Samantha: 15 Months, Week 3

Samantha is a very active little girl, just like a toddler should be.  Lately, she has taken to doing laps around the house after dinnertime.  We have a couple of push toys, one in particular is a car that plays music as you push it around, and that seems to be her favorite right now.

We love to play with her in the evenings when we both get home from work.  It's amazing, however much stress you have during the day, when you get around your little girl, everything melts away and nothing is as important in the light of spending time with your family.

Another development of this week is Samantha learning the word "no".  Now she says it quite often.  She doesn't really know what it means yet, she just says it, mostly not in response to anything, but oh, it's just the beginning!  Yay toddlerhood!  Samantha has been pretty easygoing so far and doesn't really have "temper tantrums" yet, and to be honest with you, Ben and I really aren't looking forward to that stage.

Samantha has also learned how to dance and whenever she hears music, she moves her feet and wiggles her body.  One time we went to Best Buy to look at laptop computers, and Samantha walked around until she found the TV that was playing music.  She then stood in front of the TV on the little mat and danced around to the music.  She was so cute.  Well, later in the week, we tried to capture it on camera.  Isn't she adorable?

Samantha loves to spin around and to be spun around by us.  She will hold her hand up in the air and spin around in circles.  (Sorry the video is sideways.  That's how I recorded it, and I'm not sure how to rotate it.  You'll have to turn your head sideways.)

This weekend, on Friday we had a get together with our old small group at Bryan Park to meet up and catch up after our long summer break.  It was good for the kids to see each other again, and we had great weather.  Samantha loves playing on the playground, except she's at the point where she want to climb around on all the play equipment, but can't quite do it unsupervised yet.  Samantha was pretty tired this evening, and she tends to overreact more when she's tired.  She was climbing in a yellow tube when a boy at the other end yelled very loudly at his friend.  Well, this must have startled Samantha because she started crying very loud, and I actually had to take her off the playground for awhile to calm her down before she could play again.  Then, there was one time Samantha crawled through the yellow tube from one side of the playground to the other, so I had to climb down and meet her on the other side.  However, by the time I got over there, she was standing at the top of the slide about ready to plunge over the side walking!  I told her no and pulled her back from the edge of the slide.  Samantha is very sensitive, and immediately started crying because of being corrected.  It will be interesting to see if her sensitivity to correction continues as she grows up.  In some ways it would be nice if it did because then I don't think we will have to do much discipline with her.  Just give her a sideways glance and she'll melt to pieces!

On Saturday my parents came down for a visit.  They got here while Samantha was taking a nap and left on Monday afternoon since it was Labor Day.  Unfortunately, it was a rather rainy weekend so we weren't able to go out and do anything, but we had a fun time playing together and interacting with Samantha.  Samantha loves her grandparents.  On Sunday we put her in a cute new (hand me down) dress and took some pictures of her playing with Grandpa and Grandma before we went out to dinner at Mother Bear's Pizza.

Here is Grandma reading Samantha a book.  It's a soft book that came with a teddy bear (you can see the bear in the above picture).  The bear has a button you can push and he will recite the prayer, "Now I lay me down to sleep.  I pray the Lord my soul to keep.  May angels watch me through the night, and wake me with the morning light.  Amen."  She really likes the bear, but especially likes us to read the book to her.

Here is Grandpa showing Samantha the pictures he took of her on his camera.  She's s a pretty big fan of her Grandpa.  He's very good with her.

Ben and I go back and forth on how many kids we might want to have.  I've always thought a family of four sounded good.  Ben is more in the two to three range.  However, we've made several comments to each other lately that if all our kids turn out like Samantha, with her sweet personality and laid back demeanor, maybe we will have four or five!