Samantha: 15 Months, Week 2

This week started with having some friends over to our house while their parents went to a preschool meeting.  Elam and Jude came over on Monday night while Ben was at class.  We played inside for awhile, then went to play down at the swings and climbing gym, before coming back to the house.  When Samantha saw Elam and Jude inside, she looked at me with this smirk on her face, almost like she was thinking, "Did they come to play with me?  Great!"  But then, she just stands back and observes for awhile.  The boys starting playing right away, and Samantha just watched them for quite some time before joining in and playing herself.  The kids had a great time going on the swings and running around in the sand on the defunct volleyball court.  Samantha is definitely in the mimicking stage, so she loves to watch other kids and try to copy their actions and words.  Here are some pictures from our evening play session.

Samantha is blowing kisses in this picture.

What a sweet smile on a sweet little girl!

The rest of the week was just keeping our heads above water with school and preparing for Christy and Matt's wedding shower in Chicago this weekend.  I took a half day off on Friday so that we could travel up to Chicago during Samantha's nap time.  We stayed with my Uncle Bob and Aunt Diane in McHenry since that's where we were having the shower on Sunday.  We met my family for dinner on Friday night.  On Saturday we played at the park and my cousin Brian and his children Camryn and Logan came over for the afternoon and evening.  It was cute to see Samantha with Cami particularly.  Cami played with Samantha and took her around places, giving her different toys to play with and even trying to play hide and seek with her!

Here are Logan and Samantha climbing the hill in the backyard. 

Samantha LOVES looking at flowers, whether in the ground or in planters.

You can't tell too much from this picture, but Samantha will scrunch up her nose and smell things, almost like they are stinky.  She mostly does it with her socks, but in this picture she was smelling some grass, making her "stinky" face, and I tried to capture it on camera.

Here are the three afternoon playmates posing on the hill for a picture.  I think it's so adorable how Samantha has her hand resting on Cami's leg.  They really bonded today! 

On Sunday, Samantha woke up very tired, so we actually ended up laying her down for a morning nap before the shower started at 11:00 because we knew she wasn't going to make it through the shower happily if she didn't get some rest.  The shower went well, and there were so many kids there, that Samantha had plenty of activity to entertain herself.

Here are the cakes I made for the wedding shower.  They turned out pretty well.

After the shower was over, we headed out pretty quickly since we had a five hour drive ahead of us.  Samantha only slept about an hour in the car, so that was rough, but after stopping for some dinner and a walking break, she did pretty well the rest of the way in the car.  As long as I kept the toys and books coming and interacted with her constantly, she was a happy camper.  It was a long, busy weekend, and we were glad to get back home, even though it was fairly late at night, right at Samantha's bed time.  I wanted to share a funny story about when we got back Sunday night.  We were putting some things away in Samantha's room and getting her ready for bed.  Then, she grabbed her blankie and the nursing pillow and walked toward the rocking chair, very clearly showing me that she was ready for me to nurse her and put her to bed!  What an adorable little girl we have!