7 months old!!

Sammy is 7 months old and to celebrate, she has a new tooth!  Her bottom tooth on the right side is poking through.  We saw it in the park yesterday and today, I put my finger inside and could feel it.  Hopefully, she'll sleep better soon, now that the pesky little tooth has cut through her gum.  She continues to be a super and ridiculously happy baby.  You don't even have to try to make her laugh.  She gives big smiles just when you talk to her and focus on her.  She really is as happy as she appears on the photo below!

And because I can't get enough of how cute she is, here is a picture from earlier in the week.

I love her big blue eyes.  We are a family of four and we all have different eye colors.  Mine are green. My husband's are hazel.  Ian's eyes are dark dark brown and Sammy has these beautiful blue eyes.

We had a good Thanksgiving at my in-laws.  My mother-in-law is such a good cook.  She made a kosher turkey (after plucking feathers for 1 hour!), homemade cranberry sauce, wild rice/mushrooms/chestnuts (instead of stuffing), double-baked potatoes, baked yams and butternut squash soup.  And for dessert, she made a hazelnut torte.  We brought over some delicious brussel sprouts and banana bread with chocolate chips and walnuts.

And the weather over the past 3 days has been amazing.  It started off in the high 40s and the past 2 days has made its way into the 60s.  We've been going to the park every morning to ensure that both Ian and Sammy have some good outside time.  Come the New Year, I doubt I'll be praising our New England weather.  :-)

Here we are at the park on Thanksgiving.  Look at that blue sky!

Time for Pre-School!

It's amazing how fast time is flying.  My baby girl is almost 7 months old (!) and finally finally finally she is able to make it through the night without needing to feed.

Ian officially starts pre-school next week.  He's really excited to be going to pre-school as it makes him feel more grown-up.  He tries hard to do a lot of things himself and has been getting pretty good at getting his pants on.  His newest behavior is that instead of sitting in his bed and screaming "All Done!!!!" when he wakes up in the morning, he's been getting out of bed, quiet as a mouse and coming into our room.  Today he gave me a hug to wake me up and said, "Momma, come eat breakfast with me."  And then he asked if daddy was going to come because he wanted "to eat breakfast as a family."  Come on.  Those are some heart-melting words!

Update

I'm feeling guilty about not updating my blog more often.  I did so many posts when Ian was 6 months old and I feel that I have very few for Sammy.  But such is life, I suppose.  I'm the last of 3 children and there are one-third the number of baby pictures of me as for my sister, who was my parent's first child.

The kids continue to grow up and while I can't wait for Ian to get out of his tantrum-throwing toddler stage, I want to put my foot on the brakes!  When I was putting Sammy in her crib the other night, I noticed how big and heavy she was getting.  My my.  My little sweet Sammy isn't so little anymore!  She's doing really nicely these days.  She's sitting up on her own without falling over.  She's not showing any interest in being on her tummy or learning to crawl, but she's happy to sit and play with toys.  She's extremely grabby and has an amazingly strong pincer grip.  She can really rip the crap out of your face when she gets a hold of your skin!  We still don't see any teeth, but I imagine they'll be coming in soon since she's been a drooly disaster lately.  Within the last week, she has also started to make repetitive noises like "ga ga ga" or "da da da".  According to my doctor, that's a developmental milestone so yeah for Sammy!

And Ian is doing well.  He's still no where close to being potty trained, but he won't be turning 3 until March so I'm not going to press the issue.  The people at daycare say he's not ready and I agree.  So there's no reason to push it.  He's going to start swim lessons soon with his Baba and Gramps and they've agreed to spend some time with him on the weekend after the lessons.  So that's great for me and my husband because it means we'll be able to get some things done around the house without a toddler underfoot.

We've made a lot of progress on fixing up the house.  We have the cracks in the basement fixed.  We got all of our wood gutters ripped off and replaced with seamless aluminum gutters.  Not only are the new gutters not rotted, but they're mounted correctly and can handle the amount of water running off the roof.  So we shouldn't have any more puddling outside our foundation and hopefully our basement will remain dry now.  The tile guy we hired just started working in the basement to install the 20x20 porcelain tiles we chose.  I can't wait to see the basement look finished again!

Happy Halloween!

Sammy's 6 month stats

Sammy had her 6 month well-baby visit today.  Her lungs were clear and she didn't have any ear infections.  So it looks like she just needs to get over this lingering cold.

WEIGHT:  15 pounds, 2.7 ounces (33.77%)
HEIGHT:  26.5 inches (78.01%)
HEAD CIRCUMFERENCE:  42 cm (37.20%)

She's doing great and it makes me proud.  The teachers at daycare love her.  They say they're not supposed to play favorites but they can't help but love her smiley and happy personality.  It's also easier to care for her because she doesn't cling to or need any one particular teacher.  She'll take attention from anyone who will give it to her!

Sammy is 6 months old (and other updates)

I've been so busy and neglecting this blog.  But Sammy is 6 months old today so I had to update!  Here are her official chair photos.

You can see in the second photo that she is now sitting up on her own.

Poor little Sammy has been sick a lot this past month.  Less than one week after we finished her antibiotics for pneumonia, Sammy came down with another cold and she is still congested and coughing a lot.  She has her 6 month "well baby" visit tomorrow and we'll see what the doctor finds.  She's also drooling a ton so I wonder whether a tooth is on its way soon and perhaps that is causing some of the congestion?

Ian is doing well.  When he's behaving, he's super fun to be around.  He knows that his first name is spelled "I" "A" "N" and we're having fun teaching him new words (like author, illustrator and phenomenal).  He seems extra coordinated to me.  At the park, he got on a scooter and knew right away what to do and was balancing on one leg and scooting around like a pro.  Another little boy who was 3 (6 months older than Ian) couldn't figure out the scooter, even with his father's help.  So I was quite impressed with my little boy.  

But when Ian is not behaving, oh boy.  He's a train wreck disaster packed into a 31 pound solid toddler body.  He definitely knows what he wants and doesn't want and is prone to throw some serious tantrums.  I'm hoping he'll grow out of this behavior soon, but we may be in it for the long haul.  He's going to be a fireman for Halloween and here he is trying on his costume.

And I had to capture the following - this is the face that Ian makes when you ask him to "close his eyes."  It makes me laugh every single time.

We went apple picking a couple of weekends ago at Honey Pot Hills Orchards in Stow, MA and had a blast.  We went on a hay ride, ate cider donuts and picked a lot of Macoun apples.  I've never had them before and they were super tasty!  Ian had a blast, especially because he was able to climb a ladder to pick apples at the top of the tree.  Here are some photos - I'm really happy we were able to get a picture of all 4 of us!

Work is going well.  My company is growing rapidly which is great, but raises a host of issues and my plate is extremely full (hence the lack of blog updates!)  I have no time during the day to surf the web or accomplish any personal tasks.  And at night, after we eat dinner and get Ian to bed, I'm still busy with Sammy.  And I have to put together her bottles and make my lunch for the next day.  And by the time I watch just one show on TV, I'm totally ready for bed (since Sammy hasn't slept through the night for a while now).  But every day, I'm extremely thankful for my family and I look forward to watching my babies grow up.  And I'll leave you with some cute pictures of Ian and Samantha.

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The Crud Continues

As I mentioned in previous posts, my kids have been sick a lot lately.  (As an aside, I still think it's really cool to say "my kids" meaning that (a) I have kids and (b) I have more than one!  It still makes me pause every single time my husband and I discuss who will be picking up "the kids" from daycare.)  Well, Sammy had pink eye and then she had a low-grade fever for a while, which eventually went away.  Even though her fever went away, she continued to get more and more congested.  And then in the middle of the night one night, she broke into an awful cough and had a fever of 101.6, which then went up to 102.2 by the morning.  Yikes!

So my husband took her to the doctor (it was his turn to stay home from the office with a sick kid) and the doctor didn't like what he heard in her lungs.  So he sent her for X-rays.  X-rays!  On my little happy smiley 5 month old daughter.  Ugh.  The doctor thought he saw a little spot of pneumonia in her lungs and so prescribed her a 10-day course of the lovely pink amoxicillin.  (The official radiologist report said the X-rays were negative for pneumonia but the doctor wanted to keep her on the antibiotics anyway based on the fact that her fever spiked and what he heard in her chest).  She got better fairly dramatically on the antibiotics.  Her fever broke the day after we started giving her the drugs and within 1 day, she was already breathing so much better.  So I'm happy we kept her on the antibiotics.  Tomorrow will be the last day we have to give her the antibiotics and I hope we all stay healthy for a while!