Growing up and hand me downs

Sam got very hungry for certain things. He always asked for "fresh white bread" as if he thought I would give him stale brown bread by accident.   He seemed to be hungry all the time, but so was George so it may have been a competitive thing!  He certainly started to grow, I was forever finding clothes that didn't fit.  Luckily my friends from the babysitting circle had boys of the same age who were all a good bit larger, so we had hand me downs.  When the second group of kids came along, we had the same ones again doing the rounds between children.  It made it tricky to identify which child was which in group photos!

Sam was growing pretty fast for the first time in his life and had crept up from the 3rd centile in height to the 10th which was lovely.   George was born on the 97th centile and stayed there.  By the time George was four, he had overtaken Sam (who was eight) in size so Sam had to wear George's cast offs.  I don't think he has forgiven me even now.

Since his heart was functioning properly for the first time ever, Sam had the ooomph to do things without flaking out every few minutes.  He wanted to use his new found energy to do so much, he was suddenly and unexpectedly into everything, but his bedtime was still 7pm and he really needed it.

One day he came home from school in great excitement. "Mummy"  he pronounced in his precise little way, "if you get me the wood I will build a boat for the whole family, and we can go on the sea in it!"  I felt so sad to think that such enthusiasm and excitement would be crushed when he found out what the reality was.