Tuck...

Oh, this boy! I swear he's grown a foot in the past month. He is all of the sudden turning into a BIG big boy! Where has the time gone????? We are at a difficult stage him and I. I love him dearly, and know that he loves me, but man, he can be a PILL! If he is nothing else, he is persistent and intense. It is all or nothing with him, and when he wants something it's, 'mom...mom...mom...mom...mom...' over and over again. Luckily he is not malicious or mean in any way (except to his little sister sometimes) but he pesters and whines with the best of them! I have to remind myself over and over again that he is only 7. I have to be the one who teaches him patience humility and meekness. We are still working on those! :) But I do love him fiercely! When he's not pestering his sister or begging me to have a friend over or play some sort of electronic devise, he is sweet and helpful. On that day I was testing out my new phone camera, I asked him if I could take a picture, and he wanted to pose with the Play Station Controller, of all things; I don't think he realized he grabbed Taylor's pink one! :)

The boy is intense and has a lot of energy. Always bouncing off the walls. Basketball was so good for him to get some of that Wintertime Indoor energy out. We were all starting to go stir crazy up here but is has finally just started warming up! Hallelujah!

I made a deal with him that I would take him out to get ice cream for every game that he made a basket in. I think that there was only one game during the season that we didn't get ice-cream after! :) Way to go, Tuck! (as I made the deal with him, he, of course, had to add, that if he made 1-5 baskets he got ice cream, 5-10 baskets, ice cream with a friend, 10-15 baskets, a friend over for the rest of the day 15-20 baskets, some extra time on the Play Station, etc...I finally had to stop him and burst his little bubble that it was highly unlikely that he would make more than 4-5 baskets per game. But that is my Tucker, always pushing the line, always taking things a step further, and thinking he can do it all!!!) :) I do love his enthusiasm for life and excitement for things that he loves.

Another one of his passions is his friends. I always thought I was social, I'm nothing compared to this kid. I can't tell you how many times a day I get asked if Owen can come over. Owen is his very best friend. They have been friends since they were about 6 months old. They have the cutest little friendship and both just love each other, and Owen just happens to be the sweetest most kind and obedient kid I've ever known. Score one for us for Tucker having such a great friend! :)

One night I was bathing the kids, and Tucker was waiting to get in, and he started doing all these poses for me, just laughing and laughing at himself. He posed like this and said, Mom, take a picture of this. I asked him what he was doing, and he said he was doing his 'cool' pose. He then told me to send it to Carson's mom. Carson is his best friend in his class at school. It is so funny to me that these children these days are growing up in a world, where they know nothing else but this fast, instant gratification digital world. I mean, he knew that I could instantly send it to Carson's mom via any number of devices and services. I chose Facebook.

And sure enough, a few minutes later, we got this response from Carson's mom, saying 'Right back at ya!' (with the cool pose) :) These boys are so cute, and I just love their little friendship. I know that Tucker can be a pill and pester and think that he is so funny and want to over run conversations, but these buddy's of his just love him and are the sweetest little guys. I'm so glad he has such good friends who are such good boys!

One funny/embarassing story recently about Tucker is a few weeks ago when I got a phone call from his Primary teacher. She is a sweet old lady, and while I know he likes her, after talking to her, I just don't think that she gets this 'young generation' if you know what I mean. She called me because she was concerned that Tucker had answered a question in class a few weeks about about his family. She was teaching them about families and to reiterate the lesson, she went around the class asking them if they knew that their families loved them. Well, when she got to Tucker, he said, No. No, my family doesn't love me. I tried to tell her that he was probably joking and being silly to make the class laugh, and that we've never had a problem with him and this, and we love him and he knows that. But she was concerned because it didn't seem like he was joking. The little stinker! I was so mad at him and I was so embarrassed!!!! I told her I would talk to him, and I did. He said he was joking, and I had to tell him that his primary class isn't a place to joke about something like that because his teacher thought he was serious! Now, I can appreciate that she had a concern and called me about it, she told me that if one of her children were struggling and their teacher noticed, she would have wanted them to call her, and she has a daughter that is inactive now, and ' I wish I would have known something was wrong when she was younger...' Anyway, I was a bit embarrassed, but did have to take into consideration that she was just a sweet little old thing, and probably doesn't get a lot that goes on in the class!!! That Tucker will be the death of me, mark my words!!! :) It's a good thing he's so cute!

Some of the kids missed the official picture day for the basketball league, so I snapped a quick picture on the last practice, so we could print one out and sign it for the coach as an end of season gift. This is how it turned out, with the awesome Sunrise Elementary blue walls:

Not bad, you say for 7 crazy 7 year old's. Well...the above photo is after I had to remove and exchange some heads. Many heads. I don't think that there was one good usable shot out of the bunch. Thank goodness for photoshop!!!

This is what most of them looked like:

Notice who's child seems to be the ring leader of the mischievousness:

But...on his last game of the season, his two best friends came to watch him, and he was the happiest boy in the world! Owen came with us, but Carson showed up with his mom. I thought it was the nicest thing ever because I know that I have a hard enough time keeping my own family's activities straight, let alone making the time to go to friend's events. But they came, and stayed for the whole thing. Both friends came over after to play and because Tucker made a few baskets, we went and got some FroYo.

Oh man, I'm in love with these boys. Ben always tells me to stop being creepy when I tell them how much I love them!!! :) I hope that they are BFF's!

Oh, and do you know who else came to his basketball game, his teacher, Mrs. Larsen! She is the best! We just had Tucker's parent/teacher conference, and she raved about how smart he is. How she sends the students to him sometimes, if they are on the computers, to help them with their work if they need it, because he is so good with computers. And that he is reading at a 5th grade level, and she was just amazed at content wise he just gets things. Which I totally understand, I'm amazed too, sometimes!  He definitely is a smart cookie. (those would be the Pyper genes, by the way!!!) :) But also how social he is and how much he talks. She said that she just can't get mad at him, because he is so sweet just wanting to tell her stories all the time about what is going on in his life, but she can't talk to him the whole time during class. She said that he started this thing a few weeks ago talking about 'Bob' everything was about Bob, stories he would write, he would jokingly call people in the class that, and now everyone in the class is doing it. She said she gets homework assignments back with sentences and stories about 'Bob' and it was just this thing Tucker started to be silly, and now it's like their class joke! We told her that it was OK to be a bit more strict and mean with him. He has had to go out in the hall a few times to finish his work because he just talks during work time. And that is totally how I was at  that age, my mom told me that my Kindergarten teacher told her that she wanted to duct tape me to my chair because would just always get up and wander around the class taking to my friends. And we all know how his father is, so basically Tucker had no hope in this department!!! :)  But it is something we have definitely been trying to help him control and work on while he is at school. But she just loves him and I'm so glad that he has a teacher who loves him and understands him. And he has so many friends at school, I'm so happy that this has been such a great year for him and such a good experience. I just hope it continues and we can work on his listening and focusing skills!

He is so fun to chat with and be silly with and wrestle with. I just love my big boy. I have to pray every day to love him, but I do love love love him!!! :) Some day's it just comes easier than others! :)