A few weeks ago, I left the kids with Eric and spent a Sunday afternoon with my sister and our dad. We went to a park and played on Dash’s favorite playground.

We talked about our dreams. Our aspirations.

Elaine will be going to college next year. The possibilities are numerous for her. I remember those days. Should I major in mathematics or architecture? Should I go to the local university or should I choose one farther from home? Should I even attend college AT ALL? I worried so much about making the right decisions, but now I see that it didn’t matter as much as I thought it would.

My dad, the dreamer, is an inspirational one. At over 50 and with more than 25 years of experience growing a company that he started in our garage, he still has plans for the future. He’s going to buy a sailboat.

I used to have dreams. Ever since I can remember, I wanted to design houses. But not just any houses. I wanted to design forts, castles, tree houses, secret passageways, and geodesic domes. I wanted to incorporate puzzles and riddles into my designs. Doors disguised behind bookshelves, hinged walls, impossible contraptions that, when solved, would reveal a hidden room.

I’ve had other dreams, too. There was a time when all I could think about was making movies. I could see the movie playing out in my mind during long road trips. I could hear the soundtrack. I could envision the movie posters! Yet, I was never dedicated enough to record more than a few notes on the screenplay in text files.

I’ve barely considered these dreams since having kids. It’s not that I don’t have time. Kids, especially young ones, don’t take up as much time as they say. They nap often, they play well by themselves, and they go to sleep early. So what happened to my dreams?

Month three was kind of a big deal for Sam. He started rolling! First from his belly to his back, then from his back to his belly. Now it’s his favorite thing to do. They say not to put an infant on their belly to sleep – and I don’t – but Sam immediately rolls to his belly every time I lay him on his back.

He also started sucking his thumb (and his fingers or sometimes even his whole fist). Dash never really sucked his thumb. He preferred the pacifier. Sam spits out the pacifier almost every time I give it to him.

My precious little baby who used to just lay peacefully where ever I placed him now rolls over and noisily sucks his fingers as soon as I look away. What am I going to do when he starts crawling and talking?! I’m going to have to have another baby – that’s what.

They grow up too fast.

Anyway. Plano, Texas landed on our list of potential cities. Knowing nothing about it, I began my research by looking at it on a map.

The first thing I noticed was the uniformly spaced grid. Major roads are approximately one mile apart. This might not be surprising to anybody who lives west of the Appalachian mountains, especially if you’re familiar with square townships created as a result of the Land Ordinanace of 1785. But where I’m from, no suburbs are arranged on a grid. The streets are dynamic, or curvy. Much space is wasted.

Upon zooming in, I noticed something even more fascinating. At every major intersection, there is a shopping center. Hubs of commercial activity are never more than a mile away! Coming from a suburb where you can’t walk anywhere, the layout of Plano is very appealing.

Critics might accuse this type of suburban development as boring, but I think it’s perfect. It allows residents to have their own slice of land, but in a dense enough fashion to support walkability. And of course, the organized grid satisfies my appetite for order. There are one or two areas around here that resemble this style of development, but most of the suburbs surrounding Richmond are more capacious with unnecessarily large residential lots and buffers of undeveloped space between neighborhoods.

One of the first things he did that demonstrated his comprehension abilities and ought to have prepared me with what to expect was this: I had unplugged the vacuum so that he wouldn’t trip over the cord. I noticed that he was watching me and it crossed my mind that he wanted to plug it back in. In an effort to obscure the connection between the plug and the outlet, I discreetly moved the plug to the other side of the sofa. A few hours later, I still hadn’t put the vacuum away. He found the plug, dragged it around the sofa, and tried to stick it in the outlet. I was floored that he remembered where it went after seeing me use it only once earlier in the day. Then I took it from him.

He can follow instructions now. He happily puts away toys when he’s done playing. He gets his shoes out of the closet when it’s time to go. One time, I even asked him to bring Sam’s blankie to me. I wasn’t sure that he knew what a blankie was or where to find it, but he walked straight to it and brought it back without needing further explanation. He also knows that “time to eat” means that he should climb into his booster seat.

He’s been out of his high chair and in a booster seat for a few months. We knew that he was too big for the high chair when he started climbing up and into it by himself. That boy scales furniture like a mountain goat.

He also graduated from his crib to a twin bed. We were worried that he was going to fall trying to climb out of his crib, so we moved him before he had the chance to figure that out. We also took away his pacifier this quarter. When Sam was born, Dash tried to use Sam’s pacifiers at first. But now he knows that they are for Sam only. In fact, if he sees that Sam doesn’t have a pacifier in his mouth, Dash will try to shove one in his face. He means well.

The months when Dash refused to sleep seem so long ago. Dash sleeps – and puts himself to sleep – beautifully now. It’s almost too easy. His bedtime routine includes many new skills: brushing his teeth, peeing on the potty, pulling up his pajama pants, then giving kisses and turning off the light. If we don’t let him turn off the light himself, he gets mad. Getting ready for bed has been rote for so long that he anticipates what comes next. He says “nigh nigh” as we leave his room, then we watch him flip through some books on the video monitor before he cuddles up with his blankies to fall asleep on his own.

We’ve been working on potty training a bit more consistently this quarter. We switched from diapers to Pull-Ups and then from Pull-Ups to real underwear. He still wears Pull-Ups when he’s sleeping, at preschool, and any time we leave the house. But at home, I’ve been letting him run around without pants or with real underwear on. He still has accidents, but every day is better than the previous. I’m sure he’ll be potty trained by the time he’s two.

He is such a big boy now. He can climb into the car and up into his car seat by himself. He gets mad if I try to help him. In fact, insisting on being independent has become a trend. He wants to do everything by himself! He doesn’t even want to hold my hand when going up and down stairs anymore. Thankfully, he’s pretty steady on stairs now so I don’t worry too much about him falling. But I still hover just behind him in case he trips.

Until a month ago, Dash had a hydrocele. A hydrocele is a pocket of fluid trapped in the scrotum. Supposedly, 80% of boy babies have them, but most are absorbed by the time they are 18 months old. His was only getting bigger at his 18 month check-up, so his doctor recommended surgery to drain it. It involved anesthesia, an incision in his groin, and stitches. He was so brave and he recovered quickly.

My mom always said that she enjoyed it when her kids were sick because they were so sweet to care for. Now I know what she means. Dash was extra cuddly when we brought him home from the hospital.

Dash is such a sweetie all the time, though. He gives big, squeezy hugs and loud, smacking kisses. One of his teachers said that he even kissed a girl in his class! He also gives high fives, up high and down low. He sits in my lap when we watch TV or read books. When he’s teething and having a rough time getting to sleep, he falls asleep laying against my chest. I hope he stays this lovable forever.

Dash loves his brother so much. While I was breastfeeding Sam under a nursing cover, Dash noticed that Sam was missing. He said “baby?” and held his hands up in the air to gesture “where?”. And if we don’t bring Sam into Dash’s room when he is getting ready for bed, he notices his absence. He brings a pacifier to Sam when he is crying, he covers him with a blankie when he sees him without one, and he tries to share his toys and snacks.

Eric and Dash have been bonding a lot, spending time together alone while I care for Sam. They go on walks to the lake and the playground. Dash loves Eric so much that it seems like all he says when Eric is at work is “Dada? Dada? DADA? Dada work?”.

His vocabulary is huge now. It may not all be understandable, but he attempts to repeat everything that we say at least once. For some reason, he won’t say “blankie”. Instead, he calls it “daddy”. But he calls Eric “dada”, so we know the difference. We haven’t heard him say “Sam” yet, either. Though, we know that he knows who Sam is because when we ask “Where’s Sam?”, he says “baby?” and points to the baby.

He says “please” and “thank you”. He can say his name. He says “hello” on the phone. And he’s been putting two or three words together in sentences. His favorites are “poo poo potty”, “eat nana” (banana), and “bye bye” followed by anything and everything. At the mall’s play area, he had to say “bye bye” and wave to every piece of equipment on the way out. “Bye bye, tree! Bye bye, bear! Bye bye, slide! Bye bye, balloon! Bye bye, bucket!”

Dash is curious about how things work, especially when it comes to putting things together. He can do big block puzzles that say they are for ages three and up. He can hook together pieces of train track like a jigsaw puzzle, and he is interested in how the magnets on the front and back of his trains work. He also loves to buckle the straps on Sam’s bouncy seat and his booster seat.

Balls and trucks are his favorite toys. He can throw and kick balls very well now, but he isn’t so good at catching them. We push trucks back and forth instead. He also likes to putt balls with his plastic toy golf clubs. He has excellent hand-eye coordination.

He still loves the water. He always has. We went swimming a lot this summer, both in a kiddie pool on our back deck and at the neighborhood pool where my parents are members. He learned how to jump into their pool from the side. He also had splash day at preschool once a week this summer. His teachers said that while the other kids seemed unsure about getting wet, Dash had no hesitation. He gets so excited when it’s bath time, too. He doesn’t even need any bath toys. He’s happy with a plastic cup.

He also discovered squirt bottles. We have several squirt bottles around the house, some for squirting cats when they get on the kitchen table and some for moistening cloth wipes. Once Dash learned how to use them, he would squirt everything and everybody. For a while, we restricted his play with squirt bottles to outside only, but he would throw such a tantrum when we would go inside and have to take the squirt bottle from him that we now hide squirt bottles from him all together, out of his sight and reach.

I mentioned earlier that he is like a mountain goat. Despite our discouragement, he loves to climb all over the sofa. He straddles the back or the arms of the sofa and then, he rolls off onto the cushions, giggling. I got in the habit of surrounding the sofa with pillows to soften inevitable falls, but now he thinks the pillows are part of the game. He dives onto them, clambers over them, and rolls off of them.

Some of his other favorite games are playing peekaboo through the windows of his cardboard castle, rolling trucks and trains along the back of the sofa, coloring, playing the piano and strumming the guitars at my parents’ house, and reading books. His favorite books are The Little Goat (it was mine when I was a kid), The Foot Book, and Mr. Brown Can Moo. He has Mr. Brown Can Moo memorized. He mimics all of the sounds.

After learning about motorcycles and bicycles in one of his books, he started to notice them everywhere. At first, he called all bikes and motorcycles “momo”. But during a camping trip with our cousins, we taught him how to say “bike” and that bikes are different from momos (motorcycles). I wanted to buy a bike for him as soon as I saw how much he was obsessed with them, but I knew that he would be restricted from straddle toys for two weeks after his hydrocelectomy. So I postponed ordering a bike until this month. I’m sure I’ll have a lot to say about his new bike in the next quarterly update.

This is the longest baby update I’ve written yet. He is growing and changing so fast! Dash seems so big and mature and independent now. But if I could choose only one word to describe his personality, it would be SILLY. He surprises me with his cleverness and makes me laugh every day. I am so excited to see what he will do next.

He can hold his head up high for several seconds and he loves to look all around. He smiles when he sees faces. He also does lots of baby talk, goos and oohs and aahs. His voice sounds like Dash’s voice. When he cries, his face and the shape of his lips look like Dash’s features.

Sam is a precious baby. Our only complaint is that he spends about an hour every morning grunting while we’re trying to get that last hour or two of sleep. It happens right after I feed him, but only after the first feeding of the day. We think he might be so hungry after sleeping for so long that he overeats (or eats too fast) and has difficulty digesting that much milk.

At first, I didn’t like it. Besides the fact that I broke two needles and the sewing quality was mediocre, it was difficult to adjust and I was afraid that Sam was uncomfortable.

I didn’t give up, though. I washed it a few times to soften the fabric, making it easier to adjust. And I tried different positions, eventually finding one that Sam enjoys.

After using it for a week, it has gotten a lot easier. Whenever Sam is fussy and I can’t figure out why, it calms him down within seconds. Highly recommended!

I thought the name Dexter was perfect. Dash and Dex sound spectacular together! But Eric was concerned about it being the name of a serial killer on TV. Yet he kept suggesting the name Benjamin after Benjamin Linus on Lost. Benjamin Linus probably killed more people than Dexter!

Eric also liked the name Sam. I liked it, but I didn’t love it. But without other names that we both liked, Samuel ended up in our top three with Dexter and Benjamin.

Even when I was in labor, I thought for sure that our baby was going to be a girl. And I thought for sure that we would use the name Dexter if it was a boy. But when I saw my baby for the first time, and I saw how serious he looked, I knew that his name had to be Sam.

It turns out that the name Samuel is a perfect match for the name Dashiell. Dashiell Hammett, the author that Dash is named after, is actually Samuel Hammett. Dashiell was his middle name! And his most popular protagonist, the detective in The Maltese Falcon, was named Sam Spade.

For a few hours after Sam was born, we still didn’t have a middle name. The names Linus and Miles were high on our list, but they didn’t sound quite right. It wasn’t until my sister was visiting Sam and I in the hospital that the name Emmett was suggested.

My sister remembered that Emmett was going to be Dashiell’s middle name. We changed Dash’s middle name from Emmett to Lane while I was in labor with him. I’m not sure how Eric and I could have forgotten about that! We agreed that it was perfect for Sam, and that is how he became Samuel Emmett Newman.