Celebrating Sammy C.

Today we celebrated my middle son's 5th birthday with 25 children at Pump it Up...a huge room full of  inflated jumpers.  The kids had a blast--and they almost forgot they had parents, so the parents got to relax...at least a little bit.

(Can I express my shock here and say that one father came with his two daughters.  He had not RSVPed.  He then left the party, leaving his daughters behind, and had to be called to come back because his youngest daughter was crying. He gave Sammy a present addressed to another child, and when Sammy opened it, it was a tea set.  The boys around him were snickering and Sammy was so embarrassed he started saying "no! no!" and refused to open it.  Then I was embarrassed.  I didn't want to make him open it, but didn't know what to do with the half-opened present? So I tried unsuccessfully to hide it under some of the strewn wrapping paper. John was mad and plotting revenge for his red-faced son.  I reminded him that it was the most sad for this man's poor daughters!!  Geez.)

My sweet Sam has loved the Disney movie "CARS" for three years now, and still can't get enough.  He got three sets of the same four CARS.  I asked him if he wanted to bring some of them back and get something else in exchange.  He looked at me like I was nuts and said, "No.  I love them."  Well okay then.  Easy enough.

I was thinking tonight of how we decided on his name.  My husband, who likes to think of himself as being tough, also has a sensitive side and likes to read and write poetry (I love him).  He likes to say that we named him "Sammy" in response to one of his favorite songs from Iron Maiden "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (based on the poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge).  But that was not what convinced me.  John started reading Coleridge and became a fan.  One night he showed me this poem, and our baby was named.  (Plus "Samuel" was MUCH better than some of the other options I was left with...:) )


Frost at Midnight

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

(Third and fourth stanzas)
Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersed vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.

Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

We love you Sammy C.!