?" "Samantha, dork!" "Pull the other one." "No, I'm serious! She got her little knees up under her and...

September 20, 2004: Another busy week. We took our most ambitious road trip to date this last weekend, but I'll get to that in a minute. First, I must tell you of The Yelling. Sam's newest thing is The Yelling. She'll just sit there and yell at the top of her little lungs,...

September 12, 2004: An important concept has forced its way into our life: The Cone of Baby. Sam has grown to the point where she not only can grab things, but she WILL grab things --anything-- within her reach. And some things that you'd swear were NOT within her reach. For example, last...

September 6, 2004: Not a whole lot going on this week. Sam continues to sit up and fall down, which she seems to think is wonderful. She also continues to bash things together, which will serve her well later in life. She also seems to be craving sleep more and more, and goes...

August 30, 2004: As you can see from the pictures below, Grandma Sommer (Ger's mom) is visiting this week, taking part in much of the happy fun childcare time. Sam was a bit dubious at first, apparently not having remembered Grandma, but she has warmed up considerably. In fact, Sam has bee about...

August 23, 2004: Sometimes I worry about these updates. When people put photo albums together in the past, they were pretty much relegated to dusty bookshelves and lightless cabinets. They were broken out less and less often until one day when you're trying to make room for some new junk you bought you...

August 15, 2004: This week was much less eventful. Sam hasn't done anything particularly wonderful, though she is starting to sit up with little assistance. She will, however, lunge for things (the remote control, a toy, the cat) and do spectacular face plants. She's also eating well, including plenty of mushy fruits and...

August 8, 2004: Well, it was a big week this time around, so let's approach this update by splitting this update into chapters. I'll even give each chapter a cute title. Chapter 1: I, Samantha Madigan, Heartily Endorse this Product or Event Let's face it: this kid is cute. My mother often uses...

August 1, 2004: Slow week. Sam has continued her way into the cornucopia of solid food, tackling sweet potatoes this week. Unfortunately I don't think they agree with her, as last night she spontaneously covered Geralyn in orange projectile vomit. And I mean covered. Ger came running into the office holding Sam out...

July 29, 2004: Finally, an excuse to not teach your child to speak. To quote: The WhyCry monitor is a baby cry analyser. The monitor listens to the baby's crying for 20 seconds then digitally analyses it before indicating why. The device then illuminates one of five crying "expressions" telling you whether the...

July 25, 2004: Sam turned six months old this very day. I'm not sure why that seems like such a huge milestone, but it does. We have managed to keep another human being alive for six months --half a year-- on little more than panic, hope, and stuff that came out of Geralyn....

July 18, 2004: The news this week, of course, is that we've started Sam on solid foods. And by "started Sam" I mean "dumped down the front of Sam's face" and by "solid" I mean "soupy mash". But let's back up for a second. Last weekend we trekked to Babies R Us and...

July 11, 2004: Kind of a slow week here on the Samantha front. But even small changes are adding up, as I'm still amazed some mornings when I come in to get Sam out of her crib and I swear she's grown another three inches. It's spooky sometimes, because it's like this little...

July 4, 2004: Sam's newest thing this week has been squealing. It's a high-pitched, strangled, ear-splitting squal that sounds like someone is stomping on a cat, yet it's still somehow cute. We love it and appreciate it as the precursor to future, more horrifyingly adorable screams. It's also been getting harder and harder...

June 27, 2004: I've noticed something. I've talked before about how Ger and I have joined the Tribe of the Baby People. It involves obsessing over your baby, the things that come out of your baby, and the things that will come out of your baby. I've also discovered that it involves its...

June 21, 2004: It's been a slower week this time. Sam is making lots of little improvements on grabbing things (including her feet, and shoving them in her mouth or ear, depending on how good her aim is at the time), watching things, and being cute. Unfortunately she's still fighting us bitterly about...

June 18, 2004: I noticed this story on Blogging Baby that reports on the most popular names for American boys and girls born in 2003, according to the Social Security Administration. They are: Boy Names Girl Names 1.  Jacob 1.  Emily 2.  Michael 2.  Emma 3.  Joshua 3.  Madison 4.  Matthew 4.  Hannah...

June 13, 2004: Where to start? With the screaming, I suppose. Specifically, THE SCREAMING. When we got back from vacation earlier this week, Ger and I decided that it was past time for Sam to learn to nap in her crib during the day. She's stupendously talented at sleeping through the night, but...

June 6, 2004: The last stop on Midwest-Con 2004 was Samantha's christening in St. Louis. In a nice piece of life's little symmetries (sounds like a line of Hallmark cards, eh?), the ceremony was conducted by Father Dave Flemming, the priest who not only married me and Geralyn back in '97, but also...

June 6, 2004: As I mentioned in the last update, it's been a REALLY busy week, and a tough one for Sam. We've been continuing our whirlwind tour of the midwest, stationed out of Ger's parents' house in St. Louis. This weekend we had to leave Sam overnight with someone else (Ger's parents)...

May 30, 2004: Gah. It's been a busy week, especially the last few days. Sam started rolling over on her own this week, but only from her tummy to her back. So for those of you playing Baby Bingo from home, there's another one for you. The big excitement, though, has come in...

May 23, 2004: he theme of this week's update is sleep. As in, Sam's not getting enough. Oh, she's still sleeping through the night once we get her down, but she seems to have difficulty grasping the concept of naps during the day. She may snooze for a few minutes here and there,...

May 16, 2004: People who play games online often adopt a nickname, much like professional wrestlers would if they were pasty nerds in need of more exercise. I myself chose "Thrrrpptt!" and one of the acceptable pronunciations is the raspberry sound. The kind of raspberry when you stick out your tongue, not the...

May 9, 2004: I really don't have much to report this week. Sam has continued to get better at grabbing things and dragging them to her mouth, which has turned many of her stuffed animals into moist breeding grounds for all kinds of bacteria. Oh, and funny story: We were at church this...

May 9, 2004: Hey everyone, please click on the "comments" link above to join me in wishing Geralyn a Happy First Mother's Day today (or whenever you end up reading this). Here's an action shot: I'm amazed at how well Ger has taken to motherhood, and I had high expectations to begin with....

May 2, 2004: There's not a whole lot to report on this week, sorry. It's really been a week of Sam's getting better at things that she has been doing rather than pulling new stunts. She's grabbing stuff more often now and has developed quite a grip, which she uses to cram things...

April 25, 2004: Sam is three months old this very day. Ta-da! It's been a week of milestones here, too. If I had been thinking ahead, I would have sent out "Baby Bingo" game boards with the birth announcement, along with the URL for this site. The grid cells would have included milestones...

April 18, 2004: I've taught Sammy a new game. Actually, it's more like her first game ever. For the last couple of weeks she's been really alert, more so I think than most other babies her age (she is, after all, a friggin' genius). She looks at things around her, follows them with...

April 13, 2004: I'm posting this update retroactively, as things have not been conducive to blogging. It's also pretty far from my mind. But I have a bit of downtime at the moment so I'm posting this update for those Sam fans out there. I have photos, but I'll have to add them...

April 11, 2004: Samantha's weekly update will be delayed, maybe for a few hours, maybe for days. We all three had to rush to Oklahoma for a family emergency. Sam's grandfather, my father, is very ill and I can't quite muster the spirit or the time to update right now....

April 4, 2004: Short update this week, as I've just gotten back from SIOP. It was my first trip away from Sam since she was born, I was haunted by worries that she would be walking and solving quadratic equations by the time I got back. She wasn't, though I swear she looks...

March 28, 2004: We're Baby People. This isn't the same as being parents, just like owning a dog isn't the same as being "dog people." Our friends Spencer and Nancy came to visit this weekend, and the presence of their 7-month old baby Carson proved to us that we had definitely crossed some...

March 21, 2004: Sleep! Glorious sleep! I'm dancing a jig in honor of sleep while I type this. Allow me to explain. We took Sam to the doctor's a few days ago for her 8 week checkup. The nurse practitioner was agast to learn that we were still waking Sam up every 4...

March 14, 2004: I've noticed something: Every conversation with a new parent that starts with by asking "How are you doing?" will, within 5-10 words, begin orbiting around the topic of how much sleep you're getting, and by extension how well the baby is sleeping through the night. So since you asked, I'll...

March 7, 2004: Not a whole lot to report on this week. Ger, Sam, and I just got back from having lunch with The Tabors up in Carlsbad, and Sam did so well that we even fit in a little shopping at the outlet mall. This was the biggest outing by far, and...

February 29, 2004: Things are looking up. Sam seems to have decided against the trendy but ultimately self-defeating colicky disposition and has been in much better spirits. This is something we've worked at pretty hard, though. Geralyn cut back on her vitamins a bit in the hopes that the iron in them had...

February 22, 2004: Like many boys my age, I was charged with mowing the lawn while I was growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It's normally pretty easy work, but my family was saddled with an old crank of a riding mower that had seen a few too many days but refused to give...

February 15, 2004: It's 5:42 am and I've been up with Sam for the last hour or so. Unlike me, she's wide awake and doesn't seem to think that this is sleepy time at all. She reminds me of this if I put her in her crib. In fact, she's sitting right here...

February 8, 2004: Samantha's second week of life has gone very well. The jaundice from week 1 is completely gone and she's started to gain weight nicely. In fact, she seems to be going through some kind of growth spurt where she wants space her meals just one hour apart. Fortunately, both Sam...

February 1, 2004: I thought that for the time being I'd post weekly updates about Samantha the same way I had been posting pregnancy updates. This will keep the week's news all in one place, posted here every Sunday. I'll also throw in new pictures if I have them. The first week of...

January 28, 2004: I was going to post this picture at the last pregnancy update, but things obviously got hectic. One night last week Geralyn and I sat down with a game of Scrabble and ended up with the following: I guess you can say we were preoccupied....

January 27, 2004: For those keeping track, Geralyn, Samantha, and I are all back home at this hour. We ended our stay at the hospital earlier today, but we still have a lot of pictures to remember it by. Here's a few: You may notice from those pictures that Sam looks a bit...

January 25, 2004: Let's get the big news out of the way first: On January 25th, 2004 at 4:42 a.m. the world population increased by one as Samantha Alyse Madigan was born a week ahead of schedule. She weighed 6 pounds 10 ounces measured 20.5 inches long, and has lots of dark brown...

January 24, 2004: We think Ger's water just broke. We're leaving for the hospital now. Bye....

January 19, 2004: Some new pictures for you today. When we started thinking about redesigning the nursery, Geralyn made it fairly clear that she was going to retain final judgment on the colors, decorations, and general theme. As a compromise, I told her that I got to decide on the theme of the...

January 18, 2004: Pregnancy Update: Week 38 I think we're ready when baby is, or at least as ready as we're going to get. I mean, we've learned what we can from books, taken all the classes, painted and furnished the nursery, stocked up on diapers and various ointments, picked out itty-bitty baby...

January 11, 2004: Hey! This was a very busy week for us with lots going on in the pregnancy, so this is kind of a long update. Perhaps most exciting is that Geralyn went to one of her routine doctor's visits earlier this week and they did another ultrasound to check up on...

January 4, 2004: Another wonderfully uneventful week. D-Day (as in "delivery-day") is getting close enough for us to make specific preparations. Geralyn has put together a "birth plan", which is a document explaining how we want things to go down during delivery. Here's a question for all you mothers out there: Did you...

December 27, 2003: The remaining time in Ger's pregnancy can now be measured out in days, and we've taken notice of this fact. We're enjoying sleep while we can and attending to the final details of the nursery. We're also getting in some final quality time with our books, video games, and that...

December 20, 2003: Getting ever so closer. The nursery is almost done, as we got the changing table delivered today and the painting finished up a few days earlier. It's all good, and the only thing left to do is hang stuff on the walls. We're waiting to see if we get any...

December 14, 2003: Sorry the pregnancy update is a day late, but we had a heck of a time today. Car trouble compounded by a full schedule means I'm just now getting this up. There's really not that much to report this week, other than our finishing up the nursery. The fingers I'm...

December 6, 2003: We can now think of the remaining time in this pregnancy in terms of weeks, rather than months. Before long it'll be in days. Geralyn and I went shopping this week with the gift money/certificates to Babies R Us and got a bunch of stuff off our registry. It's always...

November 30, 2003: We had a bit more eventful pregnancy this week, and it's all good. As I mentioned before, Geralyn flew to St. Louis early for a couple of baby showers around Thanksgiving. We brought one huge suitcase filled with nothing but baby booty! There were burp cloths, a mobile, booties, sleepers,...

November 22, 2003: Well, not too much to report on this week. Nothing really happened. No bins full of discount plastic babies. No odd food cravings. No new construction on Baby's wing of the house. No foul-mouthed ultrasound technicians. A rather uneventful week, really. Oh, this week's picture of Geralyn has been added...

November 15, 2003: Holy carp! Week 29! That pretty much sums it up. Fortunately, after cramming so much knowledge into our tiny skulls, I feel reasonably well educated on the fundamentals. Between the two of us, Geralyn and I have read a small, independent bookstore's worth of material on pregnancy and childbirth. So...

November 8, 2003: Another week, more pregnancy news. Geralyn is doing fine, as you can see. We finally got the nursery/office work done, so I'll be putting up a photo gallery of that whole process soon. We started furnishing the nursery today, which involved putting the crib together, unpacking the glider and Diaper...

November 1, 2003: Week number 27. Not much to report on this week, but there's a new picture added to the pregnancy photo album. Ger is still doing well, other than some very swollen feet. Foot, actually. Just her left one, but it's puffed up like a five-toed sausage. I'm not kidding; it's...

October 25, 2003: Week number 26. Not a whole lot to report this week, other than Geralyn is really starting to show (look at the pics below). One of the benefits of pregnancy revealed itself the other night when we went out to dinner. There was a 45-minute wait for a table and...

October 19, 2003: Week 25 is upon us. We spent some time this week registering for a baby shower that Ger's family is throwing her. I got to take the little zapper gun and run around the store shooting stuff into our list. Fun, but I'm already getting tired of booties and burp...

October 10, 2003: Week number 24! As you can see in the picture below, Geralyn is doing well and looking good. Baby's prenatal beepin and bopin has become a normal part of life now, but it's still pretty cool. We are, of course, continueing to educate ourselves on the whole process. For example,...

October 4, 2003: Week 23. Not a whole lot to report this week, as the ultrasound fiasco has been detailed below. We've both started calling Ger's passenger by "Samantha" (or in Ger's case, "Sammy" which I don't really care for). We're also trying to line up contractors to bisect the super bedroom we're...

September 30, 2003: How's that for a headline? I'm referring, however, to the sex of our unborn child. We had the ultrasound today, and it could have gone better. But first, without further delay, let me say that if you're a family member reading this, the doctor is "pretty sure" you have a...

September 27, 2003: Another week, another pregnancy update: Geralyn is 22 weeks along now, and is starting to show (see pic below). What was really bad ass was that I felt the baby move for the first time this week! I actually put my hand on her belly and felt a little poke,...

September 19, 2003: Pregnancy update: Geralyn is now at 21 weeks --over halfway done! She claims to feel like herself, except that she has to pee a lot (no morning sickness, cravings, etc.). Amazingly, though, she claims to have felt the baby move inside her. I think she had gas, which she doesn't...