Tucker - 21 months

Tucker,

I am a little late, but you turned 21 months in July! Over the past three months you have grown in your vocabulary and definitely grown in your independence and ornery-ness.


MOTOR SKILLS:
-You've gotten great at using utensils and drinking out of a regular cup!
-Talking....you still love to babbly non-stop. In the car we have even heard what sounds like a song you made up!
-Lemonade = "em-en AY" with an emphasis on the AY part :)
-Dinosaurs are a fun favorite for you and you can say "T-Rex", "Dactyl" for Pteradactyl, "Tops" for Triceratops
-My all time favorite word you say is "beep" for grape :)
-You get to start "school" next month! You will be going to MDO twice a week for the entire day! It's going to be a nice little break for us too


FOOD:
-We have such a hard time feeding you! If you could live off of donuts and cereal or anything else full of sugar, you would eat tons of food. I mean, you could eat SEVEN donuts!! We have started making sure you don't get "sweet snacks" unless you've eaten your meal, but sometimes Trenton feeds you his snack....

GROWING UP/BT LIFE:
-I am already thinking about how in the world we are going to raise you both to be good kids. Yes, you will do the normal stupid teenage boy stuff. And yes, I am dreading that too. But if we stay at Boys Town throughout your adolescent years, I'm sure you will become great friends with some of the boys in our home when you are the same age. I just hope and pray that we can figure out how to raise you to not think you are better than our Boys Town kids, but to not make the bad choices they made to get where they are. I have no idea how we will do that, but I pray it will come to us when we need it.  I don't want you to ever think you are better than anyone else and that you are more entitled or anything, but I want you to make good choices in life. I want you to be able to learn from those mistakes you do make.

-Some crazy things have happened recently in our house and I am just so thankful for you and Trenton. It has made me pray even more for your innocence and safety. To not go into too much detail, we have had some major drug problems in our house where numerous kids have taken or been suspected of taking prescription pain meds that are highly addictive. We even found them in our house. Along with that we even had a kid run away and overdose and was in the ICU for a few days. So extremely scary for all involved. And my heart breaks. The thing that scared me the most though, was the fact that these drugs were IN our house. What if someone had dropped a pill? What if you or Trenton picked it up and put it in your mouth? Just by sucking on a pill, it would've made you seriously ill or even killed you. You still put everything in your mouth and have no regard for that kind of safety! This terrified me. This is one of the toughest parts of our job. Having this fear that sometimes high schoolers are so selfish that that don't think of what effects their actions have on others, especially those that can't make the choices to do stupid things or not. My children are sometimes put at risk and it is terrifying. Luckily though, things have calmed down tremendously and my safety radar is back under control. Normally I am loving this job, even though there are tough days, but our week of these issues was draining! I still feel so blessed to be here though and seeing even small changes in these boys lives for the better. I still love that you and Tucker get to grow up with so many big brothers. Being here will teach you the skills needed to succeed in society as well. You will just get the opportunity to learn them a lot sooner than others!

PERSONALITY:
-You LOVE shoes. You and your brother are complete opposites. Trenton takes his shoes and socks off the second he comes inside. You on the other hand, you want your shoes on almost the second you wake up!
-It has come up over the past few weeks that you are quite the environmentalist! Every time you see trash on the ground, you must pick it up. Even while at the zoo, if there are leaves on the ground, you walk around saying "trash! trash! trash!" and try to pick up every. single. leaf.
-Your favorite movie is The Good Dinosaur and sometime you even answer to Arlo :)
-You are SO ornery! I though Trenton was bad, but no way! You are way worse. I love you with all my heart, but my goodness child. you are going to drive us nuts! Running around taking toys from your brother just because you know it'll make him cry, hitting him just because it'll make him cry, trying to hide things behind your back when you know you shouldn't have them...just to name a few things


LOOKS:
-Both you and Trenton have this little piece of hair that curls so perfectly over your right eye. That little piece of hair, plus your eyes, I assume will be getting you in some trouble when you are older!
-I absolutely love your hair. It is my texture, so really thin, but super curly. Your curls just bounce right back in place.
-Speaking of looks...you have so many! Your angry face, your muscle face, and very often, we will look over at us and you will be giving the dirtiest looks, then crack up. You are such a funny kid!!

VACATIONS:
-We got to take a big vacation this summer and we rented a car to drive down to North Carolina to stay with Aunt Brittany, Uncle Montez, and cousin Kennedy for a few days, then drove down further for a few days at Myrtle beach where we met up with Gig-Gi, Pimpa, and Aunt Amelia. Then again we drove down further to Atlanta to visit for a day before heading back home. It was a very busy vacation with way to much driving, but you boys did great! You had so much fun playing with Kennedy and spending time at the beach. You hate trying new things though, so the ocean wasn't your favorite thing to do. Luckily you enjoyed the sand since it was familiar since we have a sandbox playground.

-We also got to spend a few days in Lake Okoboji with our BT guys! Again you got some lake time in with boating and playing in the sand. It was another week of fun and trying to push you to try new things. I wanted to take you kayaking but you freaked out every time I tried. Even though you kept yelling "no! no! no!", I made you get on an inner tube with one of our BT guys and guess what?? You ended up falling asleep! Which actually was fantastic since the first day you refused to nap and were an absolute terror all day. So for the next couple days, our guys were enlisted to be the "baby whisperers" and take you for a nap on the tube! :)

-Right after we got back from Okoboji, Great Grandma, Great Grandpa, and Aunt Sherry came to visit for a few days from California! They spoiled you and loved on you for a few days and I have to admit, it was nice being able to have family to keep an eye on you two sometimes :) You had so much fun cuddling with everyone!


Next time I write, it will be your birthday!!! I cannot believe it. This year has gone by so fast and in a couple months we will have a two year old and a three year old!



I love you my sweet and silly goofball!


LoveAlways,

Mommy

 Cousin time!

 Riding Daddy's back is always fun

 Look at those three sweet babies

 First time at the beach! And of course you had to throw sand in your hair

 Auntie Brittany love!

 I love my handsome boys :)

 Saying bye to Gi-Gi and Pimpa

 I do A LOT of shopping as a Family Teacher. Sometimes it gets tiring....

 Catching Fish!

 You LOVE taking pictures. Which is fine for me!

 Daddy selfie time!

 Happy Father's Day Daddy!!

 Father's Day dinner time

 "Show me your ANGRY face Tucker!"

 You are kind of a weird kid. If Brother has his shirt off you LOVE it! You tackle him and won't get off. With a straight face too. It's hilarious and SO weird!

 Sometimes Brother hogs the TV and you want to watch The Good Dinosaur. So Mommy gets creative :)

 Sour Skittles. Need I say more? :)

 Lake Okoboji!!

 I can take pictures all day long with you, my child :) One of our many Okoboji selfies

 Great Grandma and Grandpa, and Aunt Sherry came to visit

 Love :)

 When you give a baby a pudding cup.....

You sat on the steps outside the house and said "Cheese!" so of course, we had to take a picture!

Trenton - 3.5 years July

My sweet, sweet Trenton,


I love you so much! You have grown up so much and have become such a little boy! You are incredibly ornery and obnoxious but oh so cute! And the things you say are hilarious. Over the past three months we have taken a break from "school" and just hung out in the summer. Which has been great but also we cannot wait for you to go back to school twice a week :)

For Mother's Day, you spent the entire day walking around saying, "Happy birthday, Mommy!!" And while we were grocery shopping, you picked up a wrapped box of chocolates really excitedly and exclaimed, "here Mommy! I got this for you!! Happy birthday!!". Then of course you were really sad when I told you I wasn't buying it. It was so sad....! But I really didn't want chocolate :) The big guys and Daddy were so sweet though. They bought me cake and flowers and chocolate :)

For Father's Day we took daddy out to dinner and let him relax as much as we could. That all he ever wants to do for Father's Day :) But we had fun taking our annual Father's Day photo and spending time with Daddy!

Speaking of happy birthdays, my birthday was in July and the first thing Daddy did was wish me a happy birthday and kiss me, and you started crying because it wasn't YOUR birthday. You were so mad that I wouldn't share with you. It was pretty funny for awhile, until you were super whiny and cranky the entire day. But it was still a good day! I even share my birthday with one of the BT kids in our home, along with Uncle Travis! :)

We got to take a big vacation this summer and we rented a car to drive down to North Carolina to stay with Aunt Brittany, Uncle Montez, and cousin Kennedy for a few days, then drove down further for a few days at Myrtle beach where we met up with Gig-Gi, Pimpa, and Aunt Amelia. Then again we drove down further to Atlanta to visit for a day before heading back home. It was a very busy vacation with way to much driving, but you boys did great! You had so much fun playing with Kennedy and spending time at the beach. The ocean was one of your favorite parts! You kept wanting to go further and further out into the waves. Swimming has really become one of your favorite things to do.

We also got to spend a few days in Lake Okoboji with our BT guys! Again you got some lake time in with boating and playing in the sand. It was another week of fun and excitement for you. Right after we got back from Okoboji, Great Grandma, Great Grandpa, and Aunt Sherry came to visit for afew days from California! They spoiled you and loved on you for a few days and I have to admit, it was nice being able to have family to keep an eye on you two sometimes :) Grandpa did a magic trick for you with a quarter and now everytime you want something, and we ask if you have any money, you always say, "Grandpa does!" So I guess now Grandpa has lots of money to spend on you :)

An exciting part about the past three months is your surgery! In May, you had a tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy. This was supposed to cure your PFAPA. In a good percentage of PFAPA patients who have a T&A, both fevers and other symptoms go away, in another good percentage of patients, the fevers go away, but the other symptoms still come on a cycle. Then in a smaller percentage, the surgery does nothing. I was hoping and praying you would at the very least be in one of the first two groups. Obviously I preferred the first one, but I would be okay with the second as well. We were just so tired of seeing you always sick and irritable and in pain. A three year old should be able to have a much fuller life and not be bogged down by a disease every 6 weeks. Well, about a month or so after your T&A, you unfortunately started getting your symptoms back. You were extremely irritable, hardly ate, complained of leg/bone pain, headaches, and belly aches. I didn't notice any mouth sores this time so that was good. But luckily there were not fevers!! Even though you still didn't feel the greatest, you were able to continue on with normal life! It was the best episode ever and I am okay with occasional feverless episodes as long as symptoms don't get any worse. If the episodes are still on a 6 week cycle, you will be due for another feverless episode within the next week or so. I really hope they are more sporadic still. We are just praising God that you have no more fevers and can live a better life :)

Something that is funny and drives me nuts about you is that you hate shoes. You and Tucker are polar opposites. You take off your shoes and socks the second you come in the door from outside and Tucker wants to put his shoes on the second he wakes up in the morning.

Something I think is adorable is you and Tucker both have a small section of hair above your right eye that curls and hangs down. It is just the cutest thing and I can see you both using that to your advantage when you are older.....

Your favorite movies are Jurassic Park (the new one) and you call it the "black dinosaur movie". Not to get confused with The Good Dinosaur (which is Tucker's favorite movie) which is called 'the green dinosaur movie". Your favorite shows to watch are Barbie, Hot Wheels, Legos, Masha and the Bear, and Space Racers. Gotta let you be who you want to be!

I love your vocabulary so much. Umbrellas are gorillas and seeds (like in fruit seeds) are called sea-wings. We have been trying to teach you your name, how old you are, where you live, and what your parents names are. I know you know all the answers, but when I ask you, your answers lately have been:
What's your name: Tucker Cole West
How old are you: 4
Where do you live: California

We actually found out today that you decided the Boys Town sign is California. So to you, we really do live in California! One of our BT kids has not had very many life experiences, so we were joking around today that he finally traveled to California! :)

Every morning when you get dressed, you always ask to wear a tank top, and you get mad when we run out (aka Mommy needs to do laundry). Especially if I am wearing a tank top and you aren't....oh boy, the world is over.

Lately you have been super obnoxious toward the BT guys, by throwing their point cards on the ground and laughing, or hiding them, or jumping on their backs. And throwing every couch cushion on the ground to make forts. Its an every day fight....the BT guys have started embracing it though and sometimes help you build forts to hide in :) You do love the guys so much though! There are so many great things that come with this job. You have learned some of the skills the guys are learning and fine-tuning. Sometimes you will teach to Tucker as well. If he isn't listening you will say, "Tucker, you are not following instructions. Say 'ok mommy!'" "good job Tucker!" or other things you have heard us say. It's so adorable, but sometimes I wish you would follow your own advice more often! The main behavior of yours we are working on is not grabbing toys from Tucker without asking and not crying over little things, but using your nice words to ask for something you want.

Some not so great things you are learning from the guys are the teenage slang words. You have said "yo" and "dang bro", "bro", "dawg". I've been trying to teach you that those are bad words :) And you will occasionally correct the guys and let them know those are bad words :) Of course they get super confused and we need to explain to them that those words aren't bad for teenagers to say, but they aren't appropriate for three year olds to say.

Some crazy things have happened recently in our house and I am just so thankful for you and Tucker. It has made me pray even more for your innocence and safety. To not go into too much detail, we have had some major drug problems in our house where numerous kids have taken or been suspected of taking prescription pain meds that are highly addictive. We even found them in our house. Along with that we even had a kid run away and overdose and was in the ICU for a few days. So extremely scary for all involved. And my heart breaks. The thing that scared me the most though, was the fact that these drugs were IN our house. What if someone had dropped a pill? What if you or Tucker picked it up and put it in your mouth? Just by sucking on a pill, it would've made you seriously ill or even killed you. You still put everything in your mouth and have no regard for that kind of safety! This terrified me. This is one of the toughest parts of our job. Having this fear that sometimes high schoolers are so selfish that that don't think of what effects their actions have on others, especially those that can't make the choices to do stupid things or not. My children are sometimes put at risk and it is terrifying. Luckily though, things have calmed down tremendously and my safety radar is back under control. Normally I am loving this job, even though there are tough days, but our week of these issues was draining! I still feel so blessed to be here though and seeing even small changes in these boys lives for the better. I still love that you and Tucker get to grow up with so many big brothers. Being here will teach you the skills needed to succeed in society as well. You will just get the opportunity to learn them a lot sooner than others!

One other change in your daily life that just happened the other day, is no more YouTube. You always sit on the phone and watch toy reviews and little kid songs, but yesterday I saw a video that a mom has posted about a cartoon video with the "daddy finger" song, which is one of your favorite songs. It started out as normal, with the song and characters dancing like Peppa Pig and other little kid characters. Then a few minutes in, it changes to fake Mickey Mouse characters, a family of them, shooting each other and themselves in the head with guns. My stomach just dropped and I felt so sick. I have no idea if some of the videos you have watched have these sickening subliminal messages in them! That breaks my heart to know that you could've been subjected to such horrific images and not even really understand what it was. It makes me sick that people are so dark that they do this kind of thing. So from now on, YouTube is "broken" and off of my phone. You can just play games.

Next month you get to start preschool though! You will be going to Mom's Day Out in the mornings twice a week and then preschool in the afternoons. I thought we were going to have to drop you from preschool since you have still refused to potty train. Granted, I haven't tried extremely hard, but you just keep saying, "I'm not bigger yet". I have even bribed you with things that are off limits until you are five, like gumballs and soda, just for you to be potty trained. It hasn't worked yet. But your teachers said as long as we are working on it and he is in pullups, they can help with that. So that was a huge relief! I am hoping once you see all your other friends, you will be encouraged as well.

Also here at Boys Town, we have made some new friends! There is a newer couple on campus that I've become really good friends with and they have two little girls, five and 1 1/2, We hang out a lot and their mommy and I have already planned arranged marriages :) It would be really funny if you or Tucker did end up even dating one of the Cummings girls! All four of you are great friends and play so well together :)

I am very excited for the next few months and seeing you at school like a big boy! I love being your mommy and watching you grow into this wonderful boy. We had to fill out a questionnaire for preschool today and it asked for words to describe you. We chose caring, funny, ornery, follower. You are the sweetest boy I know and you care so much for others. You are so affectionate toward Tucker especially. You are super funny and the things you say are crazy and make no sense but that's oaky. You are a goofball. You are extremely ornery and try to do things just because you think they are funny. You aren't really a leader, but love to follow what others do. I am hoping eventually you will grow into a leader so you don't follow the wrong people.

Keep loving people and being your crazy self, my child. You are an amazing human being.


I love you sweet boy.

Love,

Mommy

 My Mother's Day photo. Pretty much sums up our life. A happy, cuddly baby, and a threenager who is more intrigued by video games than his mother....

 But we did have a nice Mommy-sons date for Mother's Day with grocery shopping and going out for ice cream while Daddy took the big guys to a movie! I just love it when you have that wild afro going on :)

 But then you are starting to voice your opinion about your hair and seem to not like it in your face :( So I have to actually listen to your opinions (and Daddy's) and get you a hair cut.

 Removing couch cushions for the hundredth time is very tiring

 Cousin love! You adore Kennedy and she loves you so much, she followed you around like a shadow

 Holding hands and taking care of the littles with Aunt Brittany :)

 yehaw Daddy!

 Look at that sweet cousin love

 Impromptu family photos at Aunt Brittany and Uncle Montez' house (and their dog). A couple of cool dudes....

 Beach time!

 You loved the warm sand!

 Even though you weren't thrilled to take pictures, you still love your cousin, aunt and uncle :)

 We are such a cute little family! :)

 Saying "see you later" to Gig-Gi and Pimpa

 Fishing with Daddy is so fun!

 Our annual Father's Day photo! After about 50 shots of each pose, I finally did get some cute photos for Daddy

 Your brother is weird. He tackles you and puts a death grip around you every time he sees you without a shirt on. I guess he just loves that skin to skin contact?

 When you discover a love for fresh cherries, but are also a three year old boy....you make "blood" on your arms....

 One of these girls will be my future daughter in law :)

 Okoboji! You wanted the guys to bury you in the sand

 Great Grandpa!

 Great Grandma!

 Apparently this is the only picture I had with Aunt Sherry :(

 Rockin' the glasses

Happy Father's Day dinner with Daddy!

 Again, brothers are weird

 Sometimes, when three year olds find chocolate they aren't supposed to have, they hide between couches and smear gobs of chocolate all over furniture that isn't even ours because we are in a temporary house while ours is getting new plumbing.....sigh....

 I love all my boys

 Looking for bugs! Never thought I would be excited about bugs

 My heart melts every time I see you hold hands without prompting. You care so deeply for your baby brother and I couldn't have asked for a better relationship for you.

 Chewbacca!

 I wish we would've had your storm trooper mask with us