Samantha: 17 Months, Week 2

To pick up where I left off in my last post, here is a video of Samantha talking, saying "nigh nigh moon," and making funny faces at the camera:

This week we had unseasonably warm weather.  We tried to get out and enjoy it as much as possible because we figured we wouldn't get weather like this for a very long time.  Even though Ben needed to study for his exams, I convinced him to go to McCormick's Creek State Park one evening for a picnic and playtime at a park for Samantha.  We had a great time there, and we even decided to take Roscoe with us since we never seem to take him anywhere these days.  After our picnic, Ben stayed at the picnic table to read, and I took Samantha to the playground to play.  We actually met another family from church there, and they had a little girl that was a few months younger than Samantha, so the girls followed each other around the playground quite a bit.  Samantha enjoyed going down the slides and sitting on the big girl swing while Mommy pushed her.  After we had a full evening of playing, we decided to leave and get back home for bedtime.

On Friday after school we left for Indianapolis to meet Grandma and Grandpa Toll for dinner at Jason's Deli, and also so that we could get some meat from them.  We are splitting a hog with them (we are taking 1/3 of it), so they brought some pieces of frozen meat to us.  Samantha did an excellent job sitting quietly at the restaurant, eating pickles, almost all of Mommy's fruit cup, and several pieces of Daddy's lunch meat.  There were plenty of other kids and babies around us for Samantha to watch as the grown-ups talked.  After we ate dinner, we went over to Buy Buy Baby and let Samantha walk around for awhile before we got in the car to come back home.  Samantha really enjoyed walking around and seeing all the toys, playing with anything and everything she could get her hands on.

Saturday, while Ben was spending some good time studying for his exam, Samantha and I met some friends at a fall festival at Bradford Woods.  Even though it was a bit chilly, we had a great time with friends.  The highlight of Samantha's time was definitely riding a pony and bouncing in the bounce house, two experiences she's never had before.  We were waiting in line for the pony rides, and I wasn't sure if they'd let her on it or not.  Ever since we took our vacation to Amish Country over the summer, Samantha has adored horses, so she was SO excited when she saw these ponies.  It was agonizing making her wait in line for her turn.  She just wanted to cut under the ropes and go pet the horses.  Well, once we finally got up to the front, Samantha was very ready for her ride.  The guy was explaining what the pony's name was and how to hold on.  Samantha just had this huge smile on her face.  She didn't really hold on, but I was standing next to her holding her on while the lady led the horse around.  You can't really tell from these pictures, but she was beaming the whole time, like she was on cloud nine.  I was telling the lady how much Samantha loved horses, and she commented on how comfortable and happy Samantha was on the horse.  She said, "You're going to have to get this little girl horseback riding lessons when she gets older.  She's a natural!"  It will be interesting to see if her love of horses continues as she gets older.

After we went on the pony ride, I practically had to pull Samantha away from the ponies.  She did not want to get off, and she did not want to leave.  That's the one thing about toddlers, the things they love, they don't want to stop doing.

Our next stop was some lunch and then the bounce house.  Samantha's friends had already entered the house, and I wasn't sure if Samantha would be able to go in it or not, but she seemed to do just fine.  It was hard for her to stay upright.  She kept falling down and as soon as she would stand up, another kid would bounce next to her and she would fall down again.  She didn't seem to mind, however.  She just kept on getting up, walking as far as she could, and falling down, giggling the entire time.  

Here is a video of the bounce house.  We had another crying episode leaving the bounce house because she was having such a good time that she didn't want to leave.  It was getting close to nap time as well, which definitely increased her emotional display.

These next pictures are my attempt at getting a picture of Samantha wearing her Halloween outfit, since we went to a Fall Festival.

Sundays are always difficult for families with kids.  It seems like schedules are always thrown off.  Well, for some reason, this Sunday was particularly difficult.  Samantha didn't nap as well as she should have and because of that, had a pretty fussy afternoon.  We could tell that she was tired because she had many accidents where she would hurt herself and kept tripping all over the place.  Luckily, we had no plans to go anywhere, but Daddy didn't get as much work done as he planned to do that Sunday afternoon.  We are blessed though, because even on fussy days, she gives us smiles like this:

In the evening, we participated in our first pumpkin decorating with Samantha.  She didn't really know what to do, especially since we were having her use markers which she hasn't ever used before.  She couldn't pull the caps off herself, so Daddy and I had to help her with that.  We laid down an old sheet to cover the floor for pumpkin carving and also in case Samantha decided to color on the floor instead of her pumpkin.  The enjoyment lasted for a little while, only for as long as an attention span of a toddler will last, and then she was off to other things.  Mommy might just be a sap, but she's a sucker for family traditions like this.

You can't see it too well in the dark, but the pumpkin on the right is Samantha's pumpkin.  After she was finished drawing on it, I wrote "Samantha's 1st Pumpkin."  However, the writing and drawings washed off after the next rain.

Samantha has gotten much better at helping to clean things up.  Most often at night we will have her help us pick up her toys rather than picking them all up after she goes to bed.  She enjoys putting things back into buckets or bags.  While she does it she will sing, "een uh, een uh," her little version of the song "Clean Up."  We'd like to think that starting good habits like this early will carry on into young childhood and beyond.

Samantha is a very loving girl.  She loves to hug things: Mommy, Daddy, Roscoe, dollies, other people's babies, the list could go on.  She will come up to us, wrap her arms around our legs, squeeze incredibly hard, rock her body back and forth, and give us the best hug you've ever had in your life.  We will never turn down these passionate hugs from our adorable, loving, little girl.  We will treasure them forever, for they truly bring joy to our hearts.

Samantha: 17 Months, Week 1

This week we think Samantha was going through a bit of a growth spurt.  She was eating tons for breakfast and second helpings at meals.  It's always funny the phases toddlers go through, particularly with eating.  When we gave her baths this week, her tummy was very big from all the food she had been eating.

Samantha's babysitter was having some problems with the health of her children which involved lots of doctor's appointments, so we had to find a back up plan this week.  Some of our babysitter's good friends covered for us, and at first we were a little concerned about how Samantha would do adjusting to a new house and new family, but of course, she did wonderful.  She was excited to see and play with new children.  She ate and slept like a champ.  Both ladies that watched her commented on how easygoing and happy Samantha was.  We love that we have such an easygoing baby.  This would be a difficult for us if Samantha was a particularly clingy or fussy baby.

Samantha has been mimicking us like crazy lately.  We will just be talking in a normal conversation and Samantha will repeat a word that we just said, in her own little way of course.  It's cute and we are so happy that she is learning new words, but it's also scary in some ways because someone is always listening, not that we say inappropriate things or anything.  She has words for so many things: dog, cow, cheerios, cheese, goldfish, Roscoe, down, bus, truck, book, slide, swings, outside, moon, pumpkin, baby, blankie, peek-a-boo, and the list could go on.  Some day I should make a list of all the words she says in one day.  We can generally understand exactly what she is trying to communicate to us.  The only exception is that she says something that sounds like "ba-bo" and we are not sure what that means.  Sometimes she says it when she's around Roscoe, like she's saying "bad boy," but she also says it in reference to other random things or also to her blankie, which often she calls "baby."

We've been trying to pull Samantha's hair up more lately because it is getting so much longer and getting in her face.  However, she has a hard time leaving it in, no matter how many times we tell her to leave it in because it's pretty.

What do you think she's thinking in this picture?  It looks like she was up to something, don't you think?

I love this little girl's smile!

Great Samantha and Mommy picture!

These two pictures are of Samantha "getting" Daddy by climbing on him.  She likes to roughhouse with Daddy a lot more lately.

This past week I had to pick Samantha up early from the babysitter on Wednesday because they had an appointment to go to.  Well, on Wednesdays we have our staff meeting so she had to come with me to school.  I had ladies in the office watch her for me for a little while, and then she came into the room with us for the last couple minutes of our meeting.  She just did laps around the room and everyone thought she was pretty adorable.

Samantha has normally been pretty good going out to restaurants with us.  We just take her with us wherever we go.  However, this past week we went out to eat at Olive Garden when we didn't feel like cooking.  We asked for a booth, thinking that we could put the high chair up next to the table and then let her climb around on the booth while we finished up our food, but apparently it was against fire code, so we had to use a booster seat for her.  However, there was no strap on the booster seat, so Samantha had a hard time sitting still.  She just kept getting up and down out of the seat and was not acting very hungry, even though she normally loves anything pasta.  This little experience showed us that Samantha is definitely not ready to graduate from the high chair yet!

Over the weekend my parents came to visit.  It was colder than the last weekend, but we still got to do a few things outside.  We went to the farmer's market and out to lunch on Saturday.  After her nap we went to the pumpkin farm together so Samantha could see the animals and ride in a wagon again.  She loved looking at the animals and also rode in the play car for awhile.  She wasn't as impressed with the wagon as she was last time, maybe it was just the novelty of it.

When my parents came this weekend, they brought some of my old toys with them to pass on to Samantha.  They brought my old Fisher Price Little People house with all the accessories and people.  Samantha was THRILLED!  She thought it was very nice, especially once she learned how to put the little people into the cars and drive them around.  In fact, she liked it so much that it was hard to pull her away from it when it was time to take a nap or go to bed.  Free toys are always a good thing, and seeing this toy brought back a lot of memories of when my sister and me played with it when we were little.

One of Samantha's favorite things to do is still to read books.  She will pick books out of her bag and bring them to you to read.  She particularly like Grandma and Grandpa to read books to her.  Her favorite book still seems to be Goodnight, Moon.  Although she calls it, "night, night moon."  Oftentimes she'll want us to read it to her several times in a row.  She is captivated by the pictures and the rhythm of the words.  We just have it checked out from the library, but I think we're going to have to buy this one to add to our collection, she loves it so much.

Samantha: 16 Months, Week 4

This week, Samantha and I made a trip to the library to check out some new books after I picked her up from the babysitter's house.  She LOVES the library.  The children's section there is wonderful.  We went to the board book section where they have puzzles and trains.  Once we got there, she found a stroller for a baby, went up to it and looked inside, saying "baby."  The baby wasn't actually in the stroller, but was standing, holding onto a toy.  Samantha tried to go up to the baby and give her a hug (she really loves babies lately).  I told her to be gentle and leave the baby alone, so then she went up to the nearest chair laid her head down on it, and pretended to hug the chair.  It's hard to depict what she actually did, but it was pretty cute.  The parents of the baby thought it was hilarious as well.  Samantha loves giving hugs, especially to things she loves.  And lately, she LOVES babies.  Even when we read books about babies, she tries to lay her head on the page of the book and then wiggles her body like she is trying to give them a hug.  She's such a loving little girl, what a wonderful personality trait God has gifted her with, even at such a young age.

On Friday this week, my school had Fall Break, so I had the day off, which was a wonderful time for me to spend with Samantha.  We started off the day with  a great family breakfast before Ben headed to school to study.  Samantha and I then headed to a play date with some friends at the Banneker Center.  They have a great play room there.  Samantha enjoyed riding in the car the best.  Once she discovered this car, she rode in it the rest of the time.  She still cannot quite figure out how to push herself forwards, so she would just go backwards until she got stuck.  Then, I would turn her car around so she could go the other direction.  Hmm..maybe an idea for a Christmas present for Samantha?  Too bad we don't have much room for anything like this in our little apartment right now.

The next day, Grandma and Grandpa Toll came to visit us.  We had great, unseasonably warm weather.  We went out for lunch at our favorite restaurant, Sweet Grass,  and then laid Samantha down for her nap.  During her nap, Ben, his parents, and I had a conversation about our plans for next year.  Ben and I have been talking about having another baby sometime late fall next year, and with that, have discussed the possibility of me staying home next year rather than teaching.  However, in order for that to be feasible, with Ben still being in graduate school, we needed to figure out how we would make ends meet financially with me not working full time anymore.  Anyways, a long story short, and Ben's parents have agreed to help us out financially a bit next year so that I can stay home with Samantha and baby number two.  I am going to try to make some money by either tutoring or giving piano lessons or watching someone else's kid, but needless to say, I am ECSTATIC!  This year has been extremely stressful for us with Ben working really hard on his exams and feeling the pressure of deadlines and things winding down, but being much more critical than classwork.  My year has been extremely stressful too with new curriculum, bigger classes, and more behavior problems.  Plus, Samantha being a toddler makes our evenings much different than they were a year ago and she was merely laying or sitting on a blanket playing with toys.  There would be no way we could bring another baby into the mix and keep up the status quo.  Things will be challenging for us, and we will have to keep a very tight budget next year, but the good thing is that it will hopefully be Ben's last year of graduate school and after that, he can get a job being a professor somewhere.  I am so grateful for Ben's parents helping us out, and I am so excited to expand our family again sometime next fall, adding a new little brother or sister for Samantha.  I am so grateful that I will get to be a stay at home mom.  :)

After Samantha woke up from her nap, we went to a local pumpkin patch that also had a petting zoo area.  Samantha had a great time wandering around the pumpkin patch and trying to lift up the heavy pumpkins.

Her favorite part, by far, was he animal petting zoo area.  She LOVES animals, all shapes and sizes.  She was particularly interested in the horses, which seem to be her favorite animal as of late, and the goats because she watched the other kids feed them and also got to try and feed them herself.  She seems to have no fear in approaching animals, which hopefully will continue to be a positive thing.  Sometimes when their faces get close up to hers she will back away, but she always wants to approach them, whether it be a horse or a dog.  When we got to the area with the goats, we scooped up some dropped food off the ground and let Samantha hold it out for the goat.  However, she didn't understand the concept of holding her hand out flat for the goat to eat out of it.  She wanted to hold the food between her fingers and give it to the goat, but I was afraid the goat would end up biting her if she held it out that way.  She thought it was so funny when she felt the goat's tongue and breath on her hand as it ate the food from her.  I think Grandma really enjoyed how much Samantha loved the animals in the barn, since she is a farm girl herself.

After picking out her own little pumpkin, we went back outside and one of the employees encouraged us to use a wagon to get around and get a pumpkin.  Even though we weren't planning on buying a large pumpkin, we decided Samantha would enjoy a wagon ride.  We put her in the wagon and Ben pulled her around as you can see in the video below.  However, what the video does not show is Samantha's reaction when she had to get out of the wagon.  She loved it so much that she didn't want to stop.  She cried and cried so hard when we made her get out of the wagon.  Even simple distraction didn't work to calm her down.  She definitely showed us that she enjoyed her wagon ride. Hmm...maybe another idea for a Christmas present for Samantha?

Yay!  Family picture!  We learned to do the family picture first next time rather than waiting to the end when we are dragging Samantha away from something fun to do.  :)

We had a very exciting day because later, after dinner, we all went to the IU versus Ohio State football game.  It was an 8 o'clock kickoff, so we had a pretty tired girl on our hands, but she did a wonderful job even though it was way past her bedtime.  Here is Samantha in the backpack carrier on Daddy.  She will usually last the whole first quarter in the carrier before she starts to get antsy and wants to get out and move around.  Samantha really enjoys the big scoreboard, all the people around her, and the beginning of the game when the band plays and fireworks go off.

After the first quarter was over, Samantha and I went down to the Knothole Park area for little kids and let her run around in the play area, so that Ben and his parents could enjoy the game without having to wrangle a toddler.  We have to be pretty careful because even though the area is only for kids six and under, there are always some bigger kids there.  Plus, they are throwing balls back and forth and are not always watching where they are going.  After a while, I picked her up and set her on the fence overlooking the field.  We were right behind the Ohio State cheerleaders and had a pretty good view of the field.  When we go to IU games, we always put Samantha in her little IU cheerleader uniform that we got handed down to us.  Needless to say, she is pretty adorable in her uniform, and sitting on the edge of the fence, she attracted a lot of attention from people.

Brutus, the Ohio State Buckeye mascot came into Knothole Park to mingle with the Ohio State fans and pose for pictures.  Samantha was intrigued by this person with a buckeye for a head, so we went up to him to check him out.  Since his head is so big and he can't see very well, he turned quickly and accidentally knocked into Samantha and knocked her over.  He then knelt down quickly to make sure she was okay, and I think this big head in her face kind of scared her and she started crying even more than she was before from just being knocked down.  Brutus felt really bad, and I took Samantha away to calm her down.  Well, later on, she was sitting on the railing again, and Brutus walked by her.  Samantha was again very interested in him.  She kept pointing them him and whining like she wanted to see him again.  He came up to her and tried to get her to give him a high five.  Samantha pulled her hand away and shook her head no.  It was hilarious, especially as an exchange between an IU fan and the Ohio State mascot.  There was a camera and spokesperson from the Big Ten Network nearby and they witnessed this interaction.  They then came up to Brutus and asked him to do that again so they could record it.  So they went through the whole interaction again and it appeared that Samantha was on the screen for quite awhile.  It still don't know if they ever actually played in on TV or not, but it was hilarious to watch.  Samantha was famous again!  (Last year when Samantha was little and would fall asleep at the games, the IU cameramen put a shot of sleeping Samantha up on the big screen.)  Well, now Samantha really enjoyed the attention she was getting from Brutus, so every time he walked by she tried to get his attention and he would wave to her or come up and tickle her feet.  It was great, Samantha was just thrilled with the whole thing, and it is something I will never forget.  Through all this, I think we realized that Samantha would rather be an Ohio State fan than an IU fan, and I think her Daddy and Grandma would be okay with that!