Do Not Climb the Rail, and Other Important Safety Tips from Shelby Smith

I love this 4 year old stage. Shelby can carry on long (albeit random) phone conversations with her Grammy & Grampy on the way to school in the mornings, her creativity is so fun, and her independence is blossoming yet she still prefers to sit in Mommy's lap for stories--that is, when Hadley allows her to. ;)  And I'm not going to lie, the kindergarten teacher in me loves how much Shelby genuinely adores reading & writing right now. This is a new obsession in our house:

We have safety signs adorning our entire house, just in case anyone might happen to forget. ;)  And in addtion to the signs, we've also got these precious gems of artwork that Shelby refers to as her "posters" hanging on lots of our doors. :)

We introduced the girls to the Elf on the Shelf for the first time this year & started doing the Kindness Elf tradition {as seen HERE}. Our elf doesn't do anything crazy or make messes, he just lands in a new spot each night & leaves a note for the girls giving them fun ideas on how to be kind. It's been really fun so far, and I'm keeping it super-simple for myself so it stays fun & doesn't get stressful. ;) One day, our elf Fizbee suggested Shelby should write letters to her teachers to tell her how much she appreciates them. She took her task very seriously!

We started working on the "two finger space" between words when Shelby was writing.

Shelby's shopping list she made for her Operation Christmas Child box a few weeks ago.

And this picture below absolutely cracks me up!! My mom & I both used to work at a Hallmark store, so we are no strangers to the Dream Book of ornaments. But I get such a kick out of how much Shelby enjoys the Dream Book! She will sit there forever looking at all the ornaments & reading the ornament descriptions to me interjecting her own commentary at times:  "Mama-girl, this one lights up!" "Mama, this one opens up!" "I think we should get this for our Christmas tree one day, Mama!"

Yesterday after we finished lunch, Shelby asked if she could go upstairs by herself. She typically never goes upstairs by herself & had never asked to do that before, so I asked why she wanted to go upstairs. She told me she just wanted to read by herself in her room for a little bit, so I said okay. An hour later, I finally had to tell her she had to put all of her books away b/c it was time for nap. ;)  She insisted we still needed a naptime story first though! Apparently the previous 60 minutes of reading wasn't enough, ha!