The Beach

The weather has been so beautiful this week (not too hot with a nice breeze), that we have taken full advantage of it and spent some time down at the beach. We live in a subdivision that is built around a lake, and while we don't actually live ON THE LAKE, we full have full lake access.

When we first moved here last year, it took a while before Sam was open to the idea of actually going into the water. We often had to coax her to even get close to the water's edge:

Eventually, she found that she loves the water A LOT, and also likes the playground area down there. So this year, she BEGS to go down to the park/beach. It's hard for me to take both girls by myself because I have to keep a close eye on Sam, but my mom and sister have been able to help me this week (Steve is in Mexico again). And, it has helped that we have gone right around the times that Sophia likes to nap, so she naps in the shade while we play on the beach. Perfect!

There is no fear this year; she just goes for it!

Collecting water for her sandcastle:

Building sandcastles with Aunt Minnie:

One of her favorite places to sit:

And look who just woke up! (Yes, they have matching bathing suits -- too cute!)

Sophia is Four Months Old!

Sophia is four months old today. Her personality is developing more and more these days as she becomes more active and alert to us and to her surroundings. She is a relatively easy-going baby; she seems to only cry when she really needs something (a feeding, a diaper change, or if she becomes bored). Here is a little bit of information about her:

-- She now weighs 13 lbs. 4 oz (this puts her in the 40th percentile for weight).

-- She is 24.5 inches long (this puts her in the 60th percentile for length).

-- She has been sleeping through the night since she was about 2 months old. I typically put her down for bed between 9 and 9:30 pm (after Sam goes to bed) and she usually wakes up between 6 and 7 am. Very impressive!

-- She is so long that she wears 6-9 month sleepers. Her other clothes range in size depending on the outfit.

-- She is transitioning into size 1-2 diapers. She has a lot of wet diapers during the day and only poops about twice a day.

-- There is still A LOT of drooling. I think that we must average about 8-10 wet bibs a day!

-- She typically takes a morning nap and an afternoon nap. If the stars are aligned, I can get Sam and Sophia to take a nap at the same time. Often, but not always ...

-- She started rolling over 10 days ago and now she doesn't stop! If I leave her on her playmat for any period of time, she is often in a completely different location when I return. The tricky stage has started!


And just because ... here's a picture of both of the girls together:

Mommy's Helper

Samantha is at such a fun age right now! She interacts so well with her sister and with us, and she loves to help me with any tasks that I assign to her. Some of those tasks include holding the dustpan when I sweep, getting the mail with me, fetching anything and everything for Sophia, and lately ... helping with the laundry.

Whenever I ask, she goes upstairs to her room and brings down her own laundry basket full of clothes for me to wash. She is insistent that she take the basket by herself to the washing machine and unload it. This is a definite help to me!

(Nevermind that her shoes are on the wrong feet in the picture shown above. We are still working on that one).

Now, with folding the laundry? Well, she's not as big of a help as I would like! Often, the clothes get tossed out of the basket into random piles and eventually I find myself just begging her to "let Mama do that job!" Maybe one day I can have her trained to help with that task??!

Another Milestone for Sophia

On Friday night, Sophia rolled over for the first time! She rolled over from her belly to her back ... twice. She is still getting the hang of it, and doesn't do it every time, but she has proven that she is definitely capable. I noticed today that she can also roll from her back to her belly, as well.

Along with this milestone (which I promptly recorded in her baby book), comes the fear that I can't just leave her alone for too long in one place. She's very strong, and once she rolls, she is already trying to use her feet to push over and get somewhere.

The picture above just cracks me up because she is just simply showing off! It was taken right before she rolled over. She paused to look at the camera and within seconds, she was on her back!

And then there's this one (quite the modeling pose):

Happy Father's Day!

We are enjoying a nice, relaxing day at home today before Steve leaves for Tennessee tomorrow morning. I made sure that the girls were wearing special shirts for Daddy: Sams's shirt says, "I melt my daddy's heart," while Sophia's shirt says, "Daddy's little hula girl." It's hard to get a decent picture these days with a two year old and a four month old, but they did pretty well ...

Happy Father's Day to both of our dads!

Tom and Arnie

When Steve came home from Mexico/Texas last week, he brought with him another little surprise for Samantha. This time, the stuffed animal of choice was Arnie the Armadillo. It was love at first sight:

Now, whenever it is time for Sam to get into her bed (either for a nap or bedtime), Arnie and Gus (the alligator from Florida), have to come with her. Often, they also ride in the car with us. I'm not sure if the love that she has for these two animals is based purely on the fact that they are so cute ... or if it is because her daddy is the one that got them for her. Maybe it is a combination of the two.


And then there's Tom.

On Steve's way home from work this week, he stopped to pick up a turtle from the side of the road. It is turtle mating season around here, so they seem to be EVERYWHERE these days. When Daddy pulled in the driveway, Sam met him out there and Steve introduced her to the turtle that they later affectionately named Tom.

I had to leave for work, but I hear that Tom eventually came out of his shell and moved pretty fast through the grass, later disappearing into the woods. But not before Steve took a couple of quick pictures.

And, because I don't want to forget this -- Last night, Sam was playing with Sophia on my bed. I don't think that I could ever put into words how much my heart swells with love for these two girls, especially when they just lay there looking at one another, smiling and laughing. Sam took a moment, right then, to look away from her sister.

She turned to me and said, "Somebody got sister for me."

I said, "Who got your sister for you?"

Without missing a beat, she said, "Mommy and Daddy got sister for me."

And that is what makes me smile even more. She loves her sister so much.

Fun with the Sprinkler!

Yesterday, Steve set up the sprinker in the yard so that Samantha could have fun running through it in her bathing suit. This is the first time that she has ever used the sprinkler and we were anxious to see how much she would like it.

At first, she preferred to simply wear her bathing suit and water my plants with the watering can:

But, after many encouraging words, we were able to get her to at least go out into the grass where it was running. Steve went through it the first time with her:

It wasn't long after that, that Samantha realized that the sprinker can be SO much fun ...

A little of this ... and a little of that ...

Things have been busy around here lately, which is probably why I haven't found a lot of time to blog. With Steve out of the country this week and me back to teaching a couple of times a week for the summer semester, we are going through a little adjustment period. Nonetheless, I do have a few pictures to share.

My mom came to stay for a few days so that she could watch the girls for me on the nights that I teach. She brought a little gift for each one of the girls, and Samantha immediately set to work opening them. I love this picture because it looks like the two of them are communicating with one another:

The warmer weather earlier this week brought with it the opportunity to go outside and water the plants ... in a bathing suit! Sam is so excited about her bathing suits this year because she DOESN'T HAVE TO WEAR A DIAPER UNDER THEM! This was a really important concept to her when she was potty training.

Sophia is enjoying the warmer weather as well. With my mom's help this week, I now have all of Sophia's summer clothes hung up in her closet or put away in her dresser drawers. It was a bigger job and I originally anticipated I sure am thankful for my mom's help.

Finally, with all of this beautiful weather, we have an update on Samantha's two tomato plants. They are growing so tall that I already had to put tomato cages around them. In no time at all, they will be producing fruit -- and Sam can hardly wait.

(I am hoping that I will be able to post some pictures from Sophia's baptism sometime next week. Steve took the camera with him to Mexico before I had a chance to download the pictures off of it).

Two Thumbs Up!

Before Steve left for Mexico yesterday, he taught Samantha how to do the "two thumbs up" sign. It took her a little while to actually master it, but I think that she has it now.

It was so fun to watch her do it the first couple of times. It took total concentration on her part (not to mention coordination), and I became mesmorized just watching as the wheels were turning in her head ... And then, once she figured it out, she became SO excited. It's the small things around here that bring such joy ...

Playtime Fun!

Sophia really likes to lay on her playmat and reach for her dangling toys. She has quite the grasp, and to keep things interesting for her, I try to change out the hanging toys on a regular basis. Her new trick seems to be reaching out with as many appendages as possible and using all of them to grip her toys:

And then there's Samantha. She loves to gather things and group them together. Yesterday, it was her personal mission to find every last wooden puzzle piece and put them in her special bucket. Then we set ALL of her puzzles up on a table and let her dig through the bucket of pieces. She would find a piece and then find the puzzle on the table where it goes and put it there. A big job for a little girl, but she loved it.

Samantha's First Pigtails

It was a long time coming ... but Samantha's curly hair is just barely long enough to put in pigtails. She loves wearing them (unlike barrettes that she takes out of her hair about 10 seconds after I put them in for her). In fact, she was twirling one of the pigtails around her finger when she fell asleep for her nap yesterday ... Too cute!

No More Diapers!

Samantha started showing an interest in potty training quite a while ago. In no time at all, she knew everything there was to know about it and she seemed genuinely interested. In fact, she started coming to tell me that she had just gone in her diapers and wanted me to change her immediately.

The problem was that she soon realized that the one thing that she had control of in her "toddler world" was using the potty. And so, while I knew that she needed to go (by seeing her exhibit all of the signs like dancing around or running off to a corner in our house), the minute that I set her on the potty, she refused to go. She would hold it and fight me in the bathroom for more than an hour ... until she could no longer physically hold it. Hopefully, that instant would be when she was actually sitting on the potty.

We reached a turning point ten days ago, when after sitting with her in the bathroom for over an hour -- coaxing/fighting with her to go -- the second that I left to set Sophia down, she peed ... all over my bathroom rugs. She was pretty upset about it.

I made a decision that day (it was a Friday), that we would try something new the following Monday. Starting on May 23rd, I kept her confined to the family room and kitchen (both are wood floors -- no carpeting), and she would wear "real" panties. I would keep reminding her about the real panties and ask her if she needed to use the potty.

She had exactly two accidents in her panties and she cried about them. She doesn't like messes and she definitely did not like the feel of wet panties. And so, as of today, she has not had an accident in her panties for one full week; two days after my regimented potty training.

She hasn't had an accident during her nap or in the middle of the night. She goes in the bathroom and uses the potty by herself (sometimes she tells us before she uses it, sometimes she just does it on her own). She holds it while we are running errands and then goes in her potty as soon as we get home. And, she doesn't have a particular affinity for one particular potty -- we have three of them and she has successfully used all three of them.

Here she is officially packing away all of her diapers this weekend (we will save those for Sophia):

One of the other things that I did with Sam while training her last week was to use a "Potty Chart." Every time that she used the potty successfully, she got to pick out a sticker out of my sticker box. I have TONS of stickers and she had a blast choosing one each time. Before long, the chart was full and we even had to make a second one. We are no longer doing stickers (it would be a full-time job for me), but the charts are still up on the fridge to remind her.

Steve and I both knew that once she started using the potty, that she would progress with it VERY quickly. That's the way that she accomplishes milestones; she takes a while to get there, but once she gets it, she soars. For example, she was a "late walker." In fact, she didn't take her first steps until she was 15 months old. But the day that she did, I called Steve at work to tell him and when he came home, she walked all the way across the kitchen to greet him.

There are some milestones that I got a little teary-eyed over when Samantha met them. It was because my baby girl was growing up and becoming more and more independent. This milestone brings a different kind of tears though-- tears of joy and happiness because she she is so proud of herself. And then of course, it also means less messes for me (and this mama doesn't like messes either).