Samara's Second Birthday

Today is Samara's second birthday. Pretty crazy that we have been parents for two years, though in other ways it's hard to remember life before we met her! Today was my first day of part time working (technically Monday was, but today was my first day actually not working!), and it was so awesome to spend it with Sam. We slept in until 7:45 (heavenly!), then we skyped with Bubbie and Zaydie and made cupcakes. We went for a walk with the scooter (until they started spraying for mosquitoes and we had to come back inside). We read books. We build with blocks. We coloured. We even went mountain climbing on our bed. When Sam slept I went to two doctor appointments that I never had time to go to, and then ran other errands. I spoke with people I always want to call but never get a chance to. I got to play with Samara outside in the middle of the day...AND go to her music class. She has been going for over a year, and I have NEVER been (I wasn't so impressed, but that's another story). We then played on the playground, had dinner, sang happy birthday on skype with Savta and Papa (with Tita too), ate the cupcakes (Sam just liked the frosting, really), read books, opened presents from Tita and a new toothbrush from Mommy and Daddy (hey - if you wrap it and make it special, what do they know!?) and went to bed. What a great great day.

I want to try to capture what Samara is like right now.

• She says sentences like, "I have boo boo," or "I want milk." Or "mommy drink water too.
• She likes to orchestrate. She tells me where to sit and what to do. (I recently read that no one calls little boys "bossy", so I'm reluctant to use that word). She's usually pretty flexible, but she will sit on say, the red square, and she wants me to sit on yellow.
• She knows her colours. She sometimes confuses green and blue, but overall she knows red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, black, brown and white.
• She is extremely excited by diggers and cranes.
• When I'm not listening to her but she wants me to, she will physically move my head to look at her.
• She likes to lick ice. She loves ice cream, yogurt, raisins and cereal bars. She hates trying new foods, but she'll still eat purees if we make her.
• She can recognise books in her bookshelf (like if I'm talking about them, she will go get them), like one fist two fish, caps for sale, goodnight moon, goodnight gorilla, michigan book, pajama time and ALL of the Jewish books.
• She actually loves everything Jewish. She knows the bracha for the candles. She wants to practice shabbat everyday. She talks about the shofar non-stop, and sometimes she says, "I scared shofar," and kind of hugs herself while she says it. I'm not sure why she's scared of the shofar. She also loves to wear kippot.
• She has a running commentary through life. Singing. Dancing. Eating. All done. Start singing. Talking. Ringing. Anytime she hears a ring, she goes, "ding."
• She knows nearly all animals that I know. She's good with animal sounds too. It's pretty impressive, really. She does call the hyena in Goodnight Gorilla a rhino, but mostly she's got it.
• She remembers the weirdest things - like for example she remembered what cup someone used in our house more than a week after they had left.
• She is extremely good with names. She knows all of the names of the kids in our condo - and some of their moms' too! She's super social - loves to say hi, NAME and bye bye.
• She does not like sharing. She knows what it means to share, she knows the word share, and she uses it, but always at the last minute, she pulls it in (whatever "it" is) and says, "mine."
• She loves to clean. She hates dirt.

I could actually probably go on and on, but I won't.

In other news, there is some sort of parade in my neighborhood tonight - I think it's Chinese, since I saw a lion-dance character. It had LOADS of symbols, drums and people chanting. It had two cars with neon lights. There were probably 200 people trailing it (and the people didn't look Chinese - at least from the 7th floor). This was at 8:30 and again at 10pm. Don't other people's kids sleep? I mean really, SYMBOLS!?