Steppin' out

Sam is an excellent crawler. We commonly chase one another around the second floor of our house. I take off into the bedroom and stop on the rug in front of our bed. I hear him behind me, his hands and knees hitting the floor--thump, thump, thump, thump. He sticks his head around the door and offers a big smile. Then he squeals and we crawl at top speed toward one another. I tickle him and he laughs and laughs. Then he speeds toward the bathroom. I go the other way and we meet back in the nursery. Once again we have a tickle-fest.

Sam is a problem solver. He likes to look out through the of our bedroom window onto the world. He can't quite see outside when standing up, so he will turn over our laundry hamper and push it to the window and climb up on top of it. He then stands at the window, pounding on the glass, squealing. Today he moved our kitchen chair to the counter, moved his little blue chair to the big kitchen chair, and climbed up one to get on top of the other.

Sam is a climber He climbs up and down the stairs. He climbs up and down from the couch. He stands up and pounds on the oven door. He pulls himself up to standing and looks at us in the bed. He holds onto furniture and steps across the room reaching from one piece of furniture to the next. He climbs out the front door and down the steps onto the sidewalk. He crawls from our front door to our car parked on the street and stands up holding onto the driver side door handle, wondering why it won't open. He loves jungle gyms in the park and taking multiple trips up the stairs and down the slide. On Sunday we were walking with the stroller in the South End and Sam started to whine and squeal inexplicably. Lynn knew what he was after; he had seen a little park about a block away with a slide at it. Sure enough, he kept his attention on the slide and as we walked closer, he started to rock back and forth and tried to squirm out of the stroller until we finally released him and let him use the slide.

Sam is a Walker For a couple of weeks, Lynn has seen Sam take a step. But she didn't think that it really counted. Last week at the playground, she was helped Sam off of the slide by setting him on his feet. He normally would get down from his feet, crawl to the stairs, climb them and go down the slide again. But that day, instead, he took three steps and then got down, crawled, climbed and slid like nothing special had happened. Today Liz saw Sam walk again at the Museum of Science. He doesn't make a big deal about it (like Claire would). He's still the same Sam.