Well, where to begin today...for starters, as you can see in the picture, his ears are beginning to stand!  My how he has grown.  Today I decided to see if I could teach him to sit - and wow, how quickly that happened!  That is a pretty accomplishment considering how excited and distracted he was over the taste of deli ham.  Since he responded so well to it, I decided to do some training...he sat deliberately on the second time, and by the fifth or sixth time, he was doing it consistently. Took no time at all.  He even sat down for me without a sound to ask for more!  And he will do it on command, though I think "sit" means to drop down on his hind end from a standing position, not just to get in the sitting position.  We can work on that later.  Today he is officially nine weeks old, by the way.

What other things...he is going outside to potty on his own much more often now, and getting better at giving us signals that he needs to go.  Sometimes I feel that it is less us trying to figure out what his signals are and more him trying to figure out what signals get us to let him out.

Last night he slept in his crate without making a single sound.  I don't even need to hold him in the crate while I shut the door anymore, he understands when I have to go off to work for a couple hours without him (I work on a farm so I'm in and out of the house a lot).  When he's older and has a better immune system I'll bring him along with me more...but of course he can't ever be in the poultry barns, hehe!  Jake loves riding in the truck, however, and sometimes we can't get him to leave the truck, so I hope Samson will end up having the same love of truck rides!  Anyway, no crying or whining when I leave, and he waits patiently for me to open the door before coming out to greet me.  Learned very quickly that the crate is an okay and safe place to be.  This evening he came down the stairs on his own, though I had to place him in position, and he still won't start on his own...but at least he knows he can get down the stairs!  Now to work on getting up them.  He does everything he can to make his people happy, I won't push him too hard.

I finally updated my post a little ways down about the airport ordeal, you can read about that if you want.

Sorry about the picture quality, full-size it's a bit blurry and out of focus, but I had to snap it fast!  

He moves JUST enough to make a clear picture hard to get, at least indoors, and I've never had a good-enough quality flash to my liking...just seems to alter the colors too much on the warm side, so I use it very sparingly.