Sing-a-long

Alyssa is now singing and we love it!

It started a few weeks ago when she spontaneously burst out into the "ABCs" all by herself and it has continued. Yesterday we hit a high point. On the way home from the store, I asked her if she wanted to sing a song and she said yes. So we started singing Old MacDonald, she made all the animal noises and would choose the animals we sang about. (She corrected me when I sang that chickens say "bok bok", she wanted to say "cock-a-doole-doo".) The we sang the wheels on the bus and she could keep it going by herself.

At bedtime, I started singing her good night songs, and she joined in. Aaron could hear her downstairs (although he wasn't able to make out what she was saying). She sang Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, Jesus Loves Me, and He's Got the Whole World in His Hands. It was awesome. Her tune isn't always the best, and she's not always on key, but she's singing!

Her favorite song by far is the "Rain, Rain Go Away" song, which we sadly have been having to sing more and more. We added our own little verse where we sing "Little Alyssa wants to go outside and play." We then have to sing it to Lauren (or Lolo) and all her friends at daycare (which she sometimes calls her peeps since that's how Gwen sometimes refers to them). She sang it this morning on the way to daycare all by herself - three times, once for herself, once for Lauren, and once for me too!



This picture is from last weekend while I was in Minneapolis for a conference. Aaron took the girls to Arts in Ada; I think they had a good time and enjoyed the nice weather outside. The girls had to go to a different day care center for three days last week, and Alyssa did really well there. She made new friends and got to do all sorts of different activities, including having a birthday party for one of the other kids. The providers said that she was a super star because they wouldn't have known that she hadn't been going there all along.

She loves to help do little things around the house - wash bottles, sweep the kitchen floor, set the table, buckle Lauren in her car seat, etc. This morning I told Lauren to not take her shoes off, and Alyssa came over and held the shoe on Lauren's foot so she couldn't take it off, and if Lauren's eating puffs or cheerios, Alyssa will remind her to eat "one at a time." She amazes be by the complexity of her thoughts sometimes. I asked her yesterday what they did at day care and she told me (in three separate phrases): "I not go outside and play today...it rain all day...so we had to play inside." What good thinking on her part! While I have enjoyed many of the different stages, Alyssa has passed through, I think is one of my favorites because she's just silly and she's so on top of things.