Samantha at 37 Weeks

This past week there were several times I looked at Samantha at was amazed and how big and grown up she looked.  It is amazing how fast she grows, and I can't believe she is almost 9 months old!  She is developing so much in the area of sleeping, eating, and moving around.  


This past week her fifth tooth came in, one to the right of her two front teeth.  I was changing her diaper at the beginning of last week and noticed a new tooth popping through her gums.  We didn't even know she was teething, and it didn't seem to bother her very much this time, definitely not like the last tooth that took almost a whole week to break through and caused her a lot of pain and discomfort.  Now her mouth looks so funny with the three teeth on top all at different lengths since they came in at different times.  I will have to get a good picture of this priceless grin to put on my post for next week.


Also, every night this past week she slept all through the night until the time I nursed her in the morning before I went to work.  Previously, she had started waking up earlier in the morning between 4 and 5 a.m.  Needless to say, I am a fan of this new habit of hers.  I feel so much better rested the next morning after I night of uninterrupted sleep.  Samantha continues to go to sleep between 8:00 and 8:30 each night and will generally sleep until 6:30ish when I feed her before work, then will go back to sleep until 8 or 8:30.  She has gotten into quite the little routine, and it works out great.  She gets a good 12 hour sleep at night, and Ben gets time in the morning to get ready for the day and do some work before she wakes up.  In fact, Thursday night she actually slept 12 hours straight without waking up because I took Friday off of work so that we could head out of town earlier.  I didn't have to wake her up to feed her and she didn't wake up on her own, so she slept all the way through the night until 8:00.  We were so surprised!


Samantha continues to eat more and more of her baby food.  In fact, now she is eating a jar of fruits or vegetables at lunchtime mixed with some cereal, as well as a jar of fruits or vegetables for dinnertime.  We have also been giving Samantha more Cheerios, and she really likes them!  They are especially helpful when we go out to restaurants because they keep her little hands occupied while we eat our meal.  She is doing a much better job getting them to her mouth now.  Samantha loves to eat now, and when we feed her she holds her hands up in the air and moves them around like she is extremely excited.  You can see that in this picture here.

Samantha continues to move around all the time.  She is crawling faster now, will spot something across the room that she wants to get to, and will crawl towards it.  We have to do much more redirection with her when she going for something that she shouldn't.  It's great that she's so curious and aware of her surroundings, learning about the world around her.


On Wednesday night we decided to be adventurous and go to a birthday party in Indianapolis for a friend of Ben's from college.  The dinner didn't start until 7:30 so we were a little hesitant at first, being that we usually get Samantha ready for bed around 8:00, but she did an awesome job!  We fed her food and Cheerios at the restaurant, put her in her pajamas before we left the restaurant, and she fell asleep in the car on the way home.  Once we got home we put her in her sleep sack and laid her down in her crib and she fell right back to sleep.  We were worried that she would have a hard time falling asleep once we got back home, but we should have known better than to be worried about our easygoing, socialite baby.


Then, this weekend we went to Upland for another get together with Jeni, Andrew, and Alaina.  It was great to see them again and give the babies a chance to interact again.  They grow so fast and even though it doesn't mean much to them right now, hopefully they will look forward to getting together with their cousin in the future.  It's great how close they are in age.  Here are some pictures from the weekend together.

Also, a great surprise that happened in Upland is Samantha sleeping really well! This is a new occurrence, and even though she didn't sleep all the way through the night like she had been, she woke up only once during the night to nurse and then went right back to sleep until her normal morning wake up time.  I think it really helps when she is able to have her own room.  Maybe from now on we will just give Samantha the bedroom and Ben and I will sleep on an air mattress in the office!


I have a couple other things to mention from this week.  Now that Samantha is getting so big, and since we made a trip to Upland this weekend, we decided to officially switch out her car seats for the new "big girl" ones.  We didn't have too much trouble getting them installed, and they will last her a long time, as well as be great for future use for any kids that follow Samantha.


One last story to share.  When we were at our small group last night, Samantha was on the floor playing with some toys when one of the boys in the group was brought down from upstairs (away from the older boys), and when Samantha saw him she just screamed out in sheer delight.  It was almost like she was saying, "There's my friend!  I know you!  I'm so glad you came down to play with me!"  Samantha's personality is so social, which is funny being a product of Ben and me, so it will be interesting to see how her personality develops as she gets older.