Stuff

We are loving our little Samantha. She is a beautiful baby, and so far is much happier and easier
than the boys were at this stage. She sleeps a lot, eats a ton, and seems to only cry when she is hungry or gassy or needs to burp. I'm not getting my hopes up too much yet though ... I know there is a honeymoon stage with most babies. We never had one with the boys though (they struggled to sleep/be happy without being held from the first night in the hospital), so even a few days of this will be nice nonetheless.



It has been wonderful having my mom here. She is such a Godsend. Micah seems to be having a rather tough time adjusting to this change. He is super clingy to me, has stopped taking naps, and struggles going to / staying asleep at night. He won't go near her, and basically pretends like she doesn't exist. So, having my mom here has been wonderful b/c it allows me to still give him some attention. Or, he gets attention from her while I attend to Samantha. Noah is clingy as well, but he has also been sick (103 degree fever and a cough). He is still sleeping well, and is super interested in kissing/touching Samantha (yeah, that's been fun with him sick...). So we think his clingy-ness is due more to his fever than insecurity.

Anyway, back to my mom. She has planned a bunch of stuff for each day around different themes: their lunch; a book that she gives them; and some fun activity. The themes are things like: "Big and Little," or "Counting," or "Yellow" etc. She has 14 different ones. You would never believe all the time she has put into planning this. And the boys are eating it up. Here are just a few pictures of their fun activities so far:

The theme today was "cold." They painted with water popsicles that she dyed with food coloring. They enjoyed painting with and eating them (they weren't even flavored!). They also got to make Snow Cones (which were flavored and very yummy since it has been pretty warm lately).



The first day, the theme was: "Inside, Outside, Upside Down" She brought box cars and let the boys decorate them with stickers. Then we practiced getting inside and outside the boxes. We hung them upside down in their boxes. (She gave them the book "Inside, Outside, Upside Down")


Each day, they have lunch in a muffin tin that has to do with the theme for that day. We were supposed to help the boys put their food inside and outside the muffin tins, but things were a bit crazy at that moment, so we just let them eat it, but the pictures are still cute. I'll post pictures of some of the other muffin tins later. A lot of them are really awesome.



She even brought a pool! Yay for Nanna!