There always seems to be items that I miss out on and don't mention, so let's add some of there here.

Pretending

In July, Sammy started pretending.  He has been putting the phone (and other items) up to his ear for a long time.  This, I consider to be more imitation than pretending.  Not surprisingly, though, it was also with the phone that he started pretending.  He picks up the phone and begins "talking" with a rhythm and tone surprisingly similar to the one that Moon uses on the phone (Korean version--he never hears me on the phone).

He also started cooking.  We got him a small cooking set with an oven/range, some pots & pans, and some wooden food.  Right away, he started using the items like we do when cooking.  He pretended to eat the food, complete with chomping sounds.  He even started to make slurping sounds with the utensils and sharing them with us.

These are a couple examples from many that are popping up every day.

Kissing

July 22 marked the beginning of the end.  Sammy has begun kissing the girls....at least they are girl dolls.  He hasn't continued on with this one, but we're still working on it :)  Mommy gets them more often than Daddy.

Using the Toilet

In September, Moon set up a kiddie toilet for Sammy.  I made a little fun of her for putting that out for a 16-month-old.

However, a couple days later (9/11/2007) I was getting Sammy ready for a bath.  He was in the bathroom, naked, and he decided to sit on the potty with his reading materials (imitating Daddy, I suppose).  I thought that it was a cute picture, so I grabbed my camera and snapped a picture.

Little did I know, that I had a picture of him using the toilet for the first time.  He left a little puddle in it!  I'm telling you.  This kid is a genius...at least when it comes to bodily functions.

Note from Sammy’s Mom:

Before summer was gone, we decided to go to the beach.

When I was a kid, my parents took me to the east coast every summer vacation. I still remember these vacations vividly. As I watched Sammy play in the sand and the water, I recalled these past outings with my family.

To get the most out of this trip, we needed to rent a car. It’s not cheap in Korea, but it is cheaper than owning a car. A car for two days was around $100 with 40% off, and the gas was $75 to fill up this car (over $6.50/gallon in Korea). I don’t know how people can afford to have a car in Korea.

Anyway, we went to west coast on Saturday morning (around 7:00 AM to beat traffic). There is a big difference between west and east coasts. West coast beaches are very shallow, whereas east coast beaches are very deep with steep drop-offs right off the beach. It took us around 3 hours to get Anmyon Island because of bad traffic (regular traffic in Seoul). Before noon, we got Ggotgi Beach.

Right away I could see how much Sammy loves the water. He didn’t look back us. He just ran into water. Dan had to tackle him and get him into his bathing suit.

It was hot day, but the water wasn’t cold enough to cool us down. We spent around 4 hours at the beach, and then we decided to move out of the sun.

We went to Duksan Water Park. This is a spa/water park. The focus is on the natural spring water, but the slides and lazy river give something for the kids to do. It took us a hour from beach. It was very fun and a nice place to go for hot summer.

We finally got home a little after 1:00 AM. It was a long day, but we all had a great time.