Sam has a vocabulary of over 200 words now. He can make me understand what he wants 90% of the time. I try and catch his words on camera, but of course as soon as the camera goes on his interest in talking is over. The latest valuable addition to his repertoire of words is...'BOOBIES'. Three guesses who taught him that one!! He now finds hilarious to say 'mummy, boobies please'

Today Sam wouldn't go down for his usual nap. Infact, he some how opened his 'child proof' baby gate and appeared downstairs. This is a disaster for Sam who usually likes and NEEDS his sleep. He very often sleeps for 3hours during the day. So, its almost 4pm here now and we are both suffering. Sam is acting like the world is coming to an end and I have had enough. Bryan has escaped to work (lucky him) so im willing the time away until I can put him down for the night (around 6:15pm is probably the earliest). The count down is on...just over 2hours of hell to go wooohooo!!!

Auntie Jane got Sam an egg cup for Christmas. I thought Sam might be more likely to eat some breakfast (he rarely does) if it was in the 'fun' cup. So I put some yogurt in there. The video shows what happened.

Here is another video from Christmas day of Sam playing on his new 'piano' that my dad and Jo got him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtnRm143fW0

Christmas '09

Although this Christmas was a little 'odd' as we had no family close by, just the three of us, we had a lovely day and Sam was totally spoiled. This will be the last Christmas for us as a family of 3 as next year the new baby will be here and Sam will have some competition!! He got lots of nice presents-mainly along the theme of trains and cars. He also got lots of books, DVD's, a 'garage' for his cars and and trainset and trainset table for his trains. He got the Peppa Pig characters, a 'piano' he can walk along and it plays the keys that he stands on, he got bath toys and chocolate..the list goes on. He was very lucky.

We had Christmas dinner at Nellies house which was nice for Sam as he was able to play with Lily and Michael. It was a very early bedtime as he hadnt had his normal mid-day sleep and was VERY emotional at the end of the day...infact the word 'hysterical' might be a better description of his state at 5pm.

Another mealtime related video. Here is Sam this morning having toast with a tractor. I tried to take it from him and he got very cross. He is really coming along with his words, I have no idea how many he actually knows but it must be over 50. He can also recognise and knows the 'sound' of letters 's', 'a', 't' & 'm'. He learns a few more each week.

Sam is still at the (developmental?) stage where he believes that if he closes his eyes, we can't see him. We often have to play this game for ages as he thinks that he disappears and reappears over and over again. I suppose we don't help matters by going along with it! Here he is last night at dinner time. I just managed to catch the end of his 'game' on camera.

Just another typical breakfast in the Brown household. Sam detests ANYTHING I give him and 99.9% of the time we have tears. I never force him to eat, or make a huge issue-but I have begun making him at least sit there until I'm finished. Who would have known that French Toast, syrup and strawberries could cause such trauma to my wonderful little bundle of joy!