ONE rad little boy

**I wrote this while we were driving home from Vegas on Sunday...I made my baby boy sit in a car seat for five hours on his birthday.  Poor fourth child.**

My sweet baby boy will officially be one today at 2:40 pm. I jut read over my post about his delivery. I could almost feel the contractions and the emotions of the days and weeks leading up to that miraculous moment of meeting my littlest man. Those last weeks of pregnancy were some of the most difficult weeks of my life (because of the incredibly miserable PUPPP rash). This morning as I held Tucker (who is usually very wiggly) in my arms, he was still and I whispered in his ear how grateful I am that he is in our family, how much I love him, how I felt the very moment he was born, and that I would go through the misery all over again because the joy and privilege of having him in our lives heavily outweighed the discomfort. After I was done talking he laid his little head on my shoulder with his arms draped over mine for a moment. I felt that his spirit understood. Man, I love this little fella!

Tuck gets all sorts of attention and he loves it - he's still Mr. Personality when I take him to the store and people love the smiles he readily dishes out. His brothers and sister often proclaim him to be "the CUTEST baby in the world" and are super cute with him. Kelly has been sad about him turning 1 because it means he's growing up. :) Such a mama.

Tucker is a delightful little man. He really goes with the flow. Our life (swim lessons, play group, school pick-up, etc) doesn't always lend to the two naps he'd like every day, but he remains his happy little self even though I know he'd rather be in bed.

I think he'll be a full-fledge walker in the next month or less, but for now he really likes cruising with our fingers. Something I don't want to forget: Tuck sits on my lap sometimes to watch the kids. Pretty soon, though, I feel his chubby hands slide down my arms until they find my hands. Then he will run his hands along mine until he finds my two index fingers. Next he'll slide his bottom off of my lap and fully expects that I will jump to my feet so we can cruise around the room. I love it. I want to remember every sensation of that - his tiny hands wrapped around my fingers, his little body sliding down my legs....and a few steps in, he leans his head way back so that he can look up at me and smile/laugh. I can't help myself when he does that and I have to lean down and kiss his face a bunch. It usually turns into a game. He'll take a few steps and throw his head back expectantly, waiting for the kisses he knows will come. I love it.

Two bummers for our little guy: eczema (horrible) and a clogged tear duct that doesn't seem to be working itself out. We'll see what happens with that, asking the doc at his checkup tomorrow.

We love Tuck's mimic laugh...every time someone laughs, he throws his head back and joins in.  Ty said something about his "imitation laugh" and Kelly now calls it his "invitation laugh".  No chance I'll correct her, but I'm sure Max will.

  

  

The faux-hawk.  I can't give it up.  It was a natural phenomenon with his newborn hair and I loved it so much that it's my hairstyle of choice for his big-boy hair now.

Brother is anxious to get going with the big kids! Since he started taking a bottle at about 9 months he generally wants to take it sitting up so that he can see all of the action (there always seems to be a lot of it at our house.) He wants to be wherever his brothers and sisters are, which resulted in him climbing the baby gate a few months ago! Say wha?! He'd put his toes into the tiny holes on the baby gate and get himself over. So the baby gate was gone early and I have had to let him venture on the stairs by himself a little earlier than I normally do with my babes. But he's a champ! He seems more sure of his body and abilities and so I stay close enough to keep an eye but far enough to let him do his thing and have some independence.

I feel so blessed to be a mom and privileged to have Tucker's particular spirit and personality in our home. Happy Birthday to our littlest man!

We partied hard!

Kelly had an adorable ballerina birthday party with adorable friends and a lot of pink.  We started out with the Ballerina Transformation Station - lip gloss, shimmery eye shadow, tutus, and a mirror to check themselves out.  Kelly decorated a ballerina for us to pin ballet slippers on.  We played musical ballerina {chairs} and there were some really sweet moves by our tiny dancers {it brings me happiness every time I picture it}.  We decorated ballet slipper sugar cookies for the girls to take home and share.  Kelly received some really sweet, perfect gifts.  It was a great afternoon!

The next day was the actual day of birth and it was just as fun because Kelly loves to celebrate and gets so into it.  She, of course, wore the beautiful dress to church that Kynnedy gave to her for her birthday the day before.  I went and grabbed her out of sharing time at the exact moment of her birth and told her that I held her for the first time at that exact moment 5 years ago.  It was a sweet little moment.  We hugged and I had tears in my eyes.  She smiled and then asked, "Can I go back in now?"  Sister LOVES singing time and they were singing a favorite of hers.  It made me chuckle and I let her go back in and headed back to my primary class {where one of the boys was climbing out the window :)}  We enjoyed giving Kelly her gifts.  

One gift in particular I was especially excited about!  Here's the evolution of it:

• In Decemeber, found a bag of kid kitchen dishes/pots and pans at Goodwill for $2 that I couldn't pass up.  Had in my mind that I might make Kelly a kitchen for her birthday.
• We got a new range hood for our kitchen and the box went in our garage.  Kelly walked past the box in the garage one day and I thought, "That's the perfect height!"  Upon closer examination, I realized that it was perfect in every way - really sturdy, perfect size, and FREE
• I was at JoAnn looking for material for curtains and while I was waiting at the cut counter, I was looking at some nearby shelves that had red tag clearance material that was an additional 50% off.  Among them?  Hot pink pleather!  I called Tyler to measure the box and got myself some hot pink pleather to cover the box for the kitchen for $4!
• I bought a small silver bowl at Goodwill for $2 to be the sink.
• Two nights before Kelly's birthday, I brought the stuff inside, intent on making it happen.  I rallied the hubs and we made a rock star kitchen out of stuff in our garage!  Sink PVC pipe for the faucet {spray painted metallic silver, which I had on hand}; a rack for our pizza stone that I've never used as the base for the stove top; the mesh grate from our old range hood - cut and molded to the top of the rack to be the stove top to set pots on; lids from spray paint cans {spray painted metallic silver} with a long screw through the middle as the stove knobs; an extra cupboard handle we had sitting around for the oven handle; a light switch for fun; some other little silver thing that looked like it should go on the kitchen so we made it into a decorative temp thing.  
• I also bought material and made her a little chef's hat and apron; material was $9
• TOTAL COST for the kitchen, plus apron and chef's hat - $17!  It won't last forever, but it will last a l o n g time.

Another gift we were really excited about was that we bought tickets to take Kelly to see the BYU Young Ambassadors.  We planned to take her to get her free birthday kid's meal at Red Robin beforehand and then go to the show.  Things got a little complicated when we found out Max had a school concert the same night.  We got the babysitter, got him to the school, watched him perform, and our dear friend brought him home for us {her son was performing too...plus she took them out to ice cream!}, we hurried to Red Robin where we had a really fun dinner with our Kelly girl.  I love one-on-one time.  Then we rushed to make it to the show on time.  We did, with just a minute to spare.  Kelly literally sat on the edge of her seat for the first 45 minutes.  She lOvEd it.  My favorite comments of the night were: "I just feel like going up there and hugging them!" and "Do you think they know that we're all watching them?"

We grabbed an ice cream cone to eat in the car on the way home {it was almost 10 p.m.} and Kelly thought it was the best night ever.  I just loved watching her soak in every minute of the evening.  She is a delight!  She finally let me take off the Happy Birthday chair cover the night of the date because that officially signified that it was over. :)