Amtrak carried us to Richmond, Virginia on July 1, where we were warmly met by Grand-mère, Pop-Pop, and Grandma Carolyn: The next day, Sam turned three and three quarters, a fact which she shared repeatedly with everyone she met. We picked up a rental car and then drove to Charlottesville, where AC and I lived for 10 …

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Sam’s first trip to the Jersey shore (that’s New Jersey, USA). We started with a visit to the Cape May Courthouse Zoo. This is a free zoo. It was nice, although we worried that several of the animals didn’t have enough room (at least as not as much as the animals at Oakland and San Diego have). Sam said that the zebras …

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A week or so before we left CA for PA, Sam found a book on dinosaurs and became interested, especially in some of the long and torturous names. So we’ve been reading a variety of dinosaur books, some serious and some silly. And we did one dinosaur craft shortly before our trip: a sponge-painted stegosaurus with …

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Sam and I have been at my parents’ house in PA for the past week. And have they been keeping the girl busy! The program includes… Tree-climbing Cookie-baking Cookie-Dough “Testing” Strawberry-picking Hayrides Batting practice Mowing the lawn Dressing up in Mommy’s old clothes I thought I had a few more years till Sam …

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One of Sam’s regular questions is: “When do I get to have my OWN laptop?” I finally broke down. Here it is: (Thanks again to No Time for Flash Cards for the idea.) This is a special design. Sam rejected both the QWERTY and DVORAK keyboard layout in favor of ZYKHJT raised to the Q. Also, notice the space bar on the left …

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Some research I was doing on children’s book publishers led me to There’s a Dragon Downstairs by Hilary McKay and Amanda Harvey (2005). Every night Sophie hears a dragon “rattling through the cat flap, slinking to the living room, growing and growing in the dark.” No one believes her, but Sophie is sure. The story is …

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Once again I must credit No Time for Flash Cards for this idea: take an empty egg carton, paste or paint a color on the bottom of each individual egg container, and then head outside to find things in nature that match the color. Sam initially wanted nothing to do with painting the egg carton, since she had her own …

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Back home in California, Sam has asked to continue the daily arts and crafts tradition we fell in to in the UK. (Thank heavens for craft blogs, because I would have run out of ideas long ago.) The source for this project is No Time for Flash Cards. A wonderful resource for parents of preschool age children and …

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People are often surprised that Sam and I aren’t traveling around the country every day seeing historical sites or spending loads of time in London. One reason for that is that we value spending our time in the U.K. as temporary residents and not as tourists. Another reason is that Sam is three (three and a half, Mom!) …

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In an episode of Dollhouse I watched just before we left the U.S., Adele Dewitt, the very proper, very British director of the Dollhouse proclaims in a drug-induced rant: “I don’t say hard R’s.” I’ve been thinking about that phrase a lot over the past couple of weeks. Indeed one of the major differences between British …

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