Happy Easter!

It took 11 years people... but I finally got him to wear a bow tie for me. And believe me - it was FOR ME.

Sweet brothers holding hands waiting for the easter egg hunt! This is when we should have been reminding Tucker not to only look for the Golden Egg. Who knew we had to go over this information?? He was a sad little boy at the end because he did not pick up one other egg!

Tucker's creation for his class Easter Egg Hunt!

After church -- more attempts at a family picture.

Transportation Field Trip

Tucker and Mimi went on this field trip together with his Pound Puppies class! They did the "People Mover" downtown (the Ryans call this the "Flying Train") that goes across the river and throughout downtown. It is very similar to a monorail. Then, they ventured on to the water taxi which is the boat that takes people from the northbank to the southbank of the river for football games, to go to the Landing, etc. Tucker loved sharing the day with Mimi and his friends!

Mac Attack

At 2 & 4 months:
- Funny. Sometimes sweet. Sometimes angry. Often aggressive.
- Zero interest in potty training. Unless you count his love of being naked.
- STILL not saying any words. Except "ought oh. Hi. Hello. Choo-Choo. "Duck Duck" (for Tucker.) Dada. and MomMom (A LOT!)
- Screams, grunts, growls, babbles loudly. Very loud.
- Loves to wrestle Tucker.
- Loves anything having to do with sports - loves to watch them, play them, etc.
- Wakes up early and still wants to take a morning nap when I'll let him (in addition to his afternoon nap!)
- Wakes up HUNGRY from all these sleeping sessions and will not rest until he is fed -- usually wants a NutriGrain or granola bar.
- Plays by himself well. Loves little men of any kind - Lego, Little People, etc.
- Tucker is always trying to convince him to watch an airplane show when they are choosing what they get to watch. Mac vehemently shakes his head NO!
- Sporting a mullet right now because he cut his hair twice in the front last week and I can't bear to cut his curls he FINALLY has off the back.
- Falls often - usually has scraped knees and many bruises.
- LOVES to dance. His best and most often used move is two pointed fingers to the same side in a sort of "Heisman" pose while bouncing up and down.

(Wish I had a sound recording on this play session - - he makes his men "talk" with his own language.)

Look what I can do!

4 1/2 months old

-- Starting to grab things.
-- Found my feet.
-- Can turn over both ways.
-- So very jolly! Always laughing & cooing.
-- Used to sleep through the night. Now very unpredictable again.
-- Drools like a mad man. Teething?
-- Wearing 9 month clothes.

In case you think I'm embellishing Tucker's obsession.

I just had to force Tucker to go play with his airplanes. This is not uncommon... I often have to force him away from his "research." He spends most of his energy at home begging to be on my phone or laptop looking up airplanes. Whether it is looking at one of the tens of thousands of You Tube videos on each airline like this one,

(Tucker's favorite video on all of You Tube!)

searching Amazon for all the airline toys, going to Lego.com to see what Lego airplanes he is missing, or watching one of the documentaries on different airplanes/airports we have DVR'd there is always something he "needs to look up!" His interest lies in things like whether or not they own 747s or A380s (he loves double decker planes), how to draw their symbols perfectly, what cities they fly to/why they don't fly to Jacksonville, etc! He is forever asking me how to spell one of the commercial airlines to plug in to the search space of one of these technological options. Now he writes them down (picture below) so he doesn't have to ask again. Today he discovered a new airline - Qantas. He would tell you he already knew they existed, but he just started figuring out what kinds of planes they fly, where they fly, etc. If you ask him his favorite airline it usually changes based on what he has heard about one of them recently that struck his curiosity!

(Tucker writing down "Qantas Airline" so he won't have to ask how to spell it later.)

We pray he will be the king of research papers in high school with this sort of tenacity and thoroughness. However I fear he may be too one tracked to do anything HE isn't interested in. Presently at Lakewood Preschool they can't even get him to make a picture that doesn't have an airline on it. For example the assignment in which he was supposed to draw a scene from their upcoming circus.

(Sort of hard to see because he "had to use a big paint brush"- but this is a Delta plane flying over the circus tent.)

His quote after his play date with his buddy Will yesterday: "Well it's just my job to teach people things they don't know about." This was of course in regard to how little Will knew about airplanes.

His friends all love Star Wars. He will NOT be moved. Doesn't want to see it. Doesn't care that they tell him to stop talking about airplanes. He is not a follower on any level.

Every Thursday he has to bring a Sharing Bag for school with an item inside for the letter of the week. He has managed to incorporate airplanes 85% of the time. He always brings in one of his toys like Delta for D or Southwest for S, but he also does things like runway for R.

He makes no less than 3 drawings a day of different airliners. And he loves to send them in the mail as gifts. Over spring break he made several for his classmates and we sent them to their home address. Last week he did a Delta for Uncle Casey and a Concorde on it's last flight (complete with the Concorde AND the military planes that flew next to it) for Pop for their offices.

He is TOTALLY in to the Concorde. If you are like me, you do not know a lot about this super fast airline that went out of business post-911. I just asked Tucker what he would want you to know about Concorde (he is very excited I'm writing this post and is over my shoulder right now... I guess it's another way for him to teach the people! :)) Here are his Concorde fun facts he is listing off right now:
- "It looks like a bird when it is taking off and landing."
- "It fits 100 passengers."
- "It went out of business because of the Air France crash and it cost too much money to fly."
- "It is the fastest airline."
- "It flew over the Atlantic Ocean."

He asks us a million questions like "Is Lufthansa Air British or German?" We constantly say "I have no idea" to try to make him stop asking questions. The only thing that works is when I completely cut him off for the day and tell him we can't talk about airplanes until tomorrow. Sad, but necessary most days.

It amazes us how LONG this has gone on. Months and months and months. His car wash obsession was also 2+ years so we may have awhile.

Since I started this post he has whined no less than 12 times about watching an airline video.

I often am asked how he knows so much about airplanes and it is hard to even explain because it is so CRAZY. If you ever doubted us when we say he is "obsessed" this is your proof. And I just had to document this for posterity.

Discovery!

Tonight we found 129 pictures on my iPhoto that I did not know about... I've seen him trying to get Mac to do this with him from time to time, but I had NO idea there were 129 pictures on there. This is picture overload, but Kyle and I started flipping through the pictures and we were CRACKING UP! There were MANY more to choose from, but this is a sampling!

(note: Mac's new hair style...professionally cut by himself! On two separate occasions in the last week! Our first and second case of this. Tucker never tried it.)

Sad pose.

????

The shot series.... He is all about giving all of us many shots a day (IRONIC coming from the kid who plots the demise of the nurses giving him shots!) Thankfully Mac doesn't really mind shots.

The Check Up!

Charlie is SO lucky to have Drs. Mac & Tucker around to keep him well.

Thank you Great Grandma!

We received a FUN package of goodies from Great Grandma and Nan this week! Thank you!

Guess the baby.

Annual Rhodes Reunion Trip

Embarking on the always-way-longer-than-it-should-take drive to Hilton Head!

The middle boys - Theo, Mac & Bo

Water toys as swords

Dessert Time! Bo, Mac, Tucker, Miller & Livvy

Movie & Popcorn in Uncle Jim's bed...

dancing - - -

dancing

Movie on the Ipad date!

Seconds before Tucker fell on the toy to the right resulting in a bizarre passing out incident and emergency room trip. The Ryan brothers do love the out of town ER!

Final bedtime reading with Uncle Rob!

Many cute pictures to come that were not on my camera...

Mostly Charlie

He loves "tummy time" but just rolled over for the first time today and now he won't stay this way for more than a few seconds!

Sweet, sweet outfit from Mimi...

What you can find Tucker doing MOST waking hours... drawing airplanes, airports, maps, aircraft carriers and more airplanes (he knows what nearly every commercial airline looks like very specifically and includes the smallest details of the symbols, makes/models, etc.)