Happy birthday to our Sammy Dean! We started the celebrating a day early with The Making of the Birthday Cake (yes, it deserves those caps) on Sunday afternoon. Sam loves trucks, and we had narrowed down his cake "request" to a purple and orange dump truck cake. I found a cute pattern/recipe/instructions on pinterest and it ended up turning out nothing like the inspiration. Luckily, Sam is two, not twelve, and he didn't much care one way or the other. He was just excited about "cake! eat it! in mouth!".
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| Beater face. And foot in a pot. Okie doke. |
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| I wanted to use Mel's Best Ever Chocolate Cake recipe again, since it was so delicious at Callie's birthday. I knew I shouldn't have filled the pans so full, but I didn't listen to myself and filled 'em right up. |
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| Luckily I did listen to myself when I decided to put the cookie sheet under the cake pans, "just in case". |
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| I got 'em out - and that pan is full of the crusties that overflowed and baked on the cookie sheet (but at least it wasn't the bottom of the oven, thank heavens!). |
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| Plan B on truck design turned into a pickup (since my cakes sunk and I wanted to maximize as much original shape as I could out of them) thanks to Gregg's design and engineering skills. He assembled. I decorated. |
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| And it's done at nine o'clock on Sunday night (no, I was not working on it all afternoon/evening). Here is the aftermath of such a feat. |
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| It's not going to win any awards at the fair, that's for sure, but Sam was so excited to see it in the fridge the next morning. He asked all day, "Time cake?" |
After waffles for his birthday breakfast (he certainly did request those, as he does every time you ask him what he wants for breakfast), we got to hangout with our missionary grandparents so they could watch him open their present to him (as well as our presents to him, too). He had seen these big boxes in our bathroom for weeks and would walk by them and say "nam pwesent! birthday! books!" (Guess we should have got him a few more of those . . . ooops.) But he was pretty stoked about the basketball hoop and balls from Grandma and Grandpa Blanchard.
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| Yes, that is, in fact, Christmas paper. Good thing he's two and doesn't know any better (again). |
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| Swoosh! |
bonus video!
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| (More Christmas paper.) |
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| He loved this book from the library so we got it for him for his birthday. It's full of trucks, which explains why he's such a fan. |
bonus video!
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| This is a cute Melissa and Doug fishing game/toy that our friend gave me to give to Sam because her little boy had just gotten it for his birthday but he already had one at home. Way nice! |
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| Floaters for the pool/lake! (We have plans to be in a hotel with a pool in a couple weeks, so these will get used soon - I hope he'll let us put them on him.) |
bonus videos!
(the full version of the one I posted on insta)
Both kids were kind of snuffly and coughy so we skipped the library that morning and instead just hung around home in the morning, and ran (not really; walked, yes) to the store to grab a couple last-minute birthday meal items. That evening my parents, Megan, Kylie and Michael, and Heather, Terrell and Grace came down to eat hot dogs (Sam's fave) and fixin's (baked beans, taco plop, roasted sweet potato "fries", watermelon) and to celebrate Sammy.
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| A beautiful day for a walkie. |
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| Reading a truck book with Grandpa. |
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| The first thing they did when our guests arrived was run to find books to read together. Haha. I love it. |
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| Dinner on the deck/patio was not as pleasant as one would expect, as we were overrun with flies up the whazoo. We moved inside shortly after we were through eating. |
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| A car! A car! |
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| Who cares about clothes or new jammies (even with diggers and dump trucks on them). Get me that new car! |
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| Spoiler alert: he didn't let this car out of his grip, even for a ride on the new track launcher toy it came with, until Grace came by and plucked it out of his hand. Sam was stunned. He didn't know how to react. But he still talks about "Gwacie take car Nam" days later. He even slept with it tight in his little fist that night. :) |
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| Getting the track jump launcher contraption put together . . . with an audience. |
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| "Happy to you!" time. I think he was stunned by a) the singing, with everyone looking at him, and b) the flash on my dad's camera strobing him. |
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| This was the closest we could get to a smile. Ha. (But Cal knew what to do.) |
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| "In mouth!" at last. |
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| Gracie the big girl, all of a sudden. Last year she was just a teeny month-old babe. And now she's walking all over. |
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| And one more story for good measure. |
- He obviously loves trucks, cars, diggers, tractors, buses, trains, anything with wheels; he loves to play with them, read about them, sing about them, talk about them, watch them go by.
- He loves to sing, and his repertoire is becoming quite extensive; my favorite thing is when he starts singing a song that I know he must have picked up in nursery since we haven't sung it much (or ever) at home. Some of the (parts of) songs you can hear him sing at any given time of day are: eensy weensy spider, abc's, wheels on the bus, where is mother? (like where is thumbkin?), I am a child of God, choose the right, what do we do? (from music makers), Jesus wants me for a sunbeam, open shut them, the hello song (from the primary book), plus anything he learns from Callie's constant singing, too.
- He loves to read (and I love that he loves it). One of the first things he asks upon waking up for the morning or after a nap is, "wead a stowie?" He obviously loves books about trucks (the big truck book, my bus, my car, trains go, trucks go, night light, a little golden book about trucks that I can't remember the name of), but he also digs rah rah radishes and go go grapes and can fill in some of the last words of the rhymes if you leave them out. He'll sit through pretty much anything that is being read and I'll find him sitting by a pile of books, just looking at the pictures quite often. I even heard him ask Callie to "wead a stowie, Dowie, pwease?" one afternoon when she was practicing reading her own little books.
- He loves to go on walks. He loves to ride in the stroller and he likes to walk/run when he can.
- He's mostly a cheery little fellow, except pretty much starting on his birthday the tantrum throwing has become more prevalent. Hmmm. Maybe it will be "terrible twos" with him? (Callie's twos were pretty terrific, though the threes were hard for sure). Or maybe he's just not feeling well this week, and that would make anyone crabby and cranky.
- He is talking up a storm, and trying to talk even more than he physically can. Sometimes the words don't come out nearly as fast as his little brain wants them to. But he doesn't get frustrated. And we can figure out what he usually wants. (It's nice to have Callie around as a translator sometimes because even though I act as translator for many other people, sometimes she needs to help me decipher what he's saying.) He doesn't say the S sound if it's at the beginning of a word (case in point: "S, Nam!"), and there are others he can't say either (C comes to mind, as in his sister being called "Dowie").
- He hasn't grown a whole lot since the last update, at least as far as clothes sizes are concerned. I have noticed a few 18 month shirts and a couple pairs of pants getting too short and being sent to the storage bin, however. And his little 12 month shorts that he's worn for two summers now, are hitting well above the knee. So yeah, he's growing. His stats from his 2 year well check say sort of the same story: weight = 24 lbs 6 oz (20%), height = 34.5 in (48%), head circumference = 48 cm (43%). He's into size 5 (or 6, because our friend gave him some and he wears them now because their velcro is better than his size 5s) shoes. His 12-24 month socks are getting to be too small. And he still wears size 4 diapers during the day, but we've moved up to size 5 for nighttime to keep all the juices contained. No new teeth, though there are only the 2-year-old molars left for a while, so we're anxiously waiting for those to show up.
- We love this favorite boy of ours so much!
Watch Samuel grow: 19 months | 12 months | 11 months | 10 months | 9 months | 8 months |
7 months | 6 months | 5 months | 4 months | 3 months | 2 months | birth
Thanks so much for all of these photos! They are so great to help us feel connected!!!
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