Videos & Our Budding Writer!

I realized the other day that I have really slacked on taking videos of Hadley since she's been talking so much, so this was my attempt at remedying that! Unfortunately, Hadley likes to pretend she's shy on video. ;)  One of my favorite things that she does right now is when you ask her how old she is, her first response is typically "four and a half" b/c that's how she hears Shelby answer the question. ;)



And of course, Big Sister couldn't be left out of the video fun. ;)  Here is her most recent rendition of "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" from Frozen.



I had Shelby's parent-teacher conference at her school last week, and my favorite part of the conference was hearing a story from Shelby's Art Studio teacher, Ms. Elizabeth. The kiddos were painting pictures, and when they were done Ms. Elizabeth had them put their names on the back. After Shelby's little BFF Kaelyn had written her name, she was urging Shelby to hurry up and finish so they could go to the garden together. Shelby insisted that she needed to write a note for BooBoo & Pop-Pop on the back of her painting, and that she would come to the garden after she finished. Ms. Elizabeth said Kaelyn continued to try to coerce Shelby to join her for another minute or so before finally heading to the garden without Shelby. Shelby & Kaelyn are usually joined at the hip at school, so I knew this a big deal for Shelby! Ms. Elizabeth said Shelby sat and WORKED for a good 10-15 minutes completely independely to get her note finished. Here was her final product:

"Dear BooBoo and Pop-Pop,
We've hung pictures on your door.
Love, Shelby"

Before Derek's parents arrived, we had decorated the guest bedroom door with pictures in anticipation of their visit.
So I'm guessing Shelby had worked on this at school before their visit.

And then today, on our walk back from the playground Shelby was carrying a ladybug home to put in her bug jar. The ladybug flew away about half-way home, and Shelby was devastated. {Fatigue & hunger definitely contributed to her overreaction!} In my attempt to get her to calm down, I told her she could draw a picture of her ladybug when we got home while I made her lunch. Here was what she came up with:

DearSmhietlh (apparently this was the ladybug's name?!),
I love you. I'm so sorry (continued on back in next picture)

that you flew away.
Love, Shelby

Again, this was completely on her own, with the exception of the word "flew." She told me she sounded it out and it sounded like F-L-U, but she said that couldn't be right b/c the ladybug wasn't sick with the flu. ;)

I was blown away with both of these pieces. I have of course known Shelby is capable of this kind of writing, but she is our kid who loves receiving help. Case in point: Hadley takes great pride in attempting to dress herself, and then Shelby will ask for help with her clothes (even though she's perfectly capable of doing it on her own) and say "I love it when you help me, Mommy." ;)  Anyhow, all of that to say, I am astonished by Shelby's recent independence in writing & so excited for her! And of course, I'm crazy proud of her, too! She's still got another full year before Kindergarten, and she's already reading & writing heads & shoulders above where most of my Kindergarteners were!

In other news, we went to check out the Natural Bridge Caverns here in San Antonio yesterday--I'll be sure to post pictures sometime this week! It was a really cool experience! Before we left for the caverns, we were talking up the cave with the girls and Hadley kept saying how there were dogs in the cave. We of course told her there were no dogs, and she held up one finger and gave us the sternest look and said "ONE DOGGY IN CAVE!" We left it at that b/c how can you argue with that?! About ten minutes later as we were getting dressed, she said "Go visit black doggy in cave?" We finally figured out that she was confusing the word "cave" with "cage."  The girls' playroom overlooks the backyard of another house that a huge pen for a black dog, which Hadley is obsessed with. So the whole time, she thought we were taking the girls to a dog cage. ;)