Samantha at 32 Weeks

This past week was our first official week of Christmas break.  This time of year is when Ben and I are very grateful for being in education where we have this built in break time together.  As I said in my last post, our break started out poorly with a stomach bug hitting us hard.  Even though Ben was starting to feel better by Monday evening, I was starting to feel a little under the weather, and on Tuesday morning when I woke up, I realized I had caught the stomach bug from Ben.  We weren't going to mess around too much with me being sick since I still have to nurse Samantha.  We wanted to get my sickness under control so we went to the doctor that morning.  They actually ended up giving me an IV of fluids because my pulse was high and my blood pressure was low which is a sign of dehydration.  I definitely didn't get it as bad as Ben which is good, and Samantha didn't show any signs of catching it from us which we were very grateful for.  I felt pretty much back to normal on Wednesday, and we ended up postponing our original plans to go to Chicago on Thursday because we wanted to spend more time by ourselves as a family before we headed up to be with the rest of our family.  We had all these plans of things to do along with relaxing and spending time together; however, we couldn't do anything because of the sickness that spread through our family earlier in the week.


On Friday we got to do several fun things as a family.  We went to Denny's in the morning for a free Colts fan slam since they won the game on Thursday night.  Ben and I made sugar cookies with icing from scratch, we watched some of our Netflix shows together, and in the evening we had Samantha open up her presents from us.  She wasn't quite sure what to do, but I put her gifts in bags with tissue paper, and she enjoyed pulling out the paper and trying to eat it.  We got Samantha some "My First Christmas" pajamas, a little vest, a snowsuit, and a fun, interactive game.

On Saturday we drove up to Chicago to spend time with my family.  My parents came over to my grandma's house where we were staying and brought Giordano's pizza with them (mmm...gotta love Chicago style pizza, my favorite).  On Sunday morning, Christmas day, we went to my family's church and put Samantha in her cute little Christmas dress.

After church on Christmas, my whole family (parents, brother Matt, sister Christy, and her boyfriend Matthew, plus my aunt and uncle) came over for Christmas dinner and present opening.  We had our normal spread of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberries, rolls, green bean casserole, you know, all the good stuff that is full of carbs and fat that make everything taste delicious.  My family got some really good time with Samantha this weekend for they were able to hold her and play with her quite a bit.  Here are some more pictures from Christmas day with Samantha playing and opening her presents from my family.

Here is Samantha in her Christmas diapers from Grandma and Grandpa Toll.  Who knew they made things like this!

On Monday we did several different things.  We went to David's Bridal to see the wedding dress that my sister had picked out, we got to see our good friends Brad and Melissa for a while, and my whole family came back over to my grandma's house for a spaghetti dinner that we made for them.  Since my whole family was in one place at the same time, we made everyone get together for a family picture since we hardly have any recent pictures of all of us together.

On Tuesday we went to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago with my parents and sister.  We had a great time and Samantha was amazed at everything she saw.  We had her in the stroller for awhile and in the Baby Bjorn for awhile. She just looked around and took everything else in.  At Christmas time they have trees from around the world and a grand Christmas tree in the center area with the really tall ceiling.  That was probably Samantha's favorite part of the whole museum.  She looked at the ceiling and tall tree in awe and was so excited that she was kicking her feet around like crazy in the baby carrier.  While at the museum, we saw baby chicks, a fairy castle, the circus hallway with the curvy mirrors, and even the U-boat submarine.  Samantha really enjoyed being there, but was really tired when we left.  She feel asleep the instant we got in the car and started driving.  We are so grateful to have such an easygoing baby.  We can take her anywhere, and she does such a great job.

After the museum my family came back over to my grandma's and we had Lou Malnati's deep dish pizza together (again, yummy!).  They got more time to hang out with little Samantha, even though she was extremely tired from the long day that she had had already and the little amount of time that she took naps.

We had a great time visiting my family in Chicago.  We had a lot of good time together, hanging out with Samantha.  Samantha never sleeps quite as well when we are out places, so we are pretty tired from not getting enough rest at night.  For several nights in a row she would go to sleep fine, but then wake up in the middle of the night to nurse again but wouldn't go back to sleep for an hour and a half.  We're not quite sure why she did this.  I don't know if it was because we were in a new place or what, but it sure wore us out.  However, we can't complain because Samantha is such a great little baby.  We have enjoyed our first Christmas with Samantha and are now looking forward to our second Christmas in Upland.


I wanted to share one more funny thing about Samantha that I don't think I've mentioned before.  Sometimes when she is in her car seat, she will be playing with her toy, her eyes will gradually close, but she will continue to play with her toy until she falls completely asleep.  It's so adorable watching her do this in the car.  She loves to move her hands around like a little conductor and seems to really like feeling different textures.  Everyone loves to watch her little hands move around.  Even at night when I am nursing her before bed, she will move her fingers back and forth on my pants or shirt, or she will hold onto my hand or even her own hand.  She seems to be very sensory in that way, and it is pretty adorable!

Samantha at 31 Weeks

This past week marked the last week of school before Christmas Break.  Yay!  We were SO looking forward to time to relax, unwind, spend time staying up late and sleeping in, and spending time with our adorable little Samantha.  Ben had to give finals this week and grade them, but other than that, was all done with the semester.  He even brought Samantha to our 4th grade Christmas party on Friday afternoon at school.  I thought this day would never come!


Samantha loves to sit on the floor on her blanket and play with her toys.  (Sometimes Roscoe even tries to get involved.)  She sits up and plays, rolls around, and is really good at entertaining herself.

On Friday, December 16th, Samantha turned 7 months old.  It is really hard to believe that she is that old already, and that she has been in our lives that long, but also it feels like a short time, like just yesterday she was born.  Time does go by so fast.  We also had her six month doctor's appointment today.  It was supposed to be a couple weeks ago, but our doctor was sick that day so we had to reschedule our appointment.  She weighed in at exactly 20 pounds in the 90-95th percentile.  Her height was 28 inches in the 95th percentile.  She got her next round of scheduled shots, including a flu shot (which we were so grateful we decided to get her this then, you will read more about this later).  Samantha is doing really well, developing great, and is a healthy, happy girl!  We really enjoy our doctor.  He loves being with kids, and will just sit there and watch Samantha play and make noise, which she was making quite a lot of in the office that day.  She, of course, didn't like the shots in her legs, but she stopped crying pretty quickly and seemed to do well afterwards.  She did not get a fever like she did after her last round of shots at 4 months.


Here are some of our attempt at pictures with her seven month sign.  It continues to be difficult to take pictures of her with her sign without her eating it!

We tried again the next day to get some pictures when it wasn't almost bedtime and when she wasn't hungry enough to eat paper.  :)

The start to our Christmas break did not go quite as planned.  Ben woke up Saturday morning not feeling well, his stomach was very upset.  It continued to get worse throughout the day, and he had definitely caught a serious stomach bug.  Samantha was also having a rough time because she was teething.  Her right, top, front tooth was starting to come in and was giving her lots of trouble. She had several very bad diapers in a row that caused us to have to do some laundry.  Those bad diapers gave her a pretty bad diaper rash, and she was just more fussy than normal.  She was not acting like normal Samantha.


While Ben tried to recover and rest in between trips to the bathroom, Samantha took 3 hour afternoon naps on both Saturday and Sunday.  It could have been a combination of getting the shots on Friday and also working on teething, but she was definitely way more tired than normal.  You could tell she really needed the extra rest and relaxation.


Ben was starting to feel a little more back to normal on Monday, but Samantha was still having a hard time with teething.  We gave her teethers to chew on and she seemed to like that.  We continued to give her Tylenol to help the pain, but her gums seemed to still be tender and sore.  Especially when I would nurse her at night before bedtime, she would not nurse well and I would try to lay her down, but she would just scream bloody murder.  You could tell something was wrong, and we couldn't let that last for very long; however, we didn't quite know what was going on.  Ben suggested that she might still be hungry and that it might be hurting her to nurse for some reason.  So we got a small bottle together and Ben took it upstairs to Samantha.  She gobbled it down and was asleep in less than 5 minutes, so that must have been what was wrong.  Nursing was putting too much pressure on the tooth that was trying to poke its way through her gums.  It was causing her to stop nursing even though she still was hungry, which made her unhappy when I laid her down and she realized her belly was not full yet! We were so glad to find something to help her fall asleep happy.


Nevertheless, it was an interesting weekend of dealing with sickness for Ben and a baby recovering from shots and suffering from teething pain that changed her from her normal, happy, easygoing self. However, it was a blessing that Samantha did not show any signs of catching Ben's stomach bug.  We were very grateful for that, and like I referenced earlier, maybe the flu shot we got for her on Friday protected her from getting sick.  It's interesting with babies, it seems like just as you get into the swing of a good routine, something changes like teething or a growth spurt, and everything is thrown off kilter!