Friday, May 31, 2013

Our Little Ham

Tyler is a ham.  He is adorable and funny and he knows it!  Here are some recent clips from his highlight reel.

Relishing in his ice cream and in sharing it:

Sword Fighting a balloon:

Putting on a concert:


Playing pinball:

And Tyler still has a little cutie of his own as well.  Tyler and Stella run to each other every time they get to see each other these days.





Saturday, May 25, 2013

Brittany's Baby Shower

Last Sunday I was very excited to attend Brittany's baby shower.  She's been ready for baby for a long time and I'm so excited that baby will finally be arriving soon!  Brittany and David are not finding out the sex, which I am in awe of and frustrated by at the same time!  She's just so relaxed about the whole thing, I think it's awesome!  I laughed at myself when I went shopping for Brittany, I had asked if her nursery had a theme and she said no, that since they weren't finding out they didn't know what to prepare for, so she was just registering for anything she liked.  For us, I had the theme picked out both times within minutes of knowing they were boys (Classic Pooh and Monkeys/Jungle babies), and then I didn't want anything that didn't fit that theme to be in the nursery.  Any other themes that caught me eye I ended up buying as clothes.  The idea of just getting whatever you felt like seems obvious, but it is a bit novel for me, my planning and organizing brain just doesn't work that way!






As excited as I am for Brittany, the best part for me was getting "all six of us" together.  I didn't know that everyone was coming, some until the week before and even day of, so it was a wonderful surprise to me!  We hadn't all been together since Anne Marie's wedding, and that's been almost two years.  Far too long.  It really did my heart good to get to spend a few hours with them.  Some of us keep in touch better then others, but I frequently think back to the wonderful times we had in college.  And I know that they are all just an email or text away.  It didn't occur to me to take a group picture until Nat and AM had already left, and Brittany commented that we hadn't done it.  Luckily, I found them in the parking lot and they humored me by coming back inside just for a picture!  Love these girls.


Friday, May 24, 2013

Preschool III Wrap Up

Timmy's last day of preschool, ever, was yesterday.  I was glad that the teacher invited the parents in for lunch bunch.  I brought Timmy a big treat, McDonald's.  (He was beyond excited, but as all the other kids had their regular home made meals, I did feel like I might be a little judged as the working mom who didn't find time to make lunch... but oh well!)  I got there in time to see show and tell.  Timmy brought Snuggle Puppy, and I was happy to see him jump onto his teacher's lap as he talked about him.  Timmy's teachers didn't have a prayer with me to compare with last year's amazing teacher... so I was happy to see Timmy did clearly enjoy having them as teacher's.



We all ate at the big tables in the art room and then the kids ran around playing and taking pictures with each other.  Timmy grabbed Takemi and Nate to take pictures with them, but when I suggested he ask Sophia he got very shy and said no.  Finally he suggested that I ask Sophia to take a picture with him, so I did. One of the other girls jumped into their picture immediately too, but Sophia is the one next to Timmy.



The kids got a little wild so we all headed to the playground.  They wanted to play past car-line, so Nate's mom offered to take Timmy home when they were ready to leave.  Timmy ended up getting to go to Nate's new house for the first time to play afterwards too.




When we got home Tim and I gave Timmy his graduation card and a box of Donut Holes.  I told him how proud of him we were and he gave me the cutest smile I've ever seen and a big hug around the neck.


And just so you can see how much he has grown since his first day of preschool, here you go:

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Timmy at 59 months - or Love Letter Response and the last day of Preschool, ever.

Timmy is one month shy of his 5th birthday now!  Today is his last day of preschool.  His teacher is having the parents come in to eat lunch with the kids, but there is no graduation or anything like that.  I always thought preschool graduations were kind of silly, but I listened to some other mom's talk about how upset they are that the school doesn't do it, and I've seen some pretty cute pictures of 5 year olds in caps and gowns recently, and now I kind of feel like we're missing something.  I did buy Timmy a graduation card though, "If you thought preschool was fun... just wait until Kindergarten!"  Oh my.  Time sure flies!


Timmy brought home a ton of art on Tuesday.  The pile included two more pictures for him signed with a million hearts from Sophia.  Then there was this: Timmy's love letter back!  When he saw it he told me it was supposed to go to Sophia.  I am an incredibly happy mommy that it came home first.  I will be taking it to school at lunch today to make sure it gets to Sophia.


At the bottom of Timmy's bag there was a bunch of sand and glitter, so I dumped it over the toilet to empty it, and noticed two little dried up white flowers fell in too.  Timmy came in just as I flushed and he asked if I had flushed some flowers.  I said, "Yes honey, I'm so sorry, I didn't see them.  They were very pretty, were they for me?"  He answered, "No.  They were from Sophia for me."  I apologized profusely and he told me it was okay, he'd seen where she got them, he would get some more.  I asked if he'd given her any and he said no, but he would.  Last week Timmy also made a beaded bracelet that he brought home and gave to me, but it was too small.  We decided this morning that he would give that to Sophia too.  I think I better talk to Sophia's mom today and see if she's interested in having some play dates this summer!

Timmy has started going to speech therapy weekly.  His third of six sessions will be tomorrow.  His intelligibility is lower then we would like because of s-combination words and he has trouble with the g and k sounds too.  In kindergarten he will get pulled from class during language arts time to work in small groups with other kids with similar speech issues.  He was making big improvements on his own, but I'm glad we were able to get him additional help through the county so it will clear up faster.  I just explained to him that he was going to play games with another teacher now and he's enjoying it.  We were playing the "what letter does this word start with" game the other day and he started telling me how you say the g and k sounds with the back of your tongue... so he's definitely taking it all in!

Tim also started having Timmy practice his handwriting, they call it Kindergarten Practice.  It hasn't turned into a daily activity, but any evening that we are just relaxing downstairs one of us will think of it and he'll sit and do his letters.  All of the last bunch were done very nicely and he was rightfully proud of them.  We'll definitely have to keep it up now that it's summer time!

Timmy is one extreme or the other with Tyler recently.  One moment he's playing nicely, kissing him, introducing him to friends, or getting him a snack, the next minute he's teasing and tormenting him.  The sweet moments seem to be getting sweeter and more frequent... I just hope the sour moments don't follow that trend!


And one last recent Timmy gem (while talking about how we had to be extra calm and quiet one evening because PawPaw had a tooth pulled) "How come my PawPaw gets so many booboo's?"  "Well hunny, sometimes when we get older we get more booboo's."  "I think it's better to be a newer person then an older person."

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Love Letter

Timmy has had a little girl friend each year of preschool.  While he has always been friends with all of the kids in the class, there's always been one girl who he would talk about more then the rest.  He does not like to be teased about them though, and has never let anyone get away with calling them his girlfriend or anything like that.  His first year it was Maddie, she was especially adorable and Timmy talked about her often.  A few months into the school year Maddie's grandmother told me that her nightly prayers ended with, "and thank you for Timmy."  His second year of preschool Reagan was the stand out girl.  They even had nicknames for each other, Pooh Bear and Monkey, which I wrote about here.  This year, Timmy started talking about Sophia really early on.  He would say, "Sophia is always sitting right next to me" and similar things like that.  Well last week, Sophia sent Timmy a love letter:




It is the sweetest thing I've ever seen, and when I ooh'd and ahh'd at it, Timmy did look a little embarrassed  but he did not get upset or tell me to be quiet, so I think he thought it was sweet too.  :)

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Tyler's Birthday Celebrations

We celebrated Tyler's birthday three days in a row this year which gave him lots of practice with the Happy Birthday song and blowing out his candles.  This was a good thing, because he was not a fan of the birthday song the first time!  When we sang his name and he realized it was for him, he got embarrassed and cried for several minutes.  Timmy didn't miss a beat though, blowing out the candles for his little brother!  Grammy and Pawpaw were there to celebrate with us on Thursday night.



On Friday, which was his actual birthday, Uncle Joe and Aunt Becky were there for presents and cake.  My Aunt Marleen sent him a microphone with a stand and it was the big hit of all of the presents.  He has natural rock star moves!.





 We skyped with Baba and Grandpa while he played with some of the new toys he had just opened.

He had a better hang of the cake and candles thing the second time around!



Tyler's birthday party was Saturday and he had a blast!

He loved all the decorations and ran around pointing and saying "Mickey Mouse!" every time he saw him!  

It was so nice having the party in a fenced in back yard!  The beloved moon bounce made it's regular appearance and was a hit like always.


The playground was also a big hit!

The guest list was family and our friends who have kids.  It was great to visit with high school and college friends as well as our newer friends!  All of the kids played well together too.


Grandad and Susan made some amazing food and Tim did his famous pulled pork, as well as home brewed beer and hard cider!  I did lots and lots of baking.  The rice crispy treat was sent from Disney World from Baba and Grandpa.  Everything was delicious!

Brayden and Timmy were very enthusiastic while singing Tyler Happy Birthday and I love the look of anticipation in their eyes staring at the cake!


Happy Birthday to our Tyler!