Samantha has been very busy in June acquiring some new skills. Most important among them is her ability to complete puzzles. She literally came home from Virginia after watching Cadence complete puzzles, and improved dramatically on her puzzle abilities. Like she literally went from only being able to place puzzles pieces near their spots to being able to do whole puzzles. So cool to watch her pick this up. And as many of you know, I love puzzles, so I am so excited for this stage!
Her name puzzle is the hardest, but she likes doing it the best. I need to get a movie from this week as well because she's even gotten considerably better at the name puzzles since last week.
I meant to say June 18th in this movie.
She likes doing her animal puzzles as well. If you listen closely, you can hear the woof woof noise she always makes for dogs.
Samantha can literally point to 10-15 body parts these days. This video is a little better than the May one I took, but it still doesn't accurately reflect all her body part naming skills. Best part of the video, though, is when she cracks herself up sticking her finger up her nose (yep that's a new skill, too- purposely picking her nose- good times).
And then this isn't a new skill, but teapot song dancing is too cute not to include :)
Last Sunday we celebrated Father's Day with a little picnic in Hopewell Borough Park. We are so thankful for Andrew and the wonderful daddy he is to little Samantha! Here are some Daddy-daughter pics :)
Last week Samantha and I headed down to Virginia to hang out with the Chens. We desperately wanted to meet Travis and get some time to hang out with Tiff and Cadence as well during these slow newborn days. Mostly we hung around the house and chatted while the girls played and Travis nursed, but at least we managed to take a few pictures :)
Most meal time looked like this. Samantha was a mess grabbing for whatever Cadence wanted to eat, and Cadence told Samantha no and stayed perfectly clean.
Everyone is happy because they are eating pasta. Cadence with that one ponytail cracks me up here.
There was some ball bouncing with Travis, while S was napping and C was at daycare.
And when we picked up Cadence from daycare we headed to the soft play room at their community center. I wish we had one of these! To say Samantha loved it was an understatement. She quickly followed Cadence up all the apparatuses. The only thing she didn't like was the ball pit. It was tough to make these two leave.
Um I love Cadence. I think she was singing me a song while these pictures were being taken.
This is what Travis was doing while the girls were playing. I promise he was sound asleep- poor kid looks like he's having a gas problem here...haha.
I couldn't believe how fearless she was!
These two held hands so well. I felt like a very lucky mommy!
Travis snuggles after the girls went to bed. Great friend and a glass of fruity wine and snuggly baby = good night :)
Travis still snuggling the next day. That's the redeeming feature of newborns- they are so darn scrunchy and snuggly.
Cadence got home from daycare right when Samantha was waking up from afternoon nap. Cadence was happy to go say hi to Samantha post-nap. Samantha still looks a little sleepy (have I mentioned she always wants to sleep with her doggy stuffed animal now?) It makes a little appearance here :)
There was lots of C and S playtime post nap. Here it looks like Samantha is really listening to Cadence.
This is what happened next. Samantha demands whatever Cadence had. For the most part they played well together. Often it was parallel play, but sometimes they shared things and played with the same object. Samantha sometimes grabbed things from Cadence, but Cadence was so good at using her words to ask for them back. I can't wait until Samantha can express herself like that, too!
Letter magnets. Cadence is so good at her letters!
Helping the girls with their smoothies. Samantha ate a smoothy with kale!!! Thanks, Tiff, for that idea- now to just replicate the smoothy here so that my child will eat green vegetables!
"Do it myself"
On our last morning there was still time for a little play before we headed out.
And two movies of the girls "playing." Seriously be impressed by all of Cadence's language.
And an attempt to get us and our little ones all in one shot. This is the best we could do, but pretty much representative of life these days.
And just for fun... the history of Cadence and Samantha hanging out. So fun to see them grow and change together. Love that our little families are growing up near each other!
Two Sundays ago Andrew, Samantha, and I hosted an end of the year BBQ for my Mom's Time Out (MTO) bible study. For the last year and a half, I've been attending this Bible Study for moms at our church. It's been a wonderful way to get to know more women in the church, but more importantly it's been a way to consider how the Lord is working in this whole parenting process. These women have been such an encouragement to me when being a mom is hard! I'm very thankful for them, and pray that God will somehow use me as I start to lead the group in the fall. It was wonderful to have all the kids and husbands there, as well, as we normally only see the moms! Wish I'd gotten some more pics of faces, but at least I grabbed these few shots. Fun to see how our backyard will get used one day.
Last week Samantha turned seventeen months, and she is quite the smiley and feisty little one these days.
She's still been very picky with her eating. Meat and vegetables most often get thrown (we can't make sense of the random anomalies to this rule), but pasta and fruit continue to be the big winners.
If she could eat all her food wandering around with her snack cup, she would definitely pick that. She's starting to want to eat off her own plates and insists on trying to use the spoon herself.
Love the scrunchy nose. The faces she makes are hilarious.
Samantha is always moving. Always. She is almost running now and loves to practice going up and down stairs. She realized now that she can step up stairs when holding on to side railings. And she tries to step down stairs as well (or at least come down them on her bum), but only if she's holding my hand.
Samantha continues to rather be outside than anywhere else. She makes demands to be outside "Ous" all the time.
S has started to notice when her hands are dirty, and she likes to rub them on my pants/leg to get off any dirt that is there. Funny kid. Our other favorite gesture she makes is the little shoulder shrug she does when she doesn't know something.
Her language has expanded a little bit in the last month. She now says "Hi," "Ball," "Buh-bye," "Yes," "No," "Mama," "Uh-oh," "Woah," "Out," "B" for Bird and Banana and "Sh" for fish and shoe.
But even though she doesn't say much, she seems to understand everything. She answers very definitively "Yeah" or "No" to different questions. And she follows basically any instructions you giver her - "Go upstairs," "Give your baby doll her bottle," "Find doggy" (she has totally adopted her puppy dog as her favorite stuffed animal in the last month or so), etc.
We can also see that she understands what is normal and what isn't. When we balance something on our heads that shouldn't be there- she laughs. She really thinks little things that are different than they should be are super silly. However, balancing in mommy's shoes- not silly- basically something she was obsessed with this month.
Lastly, Samantha is really so friendly. She now smiles and waves to all sorts of people whenever we go out places and even blows kisses sometimes. She is quite the charmer. We love that she feels confident enough to hold her own in church daycare and to explore new places (after she takes a few minutes to warm up).
Love this little friendly smile. Can't believe she's almost a year and a half!
