Quick Little Post

Here's a shot of Samantha in her Jumperoo. She's finally getting the hang of that thing! She's still pretty short though, we have to put board game boxes under her so her legs don't just dangle. It is a Jumperoo after all, not a Dangleroo!

This is definitely not the finished product of her quilt, but it's starting to come together. I've got 4 more rows to add and then there is a lot of fringe cutting to do. Chris thinks the colors are kind of weird, and I sort of agree, but it's too late to turn back now. At least it's unique, nobody will ever have the same quilt as my Sammy Bananny!

I forgot to put a title on this one...

Check out our cool little girl in her sunglasses!
Yesterday was the first official day of Sturgis Falls. If you don't live around here and have no idea what that is, it's a celebration/festival that happens in our town the last weekend of June every year. There's a parade, lots of food, live music, a carnival, a street fair, a bunch of activities for kids, and a lot of other things I can't remember. http://www.sturgisfalls.org/
This morning we were trying to watch the parade, but Samantha seemed to think my face was more entertaining. She survived through just about the entire parade, which is incredible because we were there for nearly two hours! It's a long parade, I think they just let anybody who wants to be in it enter. Seriously, there were people walking with llamas, a jazzercise group actually doing jazzercise while they walked (with one old old old man who I think was forced by his wife to be there), old people on a float sitting on rocking chairs, every Cedar Falls High School class reunion float that ever exisited, an oriental 'band' charming a plastic snake in a basket...the list goes on.I do want to highlight my favorite group of the parade though. When Chris pointed them out I couldn't stop myself from looking at them with an 'are you serious?!' look on my face. It was a belly dancing group, all dressed up in flashy authentic looking belly dancing skirts/halter tops. This was no ordinary belly dancing group though, and by that I mean they all had serious bellies. Maybe I'm just not that comfortable with my own body, but I would never put my belly on display in front of my entire town, especially if it looked like Kate Gosselin's belly after she had the sextuplets (no joke, most of these women looked like that). To each his (or her) own I suppose.
We gave Chris his birthday present today, even though his birthday isn't until Monday. Samantha and I had a mousepad with a bunch of her pictures on it made up for him to use at work. It turned out really well, I think I might have one made for me to have at work too!
There's a lot more weekend left, so I'm sure we'll get another post or two in before it's all said and done.

What a day!

Today was Samantha's 4 month doctor appointment, which meant more shots. Of course she was in a super cheerful mood right before the nurses stabbed her with the vaccines, which made it that much harder to watch her instantly melt into a hysterical baby. Thankfully there were two nurses, and they gave her the first two shots at the same time. I'm sure it didn't make the pain any less, but it made the whole procedure that much faster.
After the doctor visit I brought Sammy back to work with me for a little bit. She was going back and forth between sleeping and crying, and I wanted to keep a close eye on her in case she developed a fever. For a few minutes I thought she was starting to have a little break-out on her face, but after about half an hour the 'blotches' were gone. She and I were at my office for about an hour, after that Brad told me to just take her home for the afternoon. At home she has been sleeping and then waking up crying. Every once in awhile we can get a smile out of her, but it doesn't last very long. This is one girl who doesn't like her shots.
Here are a couple pictures of her right before I took her bandaids off:

We decided to be a little adventerous and give Samantha her first taste of 'solid' foods tonight. After doing a lot of research we are going to skip the rice cereal completely and give her mashed/pureed avocado instead. She didn't seem to know what in the world it was, but she didn't seem to hate it either. We'll just have to keep trying little by little.

I can't think of anything else to add, so this is it for today. Chris is going to see Transformers with our friend Drew tonight. As for me, I think I'll wait until it's out on DVD to see it.

**I think this last picture is kind of funny, because it looks like Samantha's head is super-imposed on her body. She is pretty cute though, and that totally makes up for how scary I look. :) **

Chris is a College Graduate!

It's kind of hard to read, but I've got his name highlighted in there. Chris is probably going to be a little embarassed about this post, but I'm proud of him for what he's accomplished. He finished his Associates in Science degree out at Hawkeye and has moved on to taking classes at the University of Northern Iowa now. Way to go Chris!

Happy Father's Day!

Samantha and I got this awesome idea for Father's Day gifts for Chris, Grandpa and Great Grandpa from one of the moms on the February 2009 Baby Center Community Board.
Enjoy the pictures!**Note to my Dad & Grandpa: Sorry to ruin the surprise, but I'm bringing yours out to you 4th of July weekend and I didn't want to wait that long to make this post. I would have mailed them, but I just don't trust the post office that much anymore.**

She did it!!!

Samantha rolled over! Tuesday was actually the first day she did, but I've been trying to get some pictures of her in action. Of course, she refuses to do anything cool when I have the camera out, so those pictures will have to wait. She still occasionally gets her arm caught under her body, but most times she can yank it free on her own.
We're excited about her reaching this milestone. The only downside is that we can't leave her alone on the couch anymore, and that we are one step closer to having to baby-proof the house (yep, haven't even started that yet).

Swimsuit Model

We just might have America's Next Top Model living in our house...

Long post for a long weekend

This weekend the Dymit family came to town to visit us. Okay, when I say us, I mean Samantha. :)
This was the first visit my grandparents (Samantha's Great Grandma and Great Grandpa Dymit) have been able to make out to see us, so it was very exciting for me to get to show them where we live.
We spent a good portion of the weekend just enjoying each others' company. Everyone got to play with Samantha and a few of us took the 'tour' of the parts of Cedar Falls that were under water this time last year.
On Saturday night we went to Tokyo, the Japanese Teppanyaki restaurant in Waterloo, for dinner. Our chef was pretty amazing, although I don't think Samantha is old enough to appreciate the show quite yet.

In spite of the fact that Samantha didn't get to take as many naps as she probably should have this weekend she was a pretty cheerful little girl. We managed to get lots of smiles out of her, and she did her share of talking.

I am a little worried that my family might be pushing her to become technologically advanced a little too early though. Eventually I would like to get an ipod touch, but probably not for my baby. :)

The latest and greatest

Where do I start?
Monday we tried to have Samantha stay home with a babysitter while we went to our small group. Big Mistake!!! The poor girl (Samantha) was alseep when the babysitter showed up. Stupidly I decided to let her sleep so we could sneak out and hopefully give the babysitter some peace and quiet for a little bit. We weren't even gone for half an hour before the babysitter called. Samantha was screaming in the background and the poor girl (babysitter this time) was telling me that nothing would calm her down. Thankfully the house we were at this week is only about a mile or two from ours, so I went home and handled the chaos. Samantha came back to the small group meeting with me, and other than being crabby and mad at me for leaving her she behaved quite well.
This morning Samantha pretty much just about rolled over from her back to her belly. I say pretty much just about because she still had her arm stuck under her side, so she couldn't do anything once she was over. She'll figure it out eventually. Chris helped her today and unstuck her arm. So what did she do with her new freedom on her belly? She spit up and proceeded to smear her face in the puddle so it looked like she had runny cottage cheese all over her forehead, eyes and cheek. You make me so proud Sammy!
The bouncy chair is slowly becoming more useful as she's starting to like it more. There is a setting on it where it will light up and play music for a few seconds if the baby plays with the toys attached to the arch. I don't know if she's made that connection yet, but she likes grabbing the monkey and trying to pull it off the arch. If it wasn't for that bouncy chair I wouldn't be able to iron my clothes or dry my hair in the morning!

A monster visited our house last night...

Just when we think things are under control, Samantha decides to unleash the monster again. Last night she had a hard time getting to sleep. Usually I can sit with her on the couch and she'll start to pass out by 8 or 9. Last night she wanted nothing to do with sleep, and she was surprisingly cheerful about it. We brought her out to the porch and sat on the swing for a little while. I'll be honest and say that after Chris went inside I kind of fell asleep for a little bit on the swing with her. It's okay, she was sleeping by then too, and I didn't drop her.
Fast forward a few hours, she woke up screaming around 2:00 last night. On a normal night when she isn't being impossible all I have to do is give her a pacifier and she'll go right back to sleep. No luck with that last night, so I picked her up and put her next to me in bed. If it's possible, I think she started to cry harder at that point. Thankfully Chris is staying home with her this week, so he was able to take her downstairs and calm her down enough to get her back to sleep.
I have to keep reminding myself that things are definitely going to get harder before they get easier. We've got lots of growth spurts and plenty of teeth to get through. There are going to be many more rough nights ahead...

Is today the day she's going to roll over?

For the past week or so Samantha has been teasing us and sort of trying to roll over. She'll get way over on her side, and then give up right before she might roll onto her stomach. I was hoping this weekend she would make it all the way over, but no luck. I guess she'll roll when she's ready.
As far as the 'crib training' goes, we have kind of abandoned that venture for now. Memorial Day weekend turned out to be a horrible weekend to start out. All of our neighbors decided they wanted to throw loud drunken parties all weekend long, so the noise alone kept Samantha from being able to sleep very well. She's still sleeping in her bassinett for the most part, although we do still have the nights where she just wants to be close to somebody (me) while she sleeps. Right now as long as all three of us get a good night's sleep I'm not going to be very picky about where she sleeps.
Our backyard project is starting to show some results, we have grass in the yard! It's still a little patchy, but all the rain we've been getting is helping it to grow and fill in. It looks a million times better than it did a month ago, that's for sure! These pictures are from almost a week ago, so it's even gotten a little better since then.