Samantha at 23 Weeks Old

There are so many things for me to write about this week!  Many developments and firsts, so bear with me as I describe them.  The first thing she started doing on a regular basis this week is rolling over onto her tummy, especially during naptime, and sleeping that way.  We always lay her down on her back to start, but she must prefer to sleep on her tummy (like her daddy), so more often than not, she is flipped over when she wakes up.  We actually had to change the bumper pads from the padded, decorative ones, to these mesh, breathable bumpers so that if she were to roll over into the side of the crib she can still breathe.  Samantha still hasn't learned how to roll back once she has gotten on her tummy.  Here are some cute pictures I snapped after she had just woken up from a nap on her tummy.

Samantha has also started to suck her thumb a lot more.  Every once in a while we can get her to take a pacifier, but it is not really for sucking, just for chomping down on.  Here are some pictures of our little girl sucking her thumb, wrapped up in a towel after her bath.  She continues to love baths and now has mastered the art of kicking her feet into the water and splashing everyone and everything around her (including Mommy and Daddy)!

The other new development is that Samantha is sitting up!  She has been working on it for awhile, and she still isn't completely sturdy, but she can definitely do it for several minutes without support.  I think she will really enjoy seeing the world from this perspective!

I don't have any pictures of this, but Samantha has seems to already understand that dropping objects, like her toys, is a fun game to play.  She really enjoys playing in her exer-saucer and can very easily turn herself all the way around to play with the various toys.  The other night when she was playing in it, I gave her her rattle to play with also, and Samantha kept pushing the rattle off the side of the exer-saucer, I would put it back, and then she would continue to push it off.  This is the first time of many, I'm sure, that we will play this game.  It was cute because our little girl is starting to learn cause and effect.


Here are some cute pictures of Daddy with his little girl whom he adores.

Here is Samantha all bundled up and ready for a walk with Mommy and Roscoe.

This past week Samantha developed a stuffy nose and then on Friday it progressed into a cough that got much worse on Saturday.  She had a rough time sleeping on Friday night because of it, so we took her into the doctor just to check and make sure her cough wasn't in her chest and that she didn't have an infection of any kind.  She was fine, but we felt so bad every time she did her sad, pathetic little cough.


On Sunday, Samantha achieved another new development, she finally rolled over to her right!  Here is a picture of Samantha on her floor gym after she had rolled over to her right.

Across the last couple of months we have had bouts of good and bad experiences with sleep.  When Samantha was younger, she had a hard time going down for naps and being left by herself.  Well, that has obviously improved over time and now Samantha is pretty good at being laid down for naps while she is still awake and falling asleep on her own.  Sometimes she will cry for a few minutes and then fall right asleep.  It is a real blessing for us to have a baby that sleeps better and feels rested throughout the day so that she can be herself in her interactions with others and not get overtired in the evenings.


The next big development of this week was...drumroll please...Samantha now has her two lower front teeth!  She has been drooling and rubbing her gums for quite a while now, and as I posted last week, we thought a tooth might be coming anytime, and we just noticed that they broke through on Monday.  It's interesting that they both decided to come through at the same time.  She wasn't too cooperative when we were trying to get a picture because she didn't want us sticking our fingers in her mouth and pushing her tongue out of the way, but this is the best one we got!

The last week has been up and down with sleeping at night, Samantha was waking up more frequently, sometime even two times during the night.  There were also a couple nights where she seemed unsettled, and we had a hard time getting her to fall back asleep, sometimes taking turns staying up with her.  Now, that we look back on the week, with all the new developments she has made and the teeth breaking through, no wonder she has had a hard time sleeping and has been a little more fussy during the day.  Her little mind and body have been busy growing and learning new things.  However, now that her teeth have come through she is getting back into her normal sleeping pattern and has slept through the night again a couple of times.


My most cherished time of the day is when I get to nurse and cuddle Samantha to sleep at night.  I love being a mom.  When else will my daughter cry for me to be with her at night or cuddle up into my chest for comfort when she is upset?  Even though sometimes I get frustrated when she awakens during the night, when she does sleep through the night I miss her in the morning.  These times I get to spend with my little lady are times that I will yearn for in the future.  At night, as I rock my baby off to sleep, I hold her close, cherish these moments, and I will soak up as many as I can.  I love being Samantha's mom, and I thank God for entrusting me with her care.

Samantha at 5 Months Old

Samantha is growing up so fast.  Every week I feel like I have something new to post that she has started doing.  She has been playing with her feet quite a bit lately, but this past week she has made a conscious effort to put her feet in her mouth and suck on her toes.  It is rather cute.  Don't we all wish we could be that flexible?

When Samantha gets bottles during the day while I am at work, we have started  giving her 4.5 ounces because it seemed like she was still hungry after only having 4 ounces.  That's the one tricky thing about breastfeeding, you really have no idea how many ounces they are eating, they just eat until their bodies say they have had enough to eat.  Here is Samantha attempting to hold her own bottle one day while Ben was feeding her.

We had quite the eventful weekend because it was Homecoming at Taylor University, and it was our 5 year anniversary.  We made plans to go to the 2006 class reunion and also to have a cook out with our friends on Saturday night so we could all get together and hang out.  Samantha was a pretty good sport even though we dragged her around all day on Saturday.  She didn't get very good naps because of all the Homecoming activities.  Taylor is building a new science building and Ben's dad has had a lot to do with the planning of it.  Nevertheless, the building has been a long time coming, so we went on a group tour of the building.  Ben's dad wanted a picture of him and his granddaughter in his new soon-to-be office.  Here is a picture of Samantha wearing her hard hat, ready for the tour!

Here are some more pictures of Samantha at Homecoming:

One thing we realized about Samantha this weekend is that she doesn't sleep very well when we are in other places.  Friday night she fell asleep in her car seat on the way back from dinner, and we just left her sleeping in there until  she woke up at 2 o'clock in the morning.  I then fed her and put her back to sleep.  She woke up again later in night/earlier in the morning and was running her nails up and down the mesh on the side of the pack n' play.  It's like she could tell she was somewhere else and not at home, and it felt different to her.  On Saturday night, because of the craziness of the day, I think she got overtired which made it a rough night.  She woke up several times during the night and one time she woke up she wouldn't go back to sleep and ended up being awake for almost two hours.  Nevertheless, Ben and I didn't sleep much that night, and we were feeling exhausted on Sunday morning.  Luckily, Samantha took a 2.5 hour nap on Sunday afternoon, and we were actually able to sneak in an hour nap ourselves which gave us a much needed boost.

It's amazing how much of a schedule Samantha has gotten herself into, and a change in that schedule, even as small as sleeping in a different place other than her crib, really seems to throw her off.  The last time we traveled to Ben's parents' house the same thing happened with Samantha having trouble sleeping.  The last couple of days has been just trying to get Samantha back into her routine, and she has slowly been catching up on sleep and turning into her more normal, less tired self.

Also, this past Sunday Samantha turned 5 months old!  It's hard to believe she is that old already, and it is getting harder and harder to get any good pictures of her because all she wants to do is eat her sign!

Samantha has been doing a better job with trying to sit up on her own.  She is working on it, and if she can balance herself or hold herself by leaning on her arms, she can actually sit up for a while on her own.  We have been letting her lean up against the boppy pillow or sit in between our legs to help her practice sitting up.  That is the next milestone for Samantha to accomplish, along with getting her first tooth, which we feel has to be coming sometime soon with how much she is drooling and how she rubs everything on her gums and sticks everything in her mouth.  Her cousin Alaina already has her first tooth, so we'll see when Samantha has one pop up!

Samantha at 21 Weeks

Samantha has a new development that she has started in the area of sleeping this past week.  She is sleeping through the night!  Yeah!  Last week on Wednesday, I decided that I would start the next phase with Samantha and go into her room and nurse her in the rocking chair when she woke up during the night, and then put her back to sleep in her crib rather than keeping her in our room in the pack n' play.  However, I didn't even need to do that, because that night she slept through the night.  Except for the Friday and Saturday night when my family was visiting, Samantha has slept all the way through the night, from when we put her to bed around 8:45 all the way until I wake her up to nurse her at 6:30 before I leave for school, and then will usually go back to sleep until around 8 or 8:30.  I would be okay if this were a new pattern for her, but I know growth spurts and different things will cause nighttime disturbances still.  For right now, I am really enjoying nights of uninterrupted sleep.  It is also nice having her in her own room so that Ben and I can get ready in our bedroom in the morning without tiptoeing around in the dark.

Samantha sporting her Cubs onesie!

This past weekend my parents and sister came to visit us here in Bloomington.  On Friday night we went to Brown County State Park for a cook out since the weather was so beautiful.  After dinner we went on a trail together and Samantha had the greatest time.  She really likes it when we go up and down stairs, which the trail had plenty of.  It's really funny to her for some reason, and she was just laughing and having a good old time on our hike.

As we were walking, Samantha grabbed onto the leaves of this tree and examined it carefully. 

On Saturday we all went to the farmer's market in the morning and then went to celebrate little Elijah's first birthday.  We had a great time hanging out with friends and watching all the kids play with each other.  Even though Samantha can't play yet, she enjoys watching others and is very social.  She loves being around people.

We dressed her up for the birthday in this adorable little dress.  Isn't she just the cutest thing you've ever seen?

She's not being very lady-like in this picture, is she?

Here are some more pictures from when my family visited:

You can't tell from this picture, but that hat on her head is actually Ben's Cubs hat.

Here is Samantha all dressed up for church on Sunday.  We like to put her in dresses.  :)

What a great family picture!

Another new development with Samantha is that she is responding to her name.  When she is looking away and we say her name, she will turn toward us.  If we say a different name she doesn't respond, so that's really neat to know she is starting to recognize certain words already.  Also, a couple weeks ago, we got an exer-saucer from some friends and she is really enjoying that.  She can exercise her legs and is starting to figure out how to turn herself around in it.  Right now the toys go right to her mouth, but at least they have some purpose right?  We think she may be teething, but won't really know for sure until a tooth pops out.  She has been exceptionally drool-y lately, and she has been putting everything in her mouth and chewing on it.  Samantha has also been much more vocal lately.  It's like all of a sudden she found her voice and now she is "talking" much more than she used to.  Maybe Cousin Alaina rubbed off on her a little bit when they got together a few weeks ago.  Samantha likes to make really high pitched squealing noises.  It's almost like she is playing with her voice, testing out all the different sounds that she can make.

We also just discovered that Samantha has cradle cap.  I wasn't really sure what it was before, but I noticed some yellow spots up by her hairline, along with some dry skin on her scalp, and one of our friends said that it was cradle cap.  In our pediatrician's handbook, it says to use baby oil to soften their scalp and loosen the skin, and then to use Selsun Blue and a toothbrush to scrub it to help clear it up.  We tried that for the first time and putting the baby oil on her head made her hair look so greasy!  I tried it again the next night without the baby oil and that helped with the greasiness factor, but her head still looks pretty flakey because of the dry skin.  It is a very common thing for babies to develop, so we will just keep trying to take care of it and help it to clear up.


It is amazing to me how fast Samantha is growing.  Ben and I were looking through some old pictures of Samantha to pick some to print out and take to our schools, and we were just getting so sentimental looking at how tiny she was when she was born and how much she's grown since then.  She is such a big girl and is such a joy to have in our life!

Samantha at 20 Weeks

At the end of my last post, I wrote about how much trouble Samantha was having with sleeping.  We were hoping it was just a phase, as we were so tired during the week, it was hard to function during the day when we weren't getting very much sleep at night.  Well, last Wednesday she went back to normal again, just like that.  We didn't do anything different, she just went back to going to sleep like normal and staying asleep until around 4 a.m. at which time I would nurse her again and put her back to sleep until morning.  Ahh, it's amazing how much more sleep will help you feel better!


Also, last week Samantha had her four month appointment, and she had to get her second round of shots.  They weighed her and measured her and did a general checkup.  Samantha weighed 17 pounds, 2 ounces, and was in the 95th percentile.  She was 25 1/4 inches long and in the 95th percentile there too.  Her head circumference was 42.5 centimeters which is is the 50-75th percentile range.  She checked out great and was her usual happy go-lucky, smilely self at the doctor's office as well.  The only thing the nurse said we need to keep an eye on is the fontanel (or soft spot) on Samantha's head.  She said it seems on the small side, so we just need to make sure that it is growing and allowing her brain to expand and grow as well.  The nurse said it's not a big deal, but just something to keep an eye on.  However, after her checkup I had a "crazy mom" dream of Samantha being a grown adult, but still having a tiny head because her skull never grew as the rest of her body grew!  Strange dreams of the irrational fears of a mother!


Now, we didn't know quite what to expect with how she would react to her shots.  After the shots at two months, Samantha just cried and cried in the office afterwards, and then fell asleep in the car on the way home, but other than that she had no adverse reactions or symptoms.  Since Samantha is a lot more wiggly now, the nurse had to kind of brace her legs down by hanging them off the edge of the table and then leaning against them with her legs, so that Samantha would not kick her feet and knock the nurse's hands while she was giving her shots.  Samantha didn't cry as much as she did last time.  It was mostly crying due to the shock and pain of having the needle stuck into her thigh.  As soon as Ben picked her up and held her she quieted down fairly quickly.  She seemed to do fine that evening too, however, the next day she started to get a bit fussy.  It seemed like her legs were sensitive when they were moved around or touched in certain ways, so diaper changes weren't her favorite activity of the day.  Friday night we drove to Indianapolis to meet Ben's parents for dinner since they were in town for a conference, and while we were driving there Samantha developed a fever.  We gave her some Tylenol as soon as we got to the restaurant, but it took a little while to kick in.  She was such a sad little girl because she was warm and wasn't feeling well.  We had never seen her feeling sick like that before, and I felt so bad for her.  However, once the Tylenol kicked in and Grandma Toll rocked her to sleep, her fever broke and then she felt much better and was more back to her social self.


Since Grandma and Grandpa Toll were staying in Indianapolis for the night due to the conference, we were able to go over to their hotel and take Samantha swimming for the first time!  It was getting to be later in the evening, approaching her bedtime, so she got cranky a little faster than normal, but I think overall she really enjoyed it.  She wasn't so sure when we first took her in, but once she got used to the water, she seemed to be just looking around taking everything in.  We held her in various positions so she could feel the water flowing around her, and we pulled her around the pool to make sure she was staying warm enough.  I think Samantha will really like being in water once she can sit up and have a little more control over her body.  It was a good first swimming experience for her, and she looked absolutely adorable in the the little bathing suit that Aunt Christy got for her!

On Saturday, Ben went to the IU football game, and Samantha and I decided to go with friends from our small group to an apple orchard.  It was a perfect fall day.  The weather was brisk, with a bit of a chill in the air, but the sun was out all day.  I carried Samantha around in the baby carrier, and we picked apples and walked around the apple orchard with our friends.  Samantha enjoyed being outside and watching Elam, Jude, and Thomas run around and play.  She likes getting attention from these boys!  This first picture is so cute of Samantha in her apple hat.  Andrea from our small group got this for her, and we thought it would be the perfect hat for her to wear at the apple orchard.

 Here is Samantha sitting in the pumpkin patch.  It took many shots to try to get a picture where she is sort of looking up.  She was too interested in playing with the grass with her right hand.

 Here is Elijah and Samantha sitting in the pumpkin patch together.  He is almost a year old and is the son of Melanie, the lady that babysits Samantha for us during the week.

Here is a picture of Samantha and me sitting in the pumpkin patch:

Besides for all these fun activities that Samantha has experienced over the last week, she has been doing a few things developmentally as well.  She has completely given up taking a pacifier lately.  We used to be able to use it to soothe her when we were trying to get her to sleep or when she was upset and fussy, but now she won't even take it into her mouth.  She just pulls it out and plays with it, or sucks the bottom part into her mouth rather than sucking on it.  I guess that's both a blessing and a curse in some ways because we won't have to worry about breaking her of the pacifier, but at the same time, we have no tool to use for those certain occasions to calm her down.  She hasn't completely taken to sucking her thumb, but she is definitely working on it.  It used to be that she would try to stick her whole fist in her mouth, then it progressed to just her fingers, and now, more and more, she is just sucking on her thumb.  We'll see if this sticks and if she uses this to soothe herself in the future.


Samantha is also batting at toys a lot more.  We even noticed her batting at the toys that are hanging from the handle bar of her car seat the other day.  That was the first time we had noticed her doing that.  She will also bat at the toys hanging from the bar on her vibrating chair and on her floor gym.  Her movements are much more intentional now, and she is able to reach out and grab a toy that she is interested in playing with.  


Things always change with what babies like and what works for them.  We used to have a so-called "magic position" that would always work to get her to fall asleep.  We would hold her on her side facing towards our stomach, and we'd use our body to help hold the pacifier in her mouth.  It would be kind of like a nursing position.  Well, when we would do this and rock her or walk around with her she would almost always fall asleep.  Lately, however, this has not really worked.  It is no longer a "magic position."  The position I have found she likes the best lately is just being held straight up with her head resting on my shoulder.  She is liking to snuggle that way a lot more, when for a while she didn't seem to like being held like that anymore.  I have to admit that I enjoy the snuggling, feeling her tiny breaths on my neck, feeling her small hands grasp my shirt or my hair, and then watching her hands fall lifelessly as she passes into deep sleep.  I like to just watch her sleep sometimes.  She is so peaceful and calm.  I often wonder what she thinks about and what she dreams.  As I rock my baby to sleep, I dream about the future, I wonder what she will be when she grows up, I wonder what kind of a personality she will have.  The future is full of endless possibilities for this little girl, this little blessing from God, and I can't wait to see what God's plans are for her little life.