Email Memorybank - Sam's nicknames

This excerpt from the email exchange dates back to February 2004: Sam was 10 months old.

We have a ton of nicknames for Sam. First, and this started in the womb, so unconcerned were we with scripting his baby behaviour, was "smashe" for Smashin' Sam Ashe Arnold. Some of our friends still call him Smashe {still true at nearly 5 years old}. Fits his "bam-bam" moods perfectly. His favourite activity these days is to take a large plastic spoon and hammer it "Stomp"-style on the side of the oven. He also likes the sound it makes thwacking against a cooling rack.

But Smashe is the lesser version of "Oh-Sammy Bin Laden: Baby of Mass Destruction!" In this mode, he gleefully tears the house apart. Empties drawers, relocates things (recently found my cucumber bar soap in the bread pans), expresses interest in how things like his activity cube are made by destroying them. He watches the balls roll the ramps once and then attacks it, pulling the whole thing over on to his lap and flipping it from side to side to side, pulling out the gears, the letters and numbers, the clock. Once he's emptied the thing and spit on the mirror, he looks at me as if to say that I'm free to reassemble so the game can begin again. Of course, there are fewer and fewer pieces around. For the life of me I can't figure out what he's done with the blue and red balls. This place is simply not that big!! Child of a Neat Freak; it figures.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's Samster the Hamster, who can sit quietly and study an envelope for many long minutes, as though he's thinking "oh, I see... Afix proper postage in the top right corner, but be certain to include the return address in the top left, in the event that the letter cannot, for whatever reason, be delivered." When you mix these two personas together, you get Stewie, from The Family Guy. And then there's Ram-Sam-Sam, Sam-a-lam, or Sam-I-Am, named for the Gerber Baby Charm he pours on for strangers in grocery line-ups; his big smiles, fake shyness, coos and gurgles are right out of the movies and have nothing to do with the baby he is at home. Everyone asks "is he always this happy?" to which I usually respond "uhhh, no."

Sam has his hands on the DVD cord now, threatening to unplug it, just so he can see me shake my head "no." He thinks that's hysterical and he mimics it with great vigour, causing me to worry about his brain sloshing around in there. Try as I might, I can't keep the shake out of my 'no!' but I have a few tones depending on the No Category: "No, that's yucky!" for when he snacks on the dust bunnies from behind the fridge; "No, that's dangerous!" for when he pops the front off the hard drive and sticks his arm inside the computer; "No, that's mommy's" for when he finds my teacup and Sam-slams it on the floor. His response is either to laugh or to growl, but he's catching on, I think. Jeremy has another one; "No, you don't play with Daddy's glasses!" I wonder how many thousands of times he'll have to say that! {These days, it's "watch my glasses!" when Sam sends them flying in a play-wrestling match... "Sorry!" Sam says, and waits for Daddy to tuck them safely under the nearest furniture before taking another flying leap...!}.