Samantha: 23 Months, Week 3

Bath time with Samantha is always fun.  She loves her baths, always has.  This night was particularly enjoyable because she brought Dora in the tub with her, and we started a new game--spraying Dora.  She thought it was hilarious when I would spray Dora right off the side of the tub into the water, as you can see in this video.  Her laugh is precious to me.  I wish I could bottle it up and sell it to people that need something to cheer themselves up.  I also got on this video her saying, "Walking the roadie, roadie, roadie."  She has been saying this a lot lately, particularly when she's outside and is walking along the curb beside a road.  I have no idea where she got it from, but I think it's pretty adorable.

If Samantha wakes up extra early on a particular morning, Daddy will often take her somewhere to do something, to get some energy out, instead of making a disaster of our house, since we don't drop her off until 9:30 in the morning at the babysitter's house.  This particular morning Daddy took Samantha to a park near the babysitter's house.  She had a great time swinging on the swing, pretending like she was kicking Mommy through the phone.  It's always sweet to hear Samantha talking about me while I am gone at work, even if it is pretending to kick me.

This week was a very busy week.  On Tuesday evening, I had a baby shower for a friend and another friend was going as well, but needed someone to watch her two boys, one in preschool and one a little younger than that.  Ben was willing to sacrifice his time (and sanity) to watch the two boys and Samantha for the evening.  They created quite the mess, but had an enjoyable evening together.  The boys didn't even leave our house until 9:30, and Samantha didn't get to sleep until 10:00.  That is WAY late for her!

The good thing about her staying up that late was that she slept in until 10:15 on Wednesday, May 1st, Daddy's birthday.  He ended up just bringing her to the babysitter's house late and was able to get some good work done at home that morning.  Even though it was Daddy's birthday, he had a dinner out with his class from IU to a fancy restaurant for a free meal.  He couldn't pass that up, so Samantha and I went to a park and Daddy went to his dinner.

We have this book called "One Ball, Two Babies."  It is a very simple board book with very few words on each page, but Samantha has the whole book memorized. She started at the beginning, flipping the pages, and reciting almost every word.  I was pretty impressed.  There are some books that are her favorites that she knows certain words or phrases of, but never a whole book and knowing which page has which words.

On Thursday, we celebrated Daddy's birthday.  Mommy made Daddy an ice cream cake, our tradition, and Samantha helped me decorated it.  I put the M&Ms in the shape of the 29, then I let Samantha help me with the sprinkles.  If you notice the left side of the cake, you'll see a bunch of sprinkles all in one clump, that would be Samantha's handiwork.  However, once she discovered these sprinkles were things she could eat and that they tasted good, she just wanted to eat them instead of put them on the cake.

Here is Samantha enjoying Daddy's birthday cake.  I think she was a fan.  :)

Friday night was a school carnival, and we decided to take Samantha for awhile.  She was pleased because there was a bouncy house there, and she really likes to try those out.  There are a couple girls in my class that really love Samantha.  Ben will bring Samantha to my class quite frequently just to say hi, so she has become pretty popular with the third graders.  Well, these two little girls took hold of Samantha and were trying to help her in the bouncy house, talking to her, and encouraging her.  It was pretty cute to see them reaching out.

On Saturday we decided that it was nice enough weather to go to the Farmer's Market in downtown Bloomington.  We told Samantha ahead of time about where we were going and she kept saying "McDonald had a farmer's market" and talked about wanting to see a pig at the market.  Even though there were no live animals, she still had a great time and did not want to leave.  We walked around on the grass terrace, saw some people dancing a traditional dance in the square, and even got to watch some rescue dogs.  All in all, it was a great morning for the little girl.  As as we left, she asked if we could go back again sometime.  Going to the Farmer's Market tired her out and she took a GREAT three hour nap on Saturday, which Ben and I both appreciated.  

She has been having a bathroom issue again lately, going several days without a bowel movement and then finally on Friday night, she was sitting on her big girl potty and went poo poo!  We were so proud of her and so glad that she finally was able to go.  She continued to go several times on Saturday and is now seeming to be back to normal again.  I wish this problem would go away from her, it's hard to tell what the cause of it is or what we can really do about it.

As Samantha gets older, her vocabulary continues to explode.  I can't believe she is a couple weeks away from being two years old.  She can carry on full conversations with us sometimes, sings songs, makes up her own songs, says complete sentences (I even noticed that she corrected her verb tense once, going back and saying the sentence over again with the correct verb).  As a toddler, she of course is an expert at expressing her wants and desires, saying things like "Mine" or "I NEED you Daddy," "Come play with me Mommy" (while pulling on your pant leg.  She will look outside and say, "Play outside tomorrow" almost acting as if she's asking if she will be able to play.  Sometimes we say, "You can play outside today!" and she yells, "Play outside TODAY!"  We love listening to her talk and love to try to understand how her brain works and how concepts and ideas are connected in her brain.