master mind

Sam is my little guy bursting with big things inside of him.

I learned at our parent/teacher SEP's that he is a smarty pants, especially in math.  I was not surprised, and I was proud of him.  His teacher said that she can tell he focuses really, really hard in school.  So hard in fact, that he literally gets tired, and she has to give him pieces of a granola bar to keep him going until lunch.

Sam is very meek, and he is soft hearted.  He can almost come across as a little, shy, mild kid.  He is not shy at all, he is actually extremely literal, but has no malice.  He will tell you exactly how it is, but without any guile or sour feelings.  He is just factual.  It actually has Ben and I laughing all the time, and throws us off guard every time.

He is soft hearted, but at the same time, he has a strong tough spirit in him, that will come in handy when needed.

He may be small, but let me tell you, on his bike, a scooter, roller blades, or a pair of snow skis, he is a force to be reckoned with.  It can be deceiving.

Sam began snow skiing at the age of 3, and he taught himself how to ride a bike without training wheels when he was 4.  He was riding 2 scooters, one on each foot, when he was 5.  He has been going for faster speed and more technical jumps and tricks ever since.

He has been the mastermind all summer when it comes to building bike jumps.  He has built jumps that even the older kids in the neighborhood, and maybe even his older sister, will shy away from.  Ever since the week we moved in, we have consistently had a bike jump of some sort, or parts of one in the making, on our sidewalk every day.

He thinks long and hard about how to build it, he collects the wood and pieces it all together, and spends hours, and sometimes days, building these amazing jumps!  He will then fly off of them full speed, and without fear.  At times, he will also do tricks with his bike in the air. 

I have a feeling that I will be very grateful that we have 2 nurses right here in our cul-de-sac. 

Yesterday, I looked out the window, and of course, Sam was crawling around the dumpster and finding all sorts of goodies to build a new jump with.  We are in the perfect area right now for finding lots of wood!  Houses are being built all around us!

He is actually not allowed to climb into the dumpster, but there is always tons of wood that falls out, or the older kids climb up and throw it down to him.

He then began constructing a crazy cool jump.

This is only half way finished.  I did not get a picture of the finished product.  There were walls going up the sides where the two slabs of wood are poking out on the right.

 Do you see the window well/metal tunnel in the background, across the street in the above picture?  Sam rode his bike at that full speed, while I was screaming at him to watch out, in horror.  When he got to it, he ducked down below his handle bars, and flew right under and through it.  I almost died, he thought it was awesome.  Seriously!

It took him almost an hour to build.  It is much higher than what it looks like in the picture.  Those rocks are very big.

While Sam was building, Luke was outside doing this.

He is so stinkin' cute!

 

He would spend all day outside if I let him, just like the others.  He must have walked a mile by the time he was done pushing this car up and down the road, over and over again.

 

Back to Sam...

This jump was a gap jump, where you go off the jump, clear some air, and then come down on another ramp.  It was nuts!  Of course, Sam tried to do some tricks while I the air, but he almost crashed once, and I made him stop.  My nerves and my nausea couldn't take it.  He just tried it with a scooter instead.  Not any better.  I finally just went inside, while he did the jump about 20 more times, and lived to tell me all about it.

Sam did it over and over again, faster and faster each time.  His little tongue out, and his face all scrunched up in complete determination.  He would land the jump and just grin and laugh.

I can only imagine what will be going down when he is just a few years older.  He is 6 right now.

Do I have an engineer in the making???  Or maybe just an X games, scare the fingernails right off your mother, break every bone in your body, do crazy cool tricks, type athlete in the making?

I vote for engineer.  Save the bones.