Friday August 1st

We started the day out at the dentist, who fixed my teeth up in about an hour, thank goodness!! I’m going to have him make another retainer for me just in case we have another mishap like this one. I can see it happening right before some huge event, like Paul’s graduation or something, and I’d be totally screwed without a backup.

When we were done we went around returning more girl stuff again (thank you, wal-mart, for being willing to take anything back without a receipt; even if you are an evil plot to take over the world). We met up for lunch at this great BBQ place, Rattler’s, with Sarah & Chris and Chris’ family. His brother-in-law Travis manages the restaurant, and they all get together every once in a while. Phil & Gail, Chris’ parents, came, and Travis’ wife Ally & their two kids, Jack & Blake. Jack is almost 2 and is the smartest little kid on the planet; not only does he already know all of his letters and numbers, he’s learning them in Spanish now, too, and neither of his parents speak Spanish to have already given him a base for the language. Blake is way cute, he’s 5 weeks older than Sam and we are SO grateful to their family for donating all of Blake’s newborn clothes to us so that Sam didn’t have to go naked or running around in pink for a while before we got some clothes lined up for him. They are all so nice and we had a great time chatting for a couple of hours.

Afterward Grandma, Sam & I continued our shopping and ended up at Barnes & Noble. My family has a thing for bookstores, we totally love them. I bought James and the Giant Peach on CD – I’ve become addicted to books on CD – and a book for my dad entitled 5 People Who Died During Sex and Other Completely Tasteless Lists…something like that. I get so excited when I see things that I know my dad will like, because it happens so rarely. If he wants something, he goes out and buys it. I can’t wait to read it when we go out to Utah, it looked so hysterical. Grandma Janet bought us some freaking adorable notebooks to write down cute Samisms for the next few years, they’re great!

When we got home Paul was there and he played with Sam for a bit, then he & I went to lay down for 1/2 an hour or so…and woke up 2 1/2 hours later! I guess we were tired, eh? Most of the fam had already gone over to the Eddys’ house for games, but Grandma stuck around to feed us first. She’s so nice. We joined the rest of the family and stayed up ’til about one playing, it was great. Especially since it was Friday night so Paul could join us this time.

Saturday August 2

Grandma Janet & I went to Costco first thing this morning to buy the newest book in the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn. YAY!! I am obsessed with this series, it’s so the greatest set of books ever! I’ve been trying to read it sparingly, only when I’m nursing Sam and have nothing else to do, and I’m already over 300 pages into it. It just grabs you and pulls you into the story!

After Costco we said goodbye to Grandma Janet, which was so, so sad. I cried like a baby, I can’t believe she’s not able to be here to watch Sam grow up. We appreciated having her so much this week, I’m so glad that she came out and took care of us and bonded with Sam for a while. Thank you, moms!

After lunch we all went out running more errands, then we all headed to the shooting range for dad’s weekly dose of bang-bang-shoot-’em-up. Sam and I stayed out in the store on their ridiculously comfortable leather couch while Paul unloaded his 100 rounds that he’d bought. I read my book and Sam tuned out all of the popping sounds from the next room and slept peacefully. We saw a couple of the other recruits from Paul’s class there and they ooh’d and aah’d over Sam for a while until Paul came out. They’re so nice, they’re almost always there when we go to the range. I can’t wait for Paul to get his backup weapon so that I can go shoot, too – I’m not allowed to shoot his primary Glock that the LAPD issued to him. I miss shooting.

After the range we went out to the Northridge Mall, the closest location of The Children’s Place, our last place on the returning-girl-clothes list. We ended up buying some cute new outfits for Sam, since he doesn’t have any yuppy clothes for church yet. They’re really cute! I wish Banana Republic had baby clothes, those would be freaking adorable. We were walking by Hot Topic when Paul started freaking out. He saw this batman onesie in the window and just HAD to buy it for Sam, hahaha. It was ridiculously expensive, of course, but it’s amazing how Paul’s cheap side can run & hide in the face of all things superhero. He was SO excited to take it home and get it washed so he could put it on his son; and of course, he had to put his own batman shirt on to match. We are batman’s fan club, after all, haha.

We decided to have Brinner (breakfast for dinner) that night, a personal favorite of mine. When it came time to eat Sam was wide awake and we hate to waste that time putting him in his bassinet, so we decided to try his swing out and see what happened.

Sam eventually ended up like this, slumped over like a drunk. For a while, though, he was really absorbed in looking at the little globe toy and trying really, really hard to focus on it and figure it out. We can see him getting more and more alert and interested in his surroundings every day, it’s so neat. He’s been trying to grab at stuff lately and put it in his mouth, and you can just see his frustration when he can’t coordinate his hands well enough to do so. It’s so awesome to watch him developing already!

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