Disco Fever

Shay is a disco ball. She is bright and shiny with thousands of little mirrors that reflect everything around her. She swirls and twirls around, sparkling her myriad lights onto everyone she encounters, mesmerizing and glowing. Her blue eyes rival the ocean with their multiple shades and hues, her lashes are long, thick and spiky, her skin is pink cream, and her grin displays two large, perfectly white and square front teeth.

Her hair is a bit of a debacle. It is straggly, sparse and flyaway, with a tendency to frizz in the back. I cut it myself a few months ago in the back because some of the strands had actually gotten matted together. But it curls in random directions, flips up here and there, fuzzy and wavy, doing its own thing without much care for conformity. Rather like its owner.

Shay chortles. She doesn't giggle. Never has. When she is amused or happy, she emits a series of low, long chortles - heh, heh, heh - that inevitably prompt others to do whatever necessary (tickling, nuzzling, teasing) to keep the chortles coming. Her chortles are frequent and loud, evidence of both a sunny disposition and an extroverted, curious and affectionate personality that makes her approach babies with a loud "Hi!" while waving her pudgy little hand in their faces.

While cautious around strangers, once you have passed her inner acceptance test, she bestows upon you an unlimited amount of warmth and enthusiasm, which sometimes translates to squeezing your face between her hands and issuing a squeaking, "Ohhhh," much as one would do with a newborn. She craves being held by people she trusts the way a fish craves water. She is relentless with her dispersal of hugs and kisses to her friends and family. She loves to hold your hand - or grip your finger tightly, as the case may be, as she holds up her hand and demands, "Walk!"

She's a talker. At her age, Logan was quieter with a less extensive vocabulary, but he had a far longer attention span than she does. (I know, they say not to compare your children, but frankly I can't compare them to anyone else). Any comparison I make is always followed by an implied, "Interesting, huh?" - with no intention of purporting that one trait is somehow better than the other. It's just...interesting. Like comparing clouds.

Shay has a lot of very intelligible words. Book, bed, nap, nurse, hi, bye, park, car, shoes, diaper, walk, man, dog, truck, bus, etc. She also has several Shay-words that are starting to disappear slowly into "proper" pronunciation, which, as with Logan, is a very bittersweet thing.

It took Shay awhile to make an effort at saying Logan's name, and when she finally did it came out as "Long" (as in, "Hi, Long!")

Sass = Shay. When she falls down, she emits a yelp and a "Sass!", though whether she's saying her name to comfort herself or chastise herself for being clumsy, I have no idea.

pink oak = pink yogurt. Usually strawberry. This morning she asked for "Gurt." I was a little sad. I will miss pink oak.

fuff = flower. Yesterday when I was putting on her clothes, she pointed to a flower on her pants and said, "Fower."

onch = lunch. I love this one. "Onch, onch!"

sim = swing. When going to the park, she points at the swing and yells, "Sim! Sim!"

yak = jacket. Or "pink yak" when she wants to be specific.

stoom = spoon

wish = fish ("Hi, wish! Bye, wish!")

When in agreement with something she used to nod and give a long, drawn-out, "Yyyyyyyeah!" which within the last week has become a still drawn-out, "Yeeessssss."

She appears to be somewhat girly. She likes the color pink. She loves to look at herself in the full-length mirror in the bedroom, putting her hands on it and pressing her button nose up to her reflection as she squeals, "Hi. Hi! Sass!"

She's kind of prissy. If she gets yogurt on her hands, she whines and extends her hand while saying, "Yuck, yuck!" and expects you to wipe it off before she continues with her meal. If there's a leaf or piece of dirt on the slide before she goes down, she announces, "Yuck!" and points at it accusingly with her little forefinger until you sweep it away. Only then does she proceed to go down the slide.

Once she saw a thin piece of bark that had somehow made its way on to our kitchen floor. She pointed at it and started saying, "Bug! Bug!" while stamping her feet and shrieking until I threw it away.

Will's nickname for her is "baby." Mine has been "Shay May," and "Shay Shay," and currently is "Shaylie," which Logan used to call her. Sometimes I mix it up with "Shaylie Ukulele." To Logan, she is "little baby" or "little cutie." She doesn't seem to mind what we call her.

Like her big brother, she is developing a love for books. She occasionally sits through a whole story, especially if it's short, like Where the Wild Things Are, but more often she wants to just look at the pictures and point out various things - and point she does, tapping her forefinger repeatedly on a picture while either asking, "Whazzat?" or stating what it is -- dog, cow, cat, baby.

She is attempting to start singing. One of her favorite songs is "Rum Sum Sum," and she loves doing the accompanying hand-motions. The first line of our standard lullaby "Hush, little Shay..." comes out sweet and melodic in her little voice. She sometimes dances with her whole body and sometimes prefers to stand and sway, cocking her head in time to the music and pumping her arms up and down.

She's our disco ball. And we love living amidst her swirling, multi-colored lights.