29 Months

My one word to describe Shae would be FRIENDLY. He always has been and I hope he always will be. He LOVES people. ALL people.

Our favorite Shae words: Moodie (Smoothie), Oller Pop (Otter Pop), Mato (Tomato), Faffles (Waffles) -- We only talk about food at our house, well, and "Wessle!" (Wrestle) and "Foo-mans" (movies). He also calls popcorn "corn" and peanut butter "butter", that can get confusing for people.

Things that I want to remember about this stage:

He does "roll call" quite often. Before bed, during his prayer etc. This is when he starts saying names of people he knows and he just keeps going and going. Sample prayer: Dear Heavenly Father, mama, dada, belen, anna, flala, sarah, kyler, mee-a, gama, pilup, a.j., kunta, etc. etc. Pretty much anywhere he goes, if he sees someone he first says, "Name, Shae." Then starts listing off all the other names of anyone he has ever met.

A lot of the time when he runs, he sticks his arms back and wrists up like he's flying.

If he is not throwing all of our pillows down to the bottom of the stairs to play in, he tends to sneak down and grab all of our shoes to play with.

Sneaky Shae

I usually come back to find something like this:

He might be a little OCD when it comes to certain things.

He is going through a stage where he pluralizes everything: "I want shoes ons." "Hi Ezras!" "I gonna stirs it."

He is finally consistently going poop in the potty! He even tells us himself when he has to go, rather than us always encouraging him to try when he is on the potty. Yay! 

He loves jumping up on the couch next to his sister the second I put her down. He also really likes to pretend her swing is a rocket ship and blast her off into space. She cracks up while I stand by in panic preparing to rescue her from a face plant.

Currently enjoying: 

The Summer Reading Program. He loves the different activities we go to. He loves getting ice cream coupons and a prize each week for doing his daily reading.

Letters. He has started to recognize letters and stops wherever we are if there is a sign with letters and "reads" it. The other day during scripture study he turned to the title page of the Book of Mormon and pointed at the letters and said, "B-O-O-"k" sound." Talk about proud parent moment. Darin and I couldn't stop smiling, and trying to get him to spell more words but he was like, "Okay padres, that's enough for one day. Spelling one word is kind of a work out."

Numbers. He likes to call them letters. He definitely knows 1-10, although he only counts the full 1 to 10 occasionally, he still prefers to leave out the 1 and 8 and add 11 and 14.

Picture Books. I might be loving this one slightly more than him. I get SO excited to get new books from the library (he could probably read the same book all day and be happy), especially when books that we've put on hold come in. I just love that his attention span has extended from little one word a page board books to full on paragraph, okay sentence(s) on a page. I've really been enjoying putting these books on hold for us to pick up each week, along with books on a list of Books to Read by Five that Darin's mom picked up at a book store for us. I'd say Shae and I have similar taste in books because we are both currently loving this and this and this book. I just love the imagination within these books.

Alphabet Shows. Like I said, he has all of a sudden taken a huge interest in letters, so all he really likes watching these days are shows like Super Why and Leap Frog shows--both of which are on Netflix (Although, he REALLY loves the Shapeville and Numberland leapfrog shows...to the point where I have had to ban it for a few weeks because the songs were keeping me up at night).  He loves these short Leap Frog clips that Anna has shown him as well as well as these Super Simple Nursery Rhyme songs.

We are currently loving how his imagination is booming. One minute he is falling off the pirate ship (playground) down the plank (slide) into hot lava, the next he is using a fishing pole for one of his puzzles as a tool to be a doctor, and the next he is under the table--when I ask what he is doing he says, "I in cage! Jaguar! Water!" I love that I get to be such an integral part of fueling his imagination. Of turning the simple things around us into whatever we want them to be. Needless to say, I'm really loving this stage. I know I've been "teaching" Shae since the day he was born, but I feel like the teaching is so much more rewarding now. 

He is obsessed with his tie. The minute he sees it he has to put it on and won't take it off until we make him at the end of the day.

(He was burying his pirate treasure here).

He's also going through a phase of loving his water cup. Which is funny since until he now the only thing we could ever get him to drink was milk. His water cup has become sort of an attachment item. He asks for it before bed and nap. He also holds it right next to him while he drinks out of his milk (you didn't think he'd stopped drinking milk had you? Oooohh no).

Our conversations may not be very in depth at this point, but I love that we can have simple conversations with Shae now. 

S: "Mommy, Fun? Fireworks?

M: Yes Shae. I loved the fireworks. Did you?

S: Mmmhhmm, yellow, orange, purple, blue...

I love that he can talk to Darin after work and tell him what he did that day or tell us what he played with in nursery. I love that we can tell him at night that we will do something in the morning and that the first thing that he says when he sees us (after "I awake!") is "Go beach!" or "Blueberry pick!" I am just absolutely loving his excitement for life right now. It definitely makes me more excited for life each day too.

This picture was taken on our first adventure out with just me and the two kids. He looks so much smaller here. He has really grown these past two months.