I haven't forgotten about Shelby....

Shelby is becoming quite the handful…not like she wasn’t before, but she is a lot of fun.

Her speech is coming along good…the therapy seems to be helping. She was going twice a week for a while (once through the schools, once through hospital system) but right now school sessions are out and she is going once per week. She has had a major word explosion over the last couple of months but her pronunciation is still off and she leaves the first syllable off of most words:

Example: Mama=Ama
Juice=uice
Milk=ilk

Some words are fine….she says Layla, baby, and others clear as day. But she is definitely making progress….she is repeating after us know and is trying hard to put words together. The therapists say that it will come along at her own pace and she will be fine.

She is a great big sister to “AM” and does what she can to help me. She gets me the burp cloths when Sam spits up and tries to give her the pacifier when she fusses. She also likes to imitate what I’m doing. She has been caught a couple of times trying to breastfeed her dolls and use my pump. She is an observant little girl and doesn’t miss a thing.

Here are some other cute things she is doing:

• Shelby is also always “HOT”. She doesn’t like to wear clothes and strips down (especially her shirt) as often as she can and she claims that she is “HOT”….
• When she wants to stall or do something longer, she puts her hand up at me and tells me to “wait”…sometimes it will be 5 minutes (the whole hand, other times, just one finger for one minute)
• The biggest thing she is doing is when you try to help her or do anything, she gets very annoyed and says “ELF”, which is self….she wants to do or try everything by herself…she has come so independent.
• She loves the water and loves to swim…we have been both to Uncle Trevor’s pool and Uncle Bill’s pool this summer…and although she loves to play with her cousins, I think she prefers Uncle Bill’s pool because it is warmer than her bath. Yesterday, she saw me jump off the diving board and had to try it herself. She has no fear.
• She got a new sandbox both at home and at Papa’s….she loves to play in there, although we did have an incident of her trying to eat it.
• She is such an affectionate girl and is always giving lots of hugs and kisses.
•when she doesn't want to wear something, anything from shoes to a certain shirt, she says it hurts....but the next day it is fine and doesn't hurt because she wants to wear it!
•her voice raises a few octaves whenever she talks to Sam....she says in her highest voice "HI" whenever she sees her....I guess everyone kind of does that around babies!!! It is really cute!

I love her so much!