Sunday, June 3, 2007

Our New Favorite Thing - Swimming!




Well, being back to work all day -- especially at the hectic end-of-the-year time -- and keeping Miss Maelin busy every evening leaves very little time for blogging! As you can see from the pictures above, we have a new favorite pastime: swimming! I took Maelin and Laura (bottom picture) to the Lapeer Rec Center on Memorial Day, and we had a grand ol' time! We have been running through the sprinkler at Uncle Jon and Aunt Laura's house, and we ran through one again at Great Grandpa and Grandma Minkstein's (second pic) this past Saturday. The top picture was also taken at their house. In it, Maelin is sitting with cousin Adrienne, also known as 'baby.' Ha! The third picture happened when Baba and Maelin were jousting for the same piece of faux crab meat one night. I thought it was a perfect 'Lady and the Tramp' moment and couldn't resist catching it on film! :)

Maelin continues to amaze me at the rate she's picking up signs! I have several more to add to our tally, but i think we're at about 85 signs now! She's also picking up a few spoken words, but it's just so obvious that she's a visual language learner at this point. Signing has been such a blessing for us! Our communication with Maelin would be seriously limited without it.

That's all i have time for right now.
xoxo,
Shonda

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well looks like Miss Maelin is going to turn out to be a little fishie too, they love the water in the summertime. Looking at that third picture...Baba has a determined look to get that crab but Maelin looks like...ain't no way I'm giving in!! It's a cute pic.

Wow, 85 signs now that's awesome. I'm sure Haley would have learned faster if I knew more than I did in the beginning but still she did well too. She is a conversationalist for sure and she expects that eye contact, we don't dare glance away for even a second. I understand about the limited communication, I can remember how frustrating things were in the beginning, especially for Haley it's getting better all the time. We are so indebted to you and Emily and Shirley. How do we ever repay what you've done for us.

I will talk to you later.
xoxo back at ya,
Connie

Anonymous said...

Shonda I agree with Connie we are all very indebted to you for teaching our young ones Jason was very blessed to have come in contact with you and we can never repay you for what you have done,

Litte Miss Mae has the best teacher she can receive for a little one. She is really a cutie and I'm sorry I forgot to take time earlier this week to look for her beautiful smiling face I Love the pics. especially the one of her and BABA

Jason is continuning to grow with his sign and I to can relate to the limited communication but we are getting along better all the time

Love Ellen and Jason

Anonymous said...

Holy Cow!! 85 signs? thats awesome! She is smart as well as cute! Watch out mama and baba that means she will be slick too! LOL! I will reiterate what Connie and Ellen said... where David was "just" hard of hearing we still had a huge amount frustration with his and our communication. HE would get so mad when we couldnt understand what he was saying he would just cry and cry, but when he got you for a teacher and along with Emily and Shirley and the various speech teachers we have no problems now. Actually he wont stop and if we dont understand him now he just signs it and with his help i know what he is saying. Cuz my lil hero has taught me a lot of signs. You have helped give our kids the gift of communication and we all thank you for that! Looks like lil Miss MAe is having a lot of fun too! Very awesome! TTYL! Love ya guys! Tara and David