A Sunny Afternoon

Last Saturday we were blessed with a beautiful, sunny day. We took full advantage of it and spent the afternoon in the backyard and at the park down the street. Samantha has quite a little rock collection going. She keeps them on the little shelf on the garden hose hanger. She goes back to it day after day to add new ones and carries some of them around with her.

We showed her how to blow the seeds off of dandelions, and she got it right away. Now she has to stop and blow on them any time she sees one.

She tries to blow the petals off of regular flowers too, but it doesn't work nearly as well as the dandelions.

Pat took the opportunity to start grooming Sammy for a promising golf career. She seemed to enjoy her first lesson, which included dragging Daddy's club around, clicking the balls together, and running up and stealing the golf balls everytime Daddy tried to chip one.

A Wink and The Wiggles

Sammy has figured out how to wink recently...well kind of. She gets what she's supposed to do, but she ends up making an adorable pirate face. She also shows off her body-part naming skills. I was trying to get her to make some animal noises, but she knew that The Wiggles were coming on soon, so she was a little distracted.

Here was her reaction as soon as she heard The Wiggles theme song.

Television-watching definitely isn't a passive activity in this house!

Miss Independent

Samantha has definitely entered the "I can do it myself!" phase of toddlerhood. She has become very interested in dressing herself and reading her books by herself. She used to sit on my lap at bedtime while I red two books to her. Now she yells "No, no, no!" if try to read them. Instead, she takes them to her bed and "reads" them herself. She has managed to put together some pretty interesting outfits with whatever clothing she can pull out of the hamper. She ran around like this for quite a while the other day. I didn't manage to get a picture, but she added her rainboots to the outfit. Yesterday I saw her run off with my socks, and then reappear a few minutes later wearing them. Pretty impressive!