Samantha's first blog

pamelamyers | July 26, 2011

I’ve been up since 2:40 this morning….no one in the house got much sleep last night, not me, not Mark, not Sam, not even poor Zephyr!  Sam’s sleeping is not getting any better. We have no idea what is going on with her.  It is still taking a million years to get her to sleep but at least once she falls asleep she has been staying asleep.  But last night she woke up screaming and yelling before 3:00 a.m. and we could not get her back to sleep.  Mark and I went into her room a million times and alternated between yelling, cajoling, threatening, begging, and bargaining.  Nothing worked.  I gave up around 4:00 and went in and let her sleep on me while I sat in the chair in her room. She did take a nap today at my mom’s but only in the double bed, not in her crib.  And over the weekend for her sleepover she did the same thing.  Oh boy…something has to give.  Mark and I are not ready for her to move out of her crib. I don’t think Sam is ready either, even if she thinks she is.  We aren’t really comfortable with the idea of her being able to wander around at night if she wakes up.  Hopefully, this is just a phase she is going through.  Wish us all luck (and sleep!)

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pamelamyers | July 23, 2011

My little girl is 22 months old today. I usually remember and give her a happy x-month birthday wish, but today it just totally slipped by me. I had no idea what the date was. Mark and I have been in a bit of a fog lately. Sam decided a few days ago that going into her crib is akin to being thrown into a pack of wolves. She screams, she cries, she whines and it generally uncooperative and miserable. We think it seemed to start when she wasn’t feeling well recently.  She had a stomachache and wasn’t sleeping well.  Every time she gets sick she does this little routine where we have to re-sleep train her.  Well, at any rate, she is refusing to nap and is fighting bedtime no matter how tired she is.  The only upside to this little drama is that she is having a sleepover at Grandmom and Poppy’s tonight – maybe they will break her of this unpleasant routine and she will come home back to normal.  Here’s hoping!

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pamelamyers | July 22, 2011

Sam has been trying out something new lately — she has been resisting my attempts to carry her down the steps.  She has been racing up the steps for a long time now but down was another story.  It was really only recently that I could get her to at least try to go down.  Sometimes she would, sometimes not, but always with someone holding her hand.  I could never get her to start at the top of our stairs either. I guess 12 or so steps is a long way down for a little person and it looked scary.  I would carry her down until we were about 6 steps from the bottom and then let her try to descend.  I wasn’t sure how she would do it, on her butt, walking down backward, but it seems she likes on her butt the best.  Frankly, I am glad, because that seems safest.  Well, in the last few days, she has been really willing to try to do it on her own, all the way from the top.  She is doing really well too.  Sometimes I have to remind her to stop looking back up, off to the side, or anywhere else for that matter and to please just concentrate on coming down safely.  She tends to get too interested in something she sees off to the side or back up the steps and gets a little wobbly.  I always stand in front of her just in case.  But she has been doing so well, I am very proud of my little girl!

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pamelamyers | July 18, 2011

…to remember….or however that song goes.  Well, I may not remember the song that well, but I certainly will remember these days with Sam.  I know I keep saying it, but she is growing up so fast.  Just yesterday she finally figured out how to stand on my feet and let me walk with her.  I have been trying to show her but she never really got it.  We must have walked and walked a million times yesterday and today while she looked up at me, holding my hands, giggling.  And just yesterday we spied her lying on the floor on her belly, legs up in the air, coloring.  It was such a “big girl” pose that it almost broke my heart.  I feel like the days of her babyhood are long behind me now, and the toddler years are going to fly by too.  Soon Sam will be so grown up I can’t even stand it.

We had so much fun today.  It was the kind of day that makes me so glad that I am lucky enough to not have to work full time now.  We started out the day at PetSmart, which is like the zoo to Sam she has so much fun.  She looks at the fish for endless amounts of time, then she is off to the cats that are up for adoption, then onto the hamsters and the birds and the other assorted small animals.  Then comes the bonanza — the doggie day care.  There are 2 rooms full of dogs, one for big dogs and one for little dogs, and the wall facing into the store is one huge floor to ceiling pane of glass.  Sam stands there just mesmerized by the literally 12-15 dogs in each window running around like lunatics.  So many of them naturally come right over to the window to see her and she gets so excited.  But honestly, she seems just as excited by the fish, and I have no idea why.  Fish are just not all that exciting, but Sam loves them.

After her nap I took her to the pool with my mom.  Sam had so much fun!  It was the most relaxed she has ever been.  We spent pretty much all of our time in the baby pool, of course, which Sam loves.  Usually, she just stands there, plays with her watering can and her bucket and that’s about it.  Today she was actually sitting in the pool with the water just about up to her neck, she was squirting me with her squirty toys, and she let me bounce her up and down splashing into the water over and over again.  We were in there for over 2 hours.  She had so much fun. 

I wish Mark could have been there with us, but he was working, of course.  I come home from a day with her and he always asks me if it was fun and frankly sometimes I feel like lying and saying not really.  Because although I know he wants Sam and me to have fun, I think it is somewhat sad for him that he misses it.  I can’t wait until our beach vacation.  Last year, Mark and Sam had so much fun together. I think they both could use the Daddy-Daughter time.  I can’t even imagine what it will be like on the beach this year with Sam!

The best part of days like these though is after all the fun is over.  Every time I have a day like today, Sam spontaneously runs over to me so many times and just throws her whole little body against my legs and hugs so tight.  It’s like she’s trying to say thank you, Mommy, I had the BEST day.  Sam, if that is what you are trying to say, thank YOU.  Because I had the best day.  And someday, when you are bigger, you won’t even remember these days, but I definitely will.

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pamelamyers | July 15, 2011

Well, wearing this cute little hat for one!

Believe me, getting her to wear a hat this year has been an uphill battle.  Last year she wore a hat, and sunglasses, all the time.  But then again, she was a little tyke and didn’t know that she had a choice in the matter.  Now, however, she does know and she is very happy to assert her will.  For the longest time, every time I would put a hat on her Sam would immediately take it off, throw it on the ground, and laugh.  We had some major battles about the fact that Mommy did NOT find this funny, and she WILL wear a hat.  You can imagine how many of those arguments I won.  Yeah, not many.  But for whatever reason, the novelty of throwing her hat off has worn off somewhat and she will wear it pretty regularly.  It actually seems that she is getting the whole point of wearing a hat now because Mark has seen her in the bright sun tugging the brim down over her face.

As for the rest of our latest news, things have been going really well.  Sam is getting bigger and smarter and funnier every day.  It seems like from one day to the next she is learning how to do more things.  She surprises me all the time by what she figures out, what she understands, and what she can do.  Mark and I have noticed that she is like me in one way — when she is attempting to do something and it isn’t quite working out, she gets frustrated fast and throws a bit of a fit.  I am like that.  Well, I don’t throw fits, but I get frustrated quickly.  I am trying to teach her that it is ok when things don’t always work, you just try again. 

Her sleep habits have been a little off in the past couple of weeks.  She has been waking up early and yelling, about 5:00 or 5:30 a.m.  For a while, I was going in to get her, but it was getting old having to wake up so early.  So, Mark and I decided to let her cry it out.  Sure enough, just like in the past, she pitches a fit for a few minutes then gets quiet and hangs out in her crib.  She has been waking up at 7:00 a.m. for a long time now, and sometimes we can only get her to 6:30 these days, but we are hoping things even out soon.  She still doesn’t seem to make it past 7:00 p.m. for bedtime, so maybe she just needs less sleep.  She has been fighting going to bed a little too at night.  Not so much crying as asking for one more book, one more song, one more hug.  Eventually, I have to just tell her, Sam, you are going in your crib for night night and that’s that!  It is funny, it took me a while to figure out what she was saying but I finally did.  Sometimes, I stand up after holding her in the glider and walk to her crib and she yells what sounds like, Dit Dit Dit!  She is actually saying, Sit.  She wants me to go back to the chair to read again or to sing another song.  At least she has been a good napper sleeping about 2 hours at a time.  That only took her, oh, almost 2 years to accomplish. 🙂  Wow.  Pretty soon she will be 2 years old.  How did that happen?

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