Sam, "L'il Jeff"

When Sam was very little, he spent much time finding creative ways to communicate with his family, as we couldn't always understand his words. Jake was great at being Sam's translator, but sometimes that didn't even work. Sam wouldn't get frustrated, though, when we didn't understand what he was saying. His mind would just keep on working as he came up with new ways to effectively get his message across. I remember several times when I was trying to understand his words, he would stop using words, put my hand in his and take me somewhere, pointing out something that would help explain what he was saying.

One day I was making pancakes and he climbed up on a chair next to me, excited to help. He kept saying something over and over and I couldn't quite understand what he was saying. He kept saying, "L'il Jeff." I apologized for my limited thinking and my inability to understand his beautiful language...and we moved on.

Weeks later, we were watching PBS when the show *Little Bear* came on ~ one of Sam's favorites back then. We watched the episode, and it started to look very familiar. Little Bear's Dad was making pancakes and Little Bear was right by him, helping out. And all the connections that I had missed on our pancake-making day were made in the moment I heard Little Bear say that he wanted to be Papa Bear's "Little Chef."

"L'il Jeff."

"Little Chef."

My Little Chef Sam.

Sam has since then spent many hours in the kitchen, always creating, always cooking, making, offering to make for others...

He's a natural and you can tell he loves what he's doing.

Lately we've been watching a lot of shows on Food Network, particularly our favorite, *Iron Chef America*. This has renewed Sam's interest in being a chef. He's even talked about going to culinary school and is looking into those (as he said in his newspaper interview, posted below, when asked if he was going to college: "I don't really know at this point. Well, yeah, I'll probably want to go to college. Maybe culinary school some day...maybe when I'm 15 or 16. I've been interested in cooking since I was about two."). One of our favorite chefs on the show is Mario Batali, and we had a chance to eat in one of his restaurants, Otto, when we visited New York City.

One night while recently watching Iron Chef, Sam had a revelation. He decided right then that he wanted to open a Brew Pub and be the chef. The ideas were flowing out of him, as his dream was being woven into something that felt real and completely within his reach. Dave and I love brewpubs and have taken our children to them since they were very little. Whenever we travel, we seek out the microbewery restaurants and make sure we go to do some sampling!

So this was very cool, and Sam now has a more specific direction to his dream.

This week, he made his first complete dinner. He's been drawn to scallops, even though he's never tried them. So he wanted to make a scallop dinner. We looked through recipes and found a scallops and pasta recipe with garlic and white wine and sugar snap peas. Sam decided to do that one. When we went shopping for the ingredients, I had Sam smell the fresh herbs to decide which one he wanted to use in his recipe. He decided on dill. We headed to the seafood department to get the scallops, picked up the rest of the ingredients and more groceries, then headed home.

And at about 4:00, my little chef emerged from his gaming room after playing Halo 2 with his friends on-line to cook dinner for his family.

What a wonderful dinner! We all loved it ~ it was Jake and Sam's first time eating scallops and they couldn't get enough. It was a beautiful evening, as you can see in the photos (check out the sunset) and we were thankful that Sam shared his talent and his passion with his family for us to enjoy.