Thank you Aunt Jodie!

When Sam was just a few days old my sister did a photo shoot with her, Chris and I. Jodie was sick with the flu (so she held her breath whenever she got close to Sam and had me move her and position her), exhausted and just generally felt like she was going to die but she put aside how she was feeling to take the most amazing photos for us. I am so grateful to have such a giving and talented sister! So, here are a few of my favorites from the photo shoot.


I love that Chris can hold her like this and that I know he will still be able to hold her with just one arm for quite some time to come. One of his nieces favorite things is to be flown through the air on his arm like its an airplane. I just love the strength this picture portrays.


Baby feet are always the most beautiful little things.
She is not always happy, but isn't that face still so cute!

So I love this picture because we both have very natural smiles and look good, however I swear I am NOT that much shorter than my husband. Jodie must have done something tricky on Photoshop to make me look so short!The whole Family! Cute photo and you cannot even imagine how hard it was to get all four "hands" to be in the right spot all at once.

We already have so many of the pictures printed and in frames around our house.
I just love them.

So THANK YOU AUNT JODIE! And if anyone out there needs a photoshoot be sure to check out J. Allen Photography.

Bath Time

I would not call our first bath a successful event. We had great intentions and thought we had everything all figured out; the water in the bathtub had been running to warm up the room, we had the stuff we would need to dry her off and get her dressed all set up and ready, we had the soap and the washcloth ready but it turns out we really didn't know what we were doing. We didn't really have the whole infant tub thing figured out, Sam screamed the whole time, it was difficult to say the least to actually bathe her, and we managed to get water on just about everything. But Sam is clean and we have the wonderful first bath pictures; that really aren't so wonderful because we were kind of trying to hurry and didn't ever stop moving to take a good photo! Even so we had to share a few from Samantha's first bath.
One of the pictures may seem "backwards". That is because Chris was actually taking pictures of our reflection in the mirror.



You will notice her head is not even any where close to being in that little pillow thing designed to hold their head!

Wet babies are slippery little suckers!

Sam in Motion

I did not know that our camera had a video camera option until after Sam was born and Chris was playing around with the camera in the hospital. I am so excited that I can now video tape Sam!! So here is my first and second attempt at catching Sam doing something cute to show you all. Remember she doesn't do all that much right now, so every small movement is exciting to me.






And here is one more video, just because I can. I got the date wrong on the video, it is actually from right now.

Oh What A Night

We had a rough night last night. Sam was up quite a bit and then after she would be changed and eat just didn't seem to be tired. By 3:30am I had done so much walking, bouncing and rocking I could barely stand up anymore. When she started crying after having already been fed and changed I woke Chris up and asked him to go and check on her. We went to her to discover her sleeper was soaked as was the bouncy seat that she sleeps in. She had thrown up all over herself as well as peed through her diaper and gotten the bouncy seat all wet. I felt horrible for her! We changed her and she once again seemed wide awake. So, in order for one of us to get some good sleep I took Sam and went down to the family room where she slept soundly on my chest while I watched Law and Order reruns (thank you TNT!). This is the second time in the last 24 hours that she has had a pretty major throw up, but she doesn't have a temperature; moms is this normal?
Then to top it all off we woke up to this...

Looks like a scene out of White Christmas or something, but no that would be the several inches of fresh snow that we got last night. Isn't it APRIL? I want flowers! I want stroller walks! This sucks.

Just because I need to smile here is a picture from our attempt to have tummy time yesterday. She didn't do very much to work on her neck muscles, she just fell asleep.

Cousins

I just love that Samantha is going to have cousins that are close to her in age, or practically the same age. I think this will make holidays and family visits so much fun for the kids. Next Christmas my parents will have four grandchildren "running" around (really only two of them will be moving a whole lot, but you know what I mean) and I think that is going to be awesome.

A huge benefit right now to having a sister that has already had two girls is the hand-me-downs. Not only have we gotten an infant swing, bouncy seat, exersaucer, and tons of other toys but we have also gotten boxes of baby clothes. I just love putting Sam in an outfit knowing that Bailey and/or Parker once wore that same thing. Somehow to me it connects them. So today Sam has on one such hand-me-down and it is one that I knew for sure Parker wore because there are pictures in my house of her wearing it. I went looking on the computer to see if I had any digital copies of those pictures and when I found a few something else surprised me.

I really think there is a family resemblance! It may just be the dark hair but something about the infant pictures or Parker look very similar to Samantha.

This is Sam today.

More Sam.

Here is Parker at Christmas 2006.

More Parker.

Does anyone else see a resemblance or is it just the outfit and dark hair tricking me?

The Hair

Bad Hair Day!

Better Hair Day!

New Discoveries

Well, Samantha has been pretty good at sucking on her pacifier from when she was just a few days old. She recently, probably by accident, had her hands discover the pacifier while it was in her mouth and she proceeded to hold it in her mouth while she sucked on it! It was very cute. And I think it helped her keep it in her mouth for longer.



Isn't that some serious bed head!?! I am really considering cutting her hair already.

Her second discovery was flipping over! She was laying next to me on the couch on her back and started fussing and then rolled herself over to her side. Chris says it was probably just the contour of the couch that rolled her over and she didn't really do anything, but I swear she pushed herself halfway over. Her face is fuzzy in the picture because she was moving around at the time but I just had to take some pictures of her laying on her side, just in case she did actually roll on her own. Before you know if she will be able to roll all the way over!