Sam speaks!

Having some trouble standing up after taking a spill.

Snow bunny.

Technically Sam has been talking for months now but it's really been within the last couple of weeks that it seems like he uses words much more frequently than his pointing and grunting thing.

As of today, he has nearly 50 words that he uses regularly (at least he has 50 that we can recognize). Some are typical baby words but others are purely the result of having a cheeky older brother. And here they are in no particular order......

Dog, doggie, horse, duck, potty (he's actually gone pee in the potty once and loves to sit on it), hi, bye-bye (he yells this and waves with his entire arm to anyone who will respond), Mommy, Daddy, this (accompanied by a finger pointing to whatever he happens to want), pop, thank you, no, yes, tickle, cow, baa, ball, wall, hat, moon, eye, woof, cup, pup, up, apple, yea, fish, book, lion, dirty, owie, light, boat, row row (he tries to sing the entire song), bowl, off, on, bonk (he bonks his head pretty often and always holds the side of it and tells us), floor, whoa, splash, hair, Paul (our friend who did the electrical work recently in our house - I guess seeing Paul everyday made an impact on Sam), oh dear (repeated after I said it while changing his VERY nasty diaper), oh boy (Ben says this pretty often), oh buddy (also said by Ben).

Sam will also reach his arms high over his head when asked, "How big is Sam?"

And he experienced free range snow play the other day in the driveway with Ben. Ben did his shoveling while Sam wandered. He seemed to have fun but was incredibly frustrated when he'd fall down and couldn't quite push back up into a standing position in his very puffy snowsuit. It made me think of the movie "A Christmas Story".... I can't put my arms down!

Sam and Ben both had fun making snow angels in the fresh powder and Sam even had a face plant in the snow and came up smiling.....with his eyelashes, nose, and mouth full of the white stuff.