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!