Samantha Joy

I have decided to write a separate blog entry about each child so I have a record of them at this age. Sammie is such a funny girl. Whenever I download the photos from my camera to the computer, I find hilarious self portraits of her. There are pictures of her with pretzels in between her toes, pictures of the inside of her mouth, and close up shots of her face from every angle. I have a hard time deleting them because even if they are blurry, they make me smile.

Samantha has had a difficult time adjusting to the new baby. I guess she was the baby for too long because she has said that she doesn't like being a big sister at all. She recently had surgery to remove her adnoids because since she was a little baby she has had trouble breathing through her nose. When the doctor talked to us after the procedure, she said that Sammie's nose was about 80% blocked off. Poor girl. We really thought she'd be able to sleep through the night on a consistent basis once her nose was clear. Not so. Now she is suffering from intense nightmares that have disrupted sleep for all of us. Sometimes she doesn't get back to sleep for an hour or more. It is hard to have such a great sleepy baby and not be able to enjoy it because your 5 year old doesn't sleep well. Some lady at church told Sammie that a black widow spider bite will "kill ya" and that caused nightmares and strange hallucinations that lasted for 3 hours! And that one happened when Nathan was out of town!

Samantha is also extremely bright. She brought home a book today and read the whole thing without any help. This coming only 3 months into kindergarten, from the youngest girl in the class. She asked me yesterday if she had to go on a mission to get to heaven. Nathan told her we were going to "trim the tree" and she asked him, "with scissors?" Although she can be a real handful right now, we can't imagine our life without our Sammie Joy, aka S.J.