Stunningly silent

Oh my. It has been a full month since my last post. How depressing!
As promised, I've got a few photos from our third Christmas that we had at Tonya, Chris and Hope's house:
Here's Hope!

And Sammy Santa:

And the infamous picture with the (great)

Grandparents. The orchestrating of this photo was a comedy of errors. It provided much laughter!

Once again - it was wonderful having most of the family together. I say most, because Ariel was getting ready to have Abigal. Abigal arrived December 28th. The fourth little one on David's side of the family!

I can't believe how long it has been since I've written - where to begin?!

Let's see. In January, David and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary. Amazing but true. Looking back, we have really had a wonderful time together. And nowadays it seems like it just keeps getting better and better! There were a few wee hours in the early weeks of Life after Sam that we wondered if we would be celebrating our seventh anniversary, but, as is often the case, once we figured out how to navigate through those times our relationship got much stronger.

Samantha has been growing in leaps and bounds!

• She has been eating solid foods since January 10th. We started her out on rice cereal. And then stopped that as it was...er..."binding". But she has moved on to oatmeal, squash, peas, and this morning she had green beans. The first couple of mouthfuls cause her to look at me like"what is this schlock you are feeding me?" but then she starts lunging toward the spoon with an open mouth.

• I got a call at work from David on January 18th: Sammy had rolled over from her tummy to her back! She had been rolling from her back to her side for a few days before that, but the front to back transition seems to require more intention. :-)
• Her little posture as she sits up is so nice and tall. I wish my posture was half as good as hers! She can go for two to three minutes at a time without falling over, as long as she is focused on something in front of her. As soon as she looks to see where a noise came from, or watches Homer the cat walk past her, she tumbles right over.
• This morning Sam actually woke up with bed head! Somewhere, out of the blue, she got some hair.
• She also, somewhere, out of the blue, started growing her first tooth! We noticed it this morning. We had been watching her for symptoms of teething, but had never had a definitive sign. The most she had done was to pull at her ear.

That is about it. Though as soon as I typed that, I realized I could say a bit more:

• She has pretty much weaned herself from nursing.
• She will periodically have these wonderful laughing attacks, which prompts us to start laughing, which keeps her laughing, and so it goes.
• She has this enviable outlook on life: whenever she is startled by a noise (like me sneezing, loudly, behind her) she will look at it with a huge open smile on her face. Likewise when we play the "free-fall" game. Anything that surprises her she approaches with a smile rather with tears.

What else?

Oh yeah - I finally got in touch with two of my best friends from high school. Our visits together dwindled once we went to college, and then we totally lost touch with each other after that. I am so glad to have at least made contact and can't wait for a time when I can catch up with each of them!

And another thing. I feel obliged to say: Go Seahawks. Sorry, I just couldn't find it within me to put an exclamation mark on the end of that.

One last image to leave with y'all: