This here is Sam. Big Man Sam as I like to call him. Which is funny because he is actually a very small guy for his age. He was all smiles for me, though while playing in the leaves! His mom, Kara, and I used to work together for Nick News. He’s 9 months old and his favorite thing in the whole world is standing. If he’s not standing, he’s not happy! He completely bypassed the crawling stage and went right to standing. He’s not walking yet, but he definitely looked like he was about to take his first steps at any moment!

Adelynn had her H1N1 shots just the other day. And while all the other kids in the waiting room were screaming and crying, Adelynn kept looking up at my sister with big, tear filled eyes saying in a whimpering voice, “Please, no, mommy. No hurt. Please, no…” It was almost a whisper.

Their names were called. Bridget took Adelynn by the hand and walked into that evil, white, sterile room. THE ROOM. The room where all the pain happens.

The needle goes into Adelynn’s little thigh; she screams; she cries–and does all the normal things a kid does after getting a shot. They arrive back home and Adelynn, still whimpering, looks up at Bridget and says: Leg hurts, mommy. It hurts.

Bridget plops Addie down in front of Dora with her favorite Teddy, Eddie, whom we’ve all grown to know as a part of our family. Eddie is as much a member as me or Bo or my mom or the dogs….in fact, I think she prefers Eddie to the dogs sometimes.

So, Bridget starts cooking dinner and after 30 minutes, Adelynn comes limping into the kitchen. “Leg huwts, mommy,” she says. Bridget goes running over to examine what the limping was about. Could H1N1 have paralyzed her child? As Bridget pulls up Adelynn’s pant leg, Addie says: “Leg huwts just like Yaya’s.” At which point she continues to walk around the kitchen dragging her leg behind her like Tiny Tim.

On a side note, my mom recently had knee surgery and for the past year has been limping constantly. Soooo, pretty much Adelynn associated leg pain with Yaya’s incessant limping. And after she limped around the kitchen for one lap, she looked up at my sister with wide eyes and said, “Cookie would help the pain, mommy.”

What a little con artist.