Shelby is 12

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 Shelby is growing up faster than we care to admit this last year. Her face and body is changing really quickly and she no longer looks like a little kid to us. She couldn't wait for her 12th birthday for the promised and coveted cell phone that she desired. Since Rhoda's kids got cells phones at 12, my kids are pretty sure that's the age that the law requires parents to provide a phone. We have lost power here many times this summer with bad forest fires that came too close to our home so my usual Alexa phone calls failed me and I felt uncomfortable leaving my kids at home if they couldn't call me. So I gave in and she got a new Gabe phone. No apps or games, just text, call, pictures, music and gps. Seems like a great way to welcome her into teenager land since she goes to a lot of activities and needs rides and has to use other peoples phones a lot.

We went to a local Brick and Mini-Figs here in town for a party. It was actually perfect because the kids didn't have to wear a mask inside the party room and we could bring our own food. Since we love food in this family, we brought in a truck load. Lots of girls and legos for days. Shelby did not want her brothers to be at her very grown up party, but when all her friends arrived she kind of forgot they were there and the party went on. Afterwards the girls came back to our house where they ran around like crazy and chased goats and cats until we took them home to their parents.

Shelby is turning out to be quite the artist. She draws all day long. She has learned how to make art with her computer using really poor quality apps that came with it and she can make some pretty amazing things. She will draw, paint, make comic strips, draw Pokemon and dragons and cats. She has started to play the cello over this last year with Caleb and becoming really proficient and I can't believe how quickly she is playing songs and it's sounding beautiful. Hearing her and Caleb play together is amazing and I am super hopeful we continue to harness her musical desires into something great one day. Shelby spends a lot of her days running outside alone and talking to her goats and cats. She is very introverted and even though we had more people here this summer than ever with the new pool, she was pretty isolated with Covid and went into her own shell. Unfortunately it left her feeling really lonely and sad as her brothers got invited many places. But she would get invited to a few, or girls would come here, and she just couldn't connect with them. Caleb and I have discussed it a lot and we have made concerted efforts to get her to connect more with humans. So far it's working and she has made some really amazing friends. I hope her new phone will also help her connect more. We love her talent and energy in our family. We do wish she would sleep more at night but we have been battling that since the day she was born.






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