Sam Becomes a Firefly

I wish I had the time (and energy) to do this milestone justice, but the piles of dirty laundry have reached maximum chaos and the dishwasher needs emptying so I can immediately reload and run it again, and I have breast pump components to wash and boil before I start getting clothes and gym bags and car seats ready for our before-the-sunrise start tomorrow. I wish I had the time to write in detail about Sammy's excitement and the way he cautiously checked out the toys and the fishtank and the cubby with his name on it and the pile of fireflies that needed to be colored and sprinkled with glitter. I wish I had the energy to talk about my own anxiety about making sure everyone in the entire city knew that Sam has a peanut allergy and cannot have peanuts and here is his epi-pen and please, please, please don't ever let him get hurt by anything ever. Ever. :)

But most of all I wish I could share with you all the magical moment when Jamie (Sam's daycare provider) surprised us in the hallway and squatted by him and gave him a big hug and a big smile and made the entire universe seem to come perfectly in to balance for both Sam and me. I say it all the time, that this family would not be possible without this amazing woman who takes care of my children with patience and love every day... and some nights. But words cannot possibly explain how grateful I am for the way she takes care of all of us without even knowing she's doing it.

After I had left Sam alone in the room filled with toddlers and pre-schoolers and Miss Mary (who isn't the teacher we had met the day before) and without any of his friends (who would arrive later), after I had spied the three boxes of cereal and milk and various treats sitting on a table in the middle of all of them and wondered how they actually controlled who ate what, after I had kissed and hugged Sam and watched him walk off to look at the puzzles all by himself, after I slowly walked down the stairs and out to the parking lot, after all of that, I got tears in my eyes. Letting my baby go. [sigh]

Door County Memories # 5 and #6 - Monster Juice and Sammy the Seagull

Door County Memory #5 - A Woman Who Knows How to Make Monster Juice

“Where is SHE?” Sam would ask, and we all made a game of asking him her name. Grandma’s friend Mandy made it up for the last few days of the week, and her arrival was just in time. Grandma and Mommy had run out of ways to try to exhaust a 3-year-old, and Mandy came with tricks and games and toys. Sammy’s new BFF Mandy even helped him make special monster spray to keep the monsters away at night. And when we got back home Saturday night he sprayed his room before bed. “Just four sprays, Mommy. If you spray more than that it doesn’t work.”


Door County Memory #6 - Stories with TT

“Tell me a story about Sammy Seagull, Mommy,” he said as we laid next to each other in bed. It was well after 10pm and the baby was finally quiet in the other room. Whether it was because she had fallen asleep or Grandma had picked her up that night, I don’t remember. But Sam and I had fallen into bed exhausted, and he wanted a story. He and TT had been telling stories earlier that day, stories about the adventures of Sammy the Seagull, and the sad lake that didn’t have any waves until Sam the Boy came and laughed and made waves.

As exhausted as we made her, Grandma was amazing with both Sam and Eva, and I loved watching them all together. Grandma and Sam told stories and read books and explored the beach. Grandma and Eva cuddled and talked and ate mangoes and peaches and zucchini and entertained each other at 3am when everyone else wanted to sleep. The three of them wrestled in the shade of the big pine tree and Grandma read books about “Hide and Squeak” and “Tooley, Tooley!” They ventured to the farmers market and The Farm and the beach. When TT told me she’d gotten a text message from Zachary saying that it would be great if she lived to be a hundred, we all agreed.


Thank you TT for another wonderful Door County vacation! I thought I was living my life to the fullest before these children came along, but really I never knew how full life could be.








Door County 2011 Memory #4 - The Farm

Door County 2011 Memory #3 - The Fish

Door County 2011 Memory #2 - The Forest

Door County 2011 Memory #1 - The Beach

Photos from previous Door County Weeks (2004-2010)

Door County Memory #4 - The Farm

“How do they get that open?” Sam asked.

We were in the honeybee hut at The Farm. Sam the Engineer was over and over again more interested in how things worked than he was in the animals. He wanted to know how they cut the big hole in the honey tree so they could get all the bees out, and he wanted to know what a drone bee did.

At the woodcutting shed he told me “The Queen Bee is in there. She’s making baby bees.”

At the Sugar Shack he wanted to know how hot the fire had to be and how long you had to cook the maple sap before it became syrup.

In the Machine Shed he was interested in how a horse pulled a sled and why there were some tractors that didn’t have treads.

He was mildly interested in the bunnies and the doves and the baby pigs and the little chicken pecking it’s way out from a dark brown egg, but he was mostly interested in running and running and running. When we snuck through a fence for a short nature hike he told me we were looking for a honey bee tree, and when we found a bright red tomato buried inside one of the plants he gobbled it up before I even had a chance to stand up.

Thanks TT for pushing Eva in the stroller why Sammy and Mommy explored the mechanics of farming!







Door County 2011 Memory #3 - The Fish

Door County 2011 Memory #2 - The Forest

Door County 2011 Memory #1 - The Beach

Photos from previous Door County Weeks (2004-2010)

Being a Jungle Gym

I stood in the front entry under the carved wood sign that said Jamie’s Play Palace. Four children patiently waited at the dining room table across the room and another one wandered around the princess castle on the front porch. Eva looked up at us from the nearly-too-small car seat bucket, and Sam stood behind me, his hands pulling down on my back pockets and his face occasionally diving into the small of my back.

“I’m going to be shy of Jamie,” he had told me in the car. He didn’t want to return to daycare after nine Mommy days in a row, nine days filled with playing in the Lake Michigan surf, searching for and finding rocks that were “very perfect” and “really prettyful,” building and counting sand castle turrets before smashing them in fits of laughter, hiking in the woods and picking wild raspberries and overripe thimbleberries, nine days of nearly constant contact with Mommy, nine days of running and jumping and climbing and hanging on Mommy.


Read the rest here.

Door County Memory #3 - The Fish

Sam's first fish... a nice bass

“It’s just around this corner,” TT said. “We’re almost there.”

We weren’t sure we believed her since she’d been saying that for miles, but we were all in a good mood. Earlier in the day TT and Sam had rigged up all the fishing equipment (including Sam's very own brand new bright yellow fishing pole), and I had given my lecture about how we all needed to be patient with each other because fishing might be frustrating (and Eva hadn’t let Mommy or Grandma sleep the night before). When we eventually did pull around the real corner where Kangaroo Lake laid on both sides of a long straight stretch of the road, we were all ready to be out of the car. We parked in the shade and loaded up the stroller and Grandma and Sam fished from a sunny spot on big flat rocks near the side of the road while I walked the stroller. After a while we moved to the other side of the road and I helped Sammy cast into a clear open area near the edge of some reeds while Grandma walked Eva up and down the road in the sunshine. Second cast, and Sammy reeled in his first fish. We weren’t prepared for it, so Grandma walked back to the car for the net, and we snapped a few photos before setting the big guy free. Thank you, TT, for all the work you did to create that magical day!

And THANK YOU, TT, for ALL you do to make it possible for our little family to explore the world. We love you!




Door County 2011 Memory #2 - The Forest

Door County 2011 Memory #1 - The Beach

Photos from previous Door County Weeks (2004-2010)

Door County Memory #2 - The Forest

“That’s not uuuuuuusssssss,” he said dragging out the last word as he pushed his big wheel into motion and moved down the road towards the next sign. It was part of the game we had spontaneously invented during our first morning road walk. We would stop at the green and white firemarker signs and read the numbers, looking for our own place. “Two, Eight, Four, Zero,” Sam would say. “That’s not uuuuuussssss.” And off he’d go. At every driveway along the 2-mile out-and-back walk. Every morning after breakfast we would head out with Eva in the stroller, and Sam and I would race to the next mailbox or slow to pick the wild thimbleberries. We looked at butterflies and mushrooms growing from trees. We counted the number of trunks on the river birch trees. We explored rotting, fallen trees for evidence of woodpeckers and squirmy bugs. We pulled at the long vines of ivies growing along the gravel. We tickled each other with the fuzzy seed pods from wild grasses. We squatted to look at wild orchids and purple spiderwort and dandelion fuzz that just wouldn’t shake itself loose. And all the while distant woodpeckers tapped for ants and the surf of Lake Michigan pounded just over the trees. These walks were perhaps my favorite part of every day, and I’m so glad Sammy shares my love of nature big and small.

"I love this forest, Mommy!"

Picking wild thimbleberries


Checking the colors on a dead butterfly

What boy doesn't love sticks?

Tiny orange orchid-shaped wildflowers


And oh yah, Eva was there too

Coming soon: Door County Memory #3 - The Fish

Door County 2011 Memory #1 - The Beach

Photos from previous Door County Weeks (2004-2010)

Door County Memory #1 - The Beach

“Mommy, this rock is very super perfect.” He held up a large sparkling piece of the red granite that is Wisconsin’s state rock. We were walking the beach together (as we did several times a day) looking for pieces of sea glass and skipping stones and tiny clams still stuck together.

We spent much of the week going on beach adventures… playing follow-the-leader into and out of the surf, collecting rocks to share with TT, telling seagull stories, investigating dead fish, chasing butterflies, building (and destroying) sand castles, and covering our bodies with water and sand. It is, apparently, not possible to have too much time on the beach when you’re three.














See photos from previous Door County visits (2003-2010) here.