Looking at the picture on the previous post, Jennifer and I were struck once again by how much Josh looks like Sammy did.

Decide for yourself…

Suffering from second child syndrome, Josh has not had his first few weeks quite as elaborately documented as Sammy did.  Still, there have been a few reasons to take pictures; aside from his general cuteness, we had a visit from his Grammy Lynne last week.

I suspect that Thanksgiving will provide is with more opportunities, so check back…

Sammy lost his first tooth today, and we’re anxiously awaiting his first visit from the tooth fairy. It happens to be the tooth he banged up last year in his bike accident, so we weren’t surprised when it was the first one to get loose. What did surprise us was how long it took us to finally fall out.

A month ago, we thought our family milestones were going to be tooth, birthday, baby, in that order. Josh took things into his own little hands and showed up a week before Sammy’s birthday, and the tooth hung around another month. So there you go.

When Josh was born, we had a fleeting moment where we believed that he looked more like Jennifer, especially with his dark hair. That may still happen, but what we quickly realized was that he mostly looks just like Sammy did, only smaller.

The one on the left is Sammy, six years ago, and Josh is on the right.  You be the judge.

I know there’s lots of other stuff going on tonight, but this is big news. Jennifer’s first cell phone was purchased in 1999, the year we got married. I don’t have any pictures of it, but you probably remember what cell phones looked like ten years ago.

Her second cell phone was purchased in 2003, after Sammy was born. While it wasn’t cutting edge, it was a decent phone, a flip phone with a camera. Cool for the time. I bought one for myself a few months later. Of course, I moved on to something else a few years ago.

Check it out…

Today, it finally happened. She’s moved out of the cell phone stone age. We can no longer call her a cell phone Luddite. I bought her a new phone.

It’s a good phone, the Samsung Rant. Just came out last month. It’s red, it’s on the EVDO high-speed network, and best of all, it will finally allow her to use that unlimited text messaging on her account.

So, let’s all welcome Jenn into the modern era. Feel free to send her a text to congratulate her. You know the number.

Sammy turns six tomorrow, which I’m finding as hard to believe as the fact that he’s now got a little brother. Happily, we were able to outsource his birthday party to Kids U, a children’s activity center in Needham. It was awesome. They’ve got a a huge play structure, which was a big hit with the kids, and an open play area for games, obstacle courses, etc. They take care of everything — we ordered the pizza and brought a cake, and that was pretty much it.

Given the other things going on in our lives right now, being able to just have the party and not have the stress was a huge relief. We did have a minor incident with the cake — it wasn’t ready when I went to pick it up last night, and after some consulting with the manager, it became clear that somebody had put the order in the wrong place. Happily, they were able to get me the cake about an hour later. I’m glad I opted to pick it up Saturday night instead of just before the party! Anyway, the cake was a work of art, with construction vehicles on top and frosting colored to look like dirt (which sounds worse than it is). It was marble cake, because Sammy couldn’t decide between chocolate or vanilla.

Today was Sammy’s last soccer game of the season, and I went a little crazy with the pictures. I think I must have taken about 200, and I’ve posted about 125 of them here. Jennifer went to more of the games recently, so I hadn’t seen them play in some time. I was impressed at how much better they were as a team than in the first game of the season.

Sammy’s team won the game, by a score of either 3-0 or 4-0, depending on whether the third goal counted, since it was kicked into their own goal by the other team. Everybody got trophies at the end. We’re going to have to put up a trophy shelf in the boys’ room, now that Sammy has this and his Bocce Tournament trophy.

Also, a couple of photos at the end of the bunch are from the Playdate with the Principal, this afternoon at Sammy’s school.