Summertime

So, it's mid June - almost Fathers' Day. Cole will be a year old in less than a month and I've been busy chasing him around the house and trying to keep him from hurting himself too badly :). Cole is LOUD! He screams when he wants something - food, a toy, up, down, outside, and whatever else. People tend not to believe me until they hear him. I guess Cole as always Been loud though... pretty much since day one. He wants to eat everything - he could have a tray full of food, but if someone at the table has something he doesn't have he'll scream for it and point to it. Wow - I don't want to know how much this kid will eat when he's 15! Cole is getting daring - he now will let go of whatever he has been holding on to and try to stand on his own. He says, "uh-oh" "up" and waves & says "bye bye". I'm not sure that everyone else would understand him, but we know what he's trying to say.

Samuel is great. We have so much fun at the pool and when he gets to play with his friends. Right now he's sitting next to me playing a game on pbskids.org ("PSKIDS.org" as he calls it). We bought him a dugout club membership for Camden Yards, so we'll get to take him to some Oriole Games this Summer. He's so excited! Darin is really looking forward to us taking him to his first game - against a team from Boston (I can't really type the name of the team, since I'm sure my fingers would fall off from it). I'm sad to report that Samuel has gone to the dark side - he says that he's going along with Dad and is fan of the team that will not be named. If I didn't give birth to him I'd wonder how he could come from me.... a Yankee fan... It's one of those times when a Mother's love is unconditional :)

We were in CT this past weekend visiting our Grandparents (who aren't doing well). Grandpa was in a nursing home for a few weeks and came home on Friday under Hospice care. He looks so tired and so frail to me - not the man that I remember. He's still funny though - and smiled when we asked him about giving the guy he shared a room with a hard time. My sister and I helped him into HIS chair and put his feet up on the ottoman. He needs a lot of help to get up to the chair, into bed, etc. Although it was sad to have to help him - something about doing it felt good. It's nice to feel like you can do something when you would otherwise feel so helpless. It was really special to see him smile while sitting in his chair watching the kids play. For lack of a better way to describe it - it's just really sad to see the people you love having such a hard time. At the same time I know how blessed we are to still have 3 Grandparents in our lives. I'm glad he's home. That's where he wants to be.

I promise to get some photos on here soon. I'm really trying to figure out how to get some video on here too...