Our Cute Little Sam - Part 1

Well I promised in my last post to get an update on Sam up. I started writing it and couldn't stop writing about our cute little bug!  The post ended up being 5 pages long with no pictures or videos, which I decided didn't make for a very fun post.  So I'm going to work on breaking it up into a few different posts with pictures and get those up over the course of this week.  So here's part one, with more to come soon :)  These will be a little disorganized, but I just want to capture some of the cute and funny things that Sam is doing right now so that we can remember them later.  Sam is growing up so fast, and it's sad to realize how many things he's done that I've already forgotten!  He is an energetic bundle of joy and we're so glad to have him in our family.

Sam is really into climbing, and digging in dirt, and playing with sticks and rocks.  He LOVES to be outside.  He will drag me to the door every morning and try to convince me to take him outside as often as he can.  He also loves dogs.  I really don't know where that came from because he's never really been around dogs much, but he gets so excited when he sees a dog.  It doesn't even have to be a real dog, it can be a dog on a dog food commercial or the cartoon puppy on Wii Sports Resort.  Whenever he sees a dog his face lights up and he starts panting like a dog and making barking noises.  We haven't yet broke the news to him that we have no intention of having any pets in our household...

Luckily to counteract his appreciation of dirt - Sam loves taking showers with us.  One thing that's really funny is that he's picked up on what we do when we take a shower.  When we turn the shower on he reaches his hand up as high as he can to try to touch the water.  He's mimicking how we test the temperature before we hop in!  He knows that until the water has been tested he can't get in, so he's started doing it himself :)  Tonight Eric was also teaching him how to blow bubbles in the bathtub.  He hasn't quite gotten the hang of it, but it was cute to see him try.

We've recently started some preliminary potty training with Sam.  We don't have any expectations that we're going to get anywhere soon, but we're getting him used to the idea of sitting on the toilet.  So we bought a little potty seat and let him sit on there after we go to the bathroom.  He thinks it's fun to sit on there for a little while and to wave goodbye to the water when we flush it.  We try to explain to him what he's supposed to do while he's on there and so we modeled the grunting that he might do when he poops.  So now he grunts whenever he sits on the toilet, even though he's not usually pooping. We've had a couple of successes and we figure this at least paves the way for when he is ready.  One funny thing that he did was we pulled him out of the shower and I ran to go get him a diaper.  While I was searching for a diaper he walked over to the toilet, lifted the lid... and peed on the floor.  As much as we didn't really want pee on the floor, we were pretty impressed with the effort :)

Along with his potty training Sam now has one chore - to throw away his diapers after we change him.  He loves taking the wrapped up diaper from us and dunking it in the diaper genie.  He gets mad now when we do it instead!

So, there's round one of the Sam update.  Round two might be slower in coming since I'll probably have to take specific pictures to go with the rest of the items, but with how slow I am with updating - take what you can get!

One Smart Little Cookie...

It's been awhile since either of us have posted an update on the blog, so while we've been pretty good at adding pictures and videos to Sam's facebook page, we're long overdue for a general family update. And don't worry if you are not a user of the facebook ;), pictures are posted here as well.

Sam is getting so smart in so many ways! It is really fascinating to see how his mind soaks up knowledge like a sham-wow. Take sign language for example. A few months ago we made an effort to teach him basic signs like "more", "milk", and "bye-bye". He didn't seem to take to it too well so we let it drop for the time being, but just in this past month, he out-of-the-blue starts using all these signs that we had shown him before.

His dexterity and spacial reasoning have increased dramatically, as well. It's kind of sad to notice how quickly he has been able to reach all the things we thought were high enough away. We've had to revamp our baby-proofing process, especially since he discovered where his mom keeps her chocolate stash!

The only downside as of late has been his sleep-training process. While he takes all of his naps on his own now, he still has a hard time sleeping through the night. Sometimes he gets so little sleep during the night that he has to make up for it in random places during the day.

But he is such a fun little guy, copying everything he sees his parents doing. He usually hangs out with me in the morning before I go into work so we can spend some time together, and one of the last things he sees me do before I leave the house is put on my shoes. The other day I come into the family room because I realized my shoes were missing, and then I see this:

We sure do love this little guy and all the funny things he does! He's learning to say words and do actions like waving and saying "Aye!", which serves as both his greeting and farewell gesture ("Hi" and "Bye"). We also really enjoy his word for food that he wants to eat or is currently enjoying: "MMMMmmm!"

Our regular family life hasn't been extremely exciting, but we're still getting out and having fun. We finally took advantage of my sister Dianne's Christmas Gift to us and went to see Fiddler on the Roof at the Hale Center Theater in Salt Lake City. Given that Brittny was in Young Ambassadors for four years, you'd think she would have seen this show by now, but surprisingly she hadn't! And of course since it's about a fiddler (and it's a really great show), we had to go see that one. It was a lot of fun. Thanks Dianne!

And the first week of April brought LDS General Conference and by extension, a mission reunion! Sadly, this was the first mission reunion we attended where the number of attendees actually shrank instead of growing. Last time, we took up the whole chapel with all the people that were around here, but as people graduate and move on to other areas of life, it makes it that much harder to get together. I used to get all the members of my Taidong district together for dinner either before or after the reunion. We were a very close district in the mission, but this time around, only my buddy Vance and I were able to get together.

But it's okay, life is supposed to keep changing for us. I found the General conference messages to be truly inspiring. We watched it up at Brittny's grandparents house, and while it was fun to be with family, the noise and little kids running around made it particularly difficult to focus on the TV. So instead, I picked up the Internet stream through my laptop (and at times my new phone) and used noise-isolating earphones. I also participated in the online commentary through twitter, which was exciting in a sense because we were able to become the 4th most popular subject on all of Twitter during conference. It feels like a neat way to share more about the Gospel.

So that concludes the highlights of the past month, I hope I wasn't too boring!

Sam's first haircut!

You may have noticed in Sam's birthday post that his hair was getting a little bit on the long side. I had been resisting cutting it for a long time because it was SO cute. Especially because it would go every which way and he looked like a little Einstein. Plus, baby hair is so soft! I was having a hard time resigning myself to the fact that our little Sam was growing up and needed to have a big boy haircut.

Well, Taylor and Ryan returned our hair clippers and Eric convinced me it was finally time. So on Friday after Sam's birthday we took the plunge. And of course we documented with pictures for your enjoyment...

Before - you can see how his hair was going over his ears. He'd have had a hard time going to the BYU Testing Center...

Getting his hair cut was a team effort. Taylor held him, I did the cutting, and Eric filmed the process. Sam thought it was great to have so much attention and hammed it up for the camera :P

Sam wouldn't stay still for a good after shot, but you can see a quick glimpse of him as he's on his way to other things.

Aww, my little baby is all grown up. Ok, so not really, he's only one, but it is amazing how much older he looks even with just a little bit of a haircut.

Sam's birthday

It's crazy to think that a year ago we brought home this little thing -

And now we have this big thing -

Yup, March 4th was Samuel's first birthday. It's kind of funny having a birthday for someone who doesn't really understand what a birthday is, but we had fun all the same. Sam and I were home alone the night before since Eric had Omniture Summit up in Salt Lake that day, so it wasn't too special during the day. I made him french fries for lunch because he loves them, and I would read to him whenever he wanted, and I sang Happy Birthday to him in place of his usual lullabies. Not exactly major concessions, but I wanted him to have a good day. We decided to only have a very small celebration for Sam since he's still a little wary of most people. So we had Grannie & Grandpa Hansen and Taylor and Ryan Lockwood (my sister and brother-in-law) come over for dinner. We made Chicken Fettucinne Alfredo for dinner because Sam thinks it's really funny to play with noodles. Also, have I mentioned that it's an AWESOME recipe? Oh yeah, like every other post since we discovered it. Well, we still love it and I don't feel bad about posting about it because it's not my culinary expertise (read: I don't have any culinary expertise) that makes it great, it's just a delicious recipe.

Taylor came over a little bit early to help me get the meal ready which was especially helpful since she was able to go pick up some ingredients for me as Eric still had the car in Salt Lake. Eric tried to get out of Salt Lake as soon as he could but ended up having to stay until the end of the closing ceremonies for Summit. Unfortunately that meant that he had to drive home while it was snowing AND rush hour. Not a fun way to have to make that commute. But he still made it home in pretty good time, all things considered. AND he beat his parents here, so he could still be a good host (it probably helped that they were also coming from Salt Lake and had to deal with the same conditions :P ).

Dinner turned out well and we enjoyed the people that we had here. After dinner was cleaned up Sam opened up his presents. Grannie and Grandpa had brought Sam Green Eggs and Ham (because it has Sam-I-am in it!) and a touch and feel farm book. Sam LOVES to read books, he spends most of the day trying to hand me books and get me to read them. He even likes to turn the pages on his own which I think is super cute. So the books were perfect. He loves to touch all the different textures in the Farm book too which makes it an even better sensory experience for him.

Eric and I got Sam a little toy bus to push around. Just before Christmas I'd decided that Sam was too young to play cars and decided against getting him any for Christmas. The day after I finished my Christmas shopping we were at a bridal shower and Sam started playing cars with another little boy there. Guess I was proved wrong! So, I'd been planning for awhile to get him a car for his birthday. What I didn't realize was that in addition to having little people inside this bus the people bounce as you push the bus, and you can push the driver to have it sing songs and light up! Score! The bus has been a big hit with him too.

Then of course came the most fun part of a first birthday party - the cake. Eric informed me before we got married that there is a tradition in the Hansen family of giving kids their own cake on their first birthday and letting them go to town with it. This seemed like an awesome tradition so we definitely wanted to keep with it for our family. Here are the results -

He started off eating with a spoon...

Then decided to ditch the spoon and eat with his hands. You can tell he's pleased by this decision because he's clapping.

Then his Aunt Taylor shoved his face into the cake (hence the large amount on his forehead. Surprisingly he thought this was the best part yet and kept insisting that she do it again

He really got into the whole cake eating thing at this point. Just dug right in face first

Our very happy birthday boy!

Thanks to everyone who helped make Sam's first birthday a wonderful day! We love you Sam! Thanks for being a part of our family :)

Boxing Day and beyond

For those of you without British heritage you might be wondering what Boxing Day is. Simply put, it's a public holiday in most countries that are currently or used to be under British rule, as well as several other predominantly Christian nations. It's an excuse to have the day after Christmas off from work :) There are several theories for how the holiday got its name but none have been confirmed.

Anyways, our boxing day was spent mostly up at my grandparents. Eric hadn't yet had a chance to go skiing this season so he took the opportunity to go up to Beaver Mountain with my grandpa. Logan hasn't gotten much snow this season so the skiing was a little rough but they had a lot of fun. Luckily they were just up there for a half day so Eric didn't even come back super sore like he usually does!

Sam and I slept in as much as we could that morning. When we got up we went upstairs to find my cousin Todd watching Lifetime television with my grandma. It was kinda funny to see :) Sam discovered a new snack that my grandma had leftover from when my cousins were his age. It's this puffy, fruity cereal, and he LOVED it. He is still working on the canister that my grandma sent home with us.

Once Eric got back we quickly washed us all up to head back to Salt Lake City for a family dinner at Eric's parents apartment. Eric was especially excited because it was time for another Hansen Family Christmas tradition - gingerbread houses! Sam enjoyed this tradition too because he got a hold of one of our roof pieces...

... and discovered he really likes gingerbread! Of course this meant that we were one piece short for making our gingerbread house, but I'll have to have Eric post the video of what he ended up doing with our gingerbread house with that shortage.

After gingerbread houses we headed back up to Logan. We stayed up for awhile as I had some work to finish for a client (I'd been meaning to finish it earlier the previous week but I kept getting busy with Christmas preparations). So Sam and Eric were watching Top Gear with Todd. Sam wasn't exactly being a model child and since Eric had seen how well Sam reacted to cookies earlier in the day...

... Sam was allowed another cookie.  Quite the mess, but also a very happy Sam. Todd's friend Josh came up to Logan that night as well and the guys had fun watching more manly shows before bed.

Sunday was exactly what it was supposed to be - a day of rest! We went to church in the morning and then were able to spend the rest of the afternoon just hanging out with family and napping.

Unfortunately Sam didn't take very well to being away from home so the whole trip was pretty rough for him but it was still nice to be away from home and with family during the holidays. Sunday night was probably the roughest night with Sam.

On Monday morning Eric was getting ready to go skiing and asked if it would be better if he just stayed with Sam and me so that I could have a bit of a break. While I really appreciated his offer I knew he was really looking forward to skiing, and that Sam and I could just take most of the morning to get the sleep we needed. So that's what we did, and Eric got to go skiing again.

It worked out well, Sam and I helped my Grandma put away some of her Christmas decorations (and by help, I mean that I talked to her and tried to keep Sam distracted from throwing the decorations around). Eric had another fun day of skiing. I'm really glad he got to go because he loves skiing and doesn't get to go as often as he would like. It was a good day just being with family.

Tuesday was our last day at my grandparents. We slept in and then packed ourselves up to go to Idaho for our niece's wedding. It was so nice to get to spend time with my grandparents and just doing something different during our Christmas break than sitting at home.

Stay tuned for my next post about our niece's wedding.

Christmas

Eric and I realized that this was probably our last Christmas for a very long time that we could go to bed early on Christmas Eve and sleep in on Christmas Day as we didn't have any bicycles to assemble and Sam isn't yet old enough to wake up at 4am excited for Christmas morning. We were really excited to take full advantage of this. However, since we stayed up late on Christmas Eve watching Tuesdays with Morrie and we were going to visit Eric's Grandma Hansen at noon with his parents... that didn't so much happen.

We set our alarm for 9am Christmas morning, which didn't exactly thrill us since it was 3am already.  However, the 5 year old in me woke up before that all excited that it was Christmas morning. It was kinda silly especially since I'd bought all my own Christmas presents so it wasn't like I had anything that was going to surprise me. But I was so excited to see how Sam reacted to his Christmas presents and to see if I'd done a good job with Eric's presents that I woke up early. I decided that the best Christmas present I could give Eric was a little bit more sleep, so I turned off my alarm clock and snuck out of bed.

Eric's family tradition is to make cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning. Since I'd already had my culinary adventure for the week I had Eric buy some Pillsbury cinnamon rolls that I could just throw in the oven. So I got those all in the oven and baked them so that at least I could wake Eric up to some yummy cinnamon rolls.

Once we were all awake and ready to start Christmas morning we came out to the front room and turned on our webcam so we could do Christmas morning with my family. Kind of silly, but it was more fun than just having the three of us opening gifts on our own. Plus, my family enjoyed watching Sam open all of his presents.

Sam's Christmas stocking ready to be opened

We have video of Christmas morning that I might try to convince Eric to put together for another blog post, but for now you'll just have to know that we had a good time. I had needed a new laptop so we decided for Christmas to get a new laptop for Eric and I would inherit his old one. Sam's big gift from us was a set of blocks, which has been used extensively by him since then.

This is Sam with a toy that he got that lights up and makes noises. Yeah, I regretted the purchase even before I made it through the checkout line, but he loves it :P

Once all the gifts were opened we started to hustle to get all dressed and things cleaned up before Mom and Dad Hansen came over. The house was still a mess when they got here but we enjoyed having them over for a minute and letting them see all the fun Sam was having with his new toys (and anything else he could get his hands on of course :P)

Then it was off to the retirement home where Eric's Grandma Hansen lives. Although she lives less than 15 blocks from our apartment it was the first time we'd made it to visit her with Sam. I'm so glad we went, Sam was quite the hit at the retirement home! At lunch he just looked at people and made noises and all the people just ate it up. He put on a very good show and we got so many comments from the ladies there about how adorable he was. Definitely a good way to make some people feel good on Christmas :)

One of the really cool things at the retirement home was this gingerbread village that the residents had built. You have to see it full size to really get how cool it was. But they had put this whole thing together with gingerbread and candy, it was spectacular!

After the retirement home we raced home to pack up our car. We were heading to Kaysville that afternoon and then on to various destinations after that. We wouldn't be getting back for a week and we had hardly even started packing. So we quickly threw things into suitcases and tried to at least slightly manage the mess in our front room. Then it was into the car and off to Kaysville!

We spent that afternoon/early evening at Eric's sister Katrina's house. It was a nice relaxing evening playing games and hanging out with family. We played a game called Imaginiff which was really fun. It's a game of really random questions that you have to answer about other players in the game. One example was "Imagine if Mike were a type of makeup, which of the following would he be?" and we all had to pick whether he would be lipstick, nail polish, concealer, blush or mascara. It was pretty hysterical to see the things people picked.

After dinner and everything was done at Katrina's we hopped back in our car to head up to my grandparents' house in Millville (just outside of Logan). It was a long day so we were happy to be done traveling and ready to go to sleep for the night. We spent some time visiting with my grandparents and my cousin Todd. Then we happily collapsed into bed.

Stay tuned for more of our Christmas break adventures coming up!

Gratuitous Samuel Update

Eric's done a good job lately of keeping you updated on our family's situation as it's been changing almost by the second. But I've done a terrible job of keeping you updated on Samuel. Sad day! He's too cute to be keeping all to ourselves! So this post might be a little scattered, but I promise to add in lots of pictures and a couple random videos to make it worth your while if you make it through :) I'll apologize in advance though that most of these pictures and videos were taken with our cell phones so they're not the highest quality.

Sam at Eric's graduation. Isn't he cute in that suit?
So, Sam will be 6 months next Friday. I can't believe how fast the time has gone! He is extremely wide eyed and curious about everything. I think we've decided he can officially crawl, but he still prefers to do more of an army crawl because he can get around the room wicked fast doing so! His favorite thing to play with is anything that has to do with technology (surprise!) He loves grabbing power cords and playing with our cell phones. Lately he gets the biggest kick out of "talking" to people on my phone... which generally means that he's chewing on my cell phone and pushing buttons while I put his Grandma or Uncle Cody on speaker phone.

Yup, Sam definitely takes after his parents in his love for technology!
He still sleeps with us in our bed because it's where he's happiest and there's nothing quite like getting to cuddle with a baby. It also makes it easy to take care of him in the middle of the night. However, I think that I can say that he is now "sleeping through the night"... his night just starts later and ends later to sorta sync up with his parents' schedule. We want to work towards putting him in his own crib at night but first we need to dig out his speaker that we use to play his white noise (it's one of the few things that hasn't yet made it out of the boxes from moving). I have started trying to have bedtime routines with him so that he realizes that it's time for bed rather than just a nap. We'll read a story, change into PJs, and feed him to sleep. So far I think it isn't really working, but it makes me feel good so I'm going to keep doing it :)

Uncle Jayson's iPod might not qualify as white noise...
One of the fun things with Sam lately is to see how much he wants to be like the men he sees. He is totally a boys' boy. He likes any attention, but you can tell that when he gets attention from his dad, or his uncles he LOVES it. He starts showing off all of his cool tricks that he's learning and wants to be just like them. That goes ten fold for his dad. I think it's adorable to see how much he is still just totally enamored with Eric (not that I blame him :) ).

Oh yeah, so cool!
He also recently got a little doorway jumper that my Uncle Paul and Aunt Stacy are letting us borrow. He has had a blast with it! He loves to jump and stand. He's starting to climb. I discovered this the other day when we were all waking up in bed and Sam was just crawling around and playing with us. Then he saw the clock on Eric's nightstand. But since Sam was on the opposite side of Eric from the nightstand I thought it was ok. Nope! He climbed up, and got over Eric to make his way towards the clock.

Sam trying out the jumper for the first time

One of the best parts about Sam sleeping with us is seeing him wake up in the morning. When Sam is well rested he wakes up and is very smiley and playful. It is so adorable to see him in the morning. And of course, the first thing he goes for is his dad... even though his dad is usually still fast asleep from working late shifts. It's so fun to see the two of them interact.

Eric got some bubble wrap with a package... Sam really liked the bubble wrap!
Another thing Sam has really gotten into lately is blowing raspberries. He gets the biggest kick out of blowing raspberries on people's arms, cheeks, or whatever might be exposed. If I'm feeding him and he's not tired I know that he's done because he will stop eating and start pouncing on me to try and blow raspberries!

Sticking his tongue out

Sam blowing raspberries on Eric's mission buddy Vance Lewis
We started feeding him some solids over the past couple of weeks. We started with bananas, which he really liked, and then went back to the rice cereal. However, he hadn't been sleeping real well after introducing the rice cereal, so I've taken him off of solids for the last few days and he's been doing better. Although, he'd also had a slight fever so the two might not be related, but I wanted to get him back to normal before pushing the envelope with the solids. One of the best discoveries with starting solids is actually finding one of his new favorite toys - baby spoons! He can be entertained for a good while just holding one of those rubber spoons, and chewing on it, and banging it on things. Who would have thought?

Another random toy Sam found... the door stopper

I think that pretty much covers him right now. We're taking him in for his 6 month check up in a couple of weeks so we'll be sure to let you know how that goes and what his current stats are once that happens as well!

Sam in his Grandpa Anderson's gaucho hat that I bought for him in Argentina
By the way, for anyone who is interested... Samuel's Facebook account got taken away because he's too young :( However, we made a fan page for him if you want to be his fan click here! Also, all of the pictures in this post are in his photo album on his fan page and the pictures are links to the pictures in the album, if you want to comment on any individual picture you can do it there too :)