Sam at School

Sam was totally rocking it at school today! Go, Sam, go!

He is a gentleman and a scholar. (If you don't count the fact that his favorite thing to call anyone right now is "fart man." We're working on it.)

Sam's Weekend

Not bad for a near washout, weather-wise.

At ease.

This is a photo Sam's preschool teachers sent us today. Nothing unusual, just Sam looking at a picture book. The one thing that strikes me, though, is how comfortable he is. How relaxed. He is perfectly contented just sitting there, by himself, looking at a book. On Sunday, we were talking about how most everyone will be moving up to new classes at his school soon. Sam and a couple of his friends will stay behind with their current teachers. We talked about how new friends will be joining him in this class and how he can help them learn their way around since he has been there a while now. He could, I said, show them where the cool toys are and make them feel more comfortable.

"And I could help them stop wandering around," he added. My heart sunk. Wandering around is exactly what Sam does in the classroom (or any new environment) when he is not yet comfortable. His teachers reported it at his last daycare when we first moved back to the area and at his new preschool when we finally got in this past March. In all of the photos they sent us each day, Sam was never in the foreground, participating, but in the background walking through the shot. Sam is an observer, and he will often just hang around the fringes, taking it all in. In both classes the teachers connected his tendency to wander around the room all day as an inability to focus or sit still, and they would always praise his developmental growth and maturity after a month or so when he would finally start spending a significant amount of time at any given center. But I know that is really just how Sam copes with being the new kid, reflecting the fact that he hasn't yet found his place.

Sam remembers that feeling, it turns out. When "nobody won't play with me," he said. I'm glad to see him sitting still now, even for a moment. And I'm glad when I pick him up these days, he is always angry with me because I'm too early, interrupting play time with his friends.

Telling Stories

Sam is really into superheroes these days, but he only knows what little misinformation is shared with him by his friends at school. He hangs on to these gems and mixes them with his own take on things to create elaborate tales about his superhero friends. Why, just the other day he interrupted my shower to ask me if Iron Man sleeps in his iron suit. When I suggested that he did not, in fact, sleep in his suit, Sam reasonably responded that "Iron Man doesn't have 'jamas!" So I don't know where that leaves us.

And yesterday we got in an argument over whether or not The Hulk can fly. I said he couldn't, but I'm not 100% sure of that. And Sam was invested in the idea of The Hulk flying, so I dropped it.

Here are a couple of videos of Sam discussing 1) How the Joker got his start in the Batman series and 2) Spider-Man and Spider-Girl vs. the bad guys.


SUBTITLE:
He came from a ride. And then he fell in poisonous water. And it was a lot of poisonous. And then he wanted to get it (the poisonous, I'm presuming) on everybody and Batman. But Batman saves the day. And Spider-Man. And that's it.

 
SUBTITLE:
Spider-Man and Spider-Girl saw a bad guy and he was trying to catch him but he was too fast. So Spider-Man and Spider-Girl shoot webs and then there was another bad guy and another bad guy and then he break all the things (?); break the houses; and break the toys; and break the windows; and break the pictures; and the phones; and the everything in the world; and the chicken coop. The End. Now I want a video!