Happy Sam

| April 12, 2011

Tell me this little girl was not hamming it up for the camera this weekend! I swear she was posing intentionally for me, trying out different expressions and doing a casual little lean on the wall. I can’t get over how cute she looks. 🙂

This is her one hand on hip, one hand posed charmingly oh-so grown up look.

Sam makes the funniest faces.  I have no idea what this expression was about.  I think she was figuring out what pose to try next.

We swear she knows she is unbearably cute and she actually tries to be whenever she can.

Pam scrubbed and vacuumed up our porch this weekend so that it is all clean and ready to go for the nice weather.  Although Sam has been joining Zephyr out there a lot, it is such a mess with all the pollen and dust that collects that we can’t even sit on the chairs.  Now that it is cleaned up, we can finally go out there and enjoy it.  Of course, the minute Sam saw Pam sit on a chair, she had to do it too.

The novelty soon wore off, however, and Sam tried to get down.  It was a little high up though, so she tried to shimmy her way off.

Sam is my favorite little model.   She certainly makes buying all the camera equipment I have worth every penny I spent.

Playground Bound

| April 12, 2011

We took Sam to the playground after dinner one night to give her something different to do.  There were a bunch of teenagers playing volleyball that totally captured her attention (she kept yelling “ball!” and trying to go over to them).  Once we managed to distract her from them, she was happy to of course, swing.  She thought it was pretty funny that mommy was swinging too. I think she thought it was a toddler-only activity.  I had a blast too! 

Daddy decided to swing as well and Sam was thrilled to have the company!  We always managed to be on an opposing swing (when she is back, we are front, and vice versa) and she liked passing us by every time.

I love looking at her little grin.  There is nothing better than seeing her smiley, happy face having a good time.

Next stop, the sliding board!  These particular ones are way to big for her to do alone, so we helped out. She  wasn’t scared, but she didn’t seem like she knew quite what was going on.  By the second or third run though, she was quietly giggling when she reached the bottom.

The merry-go-round was not such a big hit.  She didn’t hate it, but let’s say she wasn’t in love with it either.  I think she’s not used to the spinning motion yet.  But she’ll get there!

Sam’s Swingin’ Session Year 2!

| April 12, 2011

Once again Spring has sprung and it’s swing time!  As you can see, Sam loves her swing as much this year as she did last year.  Look at that little face!  Is that a happy child or what?

I love how her hair blows when she swings.

This is usually the expression you get when you first let her go. I pull the swing way, way up towards me and then let go, and she smiles and laughs and kicks her feet.

Swinging was always one of my favorite things to do when I was a little girl, and Sam obviously takes after me!  I cannot get over how big she looks now compared to last year.  For a blast from the past, click here.

The Big Dig

| April 12, 2011

This weekend we had so much fun with Sam. The weather was nice and she was happy to be outside playing.  She is quite the little runner now, getting faster and faster tooling around in our backyard.  This is usually all we get to see as she is running away from us looking to get into mischief.

See, mischief.  Look at that face.  Looks like an “I just got into trouble” face if I ever saw one.

She has a whole bunch of shovels and other assorted garden type toys and Mark recently taught her to dig. She picked it up right away, and now it is one of her favorite things to do.  She knows her toys are in the shed, and she will lead you over there to open the door, grabs her shovel, then heads off down the driveway to the front yard.  We have allotted her one small area in the corner of the flower bed for digging.

Now if I could only get her to put the dirt she digs back into the flower bed instead of all over the walkway (or herself) that would be great.   She is having fun though, so I guess that’s all that matters!

Sam’s gardening prowess is not limited to the flower beds, however.  She also is quite adept at re-arranging my flower pot (which, admittedly, is not ready for summer yet.)  Maybe Sam will have some planting tips!

Most of this time, Mark was outside with Sam.  I was inside doing, well, whatever I was doing.  I went out on the porch to say hi and it looked like Sam wanted me to open the porch door so she could come in.  Nope. She wanted me to come out!  Sam is always dragging someone around by the hand.  She loves for you to follow her everywhere.