His Favourite Thing

Isn't this the cutest? Sam drew a himself and his Daddy at the Plant Pool. The composition includes both pools (one deep and one shallow), the clock with mutiple second hands for lane swimmers, and pokey-haired father and son holding hands on the way in. Sam's favourite summer memory...

He was to start swimming lessons last Saturday, but there was a "pool fouling" and the whole thing was called off. I hope he doesn't draw that picture...

And Puppy Dog Tails

A week or so ago, I was gathering sweet slice cucumbers and golden cherry tomatoes from the garden, when I spotted a little brown rabbit along the hedgerow. Our eyes locked and he froze for a moment, but then he calmly resumed nibbling on the long grass. I whisper-called Trace and told her to get Anabel’s quiet attention. A bunny sighting in this neighbourhood is hardly rare, but it’s one thing to catch a glimpse of one bounding across the lawn as you drive in and quite another to watch one enjoying a nice, light snack a few feet away.

Anabel was awestruck as only a 22-month old girl can be at the spectacle of a plush toy come to life and wiggling its nose at her. She allowed Trace to hold her for a minute or two, then squirmed from her mother’s arms and introduced herself to her new pet. Bunny scampered away, of course, and Anabel burst into tears, of course. “Gone?!” she wailed, checking and rechecking the thick (admittedly weedy) growth around the tomato plants. “Gone!? Gone!?” Poor Anabel. She was grief-stricken at the loss.

Poorer still was the baby bunny that ventured into our yard the following afternoon. We don’t know for sure what happened to him—and we’re not entirely unconvinced that Huddie wasn’t involved—but this little guy lay quite dead on the patio stones in front of the BBQ. The girls all kept a squeamish distance, but the boys had a good look. In fact, Sam and Carter edged up repeatedly and then took turns fleeing the scene of fly-encrusted carnage, squealing the words “It’s aliivvvve: I saw it move!” When Jeremy arrived on the scene, he decided that a proper burial, rather than an unseemly Glad bag send-off, was in order.

Now, I can remember burying the bodies of little sparrows that had broken their necks flying into our windows, of bidding teary farewells to round after round of gerbils, hamsters, guinea pigs, and budgies. Little girls would do this up right—a gravemarker would be fashioned; someone would say a few words; poetry might be read. But this isn’t, apparently, how boys do animal death at all. When Jeremy came in to report that the grisly deed was done, I asked how Sam and Carter reacted. “Oh, they’re fine,” he answered. “In fact, they’d like to know if we can dig the bunny up in the spring and look at the skeleton.”

The skeleton.

So sugar & spice laments losing the mere sight of her bunny friend, while snakes & snails remain happy in the knowledge that their bunny may be gone, but he certainly won’t be forgotten.

Post 100

One hundred Sam stories in the archives. Wow. That makes me happy.

I no longer rue the fact that I didn’t start recording my impressions sooner, that I missed getting down the details of infancy and toddlerhood, so busy was I — what, with an infant and then a toddler on my hands. And there’s something nicely literary in starting this epic with Chapter 4 (years old), something satisfying in filling in the back story in brief glimpses as we follow our hero into his fifth and sixth years. Besides, everyone knows that doubling back to focus on those early chapters only disappoints an audience hooked on the middle part of the tale. Just look at the Star Wars series. So I’ll continue to indulge the odd flashback when the mood strikes, but I won’t continue to regret the missing portions and wonder what post I'd be on today if I'd created the blog the very first time I uttered the words "I should be writing this down."

I can forgive myself the long delay because I see how even 100 stories doesn’t do it, even 100 stories doesn't begin to convey who Sam is and what he means to us. I can’t believe the breadth and depth and detail of what I haven’t got to yet, of what came and went with no acknowledgement in I Have a Word for You. Sam played eight weeks of soccer this summer, and Jeremy coached his team (for crying out loud!). How could I not have written about that? Seriously. That’s blog-worthy.

Another case in point: Just five minutes after I started this post, Sam burst through the front door with a colourful Kung-Fu Panda stylized karate certificate declaring “Sam Arnold, You Are Great!” He puffed his chest out proudly, explaining “I had the loudest HUSSAH! and KEE-YI! in the whole class!” He graduated out of the Little Dragon program this summer and into the White Belt class, and he’s just starting to get his bearings there among the bigger kids and the new-to-the-sport grown-ups. Have I mentioned karate since he joined a year ago? I don’t think I have. It's a constant in the background of our lives, but the blog doesn't capture that. Well, except just now.

But, really, it’s the tiny moments that are hard to get down while fresh. Like Sam under the breakfast table hoping to pull off some sleight of hand and instructing Jeremy and I, by way of diversion, “don’t look over here: look at your chuther.” Your chuther. That’s funny. And yesterday morning he tried a new phrase on for size, telling me that, according to his standards, his knee didn’t feel so good. Only he said “according to my stempers,” mumbling the word he wasn’t so sure of. We were taking Huddie on his morning walk, and I squeezed Sam’s hand tight, so happy was I to catch the little vocabulary leap in person.

These are just the things I remember several days after the fact. There are so many more fleeting moments that I want to file away here for sharing with friends and family now, for smiling over later, for Sam’s benefit in the long run—a full record of how much he’s loved, how often he delights us. But those moments happen when I’m with my little boy, and I’d ruin them by fumbling for a pen and a scrap of paper. I know that. I’m content with what I have captured, and I’m already enjoying revisiting last year’s posts and imagining how an older Sam will respond to some of these tales. Already so many things have changed. The band-aid fascination of Spring 2007? Over. We’d likely have forgotten his brief addiction if not for this blog.

So I think I'll try to sit down here a little more often and sketch a short note when I don't have the time to craft a longer story. In fact, I’ll start with this photo. That’s a shot of Sam taken the day he figured out how to spider up the inside of the kitchen doorframe. Jeremy’s laughing in the background because he remembers doing just the same thing in his own kitchen doorway decades ago, and he loves the feeling of seeing his childhood self reflected in his exuberant little boy. And I love watching Jeremy love Sammy.

Enough said.