Latest on Sam

Every other day, Sam gets some time to play on the iPad. He likes to play Angry Birds games, and he has little Angry Birds Star Wars and Angry Birds Transformers telepods that can be used in conjunction with the games. Often, after he finishes playing, Sam will line up his telepods along the kitchen windowsill. These little lineups of figurines make me smile, because they remind me of how sometimes Sam likes to have things looking "just so."

In addition to being a great big brother (whose duties have extended to sitting in a laundry basket), Sam has been learning and changing a lot lately. One of the most recent changes in Sam has been his new interest in art and drawing. Over the past few weeks Sam has independently decided to draw or create some artistic thing, and it has been fun to see what projects he ends up creating. Many of his art projects involve abstract patterns and fields of color. When Sam started to make these, J gave me a knowing look that meant, "These are my genes passing down - see how he likes Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painters?!?"

Some of Sam's recent art creations on our fridge

After Sam finished this drawing, we showed Sam how his art looks a bit similar to one of Rothko's paintings.

Sam's interest in art even became intermingled with another new interest: football! I suppose it's hard for little boys to ignore all of the hype when the local football team goes to the Super Bowl for the second year in a row. Sam got some images of the Seahawks logo from school (on the last Blue Friday before the big game). He came right home from school and immediately wanted to color the logos - he even forewent a snack and an after-school television show (gasp!) because he wanted to finish his project.

 Sam wanted one logo hung on his bedroom door, and the other logo hung on the master bedroom door. They are still here right now, even though the Super Bowl was a few weeks ago.

J and Sam watched the Super Bowl. They were so fixated on the game, that I finally just brought their dinner to them on "TV trays" (i.e. a cookie sheet and a roasting pan). Sam has just really become interested in football over the past few months, due to the interest in the Seahawks.

Sam continues to love to go to museums. We were excited to learn that there was an exhibition of Star Wars costumes coming to our area, and we got to go to the show on its opening weekend. It was a really fascinating exhibition and I loved to learn about some of the historical influences on the costume choices (for example, that costume designers looked to the rich colors of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood for the dresses of Queen Amidala and her attendants). Sam loved seeing the costumes for Darth Vader and a storm trooper the most, but he was also excited about this display case that had Boba Fett and Jango Fett's suits placed side-by-side:

There also was a Nintendo exhibition at the same museum, and Sam wanted to pose for photos by this wall. He's probably one of the few kids his age who can recognize this game, since our video game console is an old NES System!

"Jumping" to get the mystery box

 Feigning terror at the approaching enemies (it was his idea to pose for this shot)

Every few days I am struck by old Sam has become. He is getting to be quite tall! He is still a voracious reader and loves to read books from the library. Right now he mostly enjoys picture books, but we are still reading the Oz chapter books together. We are in The Tin Woodman of Oz right now. He also still loves the Garfield comic books. We usually bring large stacks of picture books home (usually between twenty and thirty books) and Sam will "binge read" and finish them in a few hours.

Sam isn't too interested in wearing costumes anymore (I'm sad this era is ending), but he occasionally will dress up when he has a friend come over to play. Here he is playing with his BFF Lewis. These bright boys make quite the creative, imaginative pair!