Samara likes to be doing something with her feet at all times. Even when she is eating. Most of the time she has her feet straight out, resting against the edge of her high chair tray. Other times she is kicking her legs or trying to kick me. When I was kicked one too many times today, I grabbed her foot and started to tickle it. Samara was in a good mood and laughed. When I stopped, she was nudging me with her little foot in a silent, "Again!" motion. The video below is almost a minute and a half of her laughing/screaming/fake screaming.
Ever since Samara turned 1, she has started babbling more and more. Tonight, she started saying "Da da da da da."
Recently, Samara has started playing peekaboo when begins to get full. That is my signal to clear the food off her tray before she does the "Samara Sweep" and flings them off the tray.
There is always something new that happens while Samara is eating. However, this new "thing" usually falls somewhere between gross and annoying to cute and funny.
Today Samara was making a funny sound while she was eating, so I was trying to prompt her to make the noise again. Her noise is far cuter than my version of it.
Today Samara officially turned 1! She had a great day in daycare - they sang happy birthday to her several times. Also, when I picked her up, there was a nice birthday message on the door. All day long she was in an awesome mood.
At home, we didn't really do anything special for her seeing as she was going to have a second 1st birthday party that weekend. However, I did sing happy birthday to her at dinner.
Here she is finishing her breakfast, trying to power up for the long, exciting day ahead of her.
Look how excited she is for her special day!
Here is her fabulous cake, made by Treat. This cake totally exceeded my expectations and was made with sprinkle cake!
Little Miss Samara was served the first slice and was a little hesitant to try it. She daintily tried some icing, liked it, then picked up some speed.
The green frosting probably wasn't the best idea.
About halfway through Samara started slumping over.
This is where it started to get a little messy:
This is a screenshot (so it's not very high quality) after Samara smooshed the frosting in her face.
Let's just say she wasn't very happy while I was trying to clean her up after that mess. Luckily, she bounces back quickly and enjoyed the rest of her party.
After everyone left and the house was tidied up, Samara still had some energy in her to play before dinnertime. One of her new things to do is to lick the glass door and play peekaboo in the curtains.
As I was putting together pictures and videos for this post, it occurred to me that Samara has really changed since the Christmas post. She doesn't look as tiny and her movements are more deliberate, less shaky.
In this video, Samara clearly has more balance and babbles a lot more.
In this video, Samara has discovered the curtains. She is much more aggressive in her movements. Daycare has also stated that she is more aggressive about grabbing the toys she wants to play with.
If you remember the video where Samara is playing the xylophone, she doesn't have a lot of core strength and her movements are jerky. Here, she clearly has more control over her body as she reaches into the ball pit.
Today Samara went to her first birthday party. There were lots of babies and toys to play with, but Samara was content to sit back and watch everything around her.
It took her a while to warm up, and she eventually took advantage of some of the cool stuff the baby gym had to offer.
After the party, we headed to Panera Bread for some dinner. Daddy broke off some of his bread for Samara, but she ignored the chunk and took the remaining piece to munch on.
Deciding that she needed to eat something other than bread, Seth gave her some of his spinach salad. She didn't seem to mind the spinach and ate several leaves.
