Taelyn - 5 Years Old

For most of Taelyn's life, I have thought of her as a "big kid."  It isn't now when I look back at all of her pictures from the last five years that I realize that she wasn't so big after all.  At five years-old, though, she seems as if she is going on 15!  Her thought processing and conversation abilities have definitely reached a new level, and she is learning more and more each day.  Most of the times, this brings a wonderful, educated, independent little girl.  At other times, she is stubborn, defiant, and tells us exactly why she doesn't like what we have asked her to do.  I guess all of this is normal of a 5 year-old (and a teenager).

Taelyn is pretty passionate about a few things that she loves to do each day.  Swimming is at the top of her list, and she is getting pretty good at it.  Not only will she swim across a pool, but she now jumps in, goes under water to collect rings and toys, does somersaults, and attempts to do a hand stand.  Our favorite is her cannon ball.  She screams, "Cannon ball!" and takes a big leap in to the pool, splashing everyone around her.  Another hobby is coloring, drawing, writing, and pretty much anything related to arts and crafts.  She often makes little cards and writes our names on them and phrases such as "I love you."  At school, she is learning how to listen to the sounds of letters and writing down what she hears, so "I love you" will often be written as "I L U."  It is so exciting to see her early literacy skills!  Here is the Valentine's card that she made for us, completely on her own, as a surprise.  The cover is a drawing of Justin and I; it says "Happy Valentine's" in the best way that she can sound of the letters at the beginning of the words.

Along with writing, Taelyn is also starting the early stages of reading.  She sounds out the sounds within words and tries to read them.  Sometimes this takes quite a bit of coaching, but she can read a few words.  The first word she ever read completely on her own was "Buzz" from a Toystory bath time book that we have.  Taelyn can also count to 100 as long as we help her with all of the intros of each set of 10; once we say 40, she can count 41, 42, 43, etc. all the way up to 50 until we give her that number, and then up to 60, and so on.  Additional activities that Taelyn likes to do is play board games, Wii, the iPad, and just about any other type of game imaginable.

Taelyn has also taken quite the interest in her friends.  She has at least one play date each week where she rides the bus home from school with a friend and we pick her up when we are done with work.  Her most consistent play date is with Dale.  She goes to his house every Wednesday and will occasionally also go to Madison and Fiona's house (her two best friends at school) for additional play dates.

We would still describe Taelyn as a bit of an actress as well.  She loves to put on little performances, re-enact movies or TV shows, and show us dramatic facial expressions.  Lately, she has mastered the bat-my-eyes-and-look-sweet-and-innocent face.  This usually comes when she wants something and is trying to persuade me to say yes.

Here is a recap of pictures from the last year.  Taelyn picked out her favorite song by Pink for the music.  Enjoy!

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