Fall Fun

Our church had our annual Fall Festival last night. Normally we have the festival on a Sunday after worship services in the morning, but this year it was on Saturday afternoon with an Acappella concert afterward. We LOVED having it on Saturday and we hope that this is a new tradition.



So all the kids come dressed in their halloween costumes and get to play lots of games. Over Brent's strenuous objections, Samantha did dress up. She came as a dalmation. Yes, that is a dalmation costume, not a cow and not a cat! I realize that her whiskers are somewhat crooked, but have you ever tried drawing whiskers on a baby who hates to hold still?! I think I did great, considering!

Brent came out dressed as a mountain biker (big stretch there) so I decided that even though I was not planning on it, I would also dress up. I couldn't be the only member of my family not in costume! Thankfully, I had all the stuff from my gypsy costume that I wore a couple of years ago. I just had to look at the pictures first to remember what was part of it. It was fun and the few other adults who dressed up were glad to have some comapny.





The Maddox's brought out hale bales for our photo booth and our class brought mums and pumpkins for decorations. I thought we would have the cutest pictures since I found a couple of very small pie pumpkins and a few gourds. My thought was that Samantha would pick them up, just like she does everything she sees, and probably try to put one in her mouth. I'm thinking that this would be a great picture. But, as in most things, she had a different idea. You can see her saying, "Forget the pumpkin, Mom, I just want to eat some hay!" Apparantly I should have remembered to tell HER that she was a puppy, not a cow, and that puppies don't eat hay.



Of course many friends were there with us and we had a great time.

Glenn, Susan and Ava (who was dressed at Toto)


Hannah (as Dorothy)

Shawnya and Ryley

The Maddox's also brought a tractor and gave hay rides to all.


And I have no idea who this little flower fairy is, but she was so cute that I couldn't resist showing you.

Happy Halloween!

Caught in the Act

Samantha learned something new today. Are you ready?


She learned to dump out her toybox!



I have no idea how. She has never seen anyone dump out toys before. She has never seen her toy basket be anything other than upright. But when I left her room for a minute, I came back to see her sitting with the basket on its side and toys strewn everywhere. Then she got mad because she didn't have room to move around, so I picked the basket up, put about half the toys back in, and left the room for a few minutes. When I came back again, the basket was dumped over and all the toys where out again. And she was so proud of herself! It was adorable so I couldn't help but take pictures of the evidence.

Gratitude

I know of someone who had their twin girls at 25 weeks gestation. For those who don't know, that is slightly more than halfway through a nine month pregnancy, so those baby girls were tiny and very fragile. The parents kept a care page and at the end of every post, they wrote, "We praise God for 2 more days with our little girls (that makes 16 and 17)" The only thing that changed at the end of each of their posts was the number of days. And they continued counting all the way , with the number of days on one post being as high as 118. In their final post after the girls were both home, they expressed gratitude for poopy diapers, sleepless nights and spitup stains on their favorite clothes. These parents knew that to get through the tough times, they must be grateful for what God gave them, one day at a time, even when they were surely struggling with wondering what the next day would bring.

How humbling that even this situation, these parents praised God for everything he gave them. I struggle with "why me" when there are far less serious struggles in my life. So I have been thinking about this for a while, that I need to be grateful for what God brings me each day. I have started trying to do that at the end of each of Samantha's monthly updates. Then I read a friend's blog (Angela, I will be happy to put a link in if you tell me how) the other day and she challenged everyone who read all the way through the post to post their own "sparklies" or good news tidbits, so I decided that rather than just thinking about it, I need to start practicing gratitude every day, starting today. So hear are my sparklies for today:
1. Samantha didn't get sick after both Brent and I were sick last week.
2. We got to see my sister on Friday night and we got to go bowling with her. For free, in a smoke free place.
3. Kathy brought a jogging stroller with her to loan to me, so I can now go on a walk with Samantha and Cori even when Brent doesn't want to go.
4. The weather has been beautiful the last few days! (great for going on walks :))
5. Samantha's sleepless nights are because she is growing, developing and teething, and those all point to a healthy baby!
6. Even though the pediatrician is somewhat concerned about Samantha's low weight gain lately, she said that we don't have to come back for a weight check, so our next appointment with Dr Ramirez isn't until Samantha's one year check up.

Now it is your turn...what are the good news tidbits in your day?

better, yucky and cute

The better is how Samantha's face is looking after almost completely healing.

The yucky is how I've been feeling (blatant ploy for sympathy here!) I came home from work yesterday feeling very icky and it only got worse. I had breakfast before work yesterday morning and until a few minutes ago, that was the last thing I had to eat. (Although I have had about a gallon of gatorade, literally!) I am now eating a bowl of chicken soup as I type. So, needless to say, I am home from work. The good thing is that I was able to still take Samantha to the babysitter this morning and then come home and sleep. I wouldn't have had that option if I were a stay at home mom (see, I'm looking for the positives! :))

And the cute is the adorable future aggie girls in my family.


This was taken on Sunday, the scabs came off Samantha's nose, the bruise was gone, she was almost completely healed, yeah!




Staci got Aggie clothes for Samantha since I could only find t.u. clothes here at home (Sssss....!) One of the shirts she got matching for Samantha and Emma. How fun! I hope that these cousins always love each other as much as they do now. I couldn't get a great picture of both of them (they wouldn't both cooperate on the same shot, but I thought these two were pretty cute.






And here is Samantha in the other Aggie shirt that Staci brought us. What a cutie patootie!

9 months ?!!!

It hardly seems possible that nine months have passed since Dr. Levy asked, "What do you think about having the baby tonight?" and I vehemently told him "NO!" Yet it really has been that long already.

In the last month, Samantha started doing an army crawl. The first time was on 9/25/08. She will crawl for a few minutes, but then give up and roll since she can do that so much faster. She has signed "more" (at least I think that is what she is doing, the first time was on 10/4/08) and on her nine month birthday (10/7/08) she started waving bye-bye. She has a little bit of stranger anxiety, but quickly gets over it after being held by Mommy or Daddy for a few minutes in the "stranger's" presence.

Her hair has started growing a bit, so she now has enough on the top of her head to wear a bow clip. She still only has two teeth, and I have given up on guessing when she will get the next one.


She babbles almost constantly, with her most common "words" being aba, baba, dada, and (once in a long while) mama. I know she is just making sounds right now, but I still love to hear her say mama and dada. She now blows rasberries with her tongue as well as with her lips, and she has the cutest giggle! And we get to hear it every day since she is such a happy girl. This month also saw her get her first booboo on 10/3/08. It even warranted a trip to the doctor's office, but luckily, the doctor said it was all fine.

She has two comfort items, her pink lamb and her pink fuzzy blankie. She does have stuffed animals that are other colors, really! These are just the ones she chose all by herself! These are very necessary items for sleeping. She will always have one in her arms to go to sleep, and I will often look in her room to see her laying on top of both of them, sound asleep. I seriously need to get another of each so that I have a longer window of time for throwing them in the wash. Especially since they both get spit up on at least every other day. About the time that she decided she likes these so much, she stopped needing her paci, so she has not had a paci in nearly a month. Yeah! I'm so glad it was painless getting rid of it!

Samantha has a new favorite food - yogurt melts. They are really cool - just drops of freeze dried yogurt that melt in your mouth. She can sometimes feed herself the yogurt melts and her puffy stars, but not always. She loves to hold her spoon, and is very good at getting it into her mouth, but not always the right end! She can eat stage 3 breakfast foods, but the dinners still have too many chunks for her. She tends to not chew enough and then she gags herself. Not fun when this happens!


She is still wearing mostly 0-3 month clothes, but can manage to fit into some 3-6 month. The length is great, but the pants are usually HUGE around her waist. In fact, the pants that fit her best are still newborn size, but the length makes them more like long shorts.



Her nose is healing quickly, and I am hoping that it will be good enough by the weekend that her nine month pictures won't look too bad. We'll see.

We are so grateful for one more month with our sweet little girl and look forward to what the next month brings.

improving?

Well, here is day three of Samantha's "injury" Her nose looks terrible, I know. But you should have seen it yesterday. It was even worse then if you can imagine that. The bruise on her forehead is hardly even noticeable now, and there is no longer any bump. Yeah!
Did you notice the bow on her head? A few weeks ago, my sister in law showed me that Samantha now has enough hair to put a bow clip in. So I went and got some bows. My mom will love it!!!!


And just for fun, I am including a picture of her sleeping. Her favorite sleeping position is now on her tummy with her legs up under her and her little hiney up in the air. My mom said that I used to sleep like that all the time when I was little. That's how she was sleeping when I decided to take this picture, but by the time I got the camera out, she had straightened out her legs. She must have known I was coming, she is after all her daddy's daughter. Hehehe...

Watch for more sleeping pictures to come. After all, who can resist a sweet little sleeping baby. Certainly not me!

Award time

Is there an opposite of hypochondriac? If so that's apparently the type of mom I am this week. In fact I should get an award for it. But let me start at the beginning rather than the end... First look at the picture. Look very closely.



Yep, Samantha got her first booboo today. She fell at the babysitters house and got a big bump on her forehead and scraped up her nose. The red nose is not from crying, that is the scrape on it. And if you look very closely at the upper left part of her forhead, you will see a long rectangular bruise. It's hard to see in the picture, but boy is it obvious in person. And it has a big bump on the far left side of it.

I called the doctor's office to see if I should bring her in and the nurse said that I should since she has a bump on her forehead. When we got to the doctor's office, Nurse Sharon took one look at her and said "Daddy's not gonna be happy!" I couldn't help but agree.

Anyway, Dr. Ramirez came in and examined her and said that she didn't think the head stuff was anything to worry about. However, she asked me about her runny nose, is she coughing, etc. I told her how we have been doing the last several days (not well at all!!!!) and that I think it is just allergies since both Brent and I are have bigtime allergy problems right now and since Samantha is only coughing at night. She decided to do an RSV swab. She was almost completely certain that it would come back positive. And she told me that Samantha has a double ear infection. And she teasingly told me "She has to throw herself off the couch to get you to bring her in for her ear infections, huh?"

In just two short months, I have gone from the mom who took her baby to the doctor only to hear "She's teething and she is absolutely fine" to the mom doesn't take the baby to the doctor when she has a double ear infection and a massive cold.

Really, I thought it was just allergies. And she only had a fever for a couple of hours one evening and it went away on its own! And she never acted like her ears were bothering her. How was I to know?

The good news is that Samantha does NOT have RSV. Dr. Ramirez thinks that she has been unable to get over the cold because of the ear infections, and that since we are now starting antibiotics, the ears should clear up and we should see a vast improvement in the cold in a few days. Then maybe we will all get some sleep again.

And hopefully I will figure out some good middle ground on when to go to the doctor.