Samuel Craig's Life Blog

I haven't done a substantial update for a while. I thought it might be time.

We came to Chicago (Northbrook) on June 15.



We arrived just in time for Father's Day. We really surprised Grandpa, who I now refer to as "papa" by the way.

I've been touring popular parks in the area with my daddy



Not to mention a visit to Glencoe Beach, not too far from Grandma and Grandpa's house. I nearly buried myself trying to dig my way back to Korea.



I've taken the train a couple times. Though I take the subway nearly every day in Seoul, it's not the same. I love the train here. It's so big and loud. It's both scaring and exciting. There's so much to see out the window too.



I'm preparing for my Aunt Marcey's wedding. I read the ring bearer's book that they game me until I passed out...



...and I tried on the tux I'm going to wear, though I didn't make it easy on daddy because that wouldn't be fun. I have to admit, I clean up well :)



Daddy's been treating me to a lot of ice cream much to mommy's chagrin. I better enjoy it now, before she joins us on the 7th.



I really loved going to Lincoln Park Zoo with daddy and Anika. We had a great time running around and seeing all of the neat animals. However, my favorite thing was riding a small train that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the zoo. None-the-less, it was wonderful. Did I mention, I love trains. Here's a picture of us at the zoo.



Last but not least, we have gone to Meadow Hill pool 2 times! It was awesome! I mostly played in the kiddie pool, but I really loved jumping into the big pool. My daddy was really surprised when I begged to jump in again and again. Unfortunately, daddy couldn't get pictures of this since he needed to make sure that I didn't drown.



More to come later. These activities are all from my first couple weeks. I still have the 4th of July and a big wedding to look forward to. Yeah!

Labels: 2008, beach, chicago, family, flight, icecream, june, northbrook, park, plane, pool, samuelcraig, travel

Hi all.

I've been pretty good over the last couple months about updating my Flickr site as well as my YouTube site. Check these out for some great Sammy (and family) stuff.

Labels: photos, pictures, samuelcraig, videos

Labels: animoto, mall, shopping, video

Labels: animoto, video

Welcome back to one of the most neglected blogs on the Web. However, I was motivated by Sammy's 2nd birthday to post something.

Cliche as it is, time really does fly. It's amazing that our little boy is now 2. He surprises us every day with his grow, both physical and cognitive. We never know when a new word will pop out of his mouth (or which language it will be) or where we'll find him next (he's mastering the move and climb maneuver).

This year we celebrated Sammy's birthday at a "Play Room". It's a relatively small business that has indoor playground equipment and toys. Great for infants to toddlers.

We invited Moon's SIWA (Seoul International Women's Association) playgroup members. Most have kids that are a little too young to fully enjoy playrooms, but we have a wonderful time anyway.

We then went to the Olympic Park (yes, from the 1988 Olympics), which is across the street from the playroom. It was a glorious day (note me in a t-shirt) for a walk.

On Sunday, the Kims came over for tacos and a make-shift cake.

Labels: birthday, family, korea, party, samuelcraig, seoul

I just organized a bunch of videos on my YouTube account. Most of them are of Sammy. See them all at http://youtube.com/bigdaddyseoul

These aren't in chronological order, but they are searchable. Try searching for "cooking" "cleaning" and "eating".

Labels: samuelcraig videos

It's that time of year again, and, as usual, I'm behind schedule. I should have gotten these out sooner.

Here are the wish lists for Dan, Moon, and Sammy. These are links to pages that have links to things that we want. There is also a link to our Amazon.com wish lists on these pages. No need to get things at Amazon, but it is a convenient place to mark things that we need/want.

Dan - http://del.icio.us/danielcraig/christmas2007%2Bdanielcraig

Moon - http://del.icio.us/danielcraig/christmas2007%2Bmoonyoung

• Christmas-themed sweaters (size small)
• Christmas earrings
• Archivers Gift Card - Archivers is a scrapbooking store.
• REI Gift Card
  

Sammy - http://del.icio.us/danielcraig/christmas2007%2Bsamuelcraig

• I don't know what it's called, but there is a marker set that only writes on special paper (Mindy told me about it). That sounds really good considering the pen marks all over the house :)
• Car seat
• Sand toys (for beach and playground)
• He loves big cars, trucks, construction stuff, etc.
• Clothes for fall/winter (3t--next year--Moon shops well in advance)

Let me know if you have any questions: dan@danielcraig.com

Labels: christmas, wish lists

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.

Now that Sammy has passed that year mark I think that I'm going to do more irregular postings here. Sometimes more than a month, sometimes less. Of course, as you can tell from the title, this time it's certainly less :)

This isn't because there are fewer milestones, it's because Daddy can seem to get regular postings up because he's just so darn lazy.

Let's take a look at the last few months as we moved from spring to summer and from 18 month to 24 month clothing.

May

This is a video of Moon reading to Sammy. I love these cute videos.

Children's Day is celebrated in Korea. We decided to go to a city festival to celebrate.

Here's Sammy at a temple during the Lantern Festival. This festival celebrates Buddha's birthday.

June

This should make Grandpa so proud. Sammy just loves playing with his calculator.

Sammy loved walking around the Free Market in Hongdae

July

Enjoying a night out with the family at a Sam Gae Tang place (kind of chicken soup). Sammy really loved the chickens. Little did he know where they would soon end up....

Chicago Trip - June/July

Where do we start? I'll just let the pictures do most of the talking.

Sammy loves pools and this huge one at Meadowhill was his favorite.

Doesn't he look happy posing with Daddy.

We had fun at the zoo, though it was about 100 F in the shade.

Sammy was testing out this one before we got on the real one headed to Quincy.

Sammy approved of Mindy's new house.

Here's the family posing in front of the riverboat in Hannibal.

The circus in Quincy was fun for all.

Sammy dancing at the Village Green (really short clip)

4th of July

Mommy doesn't play nice. STOP SPLASHING ME!

Grandpa and Sammy in matching shirts

Sammy has a little quality time with Grandma in the garden.

That's it for this installment. Hopefully, I'll be back soon to update you on more recent events.