Sam-A-Lam-A-Ding-Dong

There are just a few things that I've been thinking about Sam that I want to be sure to document.

1) Sam is always going to the nurse at school. I get a call about once every 10 days that something is wrong, or has happened. On one occasion he broke his spine (his verbiage not the nurse's). I had to put an ace bandage around his shoulder for a day (that's where he thought his spine was). There have been various other problems but today's phone call included tears during lunch accompanied by a stomach ache. I was actually waiting all day for this call and needless to say wasn't surprised when it came. See, Sam tends to take longer than others (and when I say others, I don't mean his dad) when going to the bathroom. Well, this morning I didn't want him to miss the bus, so I hurried him along in that particular department and unfortunately, we all paid for it. I told the nurse that he probably was just constipated and asked her if she wouldn't mind having him sit on the potty for a while, but to call me if this didn't work and I would come and get him. Well, she called back to tell me that she let him use the "private" bathroom in the nurse's office and he took care of business. He came home happy and minus a stomach ache.

By the way, our school has a private nurse for which they ask parents at the first of the year to "donate" $50 per kid. I decided that I didn't want to "donate" $150 for the three of my kids and thought it was a HUGE waste of money and therefore only paid a portion of that amount. Maybe I need to rethink my contribution.

2) Sam takes longer than others when eating his dinner. It's not that he doesn't necessarily like the food, it's just that he is more interested in what everyone else is doing and talking about, and he gets easily distracted. The other night after about 12 reminders from Rusty to eat (he's a lot more patient when reminding than I am), Rusty told him that he wouldn't get dessert (which at our house probably consisted of a handful of m&m's or Girl Scout cookies). Finally, Rusty had to follow through on the threat and make Sam go without dessert. Sam one upped him when he responded, "Dad, it's okay, I didn't really want dessert." As if it's worth sacrificing the dessert if he didn't have to eat the dinner.

3) Sam LOVES to color. He will sit down at the table while Meg and Ben are doing their homework or practicing the piano, and I'm making dinner, and he will just color and color. I think he wants to be with everyone else and do something like Meg and Ben. He calls it his "homework."

4) Sam likes to be in the know (he takes after his Gramma Kathy:). This past week Meg had some problems with a couple of girls at school (I know, the girl issues are beginning and I'm not excited about it). Anyway, Sam kept piping in to ask questions or make comments. He would say, "Was that Hannah or Madison who said that?" "Did Madison cry too?" "Meg, did that make you feel sad?" Needless to say, Meg was less than thrilled with Sam's input. He did tell her that no matter what the girls thought about her, she was a good friend to him.

Sam will ask a million questions until his curiosity is finally satisfied.

5) Sam is 100% boy. Not only does Sam love to play with cars, animals, and Star Wars figures. But he also loves to ride his bike, throw the baseball pass the football and most importantly, WATCH the cheerleaders. A few weeks ago we were at our niece Kasey's basketball game to see her highschool team play. During the entire game he ate snacks that Gramma had brought, played toys with his cousin Solly, and ran around the bleachers. But as soon as half-time came and the cheerleaders did their dance routine--forget about it. Sam was mesmerized.