Things are pretty quiet here on the home front. It's cold outside and we're all battling some kind of virus (plus pink eye and an ear infection for Sam) so we've not been venturing too far afield over the last few weeks. Ironically, we triumphantly brought Sam to see the ear, nose and throat specialist just over a week ago with the fantastic news that he hadn't gotten an ear infection in over two months. Fate punished us for that by giving him one a few days later. Oh well, it's only his second this winter and he's off the hook for ear tubes for at least a couple of months. We'll reassess in March.
In other news, Sam's vocabulary is steadily increasing! The most impressive new addition started about three weeks ago when he started saying "apple juice". Since then, he's added "milk" to his repertoire so we've now got beverages covered. He definitely understands a lot more than he can say because he's getting frightfully good at retrieving obscure objects (e.g. "Sam, where's your walrus?"). He's often trying to talk back to us with strings of elaborate sounds but unfortunately all we're getting is gobbledigook. Still, two-way conversations are definitely on the horizon. Just look at that eager face below staring up at me. Can't you just imagine the gems that will soon be coming out of him? :)
On a random tangent, I baked an Amish friendship bread today. I got the starter goo from Sam's babysitter (it's kind of like sour dough in that respect) and went through the 10 day instruction sheet diligently. The Amish bread is something of a culinary chain letter. You get the starter goo (about 1 cup) and then tend to it for 10 days (most days all you have to do is mush the bag, other days you have to add more ingredients). Anyway, by the tenth day, the starter material has increased in volume substantially and you're meant to dole out four starter portions of 1 cup each before mixing the remainder with a range of other ingredients. You keep one starter portion for your next bread (to be baked in 10 days time) and you're supposed to distribute the others to friends. Thus, the friendship aspect of the bread. Anyway, we've now got a lovely cakey bread and I have to think of three people to push starter goo onto in the next few days. Not too sure if this will garner me enemies rather than friends... I must figure out a way to fudge the recipe so that I only generate one starter portion per round. I'm not overwhelmed with friends here in St. John's (quality rather than quantity) so I can't afford to lose any!
