apropos of nothing

pudding painting

i remember hearing about this a million years ago, but thought it might be fun for sam to try today. he happened to talk daddy and me into buying some vanilla pudding at the grocery last saturday, so i mixed up a little bit with red, yellow, and blue food coloring and was going to let sam finger paint with it—plus, he'd get to lick his fingers and generally get all messy, fun right?

well, it turned out that sam was a little gun shy when it came to putting his fingers into the pudding paint—go figure! but he did use a spoon to blop it and stir it around and such. of course, his favorite part was the eating.

when he was done, we took the remainder of the pudding and i had him guess what color we'd make if we mixed the different colors—a tasty lesson in color theory.

making—father's day

sam and i cooked up a few projects for father's day. we made some wrapping paper and decorated this frame for grandpa. we also took a photo to put in it.

i particularly had a good time coming up with phrases for the wrapping paper like "i love you more than garbage trucks" or "i love you more than star wars", and sam really enjoyed getting a chance to use markers for a change. i love crafting with my little sidekick.

cordelia @ 32 weeks

we had our 32 week appointment this morning, and all seems well. cordelia was in fine form, pushing back at the doppler and basically moving around so that it was difficult for the doctor to get a reading on her heartbeat. this girl is definitely not one to sit still, and i'm hoping she'll decide to make her own entrance (preferably soon after july 22nd—37 weeks) and not wait around for someone to grab her and yank her out the way they had to with sam. one can only hope.
in the meantime, she's a busy gal. making sure that i know she's there most of the day and doing her best to let me know that it would be fine with her if there was a bit more leg-room. sorry, kid. there's only so much i can do.

i don't know if you remember this post, but sam was the inspiration for one of the figures on this book cover (he's quite the little model of cuteness for TPP recently):

well, the authors are now working on an upcoming "sequel" and i got to work on the cover for that too. here's the sketch (it's going to the shooting squad today, and i hope it survives!):

i'm sure you can spot the sammy—happy hair and all!

recently, according to instagram

fort building • movie night • coloring • bubble blowing • stopping to smell the roses 

• mommy in her "glamour girl" sunglasses

a day out with thomas OR how to make your kid so tired he ends up face down in the gravel

to be honest, i never really thought much about these kiddie events, but we thought it would be a fun way to spend a morning with sam. so last friday mike took the day off, we packed up some provisions, and we set out to the "a day out with thomas" event at the cuyahoga valley scenic railroad.
despite the fact that sam's got trains at home he had a great time driving around on the train tables once he could finally find an abandoned engine (and this took a while, let me tell you. he was EXTREMELY patient, and i was mighty proud of my sam standing there watching carefully for his turn and not having a tantrum because there weren't any engines free for him to play with. sometimes it's just as well to have a somewhat reserved three year old.)
there was a forklift and a few other small vehicles that they were letting kids get into and pretend to drive (also a hit). and after we ate a bit of lunch (so glad we packed something healthy rather than relying on what i can only assume was highly overpriced junkfood), we finally boarded thomas for our ride.
the trains were nice (as in air conditioned and quiet), and the ride was just long enough so that sam saved his fidgety sillies for the last five minutes. i can only say that this part was definitely geared to the 2–6 year old thomas fanboys (sam knows about thomas and enjoys watching the show occasionally, but he's FAR from fanboy status.) still, he liked the ride and had a good time. 
afterward we walked around and saw the miniature train displays, rang a big train bell, perused the bouncy houses (sam refused to go in alone), and sam got his temporary tattoo. 
at this point we were all feeling a bit hot and tired, but sam was keen on revisiting the forklift and buggy, so we went back over and sam played around a while longer. we probably should've tried to make a graceful exit at this point, but instead we pushed our luck and sam ended up face down in the gravel with another bonk on the head (a small cut on his left eyebrow—that left side of his head really takes a beating) and a scraped up knee. he was clearly way past "done". we found the first aid tent where they cleaned and bandaged up our boy (and where i proceeded to get entirely too dizzy to stand), and then quickly made our way to one last stop at the porta-potties and then home.
sam was out like a light within minutes of getting back in the car, and he didn't protest leaving until he woke up at home a couple of hours later.

some more photos from the day:

though i'm not sure we'll do the thomas event again, we did have a good time. we'd actually like to try going on one of the non-thomas rides sometime in the near future.