Samantha: 20 Months, Week 4

This week Samantha got to spend time with another babysitter for a couple days while the normal babysitter had some doctor's appointments to attend.  She enjoys playing with the girls there and always seems to do a good job.

Here are some pictures of my attempt to put Samantha's hair in a ponytail.  She didn't cooperate very well, and it didn't stay in for very long, but it's cute nevertheless.  It's always pretty difficult to do this girl's hair.  It's just curly enough that it's hard to deal with, but also can be pretty crazy if just left down.  We are working on getting her to leave her hair up.  We will have her promise to leave it in and most of the time she will keep her promise, at least for a little while.

Here are some cute pictures from a couple days later.  This ponytail turned out a little better.

As soon as we get the camera out, Samantha likes to come over and make faces in the camera, watching the way her body moves in the camera and what it looks like to watch herself, especially her mouth and tongue.  Here are some funny close up shots.  It's kind of like she's in one of those pictures booths at the mall that takes your picture several different times in a row, catching you in different poses.

Another exciting event of this week was starting a new small group through our church.  Our old group fell apart because of people moving away and doing various other things, and we have been looking into starting a group for awhile now, but weren't able to get one off the ground last semester.  Well, we finally got enough people together and committed to meeting, that we had our first meeting this week at our house.  We made lasagna and just had an opportunity to talk and get to know each other, talking a bit about what we want in a group and in what direction we want our new group to go.  It was really great to meet everyone, and Samantha really enjoyed having people over at our house again, especially babies. There were two little baby girls there, and Samantha took to them right away.  She said their names over and over again for the next week after that.  We think Samantha is going to like meeting with them every week from now on.  It was great to see all the kids playing on the floor while the grown ups had adult conversation.

Ben and I have noticed a significant development with Samantha over the last week.  Her vocabulary has just exploded!  Sometimes she even speaks in sentences.  Most of the time we can understand exactly what she's saying and know the little words she uses to talk about different things.  I was showing her this picture book one night, and it has quite a few pages in it.  She was able to switch back and forth between pointing to a picture that I named, to naming something that I pointed to.  She correctly identified almost everything in the book.  I feel like for an almost 21 month old, her language capabilities are very sophisticated.  She talks almost constantly when she's awake (whether that's good or bad, sometime Ben and I don't know).  She knows so many words and learns so many new words every day that it amazes me.  She has many songs and books memorized.  It'll be interesting to see how this gift develops as she gets older, maybe she will be a very vocabulary driven person and love to read like her Mommy and Daddy.  We think that she is very smart, but then again, we are a little biased as her parents.  :)

I can't resist posting these ADORABLE pictures of Samantha all dressed up for church, wearing a "new" hand me down dress.

This next story actually needs a little background.  Back a week or so ago, we made a quick trip to Walmart to pick up something.  We walked past the electronics section, and they had several big screen TVs playing Finding Nemo.  Needless to say, Samantha was enthralled.  We stood there and let her watch for a few minutes.  With how much she liked that few minutes of watching Nemo, we decided to request it from the library.  She was SO excited when we got it from the library and wanted to watch it right away.  Toddlers are so cute when they watch TV because, generally, they don't like to sit down, they like to stand up in front of the TV, usually way too close for the parents' taste.  Well, all that background information is to explain these next couple pictures because later that Sunday afternoon, after her nap, it was a rainy day and Samantha was still acting quite sleepy.  We decided Samantha could sit in her special Sesame Street chair and watch Finding Nemo.  I snuck some pictures of the cutie from the other room.