Books: Samantha's continues to be very interested in books. However, she now has more of a say in what books she likes to look at.

Language Development: Up until now, it's been relatively easy to keep up with Samantha's ever increasing vocabulary. However, her repitoire is now expanding far too quickly for us to keep track of.

She understands a lot of commands, such as "put Samantha's socks in the bookshelf" without requiring any gestures. She is able to recognize many animals (both farm animals as well as wild animals) and knows a lot of her body parts (eg elbow, shoulder, leg, toes, nose, hair etc).

A number of responses from Samantha at this time delighted Mum and Dad: Whenever, a "yes" response was warranted she would say "Oh yeah"; and, whenever Mum or Dad sneezed she would say "Bless You" which was very cute!

Mummy's little Helper: Samantha likes to help Mum with the daily chores. I wonder if she'll be just as keen as a teenager ... umm ... wishful thinking. She helps with putting away the cutlery and plastic tupperware in the drawers, putting away Daddy's sock in his drawer and Samantha's socks in her basket, transferring clothes from the washing machine to the dryer. And what about this ....she'll get our shoes for us when it's time to go outside and even put them away when we get back.

She helps Mum with the shopping by pushing the shopping trolley around the grocery store, as well as handing the groceries from the shopping trolley to Mum so that she can put them onto the checkout. More recently, she has been wanting to do a bit of her own shopping and adding a few extra items to the shopping trolley. And for the final touch, she is also wanting to swipe the card through the EFTPOS machine to pay for the groceries... ummm, we better keep a close eye on our credit cards in future!

Samantha has also taken on the supervisory role: After Mum finishes wiping her hands she'll inspect the workmanship and if it's not up to standard, she'll present her hands to be cleaned again .... I guess we can't pull the wool over her eyes!

Sleep: Overall, Samantha is sleeping well. She has one nap in the afternoon for about 1.5hr to 2.0hrs. She sleeps through most nights from 9:30pm to 7:30am. We suspect that the occasional night time waking is due to nightmares. We have found that Dad is very good at putting her back to sleep during these occasions, otherwise, Samantha invariably ends up in our bed for the rest of the night.

Play Time: Samantha continues to be very active - enjoying most forms of activity. She is very good at running and enjoys being chased. Going to the park and playing on the slide and in the sand is always fun. Typical of most kids we've come across, she loves to play with the ball. Dad hass taught her to roll, kick, throw and even to catch the ball by holding her hands out in front. She's also become very good with climbing up and down the stairs, not really surprising as she practices any opportunity she gets.

Swimming is another favourite past-time. She'd jump from the edge of the pool into the water and come to the surface spluttering, her eyes wide open and then say "more". Soon after, the "water wings" were introduced. They were a huge success, except once they come off she still thought she'd be able to float!

Trains, trains and more trains - a number of stores have quite large train sets available to entertain the kids whilst the parents were shopping and Samantha couldn't get enough. Another toy she enjoyed playing with was a baby stroller and she'd often take Teddy for a ride in it. It didn't take her very long to realize that after the stroller reached the wall she needed to go backwards (the option being crying for help). "Play Do" also proved to be a huge success.

Around this time, Samantha started to show interest in Nursery Rhymes (especially those with hand actions) such as "Itsy Bitsy Spider", "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed" etc

Teeth: With another bout of drooling her top right, top left and bottom right incisors came through. Unfortunately, we also suspect that this was the cause of Samantha all of a sudden wanting to put things into her mouth. Luckily for us, this phase didn't last for long.

Other Milestones: We went away for a trip to Kings Canyon National Park & Sequoia National Park. On this trip Samantha decided that she enjoyed the limelight and every possible opportunity was asking us to take a photo of her. She would put on a big smile (which was really more of a grimace!) for the photos.

Mum discovered that her sense of direction was pretty darn good. We were staying at a hotel and whilst Mum was tidying up the car, Dad took a couple of trips to the hotel room with Samantha. Mum had forgotten something and needed to go back to the car. At one point, Mum was unsure which direction to go, luckily Samantha was able to show her the way.

From the beginning we have been getting Samantha's foot and hand prints. The early version were done whilst Samantha was distracted (feeding), however, we have now found that she is quite co-operative and will try to remain still while we try to create a masterpiece.