Sam is Two!!!

Sam turned two years old the weekend that we moved into the new house. We moved on Friday, unpacked on Saturday, and had his birthday on Sunday. We kept it small and just did birthday presents and cupcakes at the house.


Sam was excited to help make the cupcakes. He loves to get on his stool and help around the kitchen.


This was the first time that Sam had used the hand mixer. He was very interested and did well. I just added a little support.


Here is Sam stirring in the Funfetti sprinkles. The colors were quite appropriate since "peent" (pink) and "boo" (blue) were the primary colors that he was recognizing at the time.


Sam put all the paper cups in the muffin tins. He protested with, "my do it!", when I tried to help.

Sam loved his birthday song and blowing out the candles.  I think we did it four times before he would let us stop.

After blowing out the candles about four times, we sat down to sample the cupcakes. Sam started by picking off the sprinkles (of course).


He couldn't stand the temptation very long.


But he immediately regretted that decision!


Sam can't stand stuff on his hands and face. This was pretty much the same reaction that we got on his first birthday.


Sam seemed to remember the concept of presents from Christmas. He practically jumped out of my arms when he saw them as we came down the stairs. He ran straight to the "boo bite for Tam" (blue bike for Sam). We spent a long time playing with that before moving on to the others.


Sam got lots of cute clothes for summer. He was interested to see what was on each shirt. And of course he loved the buttons.


Those darn bows just got in the way.

Sam liked ripping off the paper, but he needed a little help getting the toys out of the boxes.


Sam got some Thomas the Train wooden railway sets. We actually had a hard time getting him to open the rest of the presents after he opened the first train toy.


Sam played with his trains for hours that day.


The first thing he asked for the next morning was his "tains".


We didn't get around to putting the train table together for a few days. Sam was a big helper when we finally did.


Well, in addition to celebrating Sam's second birthday, we also had the little matter of packing and moving in to the new house. We closed on both houses in one day. After all the papers were signed on our old house, our realtor came by and put the SOLD sign up.


Chris snapped a few quick shots of our old house in boxes with the point-n-shoot. We had planned on taking a few pictures of the moving trucks, but it somehow slipped our minds. We only had to live with our stuff in boxes for about three days, so it wasn't too bad. We were really impressed with the Mayflower moving company that we used. I can't imagine how much harder it could have been if we had to pack or move our own things.

We've got most of our boxes unpacked now. We have one or two boxes left for each room, but all the pictures/paintings are still packed and we haven't even made it to the garage yet. It's hard for us to relax until everything is all unpacked, but I was just happy when we had a functioning kitchen.

We were glad to get out of the old house when the time came. We realized that the shelving was pulling away from the wall in the master closet when we were moving out, so that had to be repaired. Then, the spring on the garage door broke in half. The house was in great shape, so it's not like it was falling apart by any means. It was just Murphy's law.


Melanie's friend Fletcher stopped by for a quick visit a few days before we moved. We had a nice steak dinner and a nice bottle of wine. It was our last chance to have a nice meal in the old house.


One of the first projects that we tackled in the new house was installing a built-in entertainment center.


The cabinet company installed the unfinished cabinets one morning.


The painters sanded and stained it later the same day. Half the time was spent with them building a "spray booth" by taping plastic and paper to the walls, ceiling, and floor. The smell was awful. I spent most of that day in the garage. The painters must have been extremely high by the time they left. Chris had to wait until the next day to play with his new TV though.


We love the backyard at the new house. It's so nice to be able to sit and relax while Sam has a great time splashing in the water, climbing and sliding, or just chasing Cleo.


This was the first time that we had gotten his splash table out at the new house.


He splashed all the water out one cupful at a time!

 

Sam has also really enjoyed his bubbles.  He doesn't quite get the concept of holding the wand a little bit away from his mouth and blowing softly, but he's  doing a good job of trying.  It was really good practice for blowing out his birthday candles any way.

Sam's favorite tool to terrorize Cleo is his Pooh car.  He'll chase her in circles all day long, inside or outside.  He was having a little bit of a problem in this video because he was laughing so hard and kept getting stuck in the ruts of the sod.

Sam had two birthday parties to go to this weekend. Hagen's was a football theme so Sam wore his new Saints jersey that Melanie got him for his birthday. We found him a matching Nerf football at Target.


Melanie and Sam posing at the fireplace before we went to the party.  Check out that nice new haircut!  It seems like the haircuts are getting worse.  Chris had to put on a cape and sit in the chair with Sam this time, and of course Sam cried through the whole thing.

One Last Dip in the Pool

We just have a few days left in our old house. We're really excited, but we are going to miss the pool. Chris decided that we should try to go swimming every day for the last week. We've been swimming three days in a row so far.



Video of Chris and Sam playing in the pool



Here's another site that we hope to continue seeing when we move. We love to see the hot air balloons going over our house, but this was a rare treat. We were coming home from dinner one Friday evening when we saw two hot air balloons low in the sky. We followed them to our neighborhood and actually got to see them land. Sam kept saying "my balloon" and "baby balloon." I'm not really sure why he was calling them baby, but he was on a kick where he was calling everything a baby after we went to the petting farm.



Sam loves throwing and kicking the ball. He doesn't quite get the concept of catching the ball yet.



Sam likes to play with my iPhone. He mostly likes scrolling through the photos. He tries to make the little LCD on the back of the cameras scroll like the iPhone does, but he doesn't understand that they aren't the same thing.



Just a silly video at the dinner table.



This is a video of Sam talking and saying a few of his new words. He's talking like crazy now. Even saying a few sentences. They are usually bossy sentences like: "De-da down here now" and "No, Mommy, sit here." He's pretty much attempting to copy any word that you ask him to say now. He really learned how to make his "S" sound this weekend. He loves buses, but when he used to say "bus," it really sounded more like "budt." Now he can really say "bus" and even said "buses." We were looking at the S page in one of his ABC books last night. I told him that Sam begins with an S too. He nodded then said, "socks?" I said that, yes, socks start with an S, too. There are still a few letters that he really can't say. L and K come to mind. L still sounds like a W, and K sounds like a T, so we get "bite" instead of "bike." We can usually tell what he's talking about though. He also moved up to the next class at day care last week, so we're excited about him getting exposed to more kids talking.

The past few weeks have been really busy with getting stuff ready to move in to the new house. It's been mostly little things like ordering utility installations and ordering a few new things. But we've also had a few not so fun things to deal with like the current house not appraising for the sales price and having our credit card compromised. Everything has worked out fine so far, it's just been stressful and hassles. We did get to spend a little time at the new house this past weekend. We went with Melanie and Sam and just let Sam run around and play for a while. We realized that we'd be moving this week and that Sam had only seen the house twice. It's been about three weeks since he saw it, and we wanted him to be familiar with it before we move.