Video blow-out!

OK, time for a whole heaping serving of the Sam Camera.

My lovely bride has been shooting video of the little guy from day one, using her point-and-shoot Canon. With a little time available to her this spring, she's been doing a lot of work in iMovie, putting together some Oscar worthy clips of the little guy in action. If you want to see these in a larger size, just click on the YouTube link in the lower right side of the video.

This first one is mostly from March and April, 2011. Apologies for the advert- we used Google's ad-supported music and the ad comes with. But you can join us now as we watch him learn to sit up, scoot, and crawl.

Next up, video coverage of our April trip to visit Grandma Pam and Grandpa Doug on the occasion of Great Grandma Esther's 100th birthday! He loved spending time with cousins, and of course, Haley-dog.

Finally, more recently, the little guy figured out how to clamber up the stairs. He's not yet discovered the laws of gravity, but we'll be sure to capture that on film as well.

Helping out at Home

Here's a little end-of-the-week goodness.

Sammy has been helping out at home this week, and asked if I could please share these photos.

We do a lot of laundry at our house, so it's a good thing Sam does his bit. That stuff doesn't fold itself, you know.

After a diaper delivery, Sammy thought that maybe we could just box him up and send him to Grandma Pam, please? I think there's room for Jasmine Buttercup too.

OK, OK, enough work, it's time for PLAY!

Eight months

Sammy turned 8 months old on Sunday. Kim has been taking photos of him on the 23rd of each month for his baby book, so I thought I'd share this month's versions.

Biggest highlight here are the choppers. He's got four showing to greater or lesser extent on top and three on the bottom.

Come on, show me those choppers!

And this is what he spends a lot of his time doing- chewing on whatever is at hand.

Today Sam and I had lunch together while Kim was in a meeting. Jasmine joined us.

Peppers, Tomatoes and Baby

Food and baby seem to be a recurring theme on these pages.

This week our bag of groceries from our CSA Fresh Fork was a pizza kit- dough, 2 pounds of Roma tomatoes, onion, peppers, sausage, fresh mozzarella and a few other goodies. When we got home, the big cooking pot came out and the Romas began their journey to becoming sauce. The pizza was quite yummy- fresh sauce, sausage and mozz making for quite the combo.

I had to take a picture of the baby bell peppers though. These things are almost as cute as babies and kittens. I included my chef's knife and the Romas to give a sense of just how teency, yet perfectly formed, these little gems are. The whole lot is sitting on our sweet new Boos cutting board. Love it!

What did Jasmine-kitty-cat think?

"Throw some of that sauce on these toes for me, old man."

Visitors and the Bard

We've had a busy week at Chez Claspy, company from two sets of Californian family and Shakespeare Rocks! camp for Maggie. We've been so busy we've had to enlist a new baby sitter.

Kim's sister Teri and family arrived on Monday, en route from San Diego to Bath, Maine. They spent two days with us and we had a great time! We visited the Children's Museum, went pond fishing with my nieces, and ate a lot of good food. Sam felt just fine in Aunt Teri's arms, which probably felt somehow familiar.

Here's the whole family, plus little Sam. Maybe his Uncle Tom can give him surfing lessons in a few years.

Maggie spent the last two weeks in her third year at the Laurel School's wonderful camp, Shakespeare Rocks! The theater director there works with the kids on all sorts of dramatic arts, culminating in a performance on the last day. This year they performed a fantastic abridged version of Romeo and Juliet. Maggie scored the role of Juliet (one of the Juliets, that is- they rotated roles through the play.) She did a great job! How all of those kids remember their lines so well after only two weeks, I'll never know. Here's our own Juliet on the boards, in a scene with her mother.

And a food shot. Our green bag from Fresh Fork Market contained many goodies, including this eggplant which has a perfectly formed nose. Now to see if I can prepare it in some way that will convince Kim that eggplant are tasty...

Move Over

We need a bigger couch.

One of those days

It was just one of those days...