"It's really cool to ride with a baby on the back of your bike"

Gracie has now almost figured out how to peddle her new bike Santa brought her for Christmas.  

This video was taken shortly after Christmas.

Tucker and Gracie figured this out all by themselves.

I found it hilarious the first time I walked into the kitchen to find them doing this lol!

My favorite part is when Tucker explains that if you don't have a trailer you just put your baby in the back of the bike lol!!!

Baby Jesus, Baby Jesus...

I'm a little (or a lot) late in posting this, but this is the song that Tucker and his friends at church performed for all the Mommies and Daddies at Christmas time.

Some things I love about the video

*  Tucker had practiced the song and motions so much that Gracie soon started doing the motions every time Tucker sang the song. (Okay, I guess that's not actually in the video...)

*  Tucker's best-friend cousin, Tatum, came to church that morning just to see Tucker sing and she ended up in the performance!

*All the kids were just so darn cute!

*  Tucker trades spots with Eli to be next to Tatum.  He LOVED that Tatum got to sing too!

*  Holli did not think there was ANY way Tatum would get up there and do the song.  Christ Community Church is SO inviting that even a little stage fright from a 3 year old is no match for our hospitality :)!

*I love that one of the children shouted, "Hi Mommy!" I wish I knew which one it was!

*  Tucker did a GREAT job with the motions and the words of the song.

*I love that Aiden and Harrison played with a little car during the performance lol!

*  At the end of the performance, Wes zooms in on Tucker and you can see his face light up when he catches Memaw in the crowd.  Read his lips, "Memaw!"

*  When the kids are done singing, Tucker turns and waits for Tatum, and motions her to "come on".  They truly LOVE each other.

Christmas 2012 - Sweet Memories, Part 2

On Christmas morning, Tucker woke up at 6:30 am.  Typically, he wakes, pees in the potty, then comes into our room to wake us up.  On this morning, he woke us by yelling "Mommy!" from his room.  I went in thinking I would cuddle up with him for a little bit and maybe get a few more minutes of sleep before starting the day.  When I went in his room, he was all snuggled up with his silky.  I crawled into bed with him, wrapped him in my arms and pulled him close.

It was then that he said, in a very sad voice but very matter-a-fact, "Santa didn't come."

"What do you mean he didn't come?"

"There's no presents under the tree..."

Realizing he had already been up and must have looked under the tree in the living room not the one in the basement, "Oh.  Well, did you check the tree in the basement?"

Suddenly remembering that we did in fact have another (and even bigger) Christmas tree, "No! Do you think Santa put presents under that tree?!"

"Well, lets go get Daddy and Gracie up and check!"

I felt so bad that he thought Santa hadn't come to his house!  Thankfully, the disappointment was very short lived when he realized there were a handful of presents under the tree in the basement for both him and Gracie.

Gracie loved her bike and boots!

And Minnie Mouse purse....

 complete with sunglasses fit for a Diva, lipstick, and her very own iPhone!

 Tucker got what he asked for: a blue pulling truck, complete with a caution sign, orange construction cones, and work zone signs.  He's very serious about his construction sites!

 Then he got a few surprises, including a real guitar and a keyboard complete with a head set..

Watch out Justin Bieber!  Tucker Keene is in the building (and he's got way better hair!).

 And I don't think I have to tell you who really enjoys Tucker's super hero cape and mask....

Tucker was also very excited about the UK hat and North Face jacket he picked out for Daddy.

(And he was so excited about the new running shoes and bright colored socks that he had picked out for Mommy that I actually opened those the day he and Daddy went shopping because he came in the door after getting home almost screaming with excitement about what he had gotten me lol!)

I realized after looking back that I didn't take as many pictures Christmas morning as usual, but I had decided to take more video than pictures.  I don't pull out the video camera near as often as I should so I'm trying to make a conscience effort to do so more often.  Christmas morning is a perfect video moment :).

Definitely some sweet, sweet memories with my beautiful family!

Heavenly Father,

Thank you so much for the birth of your son, Jesus Christ. 

For sending HIM to show us your unconditional, unending love for us.

Thank you for your grace, your undeserving grace. 

Thank you for the many blessings you have so graciously given me.

Thank you for my selfless, loving husband and my healthy, perfect children. 

For the small moments you use to show me you love me and care about me, more than I could ever imagine.

I pray that I never take those small moments for granted. 

That I slow down, live in the moment-always, and enjoy every bit of this life you have given me.

I pray that in those small moments, I am always reminded of your love for me.  

For the GIFT you have freely given me, and all of us.  

I pray that I am obedient to the plan you have for me. 

I love you.

In the name of your precious son, Jesus,

Amen.

Monster's Inc. 3-D

On New Year's Day, Wes and I took Tucker and Gracie to see Monster's Inc. in 3-D.  

It was actually my first 3-D movie!  So cool!  The movie was pretty cute too.  Thankfully, Tucker's not worried about monsters in his closet yet or it might have been a huge mistake lol!  

I'll let these pics tell ya if the kiddos had a good time....

15 Months

Yep, on Christmas you turned 15 months.

Unbelievable!

This month has been so fun!  Fun because you are SO full of personality.  

Yeah, I'm sure I said that before, but that little personality of yours keeps getting bigger and bigger.  

Actually, it's not very little at all; it's quite LARGE lol! :)   

Yep, that's the gorgeous smile we see a lot of around these parts.  And your super large personality can most definitely back up those pearly whites.  You've got to be the happiest and sweetest 15 month old on the planet.  Well, unless of course you don't get your way, but that's short lived and you're a go-with-the-flow kinda girl so those moments are few and far between (for now...).

At 15 months,

1. You walk and run on your toes.  Your tippy toes.  You've pretty much perfected the technique.  Aunt Holli used to be the same way so you must get this from her...

2.  You LOVE to sit on the potty.  You're somewhat obsessed.  You will just sit there for as long as we let you.  Taking little pieces of toilet paper and dropping them in the potty.  Every once in a while you'll look behind you to see if you've "done anything" lol!

3.  You've peed in the potty a handful of times, mostly because you've happened to be sitting on it :).  But there have also been times where you've come pulling at your diaper, then run to the bathroom, and sure enough, once I take your diaper off, you sit on the potty and pee!  I really think I'm still in denial because there can just be no way my 15 month old is ready to potty train.... right?!

4.  You LOVE music.  Any kind of music.  You LOVE it.  You dance when you hear any kind of beat.  Your signature move is to bend at the knees and bounce a little.  You make it look pretty good :).

5.  You also LOVE to sing.  Anytime you hear Tucker sing, you start to sing.  Just so happens Santa got you a Minnie Mouse Microphone in your stocking ;).

Yea, you're somewhat in love with it...

6.  I'm always surprised at how much you observe around you and how much you mimic and the things you totally understand.  You see Tucker doing motions to a song and the next time I'm singing that same song, you're doing the motions! That's just one example, there are millions.  You're very intuitive and very, very smart :).

7.  You cut your bottom molars this month.  Yay!

8.  You went to your first parade, the Shelbyville Christmas Parade.  You're favorite part were the suckers that got thrown your way.  You were like, "Wait a second!  There's suckers at this thing?!  Forget the blaring sirens from the firetrucks, give me a sucker!" 

You and your friends at the parade ;)

Ella Kate, Colson, Gracie, & Warren

9.  You're finally getting some hair!  One morning while Tucker was eating breakfast he all of a sudden said, "Mommy!!!  Gracie has hair!"  While I completely feel that you are so gorgeous that you don't even need hair, it was funny that Tucker all of a sudden realized you had some lol! According to Memaw, your hair is coming in at the same exact rate that Mommy's did when I was little.  So, you're bound to have tons of it someday soon...  The jury's still out as to whether you'll have your brother's luscious curls, but you do have a few coming in in the back, so we shall see :). 

10.  You are the best little mommy ever.  You feed your babies their bottles, give them their pacis, rock them, wrap them up in their blankets, push them in the baby stroller.  You take such great care of them..... for about 5 minutes that is, then you're totally over it and moving on to the next fun thing :).

11.  You LOVE to show off your belly.  You are quite proud of yourself as you walk around with your shirt up, belly out :).

12.  You can still be a handful.  A handful.  Seriously, we cannot take our eyes off you for two seconds.  You climb things like you're a little monkey.  Get into things and make a mess like you're a Tasmanian devil.  A handful! 

I literally only turned my back on you for 30 seconds and....

13.  You play with the Baby Jesus in the Little People Nativity set, rocking him in your arms and shushing him, kissing him and saying, "bae bae."  The rest of the characters, you just toss them on the floor (or across the room lol!).

14.  You LOVE to look for Ducky our elf on the shelf every morning, and blow her kisses when you find her.

15.  You are an accessory queen.  Hair bows, shoes, bracelets, purses, tutus.....  You love it all, and you also insist on seeing yourself dolled up in the mirror ;).  Oh goodness, we might be in trouble one day.... 

All Princesses In Training brush their teeth with a hair bow and a purse over their arm, right?

I just can not believe how big my Lil Mama is getting....  I snuggle you at night before I lay you in your crib and I just embed your sweet, chubby cheek into mine and I remind myself to slow down and just remember EVERYTHING about you.  Every perfect thing.  I try to not blink, not for one mili-second. I ask you for a kiss and you happily oblige.  I ask you for a hug and you drop your forehead to mine.  I'll confess, I have a very hard time putting you in that crib most nights.  I could hold you snuggled up forever ;).
Mommy loves every little perfect thing about you, Gracie Girl!
Love,
Mommy :)

38 Months

I was folding some of the kids' clothes the other day and as I pulled a pair of Tucker's pants out of the laundry basket, I was brought to a quick halt.  I just could not believe those pants were his.  They were so.....BIG!  Seriously, how could they possibly be the right size?!  How could my boy possibly be THAT big?!  Granted, he pretty much skipped right over a size 3T and just about completely fills the length of 4T's now, but those just could NOT be his! 

38 months.

He is 38 months.

  38 months!?!

Yes, 38 months.  And at a little over 3 years, Tucker, you:

1.  are so inquisitive.  You ask questions about EVERYTHING.  All day long.  You have recently started to ask how to spell everything.  Something your Daddy really enjoys.  I think he has a secret desire to win a spelling bee or something, so you're just fulfilling one of his dreams in life, Tucker. 

2.  you know how to spell your own name.

3.  you  helped Tatum move into her new house.

4.  you are mesmerized by skeletons.

5.  you make up songs.  All.The.Time.  I hear, "Mommy! I have a new song.  Want to hear it?!" a million times a day.  Most recently you have songs made up to the tune of Jingle Bells.

6.  you sing Christmas songs a lot.  Jingle Bells, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, to name a few.

7.  you like to push Gracie in her baby dolls'  stroller and pretend that you are her babysitter.  (Mommy *might* take advantage of that on occasion.)

8.  you love when Gracie gets up from her naps.  You run in her room and are SO excited to tell her how much you love her!  I tell you that you love her to pieces because sometimes you literally do.  You squeeze and love on her almost too much.  Today when I got her out of her crib and started nursing her, you bent down by her foot.  I accused you of wiping your nose on the arm of the chair (don't scoff! That's not above you to do!), but you informed me that you were just kissing Gracie's foot lol!  You love her to pieces.  And trust me, she loves you right back ;)!

See, to pieces!  Poor Gracie...

 There, that's better ;)

And, of course, there's lots of this at our house

 
9.  you want an orange tow truck from Santa.  (Thankfully, you changed this before you saw Santa at which time you asked for a blue pulling truck.  That was much easier for "Santa" to find.)

10.  Orange is still your favorite color.

11.  as are those dang orange basketball shorts.

12.  between those shorts and your jammies, I'm very lucky to get any other clothes on you.  You are not picky about anything that you wear, except when it comes to your jammies!  (In the pic above, you have on your absolute favorite jammie shirt.  I have a zillion pics of you in that very get-up because you wear that shirt and those shorts all.the.time!)

13.  you want me to sing "Jesus Loves the Little Children" as your night night song.  However, I have to add "orange" in.  So, we sing, "Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red and yellow, black orange white, they are precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world!"

14.  you like to "read" the newspaper.  Your favorite section is the ads for the cars and trucks.

15.  yep, still obsessed with trucks.  Here are a few of your favorites.  This is a very typical scene around these parts - your trucks parked waiting for the next "parade" to start....

16.  you have started calling me "Mama" more often than "Mommy".

17.  you LOVE Starbucks.  You get the child's hot chocolate.  You never finish it.  I think you just feel big having "coffee" like Mommy and Daddy.

18.  When you see a McDonald's you declare that you are VERY hungry for "Old McDonald's apples."

19.  We have recently started having to pretend that you are at work and we visit your office (your bedroom).

20.  You have also recently been pretending to be the FedEx delivery guy and have played with the *orange* box that our Christmas cards from Shutterfly came in for weeks.  Daddy and I have gotten all sorts of things "delivered" to us in that box.

21.  I asked you what you want to be when you grew up and you answered, "A Daddy."

22.  Of course I thought that was SO sweet.  Then when I asked you why you wanted to be a Daddy, you said, "Because then I can put people in time out."  I PROMISE you, your Daddy does a lot more than put people in TO :).

23.  Your favorite job at school is to be the electrician.  I haven't checked with Miss Jennifer, but from our conversations, I'm pretty sure it's about the only job you agree to do....

24.  You love your truck ornament.

25.  You make up nick names for Gracie all the time.  A couple days ago you said, "Mommy I have a new name for Gracie!  Avocado!  She's my little avocado!"  Then you preceded to call her your Little Avocado all day.  It was really sweet!  Others aren't quite as sweet lol!

26.  You remember lines from movies.  You totally get that from your Daddy.  You and Daddy will go back and forth repeating line after line from a movie.  Recently, I've been hearing Rudolph a lot from y'all.

27.  You know your fruits and vegetables.  The other day you told me that apples are fruits.  I agreed that an apple is a fruit.  Then you said, "Well, I know how apples can turn into vegetables."  I responded with, "No, apples cannot turn into vegetables because they grow on trees so they are fruit."  You said, "Yes, Mommy, they can.  When they fall off the tree they are on the ground then they grow from the ground so they turn into vegetables."  How do you argue with that?  I just responded, "Apples are fruits and if you say they are vegetables then you will not get the answer right.  However, I appreciate your creativity."  Lol!

28.  You are very complimentary.  You are always saying that you like my shirt or hair or something and I hear you complementing your friends and others on their clothes or shoes or toys.  You are just so sweet :).

29.  You always call for Daddy if you wake up in the middle of the night.  Mommy LOVES this :).

LOVE my boys ;)

30.  Talking to you or telling you to do something can be like talking to a wall sometimes.  We are working on first time listening....  Some days are better than others in this department.
31.  In conjuncture with Time Out, we have started putting trucks in Toy Time Out for you not obeying or talking back (telling us 'No').  You do not like this at all.

32.  You HATE to have your hair washed.  Every night at bath time you ask if you have to have your hair washed.  You HATE it.

33.  You tell me you love me a gazillion times a day.  It never gets old.  Ever.

34.  You have become really interested in having your room clean.  This really works to our benefit, but I just find it so funny :).  The other day I was helping you to put your toys in your room away and apparently I put your big fire truck in the wrong place because you came in from putting something away in the living room and said, "Mommy!  I 'telled' you 20 times!  My fire truck does not go HERE, it goes HERE."  Well, Tucker, okay then.

35.  When I ask you if you want Mommy to have another baby you say no but we need another kid like you.  In other words, you want Mommy to have a 3 year old.

36.  You really enjoy going to Aunt Jenni Pooh's basketball games.  We go a lot :).

Of course, you end up doing a lot of this at the games:

Playing trucks with Xavien and Eli!

37.  You are starting to ask to have friends over from school.  Friends whose parents I do not know.  One of those parents sent home a note from school with you last week that she would like to set up a play date with us so I guess those kids are asking to play with you as well.

38.  You get up in the night to pee in the potty, something you've done for a bit now, but recently to also wipe your nose if you sneeze, then go back to bed.  Sometimes we don't even know you've been up except that the bathroom light is on when we get up in the morning.  This just makes you seem like five.  So big....  (tear!).

Anytime now, Tucker, you can stop growing.  Just for a little bit.  I mean I know that you have to grow up one day....  Just don't do it today, or tomorrow, or next week, or...well, anytime soon.  Not too fast.  Not on this Mama who is just trying to stop time and hold on to what little wee bit of my little boy I have left....

38 Months....Wow!  Definitely the best 38 months of Daddy and I's life ;).

Last night, as I nursed Gracie before bed, she stopped nursing, looked at me, signed and said, "Hot!", blew on me a few times, then continued nursing.

I guess she thought her milk was a little too warm for her liking!

This girl is starting to crack me up as much as her big brother does!

Love her!!!