Samantha at 11 Months

Samantha has been gradually getting more comfortable with "cruising" along furniture.  We oftentimes have to encourage her by giving her something to go after.  I attempted to get some pictures/videos of her doing this, but I was unsuccessful because as soon as I got the camera out, she decided she didn't want to try and walk anymore.


Another significant marker this week was Samantha turning 11 months old on Monday, April 16th!  We can't believe we are one month away from her first birthday.  The week got away with us, however, so we didn't take pictures of her with the 11 month sign until several days later.  Here are some of our attempts:

You can't tell too much in this picture, but Samantha is learning how to put the shapes in the correct holes on this toy.  She especially can get the circle to go in the right place because of its rotational symmetry, and attempts the others.  She seems to know which spot they are supposed to go in, but has trouble turning it the right way and holding it at the right angle for it to slide into place. 

As you can tell by these pictures, she continues to be a little monster.  When she is awake, she is in constant motion.  Sometimes it is tiring trying to keep up with her, and we have even baby-proofed much of our home.  We love our active little girl.  We love her curiosity and interest in the world around her.


This past weekend my parents came down to visit us (but really mostly Samantha).  It's always good to have them here so they can spend quality time with Samantha in her home element.  We didn't do anything spectacular, just took a trip to the library and spent time playing with Samantha.  Here are some great pictures of Samantha from the weekend.  As I was looking through the pictures on our computer, I noticed a lot of them were of Samantha looking at her books.  That is one of her favorite activities.  It's funny because most of the time she looks at them upside and flips the pages opposite of what we would do.  She loves to look at two Baby Einstein books in particular that have lots of colorful pictures, and she loves the new touch and feel books we checked out from the library.

These two pictures were taken after bath time in the new chair from Grandma Kappel.   She doesn't appear to be a big fan of having things on her head and was trying to pull the hood off.

Samantha is all dressed up for church.  We just love putting pretty little dresses on her.  I'm not sure why she's making this funny face, but it's at least a picture with her looking at the camera.

Later that afternoon, she started doing something really funny.  When she is tired, she has been laying down on Roscoe's bed, rubbing her face into it like she does when she's sleepy.  It's pretty cute.  Here's a picture of her snuggling on his bed.

I wanted to end this blog post by talking about some other commonplace events in Samantha's life.  We have been giving her a lot more finger foods lately, like bananas and noodles (one of her particular favorites), and due to that, she is getting much messier when she eats.  This past week when she was eating she slapped her hand against her head, and we reacted by laughing at her, so she continued doing it, getting more and more food in her hair.  Now, she puts both hands on the side of her head a lot when she eats and also when we say "Oh, my!"  She is mimicking our sounds and motions a lot more now.  It's fun to see how much she observes about the people around her.


Also, with increased mobility comes many more minor scrapes and bruises.  There were a couple instances this week where she hurt herself, once from pinching her fingers in Roscoe's cage door when she was pulling it back and forth, and once when she bit her lip and made it bleed when she was pulling herself up on the changing table.  The little face she makes when she has hurt herself is so sad.  Her face turns bright red, her mouth opens up wide, and she bursts out crying, tears instantly falling from her squinted eyes.  Her arms reach out, longing to be picked up, rescued, and cuddled.  Oftentimes, just showing Samantha her reflection helps the crying subside.  It's hard to see your child in pain, even if it is only a small scrape or bruise.


One night, as I was nursing and rocking Samantha to sleep, I was thinking about the power of your hands as a parent.  Our hands can calm crying, and their uses have changed as Samantha has gotten older.  When she was first born, we used our hands to gently rock her back and forth after we laid her down in her bassinet.  Then, as she got a little older, after I'd lay her down on her back, I would leave my hand resting on her chest until she settled back to sleep so she knew I was still there with her.  As soon as Samantha could roll over, she started sleeping on her tummy, and I would then lay my hand on her back to reassure her of my presence.  Now that she's almost a year old, she doesn't really need me to reassure her with presence of my hands after I lay her down to sleep, but I still love to kiss her little cheek before I lay her down and hold her hand as she drifts off to sleep in my arms.