Samantha's Love Potion No.9

I remember when Emma was still a baby, there were quite a number of times where she would have unexplainable bouts of crying. We didn't know why she was crying, as it seemed that all her immediate needs were met. Nor did we know how to solve the crying. Chalk it up to experience, or maybe just samantha's personality, but it seems that Samantha has significantly fewer bouts of "random crying" than emma did.

But tonight was a random night, I guess. During the rush to get home from the grocery store and get dinner on the table, samantha let loose on us. First, we tried her current favorite - the bears on her playgym. Then we put her in a dark room and gave her the pacifier. Two approaches down and still 20 minutes into uninterrupted crying, I had no idea what to do. Josh went in and tried to comfort her. I went in and tried to comfort her.

As I held her, bouncing, singing and praying all simultaneously (mothers are great multi-taskers!) I leaned my head against the window in despair.

Samantha was hooked. Somehow, out of the corner of her eye while I leaned despairingly on the window, she saw the blur of cars, buses, bicycles and pedestrians all going to and fro on the busy street below. I think perhaps her vision is still too immature to see the objects distinctly, but she certainly saw the motion and was hooked.

We stood there for 10 minutes, until I finally decided I needed to finish getting dinner ready. The moment her back was to the window, she started howling again. I trudged back over to the window, and sweet silence once again permeated the house. It's official: Samantha's new favorite activity is people-watching outside the window.

Since this post is mostly about Samantha, I'll put up some pics of her that have been taken in the last few days.



You can see that we are starting to cultivate an early appetite for reading, but since she's so young, we thought "Fuzzy Bee" was ok to start with. Jane Austen can wait a while. She has alternating periods of intense seriousness and extreme delight with Fuzzy Bee, as you can tell.



Josh and I are amazed at how quickly she has grown; even though we vowed to ourselves to savor each day with her (and we really feel that we have!) we just can't seem to make the time stand still. Samantha is getting really good at sitting on the couch, surrounded by pillows, and has gotten lots of upper body strength. She's also a pretty happy "tummy-time" girl, though her sister at this age was not. Samantha really likes to be a part of whatever is going on, and we love having her be a part with us!



Emma is usually quite delighted to share her belongings with Samantha - this particular day, Samantha was the recipient of emma's most treasured things...her stuffed animals. Emma generously gave Samantha(or more accurately, threw in the general direction of samantha) bear, cheer bear, caterpillar, fish, lamb, puppy, zebra, another bear, puppy, and maybe even something else buried under the rubble. Samantha was a little overwhelmed by such a gracious display of generosity, and didn't seem to mind when Emma suddenly changed her mind and realized that all of her treasured possessions were not in their proper place.

Speaking of Emma, probably in a couple of weeks we will begin (???) potty training her. In the weeks leading up to the "big day", we've been encouraging her to be aware of her peepee and poopoo. She is really excited when she has her own peepee and poopoo to be proud of, and often runs toward us with feet pattering loudly. She'll throw herself on our laps and yell, "Check! Check! pee pee!" then we "check" to see if she has peepee and we all clap and say hooray.

Well, today emma decided that she should take a more nurturing approach to the aforementioned stuffed animals. She lined them all up on the couch - bear, puppy, giraffe, Samantha's elephant, caterpillar - and then brought them one by one to me.

"mommy, effant, check, peepee! yay, peepee!"

"mommy, puppy, check, peepee! yay, peepee!"

"mommy, caberdillar, check, peepee! yay, peepee!"

And so it went until all her animals had emptied themselves and been acknowledged. Let's just hope its that easy when it's her turn!