Sunday Funday

Samantha and I went over to Holley's house today for a swim.

Samantha kicked around the pool all by herselfSamantha loves Auntie Holley
So darn cute!

Unfortunately Todd could not come because he was working on the houseAnd wearing this cool outfit! Doesn't he look thrilled?

Dinner with the Stones

We had a great evening with The Stone Family on Saturday night. They met us at our new house to take a look at the progress. It is great because our new house is only a couple blocks away from them.

Here is a quick house update:

The house has been completely gutted down to the studs. Electric is being roughed in. We are meeting with a heating company this week. Plumbing, insulation and dry wall will come after that. We have someone coming tomorrow to help us draw new plans that exclude the original plan of adding a half bath. We have decided to forgo that and enlarge the kitchen. The french doors have been ordered and we are sourcing out cabinets and appliances for the kitchen. The outside of the house has been pressure washed and is getting prepped for a new paint job.

Here are some photos I took a couple weeks ago:

After the house tour, we walked over to a pizza place a couple blocks away.

Connor and Samantha had another dinner date


It got a bit messy at dinner so we strolled back to the Stones and the kids took a bath (are they going to be mad one day when they see these pics???? )
Zuki The Yorkie supervised
My Little Froggy

Fiesta in Santa Barbara

It's Fiesta in Santa Barbara. Here are some pics of Samantha in her Fiesta dress:

Look, no hands!

I am glad I took her dress off before feeding her a pluot!

Dinner Date

Samantha and Connor had a dinner date

The menu consisted of carrots, avocado, pasta, cheerios and green beans

The dress code was "Clothing Optional"

8 Months Old

Samantha is 8 months old today! Here is what's new with Samantha:

- She pulls herself up to standing and has begun to cruise around. This makes it particularly challenging in the bath tub as well as in her crib. If she wakes up in the middle of the night, she will now hold onto the railings and walk around her crib. It is pretty difficult trying to get her to go back to sleep. Here she is demonstrating her crib pull-up:

-She may be a track star one day. She likes to hurdle the exersaucer. I am pretty jazzed about this trick as this toy has been the best investment we have made. Not only will she still sit in it and spin around to play with the toys, she will eat a snack in it, cruise around it and then hurdle it. Here is a video:

- She LOVES books. We have a bookshelf in our house that provides hours of entertainment. She pulls the books off the shelf, turns the pages, eats the pages, eats the pages, and eats the pages.

-Lollipop has become her best buddy. When she was first born, I was so hesitant about all the affection Lollipop was giving her (kisses all over), but both Todd and I have relaxed on the issue. Lollipop is very motherly to Samantha and now that Samantha is mobile, they will often wrestle a toy together or chase each other. Samantha has also learned how to push Lollipop away when she has had enough. Here is some footage of the two of them:

-Samantha loves the beach. I found the beach a bit challenging in the beginning - lugging all the gear, setting up "camp", trying to keep her from eating sand, getting her to take a nap at the beach, lugging all the gear back up to the car. Now, I have relaxed more...I pop a pacifier in her mouth to keep her from eating sand and I let her go at it.

-Samantha loves play dates (so do I). Here are a few shots of her with some of her best friends:

Isabella and Reese

Jak

Rick Jr.

Connor

-Her second bottom tooth has come in and now her smile is so darn cute!

-The sleep training is working (for the most part). The only issue is that she wakes up WAY TOO EARLY! And it does not matter if she goes to bed at 5:30 PM or 10:30 PM, she still wakes up between 4:00 AM and 6:00 AM and there is NO getting her back to sleep. When she is up, she is up to play.

"I'm up Mom and Dad - Let's Play!"

-She likes phones, keys, remote controls, shoes, water bottles, plants, laptops, sunglasses, Lollipop's water dish, cords and any other items she should not be playing with or worse, chewing on!

-She does this funny thing where she crawls crawls crawls then she will stop, look over her shoulder and pose.

-Samantha is a big fan of Costco. She loves going up and down the aisles and eating the occasional sample. And then when we get home she helps me unpack everything and is happy to crawl around the kitchen with one of the empty boxes or other fun packaging we get from there.

-Samantha loves her daddy. She is with me most of the day so when Todd comes home she is beside herself with happiness.

Sam and Lolly

Here is what I deal with each time I feed Samantha. Lollipop bobs up and down from every possible angle around her chair waiting for a morsel of food. Samantha giggles at the dog and feeds her cheerios. I know I should probably separate the two of them during mealtime but Lollipop is part of the family and Samantha gets such a kick out of her. Plus, I love the fact that there is less to clean up because Lollipop does the vacuuming!

Bath Time

Every night before bed, Samantha has her bath. She loves bath time and gets so excited when I pull out the baby bath tub and turn on the water.