To Tyler, at 5 Years Old (and 4 months)

Tyler,

Oh Tyler, I don't know where to start!  I think the word I use for you most often is crazy.  You are crazy sweet, crazy silly, crazy persistent, crazy picky, crazy specific, and crazy imaginative.  You are still super cuddly and pick-up-able, though Daddy is encouraging me to stop carrying you around.  You are finally choosing to try to stop sucking your thumb, and seem to be making good progress.  I can't believe you are in Kindergarten.

Your sweetness is unmatched.  You love with your whole heart.  You still love helping Dad fix things, you love cuddling with me, you love playing with Timmy.  Last week I was sick and miserable, you would forget and ask something of me as usual, I would tell you I still didn't feel well, and you would respond, "Do you need anything?"  Another day you came home from Susan's with a bag of snack size KitKats, there were 4 left, "One for each person in our family."  You are always thinking about other peoples feelings.  You will sometimes feel a sudden urge and "need to play a song for you, Mom."  Sometimes this is on the piano, sometimes on your guitar that the Pavlus' gave you for your birthday.  You stare me in the eyes while you play, and then ask if I liked it.  You are very serious about it, it is clearly a gift for me, and I love it.  You and Timmy were playing video games the other day and got into a real life argument.  Timmy wasn't being nice, but you were over reacting, so I scooped you up to go upstairs to try to get you to nap.  Once you cried it out and told me what had upset you, I said Timmy was going to be in big trouble when I went downstairs.  We laid there a few more minutes and you said, "I don't want Timmy to be in trouble.  I want to go swimming with Timmy."  Last week we were at a back to school picnic and you won a prize at a game that was one of Timmy's favorite candies.  You came running over and told me that you won it for Timmy; then you asked if you could play again and win one for yourself.  I regularly tell you that you are the best brother ever.

Your level of silliness is new to me!  And you have such boy humor!  You laugh at burping and farting, and when I'm trying to get you out of the shower to get dressed, you're preoccupied dancing around naked.  You have started "doing downward duck" which was a phrase in the Angry Birds Movie, that was the bird doing the downward dog yoga position.  You think it's hilarious to bend over, the less clothing the funnier, and wiggle your butt around saying "downward duuuuuck".  You do it when someone is coming around the corner, or through the doorway, like a surprise attack.  You are too much.

You will ask for the thing that you want one million times until you get it.  Last night it was for a refill of your Co-ca-Co-lah.  You latch on to an idea and you won't let it drop, like when you saw an airplane one night and thought it was a shooting star, and I explained, no, it's an airplane, shooting stars go super fast, and you corrected me that there is another type of shooting star and it goes really slow, and that's what we're seeing.  Frequently, if you have any kind of "injury" it means that you can't do something for yourself, like walk up the stairs.  You will follow through with this complaint as you hop, crawl, or sit on your butt from one step to the next for the whole flight of stairs.  You are crazy.

You are so weird about what you refuse to even taste, and what concoctions you come up with yourself that you swear are yummy.  Last week at dinner you told me that cantaloupe is disgusting, then you ate the hot dog out of your bun and replaced it with cheetos, yes, there was ketchup on the bun too.  You ate it all up.  You also like to put fritos onto your plain cheese sandwich.  (Though this may have been inspired by my putting potato chips on my PBJ).  You also like to dip your pizza in soda.  You will eat bananas now though, and grapes, and you'll still eat broccoli, but you have a long way to go on eating.  You also don't like your food to touch each other.  Like, you don't like your broccoli to touch your grapes, it's not even food items that will actually affect each other that you worry about!

When you ask for someone to make you water, which you are totally capable of doing for yourself, you expect crushed ice.  If Timmy brings you a cup with regular ice, it sometimes brings you to tears because, "He should know I don't want this ice!"  When you want to play a game, or build with legos, or color a picture, you want to do it your way.  You not only won't take suggestions, but you also want whoever is doing the activity with you, to do it your way.

The scene in Inside Out where Bing Bong sacrifices himself to save Riley's memories makes me sob.  I so don't want to see the day where your Rainbow Monsters are gone.  Just a few weeks ago, at bedtime, you asked me to tell you every story that you ever told me about your Monsters.  You didn't remember a lot of what I was telling you, luckily I have previous blog posts with the stories, and even some video of you talking about them, to show you.  So while the details and regular visits with the Rainbow Monsters seem to be diminishing, they are still alive and well.  Lately you've been telling us about the Rainbow Monster's baby.  Every few bed times you share a new word that the baby has learned, or that the baby is older, apparently Rainbow Monsters grow up much more quickly then humans.  I was so hopeful that your Rainbow Monsters would make a comeback in your art now that you are in Kindergarten, and you didn't disappoint me, you made a rainbow monster the first Friday of school (though it still needs to be colored in)!

Basically you are everything, and I don't know what we would do without you!  We love you and all your types of crazy so much!