Samantha: 18 Months, Week 1

After our busy weekend of traveling, we all woke up pretty tired on Monday morning.  Samantha woke up Monday morning saying "bus" and "Texas."  She must have had a really good time there.  :)  You know what they say, once you go to Texas, you never leave.  Good thing we got Samantha out while had the chance.

The hardest part about returning to Indiana was going from weather in the mid-70's to weather in the 30's with snow!  Samantha was pretty excited to see the snow on Monday.  She didn't really know what to think of it, but enjoyed repeating the word "snow" whenever she saw it outside.  Of course it didn't stick for very long, but it was our first snow of the year.

In honor of the snow today, I put on some Christmas music that night at home.  Samantha danced around to the music, having a good old time.

Samantha took most of the week recovering from our trip to Texas, taking extra long naps in the afternoon and getting back to our normal routine, just in time to go on another trip to Florida!  We had one of our old stand by's for dinner on Wednesday night of this week: Mother Bear's Pizza.  Samantha loves pizza (probably because Mommy loves pizza and she had quite a bit while in utero).  Lately, we have been letting her dip things, and it was no different with her breadsticks and cheese sauce.  Ahh, like mother like daughter.  Here is a video of Samantha dipping:

We had a girl's night at our house this week, so I made cookie dough brownies for us to enjoy.  Samantha was very interested in what I was doing in the kitchen, so I pulled up a chair for her to stand on and let her watch me bake.  She was very intrigued by the whole process, especially the mixer.  Whenever I turned the mixer on, Samantha wanted me to pick her up and hold her so that she could see into the mixing bowl as it was mixed together.

Also, my friend brought her baby who was just a little over a month old over that night.  Samantha was very excited to see the little baby, almost too excited.  She kept wanting to go up to the baby and hug him and take his hat and blanket off of him.  Eventually, I had to just take Samantha upstairs for Ben to put her to bed so that she wouldn't wake the baby up by bothering him.  She really loves little babies lately.  It's pretty cute to see how much she adores them.

On Friday, Samantha turned 18 months old.  It's hard to believe she's already a year and half old already.  This semester of school has sure flown by.  We had quite the busy day in preparing to leave for Florida.  Once I got home from school, we packed up the last few things for our trip and headed out.  We drove for a couple hours, stopped at Wendy's in Louisville to pick up dinner, use the bathroom, and change Samantha into her pajamas, and then we hit the road again.  We had fun playing with Samantha in the car and she did great.  As long as she has someone sitting with her, someone to talk to, someone to read her books, and someone to make her laugh, she was a happy girl.  Around 8:00, we stopped for some coffee and gas, read Samantha some books and left her alone in the backseat to fall asleep.  It didn't take too long before she was comfortably sleeping.  Our plan was to drive until Chattanooga and stay in a hotel there for the night.  It's hard traveling in a car with a sleeping baby.  We tried not to talk too much because we didn't want to wake Samantha up.  We got to the hotel after 11:00, checked in quickly, brought all of our stuff to our room, and by that time Samantha was re-energized.  It was difficult to calm her back down and get her ready for bed.  Our hotel room was quite small, so her pack and and play was pretty much right at the foot of our bed.  When we got into bed, we put Roscoe up on the bed with us, it's his special treat for hotel rooms.  However, Samantha wasn't asleep yet, and of course Roscoe had to lay right at the foot of the bed.  Samantha thought it was HILARIOUS watching Roscoe up on the bed with us.  She stood their pointing and laughing at him.  We tried to ignore her as much as possible, but really, we were laughing so hard on the inside, trying not to make any noise, hoping that she would calm down and fall asleep soon.  I think it took almost forty-five minutes for Samantha to calm down enough to lay down and fall asleep.

Saturday, we had a good breakfast at our hotel before heading out.  We drove most of the day, only to stop for lunch and some coffee, getting to Florida right around dinner time.  Samantha warmed up to her great grandpa pretty quickly.  We went on a family walk after dinner since we haven't been able to do this in Indiana for a long time because of the cold weather.  Samantha was very interested in the palm trees.  We let her get up close to them and touch them.  She probably thought they were pretty funny looking.

The next day we went to church with my Dad, Grandpa, and his friend, Peg.  We dropped Samantha off in the nursery and when I picked her up the ladies were fighting over who wanted to keep her and take her home since she was such a sweet, easygoing little girl.  We love getting good reports about our little girl.  After the church service, they had a lunch at the church and Samantha was getting very, very sleepy.  However, once we got back to my grandpa's house, she had trouble sleeping that afternoon because she had developed quite the stuffy nose.  Ben actually ended ended up going in with her and holding her, letting her take a nap on his shoulder while he sat upright in bed.  It must have helped her stuffy nose a lot because she finally was able to fall asleep in this position.  (I think Ben may have taken a nap as well!)

That night, after dinner, we went over to my grandpa's friend Peg's house to visit.  Samantha has fun playing there and enjoyed being the center of attention.  It's nice that we can take her anywhere with us, and that, almost always, she will do a wonderful job acclimating to the situation.  Not all parents would drag their eighteen month old daughter across the country to Florida, but I am so happy that she is getting the opportunity to meet her great grandpa.  I'm sure it means a lot to him to see her in person.

Stay tuned, there will be more Florida adventures to come...