Happy St Patty's Day and Happy Birthday Chip!

I hope everyone had a great St. Patrick's day. Nick and I love it, partially because we went to Ireland on our honeymoon. So of course Sam had a nice shirt to wear. I also let her borrow a pin, which she was super excited about. She would not wear the hair bow.

We have been making even more progress on potty training. She has had a few accidents, mainly not going to the potty when a show is on. But today for the first time she pooped while we were out. We were so proud that she told us she needed to go and held it long enough for us to get the special seat thing and make it to the bathroom.

Spring Break is next week! So I am off until a week from Tuesday! Although mostly we will work and catch up on stuff.

Today is also Chip's birthday. I think I have never missed him more than now that I have Sam. I missed him a lot around our wedding, but just to think of the loss of a wonderful uncle for Sam and I know he would have made an amazing father. And I am sure Sam's cousins would have been terrific as well.

I like this quote:

Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.

Busy week!

Last week was crazy! So much crammed into one week.

I already watch one of Sam's friends, Samuel, on Monday and Wednesday afternoons. And Samuel's mom watches Samantha, usually when I teach. Last Monday, I added another friend in the morning, with a little overlap. It was a bit insane. Samantha and Caroline butted heads a bit in the beginning, but they got better. And when al three were here it was one big eating fest.

The weather was nice, so I took Sam and Samuel out for bubbles.

And sidewalk chalk.
Sam has been making potty progress, so we have purchased a lot of big girl underwear. We are taking everything slow, but she does get to wear them some. We are just not ready to transition completely yet. She keeps having accidents and she cannot get out of her crib on her own. Eventually we will have to take the plunge.

The weather was great last week, so we went to the park a lot. Here is Sam digging in the sand at Ritter Park.

And hanging out in the cave.

Here is Sam drawing standing up. Nick said something about taking one of her drawings into the office, so she draws us at least one per day. Evidently she thinks we need to wall paper our office.

On Saturday morning the junior league hosted a character breakfast. Sam was so excited to see all the people dressed up. She waved as they walked in. She was okay with the not fuzzy ones and enjoyed posing for pictures. Her favorite and the one she wanted to visit first was spiderman. Yep, princesses took a back seat to spidey, who was the skinniest spiderman I had ever seen.

Sam has scooby do band-aids and we started singing the song, so now when she sees them she says, "Where are you?"
The costumes were often a little off, like the not matching Mickey and Minnie.

We also attended a birthday party at Billy Bobs, the not quite as nice Chuck E Cheese.

And Nick and I saw an America's Test Kitchen Chocolate Mousse Cake, so he decided to make an adaptation for me. He is so sweet! It is super yummy. Sam loves to help us make things, so he let her help stir.

And she spends a ton of time reading, in fact that is what she is doing right now. She has quite a few of the books near memorized, it is very impressive. It is hard to get a video because sometimes she does not want to cooperate or she stops to say cheese. So here is one of the better ones. Although the ABC book is one that is super cute. This one is the foot book.

Potty success

Sam has been reluctant to poop in the potty. She had a couple of incidental ones when we were in Atlanta for Christmas, but has not been willing to even try recently. For the past 3 days, she has pooped in the potty and been going hours without tinkling in her diaper/panties. We have been having a lot of fun celebrating. Sam got some new toys, which when you ask her why she got she says because she wanted them. We went to Billy Bob's, the ghetto version of Chuck E Cheese. And yesterday Sam and I went to McDonald's for breakfast. We went to the one that has a play structure and Sam climbed through it (see the picture below). I helped her through the first time and I had to help her up the first part, but she made a friend and crawled all throughout it and even went down the slide on her own. She is growing up so fast.

Good times!

Sam has been doing well lately. Mostly being good, with a few timeouts sprinkled in there. Making progress with early potty training, including beginning to train her dolls.. Getting more and more verbal everyday. An exploding imagination, making up songs and games that we play.

Sam has been playing with the remote for my message chair that Nick bought me when I was pregnant to help with back pain. So we pulled it out and let her try it.

She has been helping cook and bake. We made whipped cream to put on strawberries the other night and she enjoyed helping.
We went to Elmo Live today. It was the Elmo's Green Thumb show. I highly recommend it. It was so much better than Imagination Movers Live. They did a great job entertaining Sam. It may have helped that we had great seats.

The characters even walked by and Sam got to high five a few. I mostly helped her, but I snapped a picture of Grover before he got too close. She loved it.

Here she is transfixed.

Here she is helping with whipped creme.

Sam the photographer

So I figured it was time to treat everyone to some of Samantha's early photographic masterpieces. Perhaps one day she will be famous and I can pull these out.

She is still not so good at holding the camera up and still until the picture has been taken. This is one of her first ones that was not all dark.

This one is kind of artsy.
She spends a lot of time chasing the dogs and asking them to say cheese or smile.

Spiderman!

Here are some recent pictures.

Here is Sam in her Spiderman shirt from Uncle Terence. Thanks! She loves it. She also loved the chocolate cookie she had right before this picture :) Sam is a big Spiderman fan.

Sam has had this truck since she was an early walker. We really liked how convertible it was. She could walk behind it, ride on it, or pull it. She wanted it converted and then put baby elmo in it for some rides. She always straps him up so he is safe. It is amazing how much of an imagination she already has.
It snowed again. I am so over the snow! It has been way too frequent. But Sam really enjoyed helping Nick build a snowman. She kept going really far off and bringing back a tiny amount of snow and patting it on.
Here she is with the snowman, our second of the season thanks to Nick. I cannot wait for Spring, but Nick is a great sport with shoveling and making snowmen.

We got this tool bench a long time ago, it was buy one get one with the truck from the other pictures. But we kept it to give it to Sam for her 2nd birthday. She likes it a lot. But it is not as cool as we had hoped.

This is an older video from when my parents were here. Mom and I found this spiderman at Goodwill and Nick fixed it. It was buy one get one, so we got it free with her new baby elmo. It was an easier fix than elmo chicken, but it has seen broken again. His foot detached when it was dropped on the floor. But Sam really enjoyed it while it worked and hopefully Nick can reattach the foot.

Sam's stats and videos

I forgot to post Sam's 2 year stats. She was 34 inches (50-75th percentile) and 24 lbs, 1 ounce (25th-50th). So she has gained a lot of weight, which is great. We can stop worrying as much about her weight and care more about variety and good habits. Although we were told to still keep her on whole milk since we had issues with her weight.

Here is Sam after opening her presents from Grammy and Poppi.

And proof that Sue and Roger must hate us :) They got Samantha electronic drumsticks. Pretty cool, but loud with no volume control. Nick added some duct tape to quiet it. She is saying, "You've got a mission" from a new favorite show, Little Einsteins. One of the characters has a baton. She likes the show and even gets everyone involved in patting, saying blast off, and such.