Atlanta!

Kyle had a work trip on Monday in Atlanta so we took the opportunity to make a quick trip to visit our friends. First we stopped at The Varsity!

The boys drove this car at Livvy's grandparent's house for literally HOURS on Saturday night.

...Every once in awhile William & Marjorie were allowed a turn.

The kids played some "Red Light - Green Light." It was pretty cute watching them organize this themselves and teach the little ones who didn't know how to play. The oldest participant was 6!

Sunday night William and Tucker were having such a blast together that we left Tucker their for his first slumber party. Girbs documented the evening by text... Tuck had a blast.

While they were partying at the Gituku's house, Mac was reading with Aunt Jess, Livvy and Anna Sims. He had a hard time going to bed without Tucker since they are so used to sharing a room.

T was thrilled Daddio's meeting was near the airport. He asked no less than a thousand times when we would get to go pick him up and see the planes. So we went early and went up on the roof of the parking garage and Tucker was in his heaven for an hour. Planes were taking off on both sides of our car every minute or two. He took MANY pictures on my phone!

Karate Demo Day!

Tuck (& other friends below) showing us their karate moves. This has been a highlight this year -- his preschool offers karate once a week after school.

In the red shirt above is his buddy Kelly. He and Tucker have shared an inside joke for an entire school year. It never gets old to them and it comes from Mrs. Bruno telling them to make their arms "look like a a chicken wing." Kelly's parents share our FATIGUE of this joke. Every time they see each other (often - they live around the corner from us) they yell "Hey Kelly! Looks like a chicken wing!" then crack up. It was funny to us at the beginning, but it has worn old :)
Great balance in this one!

Kathryn & T doing "push ups" :)

Somewhere we have cute pictures of Kathryn & Tucker with their trophies, but I don't know where they are right now.

4 month pictures -- Posting at 5 months!

Disney Trip

Daddio and Deena with all the children on the tea cups!

VERY rainy day in Disney! This was our first time taking the boys down to Orlando. We met the Little Fam down there (they came from Cincinnati!) Deena and I have been friends since we were in preschool so it was so neat to get our boys together.


Pics of the "condensed" parade from the iPhone! This was great because every character that wasn't riding on a caravan came up to the boys and talked to them. They loved all of it except when Captain Hook was on his way - Tucker was OUT OF THERE!

Out of the rain for lunch!

These might be the worst set of pictures from a day in Disney World ever, but there was no break in the heavy rain so getting the SLR out of the ziplock was just not an option! The highlight of the day was Tucker riding Thunder Mountain TWICE with Kyle. So brave! He wanted to ride Space Mountain, but we cut that off in order to not have major lasting trauma. I also loved taking the boys on It's A Small World as I remember loving it as a kid and they were just riding through with their jaws dropped open. So sweet! Despite the rain it really was a great day. The lines were not bad and we loved being with the Littles!

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.