4/19/15: Hanging with Zane and big smiles

April 19, 2015

Samara was in a great mood today. She woke up and wanted to spend time with Zane in the crib. She loves being with him, but doesn't quite know how to be gentle yet. Also, she is a little bit of a wimp (faker?) when he hits her by accident.

Then she started squishing his face.

Samara was still is a good mood during snack:

and dinner!

4/18/15: Big slide and hat

April 18, 2015

Today we went to the playground. Samara is now brave enough to go on this big slide that she was too afraid to go on last year. Here is a very comical video of one of her first slides down it. Seth's and my favorite part is the dismount.

Hopefully you heard the "ow" at the end, which is definitely the funniest part.

Later on, Samara was playing with her hat and gloves, which she wanted to put on Seth. 

4/16/15: Lie down with me, Nana

April 16, 2015

Samara doesn't like taking naps anymore. She either flat out refuses and has a tantrum, or she insists that you lie down with her. Today, Nana had the pleasure of lying down with her.

4/15/15: Burping Zane

April 15, 2015

Samara observes the vast majority of my interactions with Zane and either wants to help me with them or do them completely on her own. Here, she is "helping" by burping Zane.

4/12/15: Grampi and Grandma visit (photopalooza)

April 12, 2015

I remembered that Samara and Zane have onesies in the same colors, so I thought I would take more sibling pics in matching, unfancy outfits.

Shortly after, Grampi and Grandma arrived for a visit. Samara wanted to play with her push toy,

master the skill of putting her hair in a ponytail, 

go back to the push toy,

put my jacket on and take it off,

ride her tricycle,

play peek-a-boo,

photobomb her brother then take over,

slide,

rub Zane's hair,

be silly with Grampi,

figure out how to spin, 

sing, 

and take Grampi's hat.

What a busy day!

4/11/15: Siblings: A series

April 11, 2015

*This post is also on Zane's blog.

Samara wanted Zane to sit next to her, so I very cautiously balanced him in an upright position and waited with my camera to see what would happen. Cuteness happened.

4/1/15: I love you

April 1, 2015

When I get Samara ready for bed, I always tell her I love her and she usually just ignores it. Tonight, however, was different. She repeated it, so I had to whip my camera out to capture it on film. I tried to get her to say she loves Daddy, but she got a little tripped up on it.

So, we tried again, but Samara got distracted.

3/29/15: Excitement

March 29, 2015

Samara's jumps have continued to improve, which reinforces her excitement about practicing them at home. You can see that she can't even wait until a count of 3 is over before she jumps!

A little while later, a very exciting milestone occurred:

3/28/15: Puzzles

March 28, 2015

Ever since Samara turned 2, I feel that she has been making huge leaps and bounds towards becoming a "real person." First, her vocabulary has exploded, as well as her ability to speak in multi-word sentences (which only recently occurred). She is now officially a "sponge" and comes home with new words or phrases that make me pause and wonder where she picked them up. Second, her ability to match shapes and/or pictures is starting to emerge. In the video below, you can see that Samara has two places where her tiger puzzle piece could go. She knows which hole to put it in, and keeps rotating the piece until it falls into place. Before she would randomly mash pieces into holes and not know to rotate a piece to get it to fit.

I also like how this video from 4 months ago shows Samara with some baby pudge on her still.

3/20/15: Baa baa black sheep

March 20, 2015

One of Samara's favorite songs is Baa Baa Black Sheep. She loves having it sung to her at bedtime and she can often be hear singing it throughout the day. She doesn't quite know what all the words are yet, but that doesn't stop her.

3/15/15: Feeding my baby

March 15, 2015

Samara has had a baby brother for two months and has seen me nurse him many times. Apparently, she has watched me enough to feel confident in feeding her own baby.

3/14/15: Old MacDonald

March 14, 2015

Samara's new bedtime routine involves brushing her teeth, reading books, and singing. She sings all the time now and it is super cute. The first thing she sang was bits and pieces of the alphabet song. My favorite part was when she got to "LMNOP" because she has no idea what was being said, so it sounded like cute gibberish.

The video below is Samara hanging out with Seth singing Old MacDonald. The first part of the video is hard to hear, but Seth is asking Samara what animal Old MacDonald had for the song to continue. How adorable are both of them lying down together?

Then this happened, which is even more adorable.