Blast From the Past

How cute is Ellie in this dress that my mom made me when I was little?!

Happy Birthday Tucker!!!!!!!

Cutie pie Tucker is SIX today! Six always seems like a big jump to me. Five is kind of the last of the excited, in awe of new things, magic ages. I will miss Tucker being five. He is such an awesome kid. I feel bad sometimes because he almost always gets lumped in with Duncan and Dayton and I think a lot of times we forget that he is still so little. We end up expecting way too much of him b/c since there are the three boys in a row I mentally put him right with a 10-yr-old and 8-yr-old. I have been trying to remind myself lately that he is (was) only five and that I need to let him be small for awhile still. That is my goal while he is six: to remember how very little that still is and stop expecting him to act like an adult.

Anyways, onto less guilt-inducing things. Tucker just rocks. He is such a happy kid. He gets so excited over little things and always has. My mom does this thing with the boys and their cousin called Adventure Tuesday during the summer....each Tuesday she and my dad take them somewhere new that they haven't been before. Tucker talks about it all the time. And he always refers to it as Adventure Tuesday, like it's this super official thing. You can just hear him capitalizing it when he says the words.

He has always been absolutely wonderful about entertaining himself. Even as a baby he was like that. If the other kids ever end up by themselves with no one to play with they can't come up with anything to do on their own, but Tucker will just go in the toy room and start playing some game or start drawing or whatever. Very occasionally if no one is around at all he will complain that he doesn't have anyone to play with but it's super rare. He is probably my easiest child overall....not that he doesn't have his issues but I've kind of always felt like he is my little buddy here to make things easier.

This is going to sound kind of awful for me to say, but I really didn't know that he is apparently super duper smart. Since Duncan is the only one of my kids that got any real effort at education before he started kindergarten I didn't really think Tucker knew a whole heck of a lot before school started this year. But even at his pre-school year assessment last fall his teacher told me that he was way beyond most kids in numbers. And by the end of the school year he had totally surpassed the expected reading level. And his writing is fantastic! Of course he makes a lot of spelling mistakes but I can actually read almost everything he writes...I'm pretty sure that I was still guessing at a lot of what Duncan and Dayton wrote at the end of kindergarten.

As much as he does play with Duncan and Dayton and gets grouped with them in things like getting to go to my mom's house whenever they want (unlike Ellie) and getting to have sleepovers there (again, unlike Ellie) I think his best friend in the family really is Ellie. It was the greatest thing this last year with school b/c the older boys went to school at 8 but kindergarten didn't start until 11:23 (don't get me started on the wacko times) so the whole morning long Tucker and Ellie would just play or watch shows together while I hung out with Charlie. They would just disappear into the toy room or outside and play straight thru the morning until it was time to go. I really got sad as the school year ended because I knew that this was a one-time thing that wouldn't happen again. In a couple of months he will be a big first grader and Ellie will have only Charlie to entertain her all day long. So I'm really glad that they had that time together to really get to be such good buddies.

I really do tend to ramble on on these birthday posts, don't I? Tucker is just fantastic. We call him our little sunshine. I love his cute personality and all the funny things he says. He is amazing and I feel so lucky to be his mom. Love you Tuck!!

Crime of the Century

Yesterday started out like any normal Sunday. Got up, had breakfast, got ready, went to church. Ellie was sick so Jeff stayed home with her but beyond that a totally regular day. After church is when it got strange. Normally the kids all go to the foyer and wait for me to get there. Yesterday when I walked up with Charlie I saw Dayton and Tucker but no Duncan. Usually he is the first one there. That should have been a warning to me but I was distracted by the wind and rain outside since we had walked to church. Luckily a neighbor offered to give us a ride home...I looked around again for Duncan and then Tucker said that he had seen him with Bryce, their cousin. I figured that he had gone home with them so we could go ahead and get a ride home. Once we got home I was planning to call and make sure he was with them and if not I could drive back to the church and look some more. But before I had the chance to call I received a text to my phone with this picture:

and the accompanying message 'Ransom = brownies'. 

Horrors!! What had happened to my oldest child???

After a slight delay to get Charlie down for a nap I got right to work making brownies. While they were cooking I heard my phone ding again. My stomach knotted up with dread as I wondered what was next.

That's when I knew that they must be doing terrible things to him. Duncan would never, ever tell me he loved me on his own accord. I willed the brownies to cook faster.

Once the brownies were ready I received these instructions:

I started to worry since the brownies had turned out a little funky. The edges were way overcooked and the middle was still gooey. I either had to start over or take a gamble. I decided to just send the middle brownies and leave the edges in the pan. I quickly instructed Dayton and Tucker on the finer points of a ransom drop and hoped for the best.

A few minutes later my phone dinged again:

 Oh no. Maybe they weren't going to release him on account of not getting enough brownies. We went outside to wait and see...but my sad face must have done the trick because within a few minutes a car with dark, tinted windows pulled up to the curb, slowed for a second, and before it had even come to a complete stop Duncan was shoved out with a pillowcase over his head and hands tied behind his back. As he stumbled across the lawn the car squealed away. Hooray! Duncan came home safe and sound. The nightmare was over.

Baby Bird

Every General Conference my mom makes cinnamon rolls for everyone. My brother just comes and gets them and takes them home to his family but to say thank you we like to inflict five little kids on my mom and dad so they really get the full Conference experience. It's a big treat for the kids to be able to eat downstairs...my mom sets up little tables and they love it. This year Charlie discovered that everyone had some sort of deliciousness on their plates and he had his best morning ever.

 He just circled around the tables going from person to person getting bite after bite. Tucker even helped him with his sippy cup - seriously, kid #5 really doesn't have to learn to do anything for himself.

All he had to do was open his mouth and within a few seconds someone would deliver a bite to him.

I think he probably ended up eating an entire cinnamon roll by the time he was finished mooching off of everyone. The best part was that he didn't even notice mine so I got to eat in peace!

Teeth, Teeth, and More Teeth

We have had lots of teeth-related excitement here lately. These aren't actually in order of when they happened, just how the pics came up. So, first up...Tucker's first lost tooth! His two bottom teeth have both been really loose for awhile now and I really thought one of them would fall out Friday at school. But it held on until the afternoon. Tucker spent pretty much the whole day with his hand in his mouth wiggling his tooth around. He didn't want to straight up yank it out but he definitely wanted to help it along. 

 He was so proud of himself.

 It's kind of funny, all three boys have been in different grades when they lost their first tooth: kindergarten for Tucker, first grade for Duncan, and preschool for Dayton.

Next up: Charlie has three teeth now! His bottom two have been in for quite awhile (see below)

and one of his top teeth is almost all the way out. The other one is just about poked through, but not quite. They are quite adorable on him. You can just barely see the top one in this pic when it was very first out.

Next up, Duncan's surgery. At his regular checkup last month the dentist took panoramic x-rays since he noticed that his top middle baby teeth hadn't fallen out yet. And he found out that Duncan had two extra adult teeth hanging out in his gums up above. It is hereditary and apparently Jeff had seven extra teeth when he was a kid (of course he did) so I guess Duncan was lucky to get away with only two. He took them on Dayton too and he was free and clear which makes me think that he should have taken them a couple of years ago on Duncan but oh well. So we scheduled an appointment for surgery to have them and his baby teeth taken out. The extra teeth were preventing his baby teeth from falling out.

Here he is right before the surgery. You can see he has lost the top teeth on either side of the middle but the tiny middle ones are still there. Duncan was pretty freaked out about getting an IV but he really did quite well with it.

 Here is his mouth the next day. I took a pic the day of but it was still all bloody and really quite gross. I don't know if you can really see the stitches around his gums...luckily they are the kind that dissolve. He was pretty miserable the whole afternoon after he was done but after a four hour nap he woke up around 8 at night and felt much better.

 The teeth he got taken out: two baby teeth - you can see that they still have all the roots attached since normally the adult teeth dissolve the roots and let them fall out but the extra kind don't do that - and two extra teeth. He got a whopping $10 from the tooth fairy for these special teeth!

And here is his new cute smile...he looks so different with a big gap there. 

Oh, and more more teeth adventure for us...I had an old cavity that was pretty much the size of a whole entire tooth fall out during church on Sunday. Super fun.

Easter Fun

The fun all started during the annual egg free-for-all down at the park by our house. It takes all of about 30 seconds for all the eggs to get 'found'.  But the kids love it so we go every year. The Easter Bunny was wandering around and Ellie wanted to give him a hug. And boy did she love him - she would not let go! After about a minute I told her she needed to let someone else have a turn so she started to pull away but then she went back for more. Such a huge difference from Tucker who was absolutely terrified of any type of mascot/person in costume until after he started kindergarten .

Then it was time for dyeing eggs - my boys love to be shirtless with jammie pants in nice weather which was fine with me so they weren't risking getting egg dye all over their clothes.

Sunday morning everyone had to get up a little earlier than normal so we could take some pics before church. I knew that Ellie's hair would be ruined by the time we got home. Look how pretty!

 I LOVE her Easter dress this year - I wish adults could wear something like this.

Funny story - last year I was crazy and stayed up until 3 in the morning making matching bow ties for all four boys plus one for Ellie's hair even though Charlie was only six weeks old and still woke up at night and this year I found some in the $1 section at Target. Go figure. This pic was after church and sadly it was the best one we got of everyone (minus Jeff who took it). The boys would not cooperate at all!

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that they were going crazy waiting for their Easter baskets. We wrote a note asking the Easter Bunny to wait and deliver them while we were at church since we wouldn't have had time to open them before with church starting at 9.

 Charlie loved his water bottle and new binkies.

 He also loved the Reese's Jeff kept giving him.

 Duncan got lots of good sour eggs!

Then it was outside for the real egg hunt- Ellie wanted to bring her new stuffed bunny along to help.

After all of that I realized I had never gotten any pics of just Charlie. Also I never got any of just the three boys but I knew I didn't have a chance of getting them back into cute clothes so I had to settle for just Charlie.

 At first he wasn't very happy about it, but after a few rounds of patty cake.....

 he changed his mind. What a handsome dude!!

Later that day we got together with everyone for a potluck dinner and more egg hunts - kids and adults. Duncan, Dayton, and Gracie spent about 5 minutes right in this spot looking for the egg in this picture before Duncan finally found it. The rest of us were just dying laughing. Can you see it?

How is it possible to look this cool at the dentist?