One of Sam’s favorite activities is to flip the pages of her nursery rhyme book and sing along. In fact, if she’s ever at a loss for words, she’ll just start reciting “Mary had a little lamb,” or “Pop goes the weasel.” Incongruous, yes, although sometimes “that’s the way the money goes” is a great conversation filler. …

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Coming up: a video series of Sammy singing. But first, here she is playing the harmonica on her birthday. She plays as well as I do!

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Sam and I spent the morning cleaning the house. Well, I cleaned, and Sam mostly created things for me to clean up, or tried to prevent me from cleaning, like when she grabbed an empty bucket from my hands and immediately filled it with toys and books. I felt like I was on one of those reality-contest shows. Steel …

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Sam and I just returned from her 24-month wellbaby visit with her pediatrician. The exciting news is that Sammy weighs 24 and 1/4 pounds and is 33 inches tall, which puts her in the 25th percentile for height and almost the 25th (22) percentile for weight. This is the highest she’s ever been on the weight scale! So …

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I have a stack of non-fiction books that I’ve been meaning to get to for some time. Most of my pure-pleasure reading is fiction, and I usually curl up with these just before bedtime. Today, however, during Sam’s nap, I finally started the next book on the queue: Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty. It’s amazing. I’ve …

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The ice cream truck. The ice cream truck that loudly plays the same stupid jingle non-stop. The ice cream truck that rolls down our street EVERY AFTERNOON, year-round, 7 days a week. The ice cream truck that rouses my daughter prematurely from her only nap of the day.

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Happy 2nd Birthday to our beautiful daughter.

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What a difference a year makes.

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On Labor Day we went to the beach where Sammy jumped a little bit in the gently rolling water that waved ashore. Before we left, she practiced her jumps in the house. Sam’s bikini: courtesy of her Newport News aunts. Off-screen jumping jacks: courtesy of Mom.

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Mom and Sam are walking up to Tassajara playground when they pass a place where there used to be an apple tree. Sam: Apple tree? Mom: Oh yeah, it’s gone, honey. They cut it down. Sam: Sammy cut it. Mom: Oh you did? Sam: Yeah. Mom: What did you cut it with? Sam: A knife. Mom: A knife?! Sam: Yeah, a little knife. (Nota …

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