Thursday, March 31, 2011

Laughs...

I never thought that someone so little could make me laugh so much!  Since Sam has been working on tooth #4 she has also re-discovered her tongue.  She sticks it out constantly now and likes to play with it and pinch it along with mine and her daddy's.  I love seeing her discover things like this!  She has also really figured out how to blow raspberries which causes many drool puddles on our floors.  She loves doing it and knows that it gets a smile out of Mommy when she does it.
Wouldn't this make you smile?

Oops!

I've been a bad mommy blogger :-(  I do apologize!  Lots has been going on around here though so it's not like I've just been completely avoiding you guys just for the heck of it. 

Sam has had tooth #4 teasing her for about a month and a half and it has finally decided to make it's way down.  This has resulted in a week and a half of short naps and lots of fussing.  This has also resulted in lots of bite marks on her beautiful crib. 
I finally had to go and buy some kind of cover for the rail so that I could at least minimize the damage that will be done to this bed.  The one that I found only covers the front rail (the picture is from the side rail) but I figured I would give it a try anyways until I found one that would also cover the sides.  This is what I found:

I figured I would post a review on here.  This is in no way linked with the company but figured there might be some people out there interested in whether a product like this is worth the $12.  It comes in four 12 inch pieces that you just pop onto the rail.  It says that the plastic will soothe baby's gums and protect the wood.  Here is what it looked like installed:
As you can tell, it was a little short by a few inches, but nothing that she can really get her mouth onto.  After chewing on it a little she didn't seem to mind it being there and I think she probably liked it.


I've been keeping an eye on it and since I've put these on the front rail she hasn't really tried to chew on the side rails anymore.  Yay!  I say this was $12 well spent :-)




Friday, March 18, 2011

Spring Break

"Spring Break" didn't mean anything to me in college or for years after.  I went to a local school and when we had vacations I just used that time to work more hours and sleep.

These days, Spring Break means that all of my friends that are teachers have the week off and we get to spend some time together.  I love it and I know Sam loves having all of the visitors throughout the week :-)

First was Ashley.  She lives in Dallas so we hardly get to see her.  Sam thinks she's the funniest thing to walk on two legs so she's always thrilled when she shows up.  Everything that Ashley does causes Sam to laugh just a little harder.  Even if I was to do the exact same thing, I would just get an eye roll!  I got a video of some of the silliness that was going down on Tuesday night.  Ashley made her laugh so hard that she fell backwards!!

Next up, we had Joy.  She is very busy with teaching, music, and 900 other things so it's always hard to sync up our schedules unless school is out.  Sam used to be a little timid around Joy for some reason but Wednesday she was loving on Joy and having a blast.  First thing we did was eat lunch.  Joy and I had grilled turkey sandwiches and chips while Sam ate some puffs and yogurt melts.  Then we chose to spend our day going to the park.  Joy and I walked the linear park trail which took about an hour and Sam used this time for a much needed nap.  By the time we got back to the playground Sam was starting to wake up so we decided to put her in the toddler swings for her very first time on a swing.  She couldn't have cared less because she was more interested in the other children swinging next to her.

After the park we decided to go to the new Party City in town and look around.  I was interested in what type of things they had that would go with the theme of her first birthday.  First things first though... play with the bunny ears :-)

Last but certainly not least, we spent Friday with Morgan.  She is usually over here once a week but we certainly enjoyed spending more time with her during the day.  We chose to go to the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens since it was supposed to be so pretty outside.  Not only was it pretty outside but it ended up being pretty dang hot.  We walked around the different gardens for a while and then found the perfect place to get Sam out of her stroller and relax with a good breeze for a while.







Overall we had a wonderful Spring Break and I loved getting spend time with all of the friends that I love so much.  Now we have summer vacation to look forward to!

Monday, March 14, 2011

Cupcakes!

This past Friday Sam and I decided to make our Grams some tiramisu cupcakes for her birthday.  I hadn't done this kind of baking in a long time and I was really looking forward to it.  We started the day like usual but as soon as she went down for her first nap I got to baking the cupcakes themselves.  It was a basic white cupcake recipe that went pretty quickly.
When she woke up we ate lunch and played for a few minutes while the cupcakes cooled.  After that I had to put her in the highchair with her cooking spoons to play while I made a chocolate espresso mousse filling.  All started out well and she played and banged the spoons around.  But all started going downhill when I got to the part of the recipe that required me to stir a custard on the stove for about 20 minutes continuously.  She decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to let me know that the highchair was NOT where she wanted to be.  After lots of screaming and crying, I ended up calling her daddy to ask him to come watch her while I finished at least the filling of the cupcakes.  Blake eventually had to go back to work so we put up the baby gate to keep Sam in the kitchen, brought her some of her toys and let her go to town while I made the yummy, yummy marscarpone whipped frosting.
Sam loved playing on the kitchen floor because she finally got to explore that space and play with one of the cabinets.  Since we have porcelain tile floors I've always been a little hesitant to let her stand up and play in there in fear that she will fall and bust open her head.  I know...I'm a little overprotective...
By the time we were done with the cupcakes I think we were both exhausted but it was well worth it because these cupcakes were AMAZING!  Here is the final product:

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

M.I.A.

Sorry I've been M.I.A recently!  Things around our house have been pretty uneventful.  Sam's been an angel as always and I've been chasing after her.  She's started to "cruise" around the furniture so I'm sure walking is just around the corner and that terrifies me.

I have been on Weight Watchers for 10 weeks now and I've lost 12.4 lbs.  I had gained 24 when I was pregnant with Sam and total since the day I gave birth I have lost 42.6 lbs.  Thank you to breastfeeding for making that first big chunk so easy!  Now that I have stopped breastfeeding I have hit a wall in my weight loss journey.  I've done WW before and had great success so that is why I joined again.  I've noticed that my mornings and lunch are easy but it's the evening before dinner that I have the biggest problem.  I am a big "snacker" and have a real weakness for sweets so I've just been learning not to snack just because I'm bored and instead to grab a piece of fruit if I really feel like I need something.

I promise the next time I post will be much more interesting with more pics of Sam.  I think I will also keep everyone updated on my weight loss here as well.  The more people that I have to be accountable to the better!

Until next time...

Thursday, March 3, 2011

8 Months

Today Samantha is 8 months old.  She is growing so fast and every time I look at her I can see new developments she's making.

She now climbs up on EVERYTHING.  She loves to be standing and is usually not content sitting unless she's worn herself out from standing so much.  She's not quite cruising along the furniture yet but I see that coming very soon.

She loves to feed  herself also.  Puffs and Yogurt Melts are her favorite and yesterday I gave her a taste of my sugar-free jello and she couldn't get enough.  Although she likes to try the spoon now and then it usually ends up in a huge mess that ends in mommy cleaning the floor, high chair, her hair and my clothes.

As I mentioned in the previous post, she also got her 3rd tooth this month.  This top tooth seems to have put her through much more pain and torment that the bottom two did.  It has been hell.  Mommy needs more sleep in order to deal with these kinds of days.  Otherwise I end up texting Blake at my breaking point begging for relief.  The other day he had to come home and get her to go to the grocery store for diapers just so that I could get 15 minutes of "me" time.  I do hate seeing her so miserable though and all I want to do is pick her up and cuddle her while telling her that the pain will go away soon.

She is sleeping through the night now about 9 times out of 10.  She'll wake up once or twice but is able to put herself back to sleep now.  Last night was the first time in a while I had to go in at 5am and give her a bottle and put her back to sleep.  I'm hoping that once this teething thing settles back down that our nap schedule and sleep schedule will go back to normal.

She is now weighing in at about 17.5 lbs and is getting taller all the time!  She is starting to fit into 12 month clothing and that just makes me so sad to think she is growing up so fast :-(

Today when taking her 8 month pictures I realized that this is only going to get harder.  It was such a struggle to get her to sit still and not try to crawl off of the chair.  I tried bribing with toys and a binky and it just wasn't working.  Here is what I got out of it though:








Not the face!

My child has become a little piranha!  She has recently broken her 3rd tooth and this means drool, whining, low-grade fever, etc.  I was not aware however that she would start biting me all the time!  I would be more understanding if it was a little gentle baby bite...however, she bites with purpose.  She has left several bruises on my arms and it's starting to look like I'm being beaten by a very small baseball bat.

Today she did the unthinkable...
SHE BIT MY FACE!!  Who does that?!  She then proceeded to bite my stomach...

How do I stop this?  I've tried sternly telling her "no" and she laughs hysterically at me.  I really do not want to "bite her back" as everybody tells me to do, so is there another method?