To Tyler, at 7 years old

Tyler,

Tyler, Tyler Tyler.  You are still something else and I hope that never changes!  In some ways, you haven't changed at all.  You are still imaginative, stubborn, silly, and loving.  You still suck your thumb as you're falling asleep and in your sleep, but as of the last two days you actually want to stop and you're asking me to "put the yucky stuff on" at bedtime.  You are still afraid to be in any room alone (except the family room) and you worry over bedtime arriving before Timmy gets home from practice two days a week.  You need your sleep, and it's evident the minute you wake up if you needed more!  You are still as sweet as can be too, and will curl up with me to cuddle, end up half way on my chair while eating dinner, and climb on top of me to sit on me while watching TV, all seemingly absent mindedly, and I love it.

If Mom is for loving on, Dad is for playing with.  You spend lots of time together for baseball, but you also have quality time practicing "burns" on each other and you've been doing lots of reading with him.  You love family movie night as much as Dad too, whether it's on our couch or at the theater!

You still make up "facts" and stand by them no matter what!  Sometimes you tell me things about your day and I can't decide if they're real or not, or maybe real but exaggerated.  You rode with a friend to football the other day and told me that you saw a car, that had hit a tree, that was lying on a power line, and the car was on fire, and the person was still in it but escaped all by themselves.  Due to a power outage 5 hours earlier that morning, I believed the first three parts of that story.  You swore over and over that the whole thing was true though.  I recently asked you what you remember of your Rainbow Monsters and if you could draw me one.  You eagerly agreed, but then said you really didn't remember.  I'm so glad I have the videos of you telling me about them!

Tyler's Monsters

Rainbow Monster Update

I struggle with how to manage your silliness when I am in a hurry or worn out, mostly trying to leave the house or get you to go to bed!  These activities try my patience and activate your silliness, which don't go well together!  After a recent challenging time getting out of the house I made myself a promise to let you be silly whenever I possibly can and not to hurry you unless it was really necessary, realizing you will probably grow out of this trait eventually.  I'm so glad you haven't yet!  Most of the time your silliness is easy to appreciate!

You work so hard in school!  If asked, you say you don't like school but you do.  You never complain about going or complain about anything when you get home, and your teacher says you're always participating and involved.  You've made great progress in reading, but it still hasn't completely clicked for you.  We gave you an incentive for extra reading at home, with a reward of going to Chuck E. Cheese when you earned all your stamps.  You earned the last one the week of your birthday party, at Chuck E Cheese anyways, so we still owe you a reward!  You love science experiments and you seem to understand math very naturally.  I hope that continues for you!  Your favorite subject by far is recess.  You will go into extreme detail relaying the events on the playground when asked.  You are the self proclaimed Leader of the Boys Team and the Girls Team is your nemesis.  You talk about plans, attacks, tricks, and spies.  It sounds like it's mostly the girls chasing the boys around trying to catch them.  You get very excited and silly when you tell us about your fun.

Showing off your PBL Project, an interactive book on snake facts that you researched and wrote.

Field Day was your favorite day this school year, you were totally in your element!

Being silly, per usual! After you pulled this pose for your turn, everyone else on your team started doing silly things during their turns!

Boys Team

Somewhere along the line in the last year you started talking about how you are never going to get married.  At first you would say that you only want to be an Uncle, but then you decided you are going to adopt.  Recently Daddy was telling you how good looking you are, and that no wonder the girls are always chasing you.  You replied, "I can't wait to see their face when I tell them I'm never getting married, only adopting!" 

You tried two new activities this year, Adrenaline Dance Club after school, and Flag Football.   I suggested Adrenaline to you, knowing several of your friends were doing it.  The first few weeks were funny, because the activity wasn't really explained to you in advance so when I asked you how it was you would say, "I thought we were just going to get to dance battle, we have to do what they tell us to though."  You enjoyed it and have already said several times that you want to do it again next year.  At the end of the season performance you knew most of the routine, but I don't think you smiled a single time until it was over!

Flag football you asked to play when I was talking to Timmy about him playing.  I believe it was the first time you asked to do an activity without prompting.  Because of scheduling, I ended up taking you to "try outs" with Timmy's age group, you took one look and burst into tears, saying you didn't want to do it and didn't want to do football at all.  I don't know if you would have been as nervous if it was your own age group or not.  I reminded you that you asked to play, that you knew a ton of the kids there at try outs and would have friends in your games as well.  You still weren't interested.  I reasoned, begged, demanded, and finally threatened you with the loss of electronics.  You still weren't moving.  I then told you that I would take Timmy's electronics away too.  You glared at me and stomped off to join the other kids.  You weren't going to let me do that to Timmy (which is what I was counting on!)  Once you were out there, you participated fully and happily the whole time.  I was so proud of you!  When you were done you ran off the field with the biggest smile on your face!  You admitted you were glad that I had forced you to do it, but I was still mean.  The season itself you've really enjoyed practices but you didn't love the games as much as first, you would complain to us about how much you were sitting out and that you weren't getting to touch the ball.  (You were a lineman).  You started asking your coach for fun jobs like Center and to be the Rusher on defense.  You haven't pulled a flag yet, but you've been close, you just hesitate at the last second!  You have gotten to run the ball a few times too.  I'm curious to see if you have any new interest in watching football this fall, since you have a little understanding of the game now!

Tyler at Center

Timmy is your favorite human.  I had thought it was me, but it was clearly evident back in January that I was wrong.  We all went to Florida for a short trip for the Pro Bowl, and you and I headed home before Timmy and Dad, because I had to work, and you didn't care about football so there was no reason for you to miss school.  You cried the whole way to the airport that you just wanted to stay with Timmy, and it was fine if I went but that you would come home when Timmy did.  Even with promises of sleeping in my room every night, doing something fun after school, and being with me, you wanted Timmy.  Timmy has more responsibilities then you do, and you usually revel in that, but if you can see that he really doesn't want to do something, or is really anxious to get to do something else, you will jump up and offer to do what's being asked of him.  You were in trouble recently and I overheard you muttering to yourself from the bathroom, "Timmy is the only person who even cares about me."  He can do no wrong in your eyes, and 90% of the time he is deserving of your high regards of him!

All on his own, Timmy made you a birthday card and had every single one of his classmates write you a birthday greeting.  The minute you came downstairs on your birthday, he called you to the couch and read it all to you!

Your birthday party was super fun, you and 11 of your friends had unlimited play at Chuck E Cheese!  You finally got to do the ticket wind tunnel and you looked like it was the best thing ever!  Every kid earned enough tickets that it took several minutes a piece to get them counted up by the machine, and everyone went home with lots of prizes!

You have grown a ton this year!  You are now at 49.5" and just over 50 pounds.  You are 2" shorter then Timmy was at 7 though, so you are probably due for a growth spurt soon!  You are super skinny, still needing size small shorts so they don't fall off, even though you are in size medium shirts.  You are probably so skinny because I can't get you to eat anything!  You rarely eat breakfast, no matter what I offer you, and you've told me to stop packing anything in your lunch besides the chips and oreos... bringing home anything else I send!  You want a fancier haircut, asking for one like Timmy's or a mohawk.  I talked you into this one for now, but you are currently determined to have a mohawk during the summer.

Tyler on his 7th birthday, holding a picture from just before his 1st birthday

You love watching YouTube, playing on your IPad, playing basketball or on the trampoline with April, and playing video games with Timmy, mostly Minecraft, Overwatch, and Fortnight.  You ask to sleep in Timmy's bed every night, but you're only allowed to on the weekends.  You still sneak into my bed in the middle of the night sometimes, but less and less often.  You finally love to snuggle for reading time and you beg for "one more chapter" every time I say we're done for the night.  You are just the best!!!

To Timmy, at 9 Years Old

Timmy,

Wow.  I am completely blown away by you at this moment in time.  Every day you are becoming more and more you, and you are amazing.

You are playing baseball constantly.  This Spring you played AAA in House, continued playing Warriors Travel (where you are playing up age wise), and then made the all-star team (which means baseball for practically 21 days straight, just one or two days off thrown in there!).  I don't know how Coach Dad is keeping up with you, but I love that you are spending all of this time together.

You are also getting private coaching lessons from Coach Pudge, a local high school coach who is also involved with RHLL.  Your skills have really progressed this calendar year, it's been so fun to watch!  You are still taking and enjoying piano lessons too, and you played flag football this Spring as well!  Sometimes I'm worried that you are over scheduled, but you have never once asked to stop any of your activities, never say you're tired, and only sometimes say you wish practice would be rained out as we're going over your days schedule in the morning.  When you're not scheduled you just want to be on your ipad, so I prefer having you scheduled.  To help remember this crazy season, your weekly schedule was:

Sunday - Practice with Coach Pudge, then practice with Warriors
Monday - Piano lessons
Tuesday - House Practice
Wednesday - House Game
Thursday - House Game
Friday - Football Practice
Saturday - Football Game followed by House Game

You've played in two Warriors tournaments so far, this hit was in the first tournament.  (I wasn't excited at all.)

Fueling up at a team lunch before a tournament game!

Your football season was fun to watch.  You had a practice position on offense and defense, and the first game of the season you played every down.  The coach told you that you had the highlight of the season with this play

Before your first game

Team Captain for the last two games

For the middle of the season you only got to play defense, and you were pretty good!  You got a lot of flag pulls and were great at staying in position.  The last two games you had a few more chances on offense, and these two plays are from the Semi-Final game, which you played against Josh, Preston, and Drew's team.  (Your house baseball team made it to the Semi-Final game as well; two strong seasons!)

You got past Josh on this run but then Drew got your flag.

The all-star season is not going the way we would want it to, but it's showing what great character all you boys have!  You guys are a really young team, there are definitely better seasons ahead of this team, and it's so great to watch your individual triumphs and improved play!  Here's one highlight for you during a scrimmage.

Your school year was a little rough this year.  You didn't like your teacher from the start and that never really improved.  (For the record, we agreed with your most of your opinions.)  You did start coping with it better eventually.  You really got into reading, you flew through chapter books at school, and brought some new series home to read with Tyler and I.  I believe you finished off the Magic Treehouse series, as well as all of the I Survived books, and most of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Captain Underpants.  Your great memory still serves you well for studying for tests in history and science.  You are fighting memorizing your times tables and it is slowing you down a little in math, but you understand all the concepts.  You still love writing stories, but you've gotten low grades because you don't use capital letters and punctuation, and you're rushed handwriting is awful.  When I told you that it was just laziness and rushing you were highly offended, but it's been such a repetitive issue this year that you've lost electronics privileges multiple times over it.  Electronics are a priority issue for you so when we remove them from your day, you slow down and do what you're supposed to do.  Your end of year project is to make a playground for the 5th graders ducklings out of recycled materials and you are loving working on that.  You've learned and grown a lot this year, it's just been harder then it needed to be!  A bunch of fads raced through elementary school this year and you were into all of them; this meme sums them up!

Dabbing, Bottle Flipping, Making Slime, and Fidget Spinners

You are so helpful around the house, and usually with a good attitude.  In the morning I can count on you to get yourself and Tyler 100% ready for school.  There have been a few mornings lately when I've gone to work before you're even awake, and Daddy has said you are both walk-out-the-door ready when he's come down.  When asked, you clean the basement up, with very little stashing, all by yourself.  I'll load stuff up on the stairs and you run it up to the right rooms for me.  You jump out of the car to bring the trashcans up the pipestem for us when we get home.  I still can't get you to use the hamper on your own, or heck, half the time you don't even use it when specifically reminded to put your clothes in the hamper as you are heading up the stairs for your shower!  I have to call you back to your room to do it when I go to check.  Same for your baseball clothes drawer, you will get ready for practice and practically empty the drawer looking for something, and then leave all the clean clothes strewn around your room!  You do not really do this with your regular clothes in the morning, so I don't know what the deal is with this!  95% of the time you are an excellent big brother.  My heart melted a few nights ago at bed time, when I turned around from putting some clothes in your drawer and saw this:

You probably do 85% of the work of taking care of Sonic, as far as feeding him, letting him in and out, chasing him when he escapes, and getting things from him that he shouldn't have.  You enjoy chasing him around the main floor of the house and playing fetch with him diving into the pool.

You are a great friend, and your friendships with Caleb, Nate, and Nathan are as strong as ever.  We were all hopeful that the Pavlus' would move to Fox Mill, you house shopped and got your hopes up every time you saw a for sale sign go up near us.  Unfortunately they moved to Ashburn instead, but you are excited for him and like his new house.  Caleb was on our baseball team again this Spring so you've seen plenty of each other lately.  We will be sure to get you lots of time together to keep your friendship strong.

The Three Doritos are still a thing, you guys have a blast together. (And you finally decided to start riding your bike!)

You call me on my phone sometimes, and I love it.  I'll be at work and my phone will ring and it's you!  You're usually asking me if you're allowed to do something that you're grounded from, or looking for something and hoping I know where it is.  It makes my day to hear from you in the middle of work!

You've gotten into a new app called musical.ly where you can make short music videos.  It's really user friendly and you can easily cut scenes and time things out to the music.  It's fun to see your creativity and how much you enjoy watching your friends' videos too.  This is one of your earlier ones, they keep improving every time.

Watching you grow up has been one of the most amazing experiences of my life.  Keep doing a good job Tim-Tim.

Tyler's 6th Birthday Party

This year we decided to have Tyler's birthday party at Monster Mini Golf, and he had a blast!  This facility was actually my last project as an Architect for Miller Architect's, so the owners are clients and they gave us a great deal and treated Tyler like royalty.  It was really awesome to see him having so much fun.  I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking!

Tyler, Trevor, and Thomas - their poor teachers can't keep their names straight!