Me: Sammy, how many toes do you have? Sam: One, two, three, four, five, Sammy, eight, nine, ten.

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Lately Sammy will run up to me or her father and say, “Australia is? Sam’s room?” She just loves pointing out the land down under on the world map in her room. It used to hang on her wall, like a normal map, but a few weeks ago the picture hook broke, it fell down, and I have just been too lazy to fix it. When I …

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One of Sam’s favorite things to do now is to help me “cook” in the kitchen. What this means really is that I am training her to be my sous-chef. She dumps vegetables in the salad bowl, puts scraps in the compost tub, tries to spin the salad spinner, and insists on juicing lemons and limes by herself. (“Sammy do that!” …

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AC and I did one of those simultaneous parental double-takes two evenings ago in the back yard. Sam walked down a short flight of rail-less concrete steps all by herself and counted each step as she went: “one, two, three.” “Did she just walk down the steps all by herself?” “Wait, did she she just count to three?!” …

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We spent the morning of this holiday at the ER– Sam woke up with rapid breathing and lethargy. She’s had a cold the past couple of days and has been downright miserable. The doc heard wheezing in her lungs, and a truck load of phlegm. They also did this interesting test which measured the oxygen in her blood using a …

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Friends from the east are often asking me if I’ve seen the famous San Francisco fog roll in off the bay. Other than one jaunt to the Golden Gate Bridge in the fog (described here) the answer was no. Last week, however, Sammy and I went to a playground up in the El Cerrito hills and I saw the fog descend down the …

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Five years ago today, AC and I married each other under the warm Virginia sun in one of Thomas Jefferson’s gardens. Four years ago today, we set off on a 10-day bicycle tour of Western Ireland. Three years ago today, we dined at Molly’s Pub in Lancaster, PA, and then got caught in a rain storm during our walk home. Two …

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Sam’s current favorite pastime is to “read” books to herself in the morning. She’ll pull a book off of her bookshelf, put it on the couch, clamber up onto the couch, arrange herself with the book in her lap, then turn the pages while reading them in her most fluent gibberish. (Every now and then an English word will be …

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Our last couple of weekends have been quite enjoyable. The Friday after AC’s birthday, we hired the babysitter for Sam and went out for dinner just the two of us at our new favorite date night locale: Six Degrees on Solano.

The next day, AC and Sam went for a bike ride up to Arlington Park.

And I mean “up” as …

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If not, you can hear me announce her arrival on the carousel. (Anyone know how to edit sound out of a video in iMovie?) We took Sammy to the carousel at Tilden Park in Berkeley on Easter weekend. She didn’t seem to remember her first ride which was on her birthday. But 6 months later, her longterm memory is much …

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