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.