Busy Busy Busy!

It's official, Samantha is mobile! She's been crawling for the past couple of weeks now, I've just been too busy to find time for a new blog post.
Last weekend we went to Illinois for my friend Faye's wedding. While we were at the wedding Samantha stayed in Oak Lawn with my parents. I think she's finally getting over her separation anxiety as she was perfectly happy staying with them for the 6+ hours we were gone.
This past weekend I went back to Oak Lawn with Samantha to stay with my brother and sister while my parents made a quick trip to Minnesota to see my uncle. Samantha and I stopped at Kiera & Mike's house for the night on Friday so we wouldn't have to make the entire 6 hour drive in one night. That was a life saver. Samantha pretty much slept the entire way to Kewanee and woke up for a little bit to visit with her Aunt Kiera and Uncle Mike.
We took off pretty early on Saturday morning, and my wonderful little traveler slept for that leg of the trip too. Of course this good fortune did not last. Sunday we had to make the entire trip in one day, and Samantha was a nightmare. She slept for roughly 2-3 hours of the trip, and screamed for the other 3 hours. Literally she cried just about every moment she was awake. The only thing that quieted her down was when I reached back into her car seat and either touched her face or held her little hand. I felt like Dumbo's mom in the beginning of that movie when she sticks her trunk through the bars of her trailer and rocks Dumbo to sleep.
Eventually we did make it home though, and we made it only minutes after the Bears/Broncos kick off! It was strange watching Cutler and Orton in the 'wrong' colored jerseys, but we'll get used to it. :)
Here are a couple pictures of Samantha from yesterday morning. This first one is proof that she is not always a morning person.
Then she cheered up though. This crazy girl is already pulling herself up to stand while holding on to the couch, and she's not even 7 months old yet! I'll try to get a picture of it next time she does it, but it's hard to work the camera when you're trying to catch a baby who might topple over any second!
The strange thing is that she's getting so advanced with moving, but she still refuses to even try holding her own bottle. I'm probably going to pick up a sippy cup with handles for her this week and see if she'll make some progress with that. The drive home yesterday would have been much less tearful if she had just been able to soothe herself with a bottle.
We put a new item on Samantha's menu this weekend. In addition to avocados & bananas Samantha now eats sweet potatoes! She loves eating from a spoon, and really seems to like sweet potatoes so far. We are making her food from scratch, and the potatoes are more labor intensive for us, but it's refreshing to know exactly what she is eating. Plus we save money on baby food this way, so it's a double bonus.
Tomorrow is her doctor's appointment, and she's getting more shots. We'll have new stats and a new band aid picture to share!

Long time no post

I have been terrible about updating the blog lately! It's been about 2 weeks since I've made a substantial update, so I'm going to try to cram a bunch of stuff into one right now.
My sister Kiera and her husband Mike stayed with us last week to babysit Samantha. Chris' grandma is our regular babysitter, but she was on vacation visiting family so we needed a stand-in for the week. Kiera and Mike are teachers, they weren't technically working, so they were able to help us out. It was great having them out here. I don't get to spend very much time with my sister anymore, having a whole week together was incredible. We got to talk about a lot of things that don't come up during a phone call, and we got to go see The Time Traveler's Wife while she was here. Awesome movie, by the way, I definitely recommend seeing it.
Samantha is well on her way to crawling. She hasn't mastered it by any means, but she can manuver herself around to get any toy on the floor no matter how far away it is. Right now her crawling consists more of scooting, rolling, turning, and reaching, but we're getting there. Tonight I finally used the gift certificate my doctor's office gave me the day after we had Samantha to go get a pedicure. One of my good friends from Junior High/High School is getting married this weekend, and I figured that was a good enough reason to get my feet prettied up. Let me just say I am now a firm believer in the magic of pedicures. My feet look and feel amazing. Nevermind the flip flop tan lines.
It sounds like Samantha is having a hard time staying asleep tonight, so this is it for today. Thanks for reading, I'll try harder to keep you caught up on what's going on with us in the future!

Piratey Things

Here's a better picture from our pirate photo shoot in the Dells. And yes, Chris is indeed making his "Blue Steel" face. He did it on purpose. Gotta love it.

6 months and almost crawling

Samantha turned 6 months old on Saturday! We're halfway to a year! It's like she got close to 6 months and decided it was time to start hitting milestones left and right. She is now rolling like a pro and can pretty much make it across the living room in a blink of an eye. I can definitely see the Dymit in her, as she is very quickly becoming bored with rolling and is really working on the crawling thing. She can get up on all fours, and sometimes she'll even push herself up so she's on her hand and feet like this:
She hasn't figured out the method behind actually crawling yet, but I don't think it will be long.
She's started to talk in her sleep a little, which kind of freaks me out at night, but then it's really cute when I figure out what's going on. She makes these cute babbling noises, and then suddenly she'll stop and keep on sleeping.
I'll try to take some good pictures in the next few days and put up another update soon. Hopefully it will include a picture of her crawling!

We're back from our camping trip!

We are in desperate need of a blog update here.
I would have gotten something posted a day or two ago, but I've been sick with a mutant form of the common cold, and I haven't really been up to doing anything.
This past weekend we went camping at Holiday Shores in the Wisconsin Dells with my family. We used to camp there nearly every summer before I left for the Navy. It was really neat to get to go back there with my own little family. We went downtown in the Dells on Saturday to get some fudge (awesome stuff!) and to get an 'old time' picture done. We went with the pirate theme, they even had a little dress for Samantha to wear. They have all sorts of crazy copywright rules with their pictures, so this is the best I could do taking a picture it with my digital camera. The quality kind of stinks, but you get the idea.

Samantha pretty much seemed to enjoy her first experience camping. During the day she did great. She napped a lot and was cheerful when she was awake. Oh wait, but then she woke up screaming both nights we were there. I don't know if she was freaked out because we were someplace strange for her or what. I do know that we didn't appreciate it, and I'm sure the people in the tents around us didn't either. Oh well, babies scream, that's just the way it is. Here are a couple pics of her as a happy camper.
Before we left on Sunday we were all hanging out in my parents' camper. Chris decided it would be a great time to teach Samantha how to play catch. Lets just say she doesn't quite have the coordination for that game yet, and I managed to snap a picture proving it.

Yep, that was right after the ball bounced off her head. In his defense, it was a really soft squishy ball, so it didn't hurt her. I think it annoyed her more than anything.
Chris has some much better pictures from our trip on his camera, so we'll just have to make another post sometime in the next few days.
Now I'm off to bed to get as much sleep as I can before Samantha wakes up because she can't breathe. Being sick and having a sick baby is definitely not at the top of my 'favorite things in the world' list.