Cute Things that Shaylin Does

A few cute things that Shaylin has done recently:

- She loves to sing and can sing several songs now. Some of her favorites are ABC's, twinkle-twinkle, Book of Mormon Stories, Happy Birthday, and the Good Morning Baltimore song from Hairspray.

- She says 'Taco, burrito' now whenever we put her to bed because she likes being wrapped tightly in her blanket before she goes to sleep.

- She is always saying 'I make turkey sandwich for you daddy' and when Matt says yes she grabs his hand and pulls her toward her kitchen and play table and says 'Let's go eat.' Other things she likes to make in her kitchen are mac and cheese, sour cream, rice cereal, and ice cream

- She has always enjoyed prayer time, but just lately she's been wanting to say them herself. She does really well with a little help and a lot of times when one of us says a dinner prayer she asks to say prayers again so that she can say it.

- Every morning she wakes up saying 'Good morning Daddy' or 'Good morning Momma' depending on who wakes her up. The next thing she says is 'I wake up Daddy/Momma.' Then she says 'Where Momma/Daddy?' and after she says good morning to us she runs over to Emmalyn to tell her good morning and that she's awake. This always makes Emmalyn smile.

- Every night before she goes to bed we read a story out of her Book of Mormon stories picture book. Lately the only story she wants to read is 'Nephi Builds a Ship.' Whenever we ask her which one she wants to read she says 'Nephi builds a ship' and quickly turns to the page it's on. She can now recite almost all of the words in the story if we stop reading mid sentence.

- She really likes nursery at church but ever since we came into the new ward a few months ago she's had a little tougher time going saying goodbye to Matt when he drops her off. So Matt has been staying in there for a while playing with her and then trying to sneak out when she's not paying attention. There are windows in the doors and usually once she realizes he's gone she'll go around asking all the adults 'Where daddy go?,' then cry for a few minutes, and then she's fine. She's usually more interested in interacting with the adults and just watching the other kids play.

- She loves to talk. She is constantly pretending to talk to someone on the phone. Her favorite people to pretend to talk to are both grandma and grandpa’s, Belle, and the Beast (from Beauty and the Beast). A typical conversation is ‘Hi Belle (about 3 or 4 times) then ‘I playing with my kitchen,’ then something about Emmalyn like ‘Emmalyn’s sleeping,’ and then ‘um Belle, call me back.’ She also loves to make conversation and will often say ‘um-a’ in between sentences until she thinks of something else to talk about. The other day Matt went in her room and she said ‘I sleep on my new bed…um-a…(looking around the room and seeing the bathing suit she got for her birthday) I love my new bathing suit.’

- She is good at saying 'please' and 'thank you' - or sometimes 'thanks' now. About a month ago we still had to remind her fairly often to say please when she asked for something. She got so used to us asking 'What do you say' that her requests starting sounding like this 'I have a fruit snack?...What do you say?...Please' - she'd be the one asking herself 'what do you say.'

- Whenever one of us says 'ow' or 'ouch' she says 'ok momma/daddy?'

- About a month ago she started picking up the house phone and saying 'Hi this is Matt.' We quickly realized that she was copying Matt because that's how he answers his cell phone (and the house phone when he knows someone from work is going to call) when he's working from home.

- A few months ago she would sometimes ask for something but wouldn't ask very nicely - usually because she was crying/whining about something else. When we would tell her to ask nicely she would just say 'nicely.'