The Ides of March

Tucker has learned the "magic word", please. Except he yells it! He says "open da door!" and if you say no, he says "open da door! peez!" He is not polite about it at all, but he is so darn cute that he still gets what he wants, almost every time. We don't tell him "say please" because he copies anything we say. We say "ask nicely" and then he says "nicey". So we reward him with whatever he asked for once he finally says please. He is so funny about so many things, tonight after work, I told him I was going to cook some chicken. So he held my hand, took me to the stove, and told me "turn it on." He meant the fan over the stove, it helps with the smoke when I cook;) Then I went to get a measuring cup for the cooking oil, and he pushed me back by the stove "mommy cook!" Chris came in laughing so hard, I swear the two of them are always a team against me. I haven't written in a while, so I'm not sure if I've already mentioned this. Tucker loves me to sing to him and rock, he always has. But his new song is "go to school" which is a song that I make up as I go along. It always starts with "Tucker likes to go to school, he likes to ride the school bus" and then it goes off into odd assortments of listing activities, Tucker's classmates, things Tucker does daily.....Chris gets great amusement from listening to my school bus songs. If I get off track and sing something un-school-like for long enough, Tucker puts me back on track by saying "go to school", "ride da bus", or "Miss Amy" (his teacher). Tucker is still doing really well with his speech, but he is still not responding to conversations. His bossiness now extends to 5 and 6 word sentences;) It's funny, because when he knocks on a door, we say "who is it?" he repeats "who is it" We are trying to get him to say "Tucker" and to answer "Tucker" when asked his own name, and to answer "4" when asked how old he is. Last year, we got him to answer "3 years old" right before he turned four, so maybe we should start on 5 right now. Chris and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary last Friday. I came home from work to grilled fish and stuffed crab, as well as a huge bouquet of flowers:) This was a surprise, and Tucker was at my mom's house. I had went on an overnight trip for work, so I missed Tucker too much, and I decided to go get him! So that surprise got cut short. The next night we went on our planned outing to a nice restaurant. The food was amazing, we had reservations, and people kept coming up to us "Happy Anniversary, Mr. and Mrs. Townsend." They brought us a cake with a candle, and we weren't sure what to wish for. It was really a great night:) Tucker spent the night at Sissy and Pops house with his cousin Brycen, and they had a lot of fun. She is so sweet with him, so I'm sure she did whatever he asked, which is of course his idea of fun:) On Sunday we went to Paw Paw Ed's; Maw Maw wasn't home, and Tucker went around looking for her. Tucker was so excited to see Molli and Addi, and we spent over an hour swinging outside listening to Addi's IPod. Hearing Molli sing some Justin Beiber songs just made my day! She turns 4 tomorrow, so crazy to think that she's that old. Tucker was so completely content and at peace swinging outside with his cousins, I wasn't sure I'd seen him that happy in a while. Then that evening, we went to see Chris's family at his parents' house. Andrew and Chris were throwing the football around outside, and Tucker ran in between them, not caring if they ever threw the ball to him. He ran circles around them, and followed the ball, then when they gave him his turn, he would slam it onto the ground and crack up. Then he would laugh his big belly laugh, he is so incredibly happy to play with his Daddy and uncles:) So I would say Tucker had a great weekend, and so did we. He saw the eye doctor a few weeks ago (Chris braved that appointment alone), and the doctor said he is the same as before-he has weak eyes, so the squinting and the nystagmus are just when he gets tired, nothing we can do about that. His vision is fine, so no glasses. He has a feeding clinic appointment next Tuesday, due to illnesses on Tucker's part and the doctor's side, that appointment has been delayed two months! So I am wondering what the doctor will think, as his feeding progress is good, but not great. Yesterday his teacher sent a note home that "Tucker was putting food in his nose." Well.....that's disgusting, but it's close to his mouth, right? ;) I hope he wasn't putting it in his nose and then licking it.....hopefully it was the other way around. He also has a neurology appointment coming up, which is "always" fun....maybe that's why I forgot to reschedule it and we haven't been in over a year. Parent/Teacher conference day is Friday, so Chris and I will meet with Mrs. Amy to discuss Tucker's progress. While he has made great progress this year, we never leave these meetings feeling good about ourselves. Maybe this will be different, but I am not holding out for that. Thanks for checking in on us.