Sleeping Update

Here's the update on our sleep learning.
We started a new "program" with Samantha on Sunday night because we have just had it with nobody (other than the dogs) getting enough sleep in our house. We now start her bedtime routine around 7:00. Every other night she gets a bath, then it's up to her room for a bottle, a little time playing with some soft toys, and a few chapters from her children's Bible. After all those things we kiss her goodnight, throw about 6 pacifiers in her crib, lay her down, turn out the lights, and leave the room.
According to the plan that we are following we need to wait 5 minutes after we put her down to let her cry. After those 5 minutes we walk into her room, stop a few feet away from her crib and verbally reassure her that she can go to sleep on her own and that we haven't abandoned her. Then we wait 10 minutes. If she is still crying we do the verbal reassurance again. Then it's a 15 minute wait, and it continues at 15 minute intervals until she falls asleep.
Hearing her cry herself to sleep is hard, but I've seen so much progress over the past 3 nights that I can't deny this plan is working.
On Sunday night she cried for about 24 minutes before she settled down and went to sleep. Monday night she cried for about 12 minutes, and last night she cried for about 5 minutes. Not only that, but I have seen a significant decrease in the number of times she wakes up throughout the night. Sunday night she woke up a lot, and cried a lot. I followed the plan and did the verbal checks with her instead of picking her up and rocking her back to sleep. Monday night she woke up some, but got back to sleep very quickly on her own. Last night I think I heard her whine a little bit a handful of times, but it was so brief every time that I wasn't sure if it was her or one of the dogs whining to go outside.
Her naps are a completely different story. We've been trying to use this same method to get her to sleep on her own when she naps during the day, but it isn't even coming close to working. She literally did not nap yesterday. Every time she was put in her pack-n-play for a nap she screamed the entire time. Apparently there was even a point where she pulled off her socks and pants, and then took her diaper off too. She was one mad little baby. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of this to share with you. You'll just have to imagine what an angry half naked baby would look like standing in a pack-n-play.
I think our game plan for the naps is going to be put on hold for awhile. She's doing great sleeping at night, but she needs to get her naps in during the day too. Maybe once she has the night sleeping down we'll attempt the naps again.

So that's the sleeping news! On to some new pictures.
Samantha has figured out that she can use her own hands to feed herself!

This is how she watches Baby Einstein. Can you tell that she loves those videos?

And one for the dog lovers. Last night we were watching The Biggest Loser, and a commercial came on. It was the car commercial where two people are driving all over town looking for their dog and squeaking her toys out the car windows. I guess Katie thought they were looking for her, because that commercial had her undivided attention. The poor dog loves squeaker toys, but she's not allowed to play with them. She can only have the super tough industrial strength Kong toys because she destorys everything else. No squeaker toys for our dogs anymore, it's just a waste of money.