Yup, that's my friend!

Samuel and I went skating with our friends Erik and Melissa two or three weeks ago, and we had a blast. Samuel truly loves skating, which is very fun for me. Even better, though, is that Melissa is a figure skater and, since the rink was almost totally empty, decided it was time to try to pick it up again. She hadn't really tried jumping in almost five years, but was still able to do this:



And I was just excited to actually be on the ice with someone who could do something as awesome as that. She was showing me a few tricks (no jumps...yet...) ;0) and I was actually able to do a half-decent spin! Not exactly up to Paul Wylie's standards, but I was excited about it. Definitely a fun day!

Language Lessons

It's no secret that French has played a major role in my life. I majored in it in college, I spent time in Paris, I lived in the French House three separate times, I served in Belgium French-speaking, and I met Cameron in the French House. I remember having conversations with several companions about whether or not we would try to raise our children bilingual, and I always knew that I would give it my best effort to do it. So by request, here's an explanation as to how Cameron and I have gone about trying to raise Samuel bilingual.

There are several different approaches, but I think the most common is for one parent, often the dad, to speak to the kids in a foreign language and for the other parent to speak in the native language. Since both Cameron and I speak French about equally well, though, it seemed silly for only one of us to speak it, and how would we decide who would be French and who would be English? So we decided that we would both speak in French, and that would be the simplest. It's also good because Cameron and I have different weaknesses and strengths in French, so I think we balance each other out and give Samuel a pretty good foundation.

Certain family members (yes, I'm talking about you, Mom) were worried that our children would never learn English, but I'm happy to say that Samuel is beginning to communicate quite well in nursery and with other parents (especially if I'm not there). He gets plenty of English whenever I talk on the phone, we're in the grocery store or at playgroup, and at church. And actually, Cameron and I usually talk to each other in English, so he gets a lot of English at home along with French. We actually did an experiment a few weeks ago at the dinner table. Cameron was watching Samuel while I was speaking in English. Then I suddenly switched to French, and Samuel looked up thinking that I must be addressing him. It was pretty interesting.

I knew that the most important thing would be consistency. A lot of people suggested that I speak in French at home, and English everywhere else. But if I only spoke at home, or gave myself too many breaks from French, then I know I wouldn't have started the habit and I never would've been able to keep it up. I also heard from several others that waiting could make it impossible. Even kids as young as 9 months often get upset when a parent suddenly starts speaking in a language they haven't heard before. So as soon as Samuel was born, I only spoke to him in French. When I read to him, I translate the text in my head and say it in French. We sing French hymns and the few times I put a movie on for him, I put it on in French. He definitely was behind with English and speaks much more confidently in French, but his English is catching up very quickly already, and there are a lot of words that he can identify as the same thing and can tell me which is French and which is English. It's pretty amazing to watch him soak it all up!!

So there you go. There's not much more to it than that. It's been a lot of fun, though, and I hope we'll be able to keep it up. :0)

Les Potirons!!

This post is pretty late in coming, but here it is at last. We had a very fun Halloween! Cameron and I have a new tradition which we've been working on for the last three years now. Every Halloween, we try to get a few people together for a pumpkin meal. In Brooklyn we did this with our friends Amy and Christian, and Lizzie and Micah. Since they're too far away to get together with easily now, we decided to go with a couple of our Anesthesia friends. We had Pumpkin Dip, Meal in a Pumpkin, and these amazing pumpkin rolls! It was all so good, and we had a blast. Here are some pictures from it, which I'm borrowing from Emily:

Danielle, Dave, Luke and Emily

We took the last picture, and then thought maybe it we should

get one of Emily with her family, too. ;0) So here she is
with Mike and Clara.

Mike, Clara, Cameron, Samuel, me and Dave

After a nice, big lunch, we all went outside and had fun times.

Clara and Samuel were having a blast rolling down the little
hill in the Flintstones car :0)

So that was on Halloween. Monday after Halloween, Cameron was a later shift so that morning we finally got around to carving Samuel's pumpkin. Here are some results:

And here is the coolest pumpkin I have ever seen in my life. I totally wish I could take credit for it, but I stole the picture from my friend Lisa's blog. Her husband, Dave, is the one who carved it, and it is definitely the best pumpkin EVER!! :0)

"It's a puzzlement!

Over the last three weeks, Samuel has developed a new interest, and it's one that makes me very happy - PUZZLES!!! He loves them! And not just easy ones. We've put together a couple of 500 piece puzzles! Granted, he didn't necessarily put many of the pieces together, but he sure enjoyed trying and was able to get some together with a bit of help. I have an MC Escher style puzzle that's composed entirely of lizards so every piece can go together (a picture will come soon), and he loves putting the lizards together in different shapes. And then there's an old ET puzzle that was Cameron's when he was a kid. It took him a while, but Samuel can now put it together entirely on his own!! It makes my own puzzle-loving heart very proud. :0) Here's some footage of him putting his puzzles together. The first video is getting started, the second is keeping going and the last is him putting in the last piece and saying, "ta da!"







P.S. Anyone catch the title's reference?

The Best of the Best!

I've probably shared my thoughts on opera with most of you already. It basically comes down to this: opera is the highest art form of music and theater. But of course, there are different levels of opera, and on Saturday Cameron and I had a chance to see the most incredible, breath-taking opera ever written (again, IMHO). If you have never seen or heard Turandot, it really is a must see!! The Met in NYC does a live satellite broadcast of each of their operas and sends it to participating movie theaters, which is so great because now you can "go to the Met" without going to NYC!! It was also really neat because during intermissions, they would interview the singers and conductor and others!! It was super fun, I definitely recommend this experience!

But back to Turandot. I seriously had chills during almost the entire performance, simply because the music is such a great blend of touchingly beautiful and incredibly powerful. The choral parts must have had at least 200-250 people all singing at once, in several different bits of harmony, plus with a full orchestra; now that's power!! The singers were all top notch (of course, it's the Met!) and the scenery was simply breath-taking. Here's a clip of a different production (same place, same costumes and set, but different singers) to give you an idea of what we saw:


Like I said, breathtaking. :0)

"Do you have the time to listen to me whine?"

I went to a relief society activity this morning (we were making tiny baby blankets for premature babies born at the hospital), and Samuel was pretty clingy and grouchy. Then all of a sudden he just freaked out completely, for seemlingly no real reason. I got pretty upset with him for being so unreasonable, so I marched him outside and we went home. By the time we were home (two minutes later), it became apparent that he was having yet another allergic reaction, this time around his eyes and his nose. He started complaining about his nose hurting, which is what made me realize what was going on (at first it just looked like his face was red from crying so hard). AARGH!! It's so frustrating because I have no idea where this reaction could have come from! There were brownies in the kitchen, but I never saw him get near them (he was clinging to me, and I was nowhere near the kitchen). So how could it have happened??? It's just horrible because I feel like such a bad mom for getting mad at him, but he wasn't being a good boy, and so I just thought he was taking it a step further. And now I'm worried because I really don't know what he was reacting to, which makes me scared that there's still some mystery something out there "attacking" him. And to top it off, I don't have any minutes left on my cell phone so I can't call anyone who doesn't have Sprint, and Cameron's at the hospital and forgot his phone, so my only outlet is the blog, hence this quickly written, semi-coherent post.

Anyway, here's a picture. I caught him mid-blink so it looks even worse, but you can see his eyes and nose were puffy and red. By the time I got the camera, the Benedryl had already taken away most of the redness, so he actually looks much better here than he did a few minutes earlier.The plus side is that the Benedryl is working, Samuel's reaction was gone within about ten minutes (no throwing up this time), and he's finally napping (the first time in a week). So at least things are okay and calm now. Thanks for listening to me whine. More brownie points if you can tell me where this title is from.

Let Them Bake Bread!

I went visiting teaching yesterday, and left with a bread maker!! We were chatting, and Missy was talking about things she wanted to get rid of and suddenly said, "You don't want a bread maker, do you??" It's really ironic because I was just telling a friend last week how I've always wished I had a bread maker!! I have yet to try it out, but am hoping to give it a try this afternoon. It's perfect, too, because for about a month I tried to make bread instead of buying it. Unfortunately, it got to the point where no one wanted to eat sandwiches (myself included) because it just didn't taste very good. Hopefully this will help! I felt like I had switched roles - isn't it generally the visiting teacher who does things for the visiting teachee?? But she wanted it off her hands and I wanted it, so I guess it works out well. :0) And I'm definitely excited about it!!!