Samantha: 33 Months, Week 4 {Zoo Trip, Playing Outside, Cincinnati Family Vacation}

On Mondays Samantha and I usually hang out at home more, only leaving the house for Samantha's gymnastics lesson; however, Monday's forecast was for the low 60s, and I just had to take advantage of that nice weather for our first trip this year to the Indianapolis Zoo.  As I quickly approach 36 weeks and the technical time you are not recommended to be more than an hour away from home, I also have wanted to take Samantha on some last outings before Aedan arrives.  So, we packed ourselves a lunch, loaded up the car with library books to read on the way there, and headed out to meet another mom from church and her little boy at the zoo.  After having a long weekend of staying the night in Brown County and not napping much on Saturday, along with Samantha's little stuffy nose, she was pretty tired on Monday and enjoyed riding around in her stroller a lot more than normal.  In fact, on our drive up to Indianapolis, Samantha hardly said a word, which is very unlike her.  She just looked out the window and then looked at the big bag of library books we brought along with us.  It was kind of nice having a quiet car trip with Samantha, but when she usually talks so much, her not talking is strange sometimes.

We have been to the zoo so much with our membership pass that Samantha knows where everything is and what her favorite places are to visit.  We always watch the seals and sea lions swim around in the water and make their barking noise, before heading into the Oceans building.

The zoo was not as crowded as it has been in the past when we've visited, making it a lot easier to get around and not be stuck in a crowd of people.  It seemed like the dog sharks were a lot more active than usual, some even sticking their heads up out of the water.  Samantha goes back and forth on whether she likes to pet the sharks or not.  Today, she was very excited about petting them and probably pet various sharks six or seven times.  She was pretty proud of herself.

Then, when we got the penguin area, we stood and watched one of the zookeepers feeding the penguins and another zookeeper walking around petting the penguins inside the exhibit.  The penguins are always a big hit for Samantha.

After seeing the forest animals, of which the bald eagle and tiger were not out, we decided it was time for lunch.  Samantha did a pretty good job eating her lunch, although like usual, she was more interested in eating her blueberries than her sandwich.  She went through a phase where she really liked sandwiches, but now she has been kind of anti-bread and will just pick out the meat and cheese from the inside.

After lunch we went back to see the Plains animals and then decided it was time to ride the carousel and the train before heading back home.  Samantha had the cutest smile in this picture while we were waiting for the ride to start.  It was strange for her though because she is used to going to the zoo with more than just one person, so she commented, "There's no one for me to wave to!"  She solved that problem by just waving at everyone else standing around watching the carousel.  Some of them waved back, but not very many.  Our little friendly daughter, she makes me smile.

After having a fun day at the zoo, it was time to head back home because I had to get back for my afternoon piano lessons.  Samantha was a pretty tired little girl and fell asleep pretty quickly in the car, cuddled up under her blanket, and sleeping for about fifty minutes on the way home.  We had a wonderful time together, and I'm just so glad that I can have these experiences with my little girl.  I have been having a lot of apprehensive feelings lately with Aedan arriving in the next six weeks or so.  I want to maximize the time I have with just Samantha, making this time special for her as the last weeks as just a family of three, the last weeks where all of our attention can be solely focused on Samantha.  My, how I love staying at home with my precious little girl.

After the quick nap in the car, we arrived home just in time for my piano lessons to start, so Daddy took Samantha out to a park to play during my lessons, since it was such a beautiful day.  Can you tell we are anxious for the arrival of spring?  Samantha was pretty tired from already having a long day at the zoo, but she had a good time playing at the park, getting her hands dirty...

...and rolling down the hill.  When the weather finally stays nice like this, we won't be able to keep Samantha inside.  The winter has been so brutal and cold, and this day's weather was so refreshing.  We were even able to open up our windows and patio door during the day, feeling the fresh air breeze blowing in through the window.  Ahh, it was glorious!

After dinner that night, we once again took advantage of the warmer weather, going on a family walk, which is a nightly tradition when the weather is warm.  Samantha decided she wanted to push Dolly in the stroller, which always works out well for the first half of the walk, but then Samantha gets tired of pushing her, taking some coaxing to get her all the way back home again.  Nevertheless, it was a wonderful evening to saunter around our apartment complex.

Tuesday was another beautiful day outside, with a high of 72 degrees!  After being at the zoo yesterday, not napping much, and playing outside in the afternoon, Samantha was tired girl and slept in until almost 8:30 in the morning, much later than usual, and for a total of like 12 1/2 hours overnight.  We had our normal Tuesday morning of taking care of Sadie and attending story time at the library.  There weren't as many people there, probably because of the nice weather outside, which meant that Samantha was able to play with the train table all by herself.  It's always difficult for her when there are a lot of boys playing at the table already, because they generally don't do a good job of sharing train cars with her.

The afternoon went pretty well with Sadie taking a good nap.  Samantha did not nap, and I ended up just leaving the room and letting her read in bed because she wasn't acting too sleepy.  Especially since she slept 12 1/2 hours the night before, I wasn't too surprised that she was resisting nap time.  Plus, I didn't mind because the weather was so beautiful, I had the windows and patio door open, and I had plans to take the girls to a park to play and have Michelle just pick Sadie up from the park.  I even sent Daddy a message to let him know what we were doing and suggested that he pick up some Jimmy John's for us to eat outside at the park.  The weather forecast for Wednesday had an over forty degree temperature drop, along with snow in the forecast, so I just couldn't bear the thought of going back home and eating inside.  It was a wonderful evening, and Daddy and I were so impressed with how much Samantha has developed physically since the last time we played at a park last fall.  In the past, she would always want to try to climb up ladders and other steps like that on playgrounds, but she wasn't sure enough on her feet, so we would always want to be there to spot her and help her.  However, these last two days on the playground, she has shown us we no longer have to worry about that.  She can climb anything with ease.  She doesn't need our help anymore.  It's exciting, yet again another step towards independence.

Wednesday was a normal day of watching Sadie and going to BSF.  It was so different from the last two days as the temperature dropped and big, puffy snowflakes fell from the sky as we were driving to BSF.  Samantha took a good nap, and we had a good evening together as a family.

Thursday was a busy day, with many activities scheduled for our family.  Daddy agreed to take Samantha to a make up gymnastics class so that I could get to Mom's REST Stop on time, since the times of the two overlapped.  When I went to pick Samantha up after REST Stop was over, she was wearing a long, silver dress-up dress.  They have a huge bin of dress up clothes in the three year old room at church, so Samantha always takes advantage of that when she gets to play in that room.  I have a feeling when she moves to the three year old room on Sunday mornings, she will be dressed up in a princess dress every Sunday.  Samantha fell asleep a little after 2:00 (it seems to work better if I try to put her down for her nap a little later), which I was glad for because we had our first small group meeting that night which would put us out past Samantha's normal bed time.  She did really well playing in the basement with the other kids and the older girl, Delilah, that we have hired to watch the kids for us while we do our Bible Study.  It was good for us to finally get involved in a small group again.  We have been wanting to get one off the ground for so long, but it's been difficult to get one formulated and get people committed.

Then, the weekend we had all been waiting for finally arrived.  Spring Break started, which doesn't really mean too much to us, but we had a fun weekend planned.  We booked two nights at a Staybridge Suites hotel in Cincinnati, using a free night and hotel points from our credit card.  I had another doctor's appointment on Friday morning for a weight, heartbeat check, and tummy measurement.  Everything was looking good again.  I come back in two weeks again and then will go every week after that until Aedan is born.  It's so strange that we are already that close, sometimes it seems so surreal, like I couldn't possibly be that far along already.  Time is going by so quickly and at times I wish I could slow down time a little bit.  My doctor asked a little bit about what our birth plan was as far as getting an epidural or not, and we told him again that we are planning on using a doula and trying to have a natural birth this time.  At my next appointment, I will have an exam and my Group B Strep test, so Ben and Samantha will not be joining me for that.

After my appointment, we headed out on our family trip to Cincinnati.  We stopped for a quick potty break and coffee stop at Starbucks along the way, stopped for lunch at a Skyline Chili, and then stopped again because Samantha had to go to the bathroom again.  It took us a little longer than we would have liked to get there with all this stopping, but we weren't in a hurry, so it worked out well.  We got to our hotel and had to wait a little while for our hotel room to be ready, since we were doing early check in.  Once we got everything settled in our room, we tried to get Samantha to take a nap because we had a big evening planned of attending an indoor water park.  It took a little while for her to settle down for a nap, but she did eventually fall asleep in her pack and play for a couple hours, giving us much more opportunity to stay out and have fun that night.

After waking up from her nap, we told her what our plan was for the night, and she was so excited.  Our plan was to go to the water park, spend as much time there as we wanted, and either eat dinner there or eat after we left.  We got discounted tickets online for going on a Friday night, arriving at the water park around 5:00.  However, when we got there, everyone was standing around waiting outside the water park, and we discovered that a wire got hit in some local construction down the street, knocking the power out of their water park.  They were fairly certain they could get it fixed and that they would open shortly, but we figured we would maximize our time and went out to eat first.  So, we went out to Five Guys just a couple minutes away, ate some yummy hamburgers and fries (grilled cheese for Samantha).  Samantha was in such a good mood that she couldn't even sit still to eat her dinner.  She was dancing around to the classic rock music played in the restaurant, alternating between taking a bite and dancing around.

After having our fill of dinner, we headed back to the Coco Key Water Resort to check on their power situation.  They had gotten the power turned back on and were working on getting everything ready to open the doors.  We only had to wait a few minutes before being let in to change into our swimsuits and start swimming and playing.  I took Samantha in with me to change, and she was SO excited that she could hardly stand to wait for me to get my bathing suit on too.  There was one section that stayed closed throughout the remainder of the night because of a problem with the water filters, but we had a great time at the rest of the water park, floating around on tubes on the lazy river, but mostly spending our time in this play area that you can see in the picture below.  The water was pretty warm, making it a really fun place to run around and play.  Most our time was spent on the yellow slides you can see on the bottom left.  That's where most of the kids Samantha's age played.  They would go down the slide, zoom right back around up the stairs, and go right down the slide again.  The other fun thing was the big blue bucket you can see at the top of the picture.  There were pipes funneling in water and as the bucket got full, a bell would ring louder and faster.  Once the bucket got full, it would tip over, drenching everyone standing underneath or around it.  Samantha really enjoyed this part too, even though she would act frightened of it and try to run away, I think she secretly liked getting dumped on.

We had a wonderful time at the water park, and we were so glad that we decided to take Samantha here.  She is such a little fish and LOVES being the water, she just couldn't get enough.  I think it was after 8:30 when we finally got out of the water to get in dry clothes and head out.  She wondered why other kids were able to stay, and we explained that most of the other kids were older and had later bedtimes than Samantha, so they could stay longer.  That seemed to suffice as an answer to her.  Even though it was late, we made a quick stop at Kroger to get lunch food for the next couple days before heading back to the hotel.  We decided that we would try to let Samantha sleep on the pull out sofa in the living room area of our hotel room.  We brought a hook on bed railing with us that Daddy got set up on one side of the bed, and we put the couch cushions up against the bed on the other side so that she wouldn't roll out of bed.  We told Samantha that we would try to have her sleep on this pull out sofa, but that if she didn't go to sleep like a big girl, we would have her sleep in the pack and play instead.  Luckily, I think because it was already 10:00, and she thought it was so cool to be sleeping on a big bed, we didn't have any trouble getting her to fall asleep.

On Saturday morning Samantha woke up around 8:00, her normal wake up time, laughing and squealing, probably because she woke up and realized she was still sleeping in the cool pull out sofa in a hotel.  Life was pretty good. :)  Daddy and I decided to just wake up when she woke up, so after we got her up and dressed, he and I took turns taking showers while we let Samantha watch cartoons on TV.  She was amazed that we were allowing her to watch TV for no reason, not because she had taken a nap, like is normal in our house.  Daddy and I were joking around about how Samantha is going to think Cincinnati is the greatest vacation destination after being able to stay up two hours pasther bedtime, sleeping on the pull out sofa, and watching cartoons for no reason before breakfast.  It's vacation, you can break all the rules when you're on vacation, right?"

After we were all ready, we headed downstairs to the lobby for breakfast.  Samantha was pretty ecstatic about her breakfast of Froot Loops, peaches, and a muffin for breakfast.  She didn't even want milk on her Froot Loops, just wanted to eat them dry.  If only we had non-healthy cereal like that at our house, she would be in heaven!  We then drove to a preschool play place about a half an hour away called Totter's Otterville.  We had thought about going to a children's museum in Cincinnati, but it was very expensive, and I had read reviews about it being not worth the amount they charged for it.  In fact, one of the reviewers mentioned this play place as being much more fun and cheaper.  It only cost $7.95 for Samantha to get in and adults were free.  It was a very good price and well worth it as we spent out whole day there, leaving there after 2:30 in the afternoon.  Samantha could have stayed there playing much longer than that, but we wanted to get her back to the hotel for a nap.

The first place we visited at the play place was an indoor climbing structure with a few different slides, a ball pit, and a gigantic elephant.  Samantha had a pretty good time climbing around; however, she was pretty tired from staying up late the night before and was having a hard time remembering how to climb up to the tall, green slide you can see in the background of the picture.  She kept climbing back down instead of up, would get frustrated, and then would call for Daddy to come and help her find the way.  After that happening a few times, we decided maybe it was time to move on to a different place.

They had a round room with various "centers" around the outside of the room, each with a different theme.  The first place we visited was a pretend veterinarian office.  Samantha enjoyed checking out the stuffed animals with the doctor's kits, but then we moved onto her favorite room, the ballet room.  Once Samantha discovered this room, we could not get her to leave it.  They had a basket of ballet slippers for kids to wear and many different colored tutus.  Samantha helped herself to it, went out on the wooden dance floor with the ballet bars and mirrors, dancing around, and watching the little girl ballerinas dancing on the TV screen showing how to do different ballet moves and stretches.  She certainly is a little dancer, and she LOVED this room.  I think we are going to have to get Samantha into some ballet lessons soon.

After much convincing, we got Samantha to move on to the next area, which was the mail room.  She enjoyed collecting the envelopes, putting them in her mailbag, and then placing them in the mailbox.

After that, Samantha spent quite a bit of time in this construction area where you could gather foam blocks that looked like bricks, stick them in a little slot where they would land on a conveyor belt, and then push a button that would move the conveyor belt and the bricks along the belt, dropping them down a ramp so that you could put them all back in again.  This was a pretty fun area for Samantha as well; I think she enjoys the repetitive motion of putting things away and taking them out.

It was then time to go out to our car for our picnic lunch before coming back in to go to some other centers.  We started at the water table station, but Samantha wasn't too interested in this today.  She just wanted to move on to a different room.

The next area we visited was a big play room with many different toys.  Samantha was particularly drawn to the big dollhouse in the corner.  Then, this little boy came up and started playing with her, which was really cute.  I feel like it's not very often that little boys will play nicely and gently with girls, especially with a dollhouse.  Seeing Samantha enjoy this dollhouse so much also made be think of the dollhouse my dad made for my sister and I when we were little.  We used it mainly as a Barbie house, but we loved that three story dollhouse, and it's still in my parents' basement.  Hmm, maybe we could work on digging that out and cleaning it up as a fun Christmas present this year, or something like that?  

Since it was getting later in that afternoon, and we knew we would have to leave the play place soon, we convinced Samantha to move on by telling her that there was a train room.  She played in here for quite awhile as well, especially since she could play with a whole table all by herself with all of the trains with faces that she wanted.

After that we were off to the pretend grocery store.  Samantha had fun pushing the little shopping cart around, putting groceries in the cart along with her little baby.

She then found a dress-up room where she found a yellow Belle princess dress that she had to put on before she went back shopping again.

Before leaving, we gave Samantha a last chance to dress up and play in the ballet room.  She was so cute watching the ballet dancers on the screen and trying to mimic what the ballerinas were doing.  I think we spent over an hour in the ballet room that day; it was definitely her favorite place.

We highly recommend this play place, if you have a preschooler and are ever near Covington, Kentucky, going to Totter's Otterville will be well worth your time and money.

We got back to the hotel after 3:00 that afternoon, but still got Samantha down for a late nap.  She slept on the pull out sofa for a couple hours, which we were so glad for.  Mommy and Daddy needed that time to relax and rest as well.  She ended up sleeping until 5:30 and then we went out for dinner at our favorite tex-mex restaurant, Chuy's.  We had to wait quite awhile to be seated but decided to still go swimming in the hotel pool even though it was already past her bedtime.

After we got Samantha all ready to go, she got on her pull out sofa, laid down, and covered herself up, saying, "It's hard to lay down with my floaties on!"

Here are two cute pictures of Daddy with his little girl before going down to swim in the pool.  Samantha loved swimming around in the pool with Daddy, using her floaties to float around the deep end of the pool, and squealing with delight as she jumped off the ladder into her Daddy's arms.

After swimming for over an hour, it was definitely time to get our little girl in bed.  She didn't fall asleep until around 10:00 that night, again two hours past her normal bedtime.  Vacation is just too fun to go to bed early.  However, she slept on the pull out sofa like a champ again.

On Sunday morning we woke up before Samantha so we could get ready before she woke up.  After swimming two nights in a row with no bath, we decided it would be a good idea to let Samantha take a shower at the hotel before going down to breakfast and heading out to the Newport Aquarium.  Samantha chose the exact same breakfast, but was extremely tired after having two late nights and long days away from home.  In fact, she wasn't the greatest listener at times, but we still had a good time at the aquarium.  We got there pretty much right when it opened at 10:00 and got to see the penguin parade.

They had a pretty cool shark tank area with a huge window you could look through to watch the sharks and fish swimming around.  This fascinated Samantha for quite awhile.

They had some pretty interesting fish there...

along with a huge alligator...

and an area of frogs.

Normally, it's me that is in charge of taking pictures when we are out places, or even at home, because I tend to think about it more often.  Because of that, we tend to have more pictures of Daddy and Samantha than Samantha and me.  However, I actually thought to ask Daddy to take a picture of Samantha and me at the aquarium.  I think it's a pretty good picture, too. :)

The aquarium wasn't a huge place to get around, so we had seen the whole thing by lunch time.  It was in the 30s that day, so we ate our packed lunches in the car.  We stopped by a local Graeter's ice cream shop since it's well-known for this area, and then hit the road to head back home.  Samantha slept for about an hour on the way home, which was good, even though she could have used more sleep after our fun-filled weekend vacation in Cincinnati.  It was such a good family trip with so many fun memories with Samantha and as a family of three before Aedan is born in April.  I love solid family time like this, such precious memories that will last a lifetime!