Samantha at 19 Weeks Old

This past week was so busy, and as I said in my last blog post, I was really missing hanging out with Samantha.  Because of that, I decided to take last Friday off as a personal day just to hang out and be with my baby.  It was great to be able to sleep in a little, to not have to get up and shower and get dressed right away, but most importantly, I loved being able to spend the day with nothing to do but play with Samantha.

Also, Ben told me to make a disclaimer about last week's blog post.  Our eventful time at The Cheesecake Factory was not as traumatic as I made it sound in my description.  As soon as Samantha was changed and brought back out into the restaurant, she was fine and completely back to normal.

We also went to Upland over the weekend for another baby cousin reunion.  We are trying to make time once a month, if we can, to get both families together so that the cousins can grow up knowing and being friends with each other.  We got some great pictures of them together.  On Friday night, when we laid them both on the floor gym, they were so cute.  They even reached out and held each other's hands on numerous occasions.  They definitely are more aware of their surroundings now and because of that, they notice each other a lot more.  It will be fun to see how their interactions will become more and more purposeful as they get older, transitioning into them actually playing with each other.  Here are some cute pictures of the girls:

While we were in Upland, we went on several walks around Taylor's campus.  Samantha loves to be outside and go on walks so that she can look around at all there is to see.  You can see in the progression of pictures below that Samantha started off awake and happy, and ended the walk zonked out in her baby carrier.  Other than that, we just hung out and relaxed and enjoyed being with grandparents and babies.

It was a great weekend, and it was so fun seeing the babies together.  Here they are all dressed up for church:

The one negative development of the last week was with her sleeping.  She has gotten on a pretty good eating/sleeping schedule lately.  She would normally eat every 3 to 4 hours, and we started putting her to bed in her crib between 8 and 9 o'clock.  Samantha would usually then sleep until 3:30 or 4:00, and I would feed her again and put her back down to sleep in the pack n' play in our bedroom.  However, for 5 nights in a row this week, starting over the weekend while we were in Upland, Samantha was having a lot of trouble sleeping.  She would switch between not staying asleep when we first put her down at the beginning of the night and struggling with us for several hours to get her to stay asleep once we laid her down, to waking up in the middle of the night and being wide awake for several hours no matter what we did to coax sleep upon her.  Needless to say, it made for several long days this past week of trying to survive on very little sleep.  It made us think several times, we did this every night in college?  How did we ever survive on this little sleep?  We weren't really sure of the cause of Samantha's sleeping problems.  She has been drooling a lot, so there's a chance she could be starting the teething phase.  I have also read a lot about the four month sleep regression and about the troubles that sometimes set in around four months because they are so alert and aware of their surroundings.  Whatever the cause, it has been a rough few nights with Samantha and we are hoping that things go back to normal soon.

Samantha at 4 Months Old

This past week was pretty busy for us.  We had a lot going on with school for both of us, as well as a pretty full weekend.  Here are some pictures I took of Samantha when I was giving her a bath.  I gave her some links to play with while she was in the bath tub.  She has always really enjoyed bath time, and of course, will enjoy looking back on these pictures when she is older.  :)  Naked baby pictures are always fun!

Last Friday, September 16th, Samantha turned four months old, and as usual, we tried to get a picture of her holding her sign.  However, it is getting progressively harder to get good pictures as she is moving around a lot more now!  I tried to get a picture showing her new favorite activity, rolling over whenever she is laid down on the floor.

Samantha is such a happy little girl.  We love to play with her, tickle her, and make her laugh.  Her smile is just intoxicating and will make any bad day just disappear.


Our busy weekend started with a Political Science get together.  We had a barbecue and just hung out and talked.  Like normal, Samantha did really well because she loves to be around people.  She gets really slap happy at night though when it is past her bedtime and she is tired.  While we were sitting around talking, she was just laughing and making faces at Ben who was sitting across the room!  On Saturday we took Samantha to another IU football game, and this time, we brought our camera.  She did very well again, and even fell asleep in my arms again for awhile until the crowd yelled loud once and startled her.  Don't they know that they need to keep doing poorly while our little baby is sleeping?

Then, on Sunday, we drove up to Indianapolis to meet Grandma and Grandpa Toll for lunch.  We went to the Cheesecake Factory and had another eventful experience!  The first thing that happened was funny, the second one was not so funny.  I was holding Samantha so that she was sitting on the table facing towards me, and she reached out and grabbed a fry from the container that was sitting next to her on the table.  If we hadn't stopped her, she probably would have taken the fries and stuck them right into her mouth.  I wonder what she would have thought of that taste!  A little while later, Samantha was getting hungry, so I was getting ready to nurse her and asked Ben to make sure she didn't hit her head on the table as I was getting myself situated.  However, as he reached to protect her head, he accidentally knocked over my glass of Coke with ice and it poured all over Samantha, on her face and body!  Needless to say, she was not a happy camper, and started crying right away.  Two waitresses hurried over to help us clean up the mess as soon as they heard Samantha cry, and I rushed off to the bathroom to clean her up and change her clothes.  This was not what she wanted, as she knew she was getting ready to nurse, so changing her clothes and wiping her clean was quite traumatizing to her and probably to the other ladies in the bathroom who probably wondered what I was doing to my baby in there!  After that mishap, we all went over the the Art Museum gardens and walked around for awhile since it was a nice day outside.  Here are some pictures of Samantha with Grandma Toll.

In the meantime, Samantha has been continuing to be watched by our friend Melanie during the day when Ben is working or in class and I am at school.  It is still going really great, and she seems to be doing really well there, which makes it a little easier for me to leave her.  Here are some great pictures that Melanie took of her over the last few weeks:

There were times over this past week when life with a baby and working full time was really hard.  It was especially hard for me to want to leave in the morning.  I just wanted to stay home and be with my little girl, to sleep in and cuddle, and play with her all day.  I know that this is just a season of our life right now, and I give God my desires to stay home with Samantha on a daily basis and ask that he would help me to be content with whatever situation I am in at the time.  Life is busy and sometimes hectic, but I wouldn't trade it for the joy of having the blessing of Samantha as a part of our life now.

Samantha at 17 Weeks

Last week when Ben was home with Samantha, he got some really cute pictures of her laying on her stomach and playing on her floor gym.  I want to post some of those first before I describe the new developments of Samantha in the last week.

It's so funny reading my last blog post because I made a flippant comment about maybe next time being able to say that she learned how to roll over, and guess what?!  The very next day she did it!  I was on my way home from school when Ben called me and very excitedly saying that she had just rolled over! Luckily, I got home pretty quickly and got to see her do it myself as well several more times.  Here is a link to YouTube of her rolling over: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PjSD9Sc3Zc
Looking back now and realizing that she has been working on rolling over for the last week or so, now Ben and I wonder whether that was the cause of some of her sleeping problems, with her waking up more during the night.  Maybe she was waking up at night thinking about how she could finally learn how to roll over!  Now that she knows how, she is doing it all the time.  Whenever we lay her down on the floor gym especially, she will flip over to her stomach and has really enjoyed playing around that way a lot more.  She is getting really good at holding herself up on her forearms and pushing her chest up off the ground.  Lately, I have been putting a little baby mirror down on the ground with her when she is on her floor gym, and she enjoys rolling over and looking at herself.  She still continues to reach for things more and play with her toys.  I was even walking Roscoe the other day while carrying Samantha, and she held onto Roscoe's leash with me!


Over the last few days we have been reorganizing Samantha's closet because she is slowing growing out of her 3 month clothes, we had some hand me downs and new clothes from Aunt Christy, and it is also getting cooler out and she needs to start wearing pants more.  Some 6 month stuff is still too big for her, but she looks adorable wearing pants and socks, when we've just been used to seeing her in a onesie with bare legs and feet all summer!  In going through the closet we found this cute dress that Samantha hadn't worn yet, so we put her in it for church on Sunday.  Isn't she just the cutest thing you've ever seen!

Also, over the weekend, Samantha went to her first IU football game!  Unfortunately, we forgot out camera, so we don't have any pictures of her there.  We were not so sure how it would go because it was a night game starting at 7, and Samantha normally is in bed between 8:30 and 9:00, so we thought she might get crabby and tired while we were there.  But to our surprise, she was great!  She took a nap in my lap for about 45 minutes around the second quarter, and then she took another nap toward the end of the game after having her bottle.  She really enjoyed looking around at everyone and the noise didn't seem to bother her because she didn't even get fussy once.  Towards the end of the game she even got up on the jumbo-tron!  The camera guy must have thought that she was just too cute not to put up there, so now she's famous, but unfortunately people might think she is an IU fan which Ben would not approve of.


Here are some more cute pictures of Samantha laying on her floor gym:

I just love her sweet, little smile.  I could look at this all day.  She is just adorable to me, but then again, I am a little biased.  :)

Samantha at 16 Weeks

This week Samantha has been continuing with Melanie during the day while Ben and I are working.  She seems to love it there and loves to watch the boys play.  Melanie even told me that her boy, Elijah, was trying to eat Samantha's toes!  She has been settling into our routine, even only after a week, and has even given Melanie a nice two hour nap most afternoons when she is there.  We love to hear a good report from her and are so glad that a friend of ours, who is a great mom, is taking care of our little girl like she is one of her own.  Here are some cute pictures that Melanie took of Samantha while she was watching her:

Samantha is continuing to grab her toes and toys on a regular basis now.  Now when we go places, we have to remember to pack toys with us so that she can play with them.  She likes things with rings that are easy for her to grasp, and she also likes anything she can put into her mouth.  

This past week has seemed like such a developmental burst for Samantha.  It's like over night she has changed so much with grabbing and playing with toys, and we even have seen her trying so very hard to roll over.  She blows raspberries like crazy, can lift herself up on her forearms when she is laying on her tummy, and can lift her head up to a 90 degree angle as well, which we've read are things that babies only "may" be able to do at this age.  We have also discovered that Samantha likes to be tossed up in the air and caught.  She smiles and laughs so much when we do that; it's so great!  Back to rolling over, she normally tries to roll over when she is on her back, which is interesting, because normally you hear of babies learning to roll over from their stomach to their back.  She will roll all the way over on her side and even leaning forward more than that, but it's almost like her shoulder gets in the way, and she can't get herself all the way over so she rolls back to her back.  It seems like sometimes she gets frustrated when she can't do it.  Oh, but she is so close, and we are encouraging her to keep trying.  Who knows, maybe at my next blog post, we will announce that she has learned how to roll over!  Here is a picture of Samantha rolled over onto her side.  Ben thought she was so close to rolling over and wanted to catch a picture of it:

Sleeping has still been a little bit of an issue lately.  It's hard to tell really what it is that is causing it because she still has had some trouble with her stuffy nose, she may still be getting used to me being back at work, or it may also just have to with this developmental growth spurt that she is going through right now.  She may need some extra food and extra energy for all the growing that she is doing, who knows.  I've read that around this time babies can start to have some problems sleeping when they normally have been good sleepers just because of how interactive they are with the environment around them.  We are continuing to get her used to sleeping in her crib, and she seems to do pretty well with it most nights.  As you can see in this picture below, sometimes she can fall asleep in the strangest places!

This past weekend my parents also came down to Bloomington for a visit.  They got to watch Samantha on Friday while we worked, and on Saturday we went to the art museum in Indianapolis together.  Samantha slept in the car and for most of the time we were at the museum.  Here are some pictures of us with her at the museum:

This blog post is going to have a lot of pictures in it because I couldn't choose just a few.  They are all too cute!  Here are some from the weekend that my parents visited:

After my parents left on Sunday, we still had one more day off of work and school since it was Labor Day.  It was such a blessing to have that extra day off to spend time with family.  Another blessing was that the temperature dropped considerably, from almost 100 on Saturday to the upper 60s on Monday.  Because of the great weather, we decided to make use of our state park pass and go to Spring Mill State Park.  It was really neat because they actually had a historical village there that you could walk around, and there were tons of families out enjoying the nice weather and the day off of work.  Even though Samantha didn't know what was going on or where we were, she loves to be outside in nature, to go on walks, and to see different people and places.  We hope to take her to a lot more places like this as she gets older.  Here are some pictures from the park:

Samantha at 15 Weeks: Ben Going Back to School

This past weekend my sister Christy came to visit us.  It is always so great to see her and for Samantha to have bonding time with her aunt.  While Christy was here, we went to the farmer's market in Bloomington, attended a cook out with the political science department, played some dominoes, and just talked and caught up with each other.  You can't see it because of the bib around her neck, but Samantha is wearing her "I love my auntie" onesie that Christy got her. This will probably be the last month that it will fit her!

As far as new developments with Samantha, something that just happened for the first time last Tuesday is Samantha grabbing her feet.  I was at work and Ben texted me saying, "She grabbed her foot!"  Going along with that, she is also grabbing at toys a lot more now.  It is fun now that she is starting to play with her toys more and interact with the objects around her.  We may change our minds some day when she is pressing all the buttons on her toys that make noise!  She will reach for objects on purpose and then bring them to her mouth.  Right now, everything she touches goes in her mouth, any toys, bibs, anything, and she is such a little drooler right now!  We practically have to keep her in a bib all day long or else we would have to be changing her outfit constantly!

Also, when Christy was here, we took her to Brown County State Park, and we walked around and enjoyed the pleasant day.  Samantha is doing a much better job taking longer naps, and will usually take a good solid afternoon nap especially.  (She slept in her car seat the whole time we were at the state park.)  We have no problem getting her to sleep either in her crib or in her pack n' play during the day, and we are continuing to put her in her crib in her own room at night as well.  I usually put her down in her crib for the first stretch of the night, and then once she wakes up, I bring her into our room and feed her and then put her back to bed in her pack n' play next to our bed for the remainder of the night.  It seems to be working pretty well for right now, and eventually we will transition her into trying to sleep in her crib again after she wakes up as well.  We are very happy with her sleeping habits, and are amazed at how much of a corner she seemed to turn in this area in the last month.  She is much easier to get to sleep and is much better about sleeping on her own now.

However, going along with that, over the weekend when Christy was visiting, Samantha got her first stuffy nose.  The poor girl sounded so sad with her sniffly nose, and that Saturday night she had a really hard time sleeping.  It was almost like she didn't want to lay down flat on her back because of her nose, maybe it was draining down her throat and bothering her, I don't know.  She woke up a lot that night, and we didn't even bother trying to put her in her crib. However, at about 6:30 she woke up and wouldn't go back to sleep except for laying at an incline on my chest.  So, I propped myself up on pillows in bed so that I could at least get some rest too, and Samantha slept on my chest for the next two hours.  Now, I don't think I got very good rest in those two hours, but I was happy to be there for my little girl and felt so bad for her poor little stuffy nose.

The last big event in Samantha's life over the last week was Ben starting back at IU and Samantha starting to be babysat during the day by our good friend Melanie.  Monday was the first day she started full time, and I have to admit that it was harder for me than I thought it would be.  I took it for granted when she was at home with Ben for the last three weeks because I could call him anytime and hear updates on how she was doing and what was going on during the day.  I am extremely happy that she is staying in someone's home during the day rather than having to go to a daycare, that makes me feel much better about having to be gone at work all day.  I know Melanie is taking great care of her, and Samantha will have fun hanging out with her two boys every day.  It will definitely be an adjustment for us this week to get used to both of us being gone and working during the day, keeping up with Ben's busy school schedule and reading/work load, along with running the house, and making sure we spend lots of time with our little Samantha whenever we can.  This has been a busy week for us, but we know that God will help us through this and that he has us where he wants us to be for this season of our life, and I am so glad that our life now included the blessing of a little baby girl who we call Samantha.