Samantha: 29 Months, Week 5 {First Snow, Throwing Herself out of Her Crib, and Weekend in Upland}

After our busy weekend of visitors, Monday was a stay and home and recover day.  We started our week with preschool.  We finished the letter B last week, so now we moved on to the letter C and the numbers 6 through 10.  I decided our theme for today would be cars and Samantha really enjoyed our day together.  Here are the lesson plans I followed for the day, and this time I am going to intersperse pictures of us doing the activities within the lesson plans.  I think it'll make more sense that way.

Day 1: Cars

Books: Read the Cars book with the toy cars, Sheep in a Jeep, and any other transportation related books that she wants to read.

Song:  Sing the song “Five Fast Race Cars" to the tune "Five Little Pumpkins."  Five fast race cars speeding round the track.  The first car said, “I can’t look back!”  The second car said, “Oh no!  I’m out of gas!”  The third car said, “Beep!  Beep!  I’m fast!”  The fourth car said, “Honk!  Honk!  I’m passing you!”  The fifth car said, “Vroom, vroom.  I win!”  Then beep went a horn and flash went the lights.  And five fast race cars sped out of sight.

We used these cars when singing the song, leading to some free play time afterwards.

Craft: Paint with cars.  Lie down a large piece of newspaper, some paint in trays, and allow her to paint using the wheels on the cars.  Also, you can tape 2-3 crayons to the front or back of a toy car.  Tape so that the points of the crayons are slightly lower than the bottom of the car.  Encourage her to “drive” the cars on paper.

Letter Activity: Discuss how the letter C has 2 sounds, the sound for K and S, practice that sound, and review the sounds that A and B makes as well.  Give her some play dough and show her how to roll snakes and then turn them into the letter C.

Snack:  Make apple and grape car snacks.  Slice an apple into wedges and trim the core.  For each apple wedge, slice 2 grapes in half, widthwise.  Push the pick through the sliced side of one grape half, then through one end of the apple, then finish with the other grape half, sliced side out.  Repeat with the other end of the apple wedge and 2 more grape slices.

Gross Motor: Play “Red Light, Green Light,” pretending to be cars.  Play a tossing game.  Set out some cups and take turns tossing caps (or cars) into the cups.

Number/Shape Activity: Write numbers 6-10 as a number symbol, number word, and circles to show each amount represented by each number.  Have her fill in circles (use Cheerios or cars, whichever she would prefer) on each plate with item to show how many each number represented.

Fine Motor:  Make pretend roads on the carpet and couches with scotch tape, and let her drive her cars along the roads on the carpet.  

Mondays always go pretty well with being around the house and doing preschool.  It seems like days we stay home, Samantha will take a better nap.  You'd think it's be the opposite since she isn't getting out as much energy as say going and playing at Bible Study.  Nevertheless, on this day she took a three hour nap and fell asleep right away.  Monday afternoons are when I give piano lessons, so Daddy was planning on taking her to the library to play while I gave lessons.  However, she stayed in bed sleeping until 4:30, making it so that it was too late for him to take her to do that.  We were all okay with that though because apparently her body was needing a long rest that day.

But then on Monday night, Samantha did not go to sleep very well.  She was playing quite a bit and must have taken her pajamas off and thrown them on the floor.  We didn't notice because we assumed she just played and then fell asleep.  Well, it was really cold on Monday night.  In fact, snow was in the forecast for early Tuesday morning.  At about 5:00 Tuesday morning, Samantha woke up crying, which she never does.  I hurried into her room to see what was the matter, and I saw her curled up in the corner of her bed, only in her pull up, her skin ice cold.  I quickly put her back in her pajamas and laid her back down, covering her up with her warm blanket, and praying that she would go back to sleep.  Luckily, she did go right back to sleep, which Daddy and I were both grateful for.  We weren't ready to be up at 5:00 am.

On Tuesday, after Samantha woke up, we talked with her about taking her pajamas off at night, about how it's getting too cold to sleep without warm pajamas on, and about how it'll be hard to have a good night's sleep if she takes her pajamas off.  We have had a "fairy" coming over the last month or so to encourage Samantha to go poo-poo in the potty rather than her pull-up.  She has pretty much mastered that now, so we decided to transition the "fairy" to come now only if she leaves her pajamas on and sleeps well.  We'll see if that works.  Doesn't hurt to try, right?

As I mentioned earlier, snow was in the forecast for Tuesday morning, so as soon as Samantha saw the snow, she wanted to go out and play in it, even though it did not even cover the grass.  So, we got her in her snowsuit, snow boots, hat, and gloves, and she was out playing in the snow by 8:00 am.  Sadie had already arrived at our house, so I stayed inside with her while Daddy took Samantha out to play.  She has such a good time playing and noticing all the things that were covered with snow.  Ahh, to be a child again and have the joy of playing in the snow!  Imagine what she'll think when we have a lot of snow!  Hopefully she'll be able to experience that at some point this winter, and maybe even get to go sledding at Grandpa and Grandma Toll's house!

 Man, isn't she so cute in her little snowsuit and snow boots?

After enjoying her time in the snow for awhile, it was time to come back in for breakfast and our normal routine of going to the library for story time.  And just like has been the norm lately, we had a good nap Monday and no nap Tuesday.  Samantha resisted her nap for the whole two hours she was upstairs, talking, playing, and kicking, instead of sleeping.  I had to go up several times to tell her to stop kicking so she wouldn't wake up Sadie, hoping that she might succumb to sleep, but no such luck.

Then, as I was finishing getting dinner in the crock pot and was about to go and get her up from her bed, I heard a loud thud on the floor from Samantha's room, and then crying.  I ran upstairs, as the chicken was still cooking on the stove, to see what happened, petrified that she had hit her head on something and split it open.  Luckily, she was in the middle of the floor, far away from any furniture she could have knocked into, but she did have a pretty good sized bump on her forehead.  Once I held her and comforted her as she cried, making sure she was okay, I asked her what happened and why she tried climbing out of bed.  She just said, "I don't know."  I was just grateful that she was okay.  It was the first time she has ever attempted to do that, which I guess is good that we made it until almost 2 1/2 before she attempted to climb out of bed.  I texted Ben about what happened, and he replied, "Okay.  So it starts."  I was thinking, "Well, we may not be able to wait until after Christmas to move her to the big girl bed."  We certainly don't want her trying to climb out and hurting herself, but at the same time we don't want to switch her just because of falling out just this once.  Maybe the trauma of falling out of her bed and onto her head will prevent her from trying it again.  Let's hope anyways.

That night, we ended up giving Samantha a bath and putting her to bed early since she hadn't napped.  She was asleep by 7:30.  Since the night before was the night she undressed and woke up freezing cold, I went in and checked on her before going to bed for the night.  We don't normally check on her, we never have, I guess partly because we still use the baby monitor so we can hear what's going on in her room, but also because we are always so afraid of waking her up by opening her door and walking around her room.  Her room gets pretty dark in the back of the house, so it was hard to see her in her crib.  I inched my way up to her crib and reached my hand out to see if she still had her pajamas on.  She was still fully clothed, which I was very grateful for.

Wednesday morning Samantha slept in until around 7:30.  Daddy and I were amazed!  She hasn't slept in that late in a long time.  For the first time in a while she didn't have bags under her eyes.  We had a good morning at BSF, and I volunteered in the 4s/5s room.  It was wonderful to see the program they follow there for the kids.  It is very organized and structured, the kids are constantly being loved on and told about Jesus.  I'm so excited that Samantha is involved in the 2s/3s room.  I love to talk to her about the Bible story she learned that week, hearing it from the perspective of a 2 1/2 year old and how she remembers it.

On the way home from Bible Study, Sadie fell asleep in the car and ended up sleeping until 3:45.  Samantha on the other hand, again fought going to sleep, but eventually fell asleep around 2:25 after I went up to her room a couple times to tell her to stop kicking and ignoring her whining cries for me (which has always been hard for me to ignore).  That night, I was really craving some Five Guys, so we decided to take Sadie to her Mommy at work on our way to that side of town.  Samantha was in a wonderful mood after sleeping 12 hours the night before and taking a good nap.  It made us wonder if we should move her bedtime to 7:30 instead of 8:00, wondering if that would help her fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer.  I've been reading some things online about napping and sleeping at this age range, and someone mentioned the fact that for some kids they get to a point where they reach their second wind, making it hard to for them to then fall asleep.  And, if you would put them to bed before they got their second wind, they would fall asleep much faster.  It's an interesting theory, and one that I think we will have to test out.

Thursday morning was pretty busy with gymnastics class and Mom's REST Stop at church.  Even though Samantha's gymnastics time overlaps REST Stop, I figured it still was important that I try to go to be with other moms (and get a little bit of a break).  However, even though we had a super busy morning being out, and Samantha was acting super tired, she still did not nap in the afternoon.  I had two piano lessons in the afternoon, so Daddy took her out of the house and went grocery shopping with her.  Luckily, she was pretty well-behaved despite the lack of sleep that afternoon.  She said thank you to the grocery bagger and even asked, "Can I have some stickers, please?"  (She always wants stickers from Kroger, but we tell her that if she wants some she has to be polite and ask for them herself.)  After getting her stickers, she started sticking them all over her face.  Daddy called her stickerface, and then Samantha said, "I want to be stickerface for Halloween!"  She says some of the funniest things sometimes.

Friday morning, Samantha knew that we were heading to Upland for the weekend to see Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Jeni, and Alaina, so she woke up at like six a.m. ready to go.  I went in to her room to tell her that it was too early and to go back to bed.  A little while later, Ben had to go tell her to go to bed as well.  She did end up going back to sleep until about 7:00.  Once she started making noise again, I went in her room and she said, "Can I get up now?"  To which I responded, "Yes, it's okay to get up now, thank you for going back to sleep for a little while."  Her very next question was, "We go to Grandpa and Grandma's house now?"  Our little girl was talking about and looking forward to this weekend all week long, so as soon as we got everything together for the weekend, we headed out for Upland.  

When we got there, Grandpa and Grandma were still at work, so we just played, had lunch, and put Samantha down for a nap.  She was tired enough from not napping yesterday and waking up early that day, that luckily she took a good afternoon nap.  Samantha was so excited to see Grandpa and Grandma when they got home from work, playing catch with the football with Grandpa and asking Grandma to read her a book the minute she walked in the door.  Samantha just adores going to to Grandpa and Grandma's house.  To her, there's nothing better.

Since Samantha took a good nap, we decided we could all go out to eat at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants and then went to Meijer with Grandpa and Grandma while they did their shopping.  Grandma gave Samantha a special treat at the end of the shopping trip, allowing her to take a ride on the horse.  It was the best one cent ever spent. :)

The next day was a busy day with the Toll family reunion.  Aunt Jeni and Alaina arrived later that morning, and the other relatives started arriving around 11:00.  Samantha had woken up early again that day, so she was extremely tired by the time the guests even started arriving.  We wondered if we would even make it to lunch time.  However, Samantha thrives on being around people.  She had some great times with her cousin, playing games, playing with toys, playing hide and seek, and just generally making a lot of noise like little girls like to do.  It was a great day, and they had such fun together.

However, right around two o'clock in the afternoon, Samantha hit a wall.  She was not really playing anymore, she wasn't listening well, and she was just so, so tired.  We decided that we would try to get her down for a nap, even though all the relatives were still there.  Samantha got a little upset about it because she didn't want to miss out on anything, and she didn't want to go to bed if Alaina wasn't going to bed.  However, once she realized that Alaina was going to sleep as well, and as soon as she got in her bed, she fell asleep right away.  She was so tired from all the action of the day, and we were so glad that she let herself take a nap.

After the girls woke up from their naps and the relatives were all gone, we took the girls outside to play.  They went on the swing, ran down the hill, played with sticks, and followed Grandpa and Grandma out on a deer trail in the woods.  We then decided to go over to the science building to walk around and see the Christmas decorations.  The girls always like to go there, see the finches, and ride the elevator.  It's a nice place to get some energy out when the weather is too cold outside.

The rest of the evening and weekend went quickly with dinner, bath, bedtime, and church the next morning.  Originally, we were planning on going back home after nap time on Sunday, but the forecast called for some pretty strong, severe storms, and we didn't want to be on the road when the front would come through.  So we decided to get our stuff packed up and headed out right after lunch.  We had Samantha take a nap in the car, and she slept for about an hour which is better than nothing.  We got home just in time, just as the tornado sirens were sounding.  Ben got all our stuff in the house, and we turned on the TV to watch the radar.  We were going to have a strong line of storms coming through that could produce tornadoes, and there was one time we did go into our downstairs bathroom because the wind was blowing so hard outside.  We figured it's always better to be safe than sorry.  After that line passed through our area, we were in the clear.  There were many other areas of Indiana that got it worse than us with a few cities experiencing destruction from a tornado.  We were glad that we left when we did and got home safely.

That night after dinner, we decided to go to a concert at our church dedicating the new piano in the sanctuary.  We weren't sure how Samantha would do with sitting quietly, but we figured we could always leave if need be.  However, like normal, she always impresses us with her behavior in new situations.  She was a great listener, even though the concert went into and past her bedtime.  There was a good variety of music with the choir singing, solos in singing, violin, cello, and oboe, but Samantha's favorite was when a little girl played a piano solo.  I think Samantha was amazed that a little girl could play like that.  In fact, the rest of the concert, Samantha kept looking over at the little girl and smiling.  And after the concert, Samantha wanted to go over to the little girl and tell her how good of a job she did.  The concert lasted almost an hour and half, and Samantha did such a wonderful job listening and paying attention to what was going on.  It's nice to know that we can bring her to things like this and all have an enjoyable time.