Maternity Leave is coming to an end...

I can't believe it has been 12 weeks already!  I will be back in the office this Friday the 14th.

I have to say I have been pretty productive though and it has been nice being able to get things taken care of around the house and with the cars while I was home during the day.

Sam is a growing girl.  At her 6 week check she was in the 95th percentile for weight and by her 10 week checkup she had hit the 99th percentile.  She is our little chunker, but we love it! 

She is a healthy eater which has translated into a healthy sleeper!  For the past 4 nights she has slept for at least 7 hours, and up to 9 hours!  Woo hoo!  Right in time for Momma to go back to work and be able to function. 

Sam has found her hands and is getting better at grabbing the toys on her gym mat and she has become an expert at sucking on her hands as well.

She has also become a chatty-kathy which is a lot of fun.  She will "talk" with you and loves to "talk" to herself out loud.  I wonder where she gets it from...

This is Sam talking to me:

While on maternity leave I was able to get all of our closets organized, which was nice after being in the house a year I was able to re-evaluate where we were storing stuff and make sure everything has a home that makes sense.  I am not one for a disorganized house with stuff stored in random locations, it drives me crazy.  My label maker also got a bit of a workout.

I also explored my creative side by making Sam a fall tutu and taking pictures outside by our gorgeous tree that turns the most amazing yellow/orange color at the beginning of fall.  I definitely need to find out what kind of tree this is because if we ever move I am going to plant this tree at our next house.  By the way I love her funny side smile.  We think that Sam has my face, but Mike's facial expressions.

We also took Sam on her first car trip which lead to her first college football game at Notre Dame.  She is a champ of the car rides.  She went from Lawrence to St Louis, St Louis to Indianapolis, Indianapolis to South Bend and back again with no complaints!  She just slept the whole way.  The only stops we had to make were because the adults were hungry or had to potty.  Let's hope this continues, her Momma is a good car sleeper too, maybe its genetic.  She did great at Notre Dame too, slept right through the band performance, and loved being carried around by Daddy all day in her Baby Bjorn - genius contraption!

Sam has started to attend Day Care and she is doing great!  Mommy and Daddy are doing OK as well.  She has only gone for a couple half days so that she (and us) and can get used to the idea and get the hang of the morning schedule/routine.  If you know me well, you know that there is always a schedule and a plan, I try to eliminate as much chaos as possible.

Well, I think that is a brief update of what we have been up to lately.  At the rate I am going keeping this blog up I will update you all again in about a month and a half.  :)

Samantha's First Missouri Football Game Day!

It's football time!  So that means we have to show our support for Mizzou by blowing up our 8 foot tall Truman the Tiger!  The dogs caught a break this year by not having to wear their jerseys and take pictures with Truman, Samantha took the hit for them.  Henry actually doesn't mind wearing the jersey, or clothes for that matter, but Georgette thinks that it is a form of doggie abuse.

It was a good day because the Tigers won and Mom started to figure out the features on her Canon Rebel SLR camera.  It seems kinda silly to have a fancy camera and only use the auto setting.  It still takes me awhile to push buttons and try different settings but I'm getting there and hopefully my photography skills will continue to improve.

Recommended Website - Girls Crochet Headbands

Samantha had most of the color wheel in bows and flowers, but there were a couple colors missing (i.e. orange, kelly green & navy).  I found this website and they are based out of Missouri so the shipping is super fast to Kansas, they are very reasonably priced - even cheaper than Hobby Lobby - and have every color under the sun!  Samantha now has every color of large bow (for special occassions) and every color of small bow (for everyday use).  Just wanted to share for all the Mommies of little ladies!

http://store.girlscrochetheadbands.com/

First "real" bath in the bath tub!

Tonight we decided to give Samantha her first real bath in the bath tub since her belly button is all healed up.  The bath itself was pretty uneventful.  Samantha screamed whenever Dad was soaping her up and Henry was incredibly concerned about why Samantha was screaming so Mom held him up so he could see what was going on.  Then after the bath things got a little more exciting.  Mom and Dad took Samantha upstairs to put on her lotion and pajamas and learned two important lessons:

1. Put her diaper back on asap after she gets out of the bath tub
2. Make sure to read the bottle label correctly and make sure you are rubbing lotion on post bath, not rubbing on more soap! 

We got a couple sets of Johnson & Johnson nightime bath sets.  You would think all the lotions would be packaged the same and the and bath soaps would be packaged the same.  So if the bath soap was in a clear purple bottle, then the solid purple bottle must be the lotion.  Wrong.  I blame a combination of sleep deprivation and misleading packaging to soaping up Samantha twice in one night.  Luckily we figured it out relatively quickly and got her rinsed off for the second time and then lotioned her up after carefully examiniming all the bottles to ensure we were using lotion.  After a couple missteps we finally got to the desired end result of a good smelling baby who is now passed out on the couch with her Dad.

Learning to Blog

This is all new to me, but here we go...

Miss Samantha Jayne Whaley joined the family on 7/21/11 at 10:30pm weighing in at 7lbs 1oz and 19 3/4 inches long.

Henry & Georgette (our furry children) are handling the new addition suprisingly well.  They love to smell her and G gives her kisses all the time.  Henry is warming up to the situation, at night he is genuinely irritated at the crying but today he is showing interest when she is crying and seems more concerned than upset which is sweet.  He actually hopped up on a chair to peak in her basinet when I was changing her and she was expressing her frustration towards getting her diaper changed.

Sammie is doing well.  She is a very calm baby, so we are very lucky.  We are still trying to get the whole sleeping at night thing figured out, generally the 1 or 2 am feeding stretches out a lot longer than necessary because Mom isnt quite sure what the little lady wants in order to go back to bed.  Last night we discovered that she prefers the fast flow nipple vs the slow flow nipple to fill her little tummy faster, so here's to hoping that helps Mom get more sleep tonight.