Our trip to VA-a recap

As I mentioned in my last post, Samantha and I just made our first ever solo drive down to Virginia. In the past my Mom would come up for the weekend and then I would ride back with her and stay in Virginia for the week. Then Pete would come the following weekend and drive us all home on Sunday. This was a good system, especially since Samantha was nursing so much, and the last thing I wanted to do was stop in a rest stop and nurse my baby in my car all by myself. Now that Sam only nurses 3-4 times a day I knew we could do the five hour drive on our own with out having to stop for nurse breaks.

We left at the time that Sam usually takes her morning nap. I nursed her before I put her in the car with a blanket over her. I put on soothing lullaby music and got on the highway and with in a half an hour she was asleep. She slept for an hour and a half. When she woke up I put on a CD of fun car tunes like "The Wheels on The Bus" and "She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain." We drove for another hour and then stopped at Panera Bread for lunch. The Panera Bread had a nice bathroom with a changing table so we were able to both use the restroom. We sat down and ate our lunch. Samantha waved to everyone who walked by and naturally received a lot of attention, especially from a group of little old ladies lunching at the next table. After an hour we were back on the road with only 2.5 hours to go. Within a half an hour Sam was asleep again (just in time for her afternoon nap) and she slept for the rest of the way! I was thrilled. I can't tell you how nervous I was about driving all that way just the two of us, but it was so easy and Sam did great. She's such the traveler!

As always we squeezed in a lot of visits during Sam's 2 hour awake window, but we got to see all of our favorite people.

Samantha got to play with her buddy Tyler...



And she got to meet her new friend Carson, while I caught up with my friend and fellow new Mom Liz. Doesn't she look amazing for having a 3 week old!



We went to my cousin Stefanie's restaurant and had dinner with the family. Samantha tried Salmon for the first time and loved it.



Samantha got to visit with Grandpa....



And I got to visit with my friend Christy, who is busy making Samantha a new friend, due to arrive in early December.



Our way home was just as easy as our way down. Sam slept for the first hour and a half. We stopped at Panera Bread for lunch again and again Sam sat in her highchair and smiled and waved at everyone who walked by. On our way out a older gentleman who was sitting alone at a table near us gave Samantha a dollar. I said "oh, no, thank you, but we can't take that." and he said "She earned it, she entertained me while I was eating my lunch." So Samantha earned her first dollar. It was so sweet. I put the dollar in her baby book. Maybe she has a future in the entertainment industry? We hit the road with 2.5 hours to go. She fell asleep with in 45 minutes and slept until we reached our driveway where she was finally reunited with her Daddy who missed us like crazy and couldn't wait for our return!

Another Day

In 2003 Mitsubishi came out with a commercial to promote the Outlander. The song used in the commercial was "Breathe" by Telepopmusik. I loved the song and since I was spending a lot of time in my car I went out and bought the Telepopmusik CD. Pete and I had been dating for only a few months, and I would listen to my Telepopmusik album while driving the 3.5 hour drive to Washington DC to visit my new boyfriend, and since the album was so "clubby" it often found it's way into my CD player when driving a car full of girls out for a night on the town.

I was listening to my Telepopmusik CD on my way to visit Pete when it started snowing. I hit ice, spun across all four lanes of Interstate 95 and ended up sideways in a ditch. I called Pete hysterically crying. Pete got in his car in the snowstorm and drove down 2 hours to rescue me from the side of the road. When he got out of his car I saw that he was wearing a tee shirt and pajama pants. The guy didn't even put on a sweatshirt. He got my phone call, got in his car and came to get me. When the shock of my accident wore off, I remembered Pete's outfit that night, and realized what a special guy he is. I never listened to my Telepopmusik CD again, because I'm weird like that, and was scared that the CD would make me get into another accident.

I just drove down to Virginia with Sam. It was our first solo drive together, and she did great, but more on that later. My ipod doohicky that plays my ipod through the car speakers broke, so on my way out the door I grabbed my CD case, which literally has not been opened since the invention of the ipod (yeah, there may have been some Mariah Carey and Salt and Pepper CD's in there from when I was like 13). Since my options were slim I decided that almost 7 years is a long enough time for any bad karma to have evaporated off of my Telepopmusik CD, so I put it on. As I listened to the song "Breathe" I looked back at our daughter asleep in her car seat and I chuckled to myself, thinking back to that Mitsubishi commercial. Talk about life imitating art (that is, if you consider commercials art). Take a look...



Unfortunately the Honda Civic I crashed on that ill fated night never got to see the love that it's battle scars spawned. That poor Honda never made it to our wedding. Because a week after we bought our house and I moved in, it "drove itself" off the driveway, through my backyard, through my neighbors backyard and into a ravine in the woods. I think that car had a death wish.

Visiting Yai Yai

I know it's been a while since my last post, but we are in Virginia visiting Yai Yai. I'll tell you more about our trip when I get home and get a chance to do my 15 loads of laundry and upload all of my pictures. For now you can enjoy a cute little video of Sam enjoying her Yai Yai's home cooking by clicking here.

Spooked!

Samantha celebrated her first Halloween last night. Yes, she did wear her strawberry costume from her Yia Yia, and no, we did not take her trick or treating. She can't eat the candy, so basically it would be like Pete and I walking around asking our neighbors for food. Instead we handed out candy to our neighbors and then headed over to Pete's sister's house. She had a big Halloween party complete with outrageous costumes, spooky decorations and (leave it to Becca) a sugar free diet spiked punch. The party was fun, we wished we could have stayed longer, but we just went long enough to show off our little strawberry and get some photos of Sam with her adorable little zoo animal cousins.



I asked someone to take a photo of the three of us again, and my streak of not being able to get a framable photo of my family continues.



We were home by 9 and in bed by 11, which was really more like 10 since we had daylight savings on Halloween night. I kept thinking what a jackpot weekend this would be if I was still in college. Halloween on a Saturday and the bars are open for an extra hour!!! Now I'm just waking up at 6am instead of 7 since my little strawberry does not know that falling back means you're supposed to get an extra hour of sleep.

So Halloween was pretty tame, but we have had our fare share of spookiness around here. Since Samantha loves animals so much, my Mother-in-Law gave us a window bird feeder, so Sam could watch the birds eat at our window. I hung it up last weekend and all week I have watched in terror while squirrels have attacked the feeder and each other. We literally have had national geographic squirrel style outside our window all week long. Sometimes there are as much as five squirrels at one time scurrying all over my back deck, fighting each other for bird seed. Samantha does love it. She gets so excited watching those little rodents perched outside our window. I on the other hand have been completely grossed out by the whole display and I am taking the bird feeder down because I can't stomach my cereal while I watch rodents claw their way up the screen of my kitchen window.



We also have been scared to death by H1N1. We are actually supposed to be in San Francisco right now. Pete has a conference out there this week, and for a little family fun, we planned to fly out together over the weekend, have some fun in our favorite city and visit some friends, and then Sam and I would fly back on Wednesday. Presently, however, half of Pete's office has kids at home sick with swine flu. A couple of our neighbors have sick kids as well, the President declared a swine flue state of emergency, and every time you turn on the news they are scaring you silly with swine flu stories. With all that being said, we decided that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to put our 10 month old on a cross country plane ride where she will be breathing germ infested air for five hours. So, unfortunately we cancelled our trip. Pete is still going to his conference this week, he leaves tomorrow and I have decided to go down to Virginia to visit my family for the week.

So the scariest thing this Halloween was not ghost and goblins, ghouls or even rabies infested squirrels...but a little virus, you may have heard of it, it's called H1N1, or swine flu, and it successfully sent us screaming in terror.

A Terrible Teether

So it looks like Pete and I have a terrible teether on our hands. We have scarcely forgotten the Awful August we went through while Samantha's two bottom teeth came in, which she handled by reverting back to a newborn, waking 2 or 3 times in the night and then not napping at all during the day. Then those teeth finished pushing their way through and low and behold, we had our beautiful angelic daughter back, complete with two 2 hour naps and sleeping through the night.

About a week and a half ago Sam started night waking again, just once thankfully, but still, going from sleeping through the night to waking at 4am is tough. All of a sudden I noticed that those top two teeth were breaking through. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing that Samantha's teeth come in two at a time, but anyway, those teeth are coming in and causing our cuddly sweet little girl to become an irratable, grumpy little cry baby.



Since Sam has been missing naps lately, I have been missing workouts, and every one knows that I'm just about as grumpy as a teething Samantha when I don't get my work out in. So on Friday morning I set my alarm for 6 so that I could get up and get my work out in before Samantha's 7:30 wake up time. You wouldn't believe my frustration when Samantha decided to wake up at 6:15am. Yet even though I was quite frustrated, I couldn't help but feel bad for her as I took a look in her mouth and saw the two very large (I think she may have her Dad's teeth) teeth breaking through those soft pink gums. Then the diarrhea and diaper rash set in, and by Sunday Sam had a low grade fever, diaper rash, diarrhea, and a runny nose. At this point germaphobic Pete was sure that she had contracted swine flu from the day care at our gym (he told me not to take her there, but like I said earlier, I needed my work out and she wasn't napping). I called the Doctor this morning and Doc says this is probably all being caused by those two gigantic top teeth that are coming in. Apparently the extra saliva babies produce while they are teething can cause them to have diarrhea. The diarrhea causes the diaper rash (it also doesn't help that I switched her into disposables while she's having the diarrhea). I'm not really sure what causes the fever and the running nose, but everything I looked at on the trusty internet says they are definite symptoms of teething.

So, I guess this is our lot in life. We have been blessed with an overall good baby. She sleeps well, she FINALLY eats well, and she's always good when I take her out in public. However, she's a Terrible Teether! Four teeth down, sixteen left to go!

Baby's First Tantrum

Samantha threw her first tantrum today. We had a beautiful 70 degree day today, so when Sam woke up from her afternoon nap I took her outside to swing in her little tykes swing. She loves her swing. She was having the time of her life swinging away, screaming and laughing, but before we knew it it was 5:30, dinner time. So I gave her a couple more pushes in the swing and then called it a day and stopped the swing to take her out. She started to cry as soon as we stopped. I took her out of the swing and put her on the ground to distract her by showing her a pine cone. She pushed the pine cone away as I brought it to her and threw herself back so that she was laying on her back in the grass crying. The stern mother that I am, I picked her up and put her back in the swing. She immediately stopped crying and a big smile spread across her face followed by laughter as she started to swing back and forth. I let her swing for a few more minutes and then I had to take her out again. As soon as I started to unbuckle the harness she began whaling and kicking her legs. As I pulled her out of the swing she grabbed on to the rope and refused to let go. So now she's crying loudly, kicking her legs and holding onto her swing as I am pulling her away from it. It was quite a show for the neighbors. Luckily by the time we got inside and the swing was no longer in sight she was over her tantrum and onto the next thing. Now that I have seen one first hand, I totally understand how parents give in to the the tantrum. I just hope I don't have to go through this in a public place (i.e. grocery store) before I get a bit more practice in dealing with the tantrums under my belt.

She Knows No!

When I was a kid, and all I heard was "no" and "eat your vegetables" and "sorry, but you can't play with those dolls, they are just for the shelf" I made a promise to myself, that when I become a Mom I will let my kids do whatever they want.

Of course, now that I am a Mom I realize how ridiculous that would be! Words like 'No!" and "Stop!" constantly fly out of my mouth, not to mention the notorious mom glare, the one that says "you better stop that right now or else!" that I have already mastered with only a few months of practice. Now, I feel like Sam is getting a bad rep here. Overall she is a wonderful child, but because I'm an awful parent and still refuse to baby proof my house I have to constantly yell at her in order to protect her and teach her not throw herself down the stairs or place her hands on the burning hot glass of the gas fireplace. In any event, it has become apparent to me lately that Samantha understands what I'm saying when I tell her not to do something.

This became all to clear when we were at playgroup on Friday. Samantha was sitting in a booster seat at the table eating her lunch, and near her on the table was a covered casserole dish. Samantha kept reaching over her tray and beating the cover of the dish with her hand, like it was a drum (she likes to do this with all things by the way, she is musically gifted when it comes to drumming). This was not a good thing because a) it was annoying and b) it was someone else's dish, and the last thing I wanted was for her to break it. So, I said "Samantha, no." She stopped drumming and we went back to eating our lunch. A few minutes later she did it again. I said "Samantha, no..stop doing that." She stopped and we again went back to eating. A few minutes later she went back to the casserole dish drum for a third time. At this point I needed to let her know I was serious. I grabbed her hand, gave her the mommy glare and said in a very serious voice "Samantha, no...do not hit this again." And again we went back to eating. A few minutes later she looked at the dish, lifted her hand up to drum it, but then she stopped, thought for a second, looked at me and put her hand down and went back to eating. I was so proud of her I wanted to scoop her right out of her booster seat and give her every casserole dish in the world to bang on to her heart's content. Instead I just said "good girl" and gave her a big smile. Not only does she understand "no" but she listens as well! She is such a good kid. I'm just so in love with her right now! I want to savour this feeling so I can remember it 15 years from now when she's telling me that she hates me and kicking the furniture because I said "no." Although, maybe if I don't torture her with a shelf full of dolls she's not allowed to touch then she won't turn out as bad as I was in my teen years. Let's hope what goes around doesn't come around in the world of parenting.