Samantha's first blog

pamelamyers | February 26, 2010

Tuesday was Samantha’s 5 month birthday.  How time has flown!  In such a short amount of time, she has changed so much.  Today Mark took some photos of her sitting in her Bumbo seat that her cousin Maddox was nice enough to lend her now that he has outgrown the need for it.  Since Sam still can’t sit up on her own, we thought it would be nice for her to use the Bumbo to sit independently sometimes.  She seems to like it.  Here she is!  As you can see, she is sporting sort of a baby Mohawak — she has rubbed off so much of her hair on the back and sides from sleeping that way, and sitting in her various seats, that the hair on top is a lot longer now.  I have no idea when it will grow back in, but for now, she has a new style : )

Today was a big day, eating-wise. I was feeding her oatmeal and some pears this morning, and for the first time ever she actually opened her mouth for me so the spoon could go in!  Usually I am trying to shove it in between her half closed lips or sneaking it in when she is smiling (which seems kind of like cheating, but hey, you do what you have to do).  It was so cute.  Not only did she open her mouth for food, but she kept grabbing the spoon!  At one point I just gave the spoon to her with no food on it and she shoved it in her mouth.  I think she put it in a little too far though, because she yanked it out and had such a look of disgust on her face.  It was adorable.  She ate a good bit, which I was happy about.  I think she is finally getting the hang of actually eating food instead of just drinking it.

Sam was sitting happily on my lap most of the time during our dinner.  I had chicken tenders and french fries and the entire time she kept grabbing my plate.  At one point she actually got her hand on my chicken.  She is showing such an interest in real food now.  The best part was when I showed her a french fry up close because her head kept craning to see what I was doing every time I put a bite in my mouth.  Quick as a bunny she grabbed that fry, broke about an inch size piece off, and it was just about in her mouth before I grabbed it!  That little munchkin sure is fast!

It is so amazing seeing how much she has learned in her short little life so far.  Just last month she would never have shown any interest in my food, and certainly was not grabbing things off the table.  I was sitting in her room with her this morning, rocking her to sleep for a nap, and I started thinking about how much of a personality she has.  And it just astounds me.  Babies are such incredible little miracles. How can someone so tiny, who has been alive for such a short time, have such a unique personality of her own?  And she really does. I thought back to when I was pregnant with her, and Mark and I couldn’t wait to discover what she would be like, what kind of little girl she would be.  And now we know!  And it is really wonderful to know our little person.  All her quirks, her likes, her dislikes, her funny little habits.  And we love every single bit.

Category: Uncategorized | 2 Comments �
Tags:

pamelamyers | February 21, 2010

I posted about 2 months ago that Sam finally started laughing and it was the cutest sound ever.  Is there a sweeter sound than a baby laughing?  Samantha laughs so much now, it is almost too easy to make her do it.  She is the happiest little baby around.  She is just always smiley and giggly.  Some of her favorite things to giggle about are doing chest bumps with daddy, Grandmom making funny voices, mommy eating her feet or kissing her belly, and MomMom blowing raspberries.  Strangely, she also cracks up when I change her diaper sometimes.  As I am taking her diaper off, I act all casual, then when I pull the diaper back, I quickly put it back on and act shocked and tell her in a high pitched voice that there’s a naked baby in there!  Why this cracks her up, I don’t know.  Anyway, watching her laugh is so adorable.  Just like when she smiles, her entire face lights up.  Her eyes crinkle, her grin is wide and her whole body just smiles and laughs.  We just can’t get enough of it.  A few days ago, I was playing with her and she was laughing  up a storm.  I was able to capture this with my phone.  Hopefully, your computer has speakers. If it does, enjoy!  It will make your day 🙂

Sam_Giggle-02-15-10

Category: Uncategorized | 3 Comments �
Tags:

pamelamyers | February 21, 2010

Poor Samantha — only a few days from her 5 month birthday and she is having such teething pain.  I wasn’t really sure if she was teething or not until recently.  She has been drooling and chewing for a long time now, but that could have just been normal drooling for her age.  The pediatrician said it is common because they create more drool in preparation for learning to digest solid food.  But just a few days ago she started getting really fussy, and her nightime sleep habits have gotten worse in the last week or two.  She has been waking up only once per night for a long time now but recently she has started waking up more often, and when she does, she seems really upset.  I can usually get her back to sleep pretty fast, with just a bunch of cuddles and a few ounces of formula, but it is unusual for her to wake up at all, much less crying.

Yesterday, she had such a hard day.  She just didn’t want her bottle.  She seemed hungry, but when we’d offer her a bottle, she would start to suck then pull her face away so violently.  I read in a baby book later that day that refusal to feed is actually a sign of teething as well as disrupted sleep.  Anyway, it has been a real battle trying to get enough food into her each day.  Yesterday, the only way we got a bottle into her in the afternoon was with Mark holding her, alternating between letting her chew on a refrigerated teething ring and sucking her bottle.  It was like she just couldn’t suck unless her gums were numb.  My poor little munchkin.

Today she still had a hard time, but she did much better eating.  I put her down for a bunch of naps today, which she actually took (shock of all shocks) and I think it helped her. We have started putting her upstairs in her crib to nap instead of leaving her down here with us because she is so nosy that every little noise we make wakes her up.

We are really lucky though.  Sam is such a sweetie pie. We know she isn’t feeling great, but she is still such a happy little girl.  She was so giggly and smiley all day.  She is quite the little trooper.

Category: Uncategorized | 1 Comment �
Tags:

pamelamyers | February 17, 2010

Poor Sam, she must think we live at the North Pole.  Ever since she was born, it seems it has been either raining or snowing.  She forgets what it is like to have warmth and sunshine.  Mark and I were really enjoying taking her out in her stroller for walks for those first weeks she was home.  Alas, spring will come eventually and we will be able to enjoy taking Sam outside again.  During our last storm, after getting Mark safely home from the hospital, I stopped shoveling for a while to frankly just take in what was happening outside.  As annoying as the snow was (and still is) it was so beautiful while it was coming down.  I took these pictures of our house and our street while it was still snowing.  It is interesting to compare them to the other photos of the first big snow we had that Mark took.  It is hard to believe that, at the time, we thought what we had was SO MUCH snow.  Ha.  God laughs….

This is our dogwood tree.  The snow is not so good for such a delicate tree, but God, it looked beautiful.

This is the view from our front step, looking out into our neighbors’ yard.

A view down our street.  As you can see, the snow was still coming down hard!  It was almost a whiteout!

This is our house. What you can see of it…

 

Another view down our street.  That poor car…..

Our front walkway just cracks me up.  I love the wall of snow.

Category: Uncategorized | No Comments �
Tags:

pamelamyers | February 14, 2010

As many of you know, Mark and I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day, but that only goes for each other.  I just have to say Happy Valentine’s Day to our little Valentine, Samantha.  She is truly the light of our lives, and the love of our lives.  Happy Valentine’s Day, Sam!

It’s been about a week since we’ve posted anything, but it’s not like we didn’t have an excuse — what a week!  We had more snow than I have ever seen.  And I do mean that literally–Philadelphia’s 2009-10 snowfall record so far of 70.5 inches (179 cm) has so far surpassed our previous all-time record of 65.5 inches in the winter of 1995-96. On top of all that, we had to take Mark to the hospital on Tuesday with appendicitis!  He had surgery that day and thankfully, everything went just fine.  However, the fact that we were getting a HUGE snowfall that evening certainly complicated things!  He was actually discharged the very next day due to yet more coming snow.  Getting back and forth to the hospital was crazy, but I managed just fine with Mark’s 4 wheel drive.  Sam sort of unexpectedly spent Tuesday night at Grandmom and Poppy’s house because by the time Mark got out of surgery and I left the hospital it was already past her bedtime.  I know they were upset about that ; )

Our neighbors have been really wonderful with helping out with the shoveling.  One of our neighbors used his snow blower on our sidewalk a bunch of times and our other neighbor did more than his share of shoveling our shared driveway.  We actually had yet another neighbor across the street who has a snowplow do our driveway one last time.  On Wednesday so I could get some shoveling done, I took Sam next door so that our neighbors could watch her (Mark isn’t allowed to pick her up as she is too heavy).  It was her first time with non-family babysitters and she was an angel : )  They had such a good time with her that they offered to babysit her one night so we could have a date night.  I think after all we’ve been through lately, we will take them up on it!

Anyway, it has  been really hard on Mark with his recovery.  Besides the pain he is having, he can’t pick up or hold our little girl, and he has been having a hard time with that.  Last night I managed to gingerly prop her up against him so that he could feed her before she went to bed. I just have to watch her ever kicky feet so she doesn’t jab him in the abdomen!

I will try to post some pictures soon, as soon as we all can catch a breath!

Category: Uncategorized | 1 Comment �
Tags: