A tribute to Deeda!!!!

Tuckerman has "mastered" the song, "Nighty, night Mr. Sun" and I captured his debut on film at lunchtime today while Brooklie was sleeping!!

He'll be performing this hit along with "Rain, rain go away" and "The itsy bitsy spider" down at Penobscot over the 4th of July!

Cool dude on a pink bike...

My little biker dude!  So we've been hitting the trikes pretty hard for awhile now and Tucky's been riding up and down the road.  We normally push a stick behind him but we decided to make him pedal on his own a little.  After a few tries he was able to pedal quite well, especially after Jay had him chase Casco...yeah I've been trying to get him to leave Casco alone!  haha

Anyway, with all this potty training going on, I decided to take Tucky with me yesterday to Freeport for a special Mommy/Tuck morning.  We went to LLBean's and tried on some shoes and I bought him a pair of Keen's!  He loves them and it was so funny because he was jumping all over the store!

Then I brought him to the bike/boat/ski store to look at big boy bikes!  He has 2 trikes that we've acquired so we're going to sell one and instead I bought him a balance bike.  Basically it is a bicycle without training wheels and there are no pedals.  He sits on the seat and has to balance himself while using his feet to propel himself forward.  Apparently it helps teach them balance and many kids skip right to riding bikes without training wheels really easily!  People might laugh at Tucky's pink bike, but it's all they had and he loves it!  Plus, Brooklyn's going to get a chance to ride just like big brother in a couple years.  She enjoys watching and laughing at him now!!!  haha

So he's been using his bike now for two days and is really starting to get the hang out it.  He spent a good hour and a half out riding this morning and another 45 minutes this afternoon!  He's even starting to pick up his feet and glide more!  As soon as he found out that there was a little slope in our driveway, he rode there a few times and was balancing so well!  And all this was while using

Potty training in progress....

Tuck's ready we think!  He's been using the potty on and off since February, when he turned 2, but nothing consistently.  We decided on Thursday to give it a shot and take off the diapers.  He is psyched to run around naked or in "big boy undies!"




It's been hot the last couple days and we have been spending all day outside!  Jay hooked up the sunscreen on the deck so we have a ton of shaded areas to hang out now.  It's such a great deck and now that I don't have to worry about the kids being in full sun, we can spend a lot more time out there.  We also played in the sandbox a bit, Tuck loving his digger of course.  Brooklyn's so easy, she's happy wherever she is as long as she's with people.



So Tuck and I started a new potty chart on Thursday and so far for the last three days, he's received 5 stickers each day!  He's not totally coming forward  and letting us know when he has to go but I've got the potty in the living room and having him sit on it a lot.  He's really open to trying to "pee on grass, Mommy", so we're spending a lot of time outside.

Yesterday, Tuck and I went to Walmart and he picked out a package of big boy undies with "Thomas choo-choo" on them!  He was so excited!  We're going to go with the big boy's don't wear diapers thing because Tucky says he wants to be a big boy.

I'm sure this will be a long work in progress but if we can nail the daytime thing, naps and night will take some time.  He still wakes up soaked in the morning and wet after naps.  Oh well, he's still pretty young.  Wish us luck...

As the pictures show, our deck has turned into an amusement park in itself, we're lucky it's so big.  I like it be I can contain Tuck and Casco, we can bring his toys out on it and now it's shaded!  I can see us spending all summer out here.  We decided to try the pool out here so we can sit with Brooklyn and let Tuck splash around.  She took a quick dip yesterday as well and loved it of course, until Tuck jumped around.

Luckily I can lock the screen because I've really been working on water safety with Tucky and I want him to respect the water.  We'll dump the water out each day or so anyway because I really don't want it around with them playing out here so much.

We're on a fun playground hunt this summer too!  This playground is at the Windham town hall and Tuck's a good age for it now.  Plus, it's only a couple minutes from the house.  I've heard of a few up in Raymond so we'll be checking those out soon.

Our first StoryLand Trip!

What an adventure!!!  A day and a half of non-stop fun, lots of rides, not a whole lot of sleep and lots of smiles!  Oh and we learned that Tuck wants the "roller coaster more fast, Mommy!"

Tuesday, around nap time, we packed up and headed north to North Conway, NH to meet Meacy, Dave and the kids at StoryLand.  If you show up and buy a ticket after 3pm, it's good for a full day sometime during the year.  We showed up around 2:30pm, after good naps, and got ready to enter the park.  We tried to explain where we were going to Tucky but I don't know how much he understood until we arrived and he caught a glimpse of the log flume (bamboo chutes) ride!  His eyes were so wide and he was smiling!  We got to spend about 2 hours in the park and we took a few rides, played in the tree house and of course, we had to catch a ride on the infamous train.  We also got a quick ride on the roller coaster.  I wasn't sure how Tuck would like it but he said, "more again."  We've got a little adrenaline junkie on our hands already.

At five we headed to our hotel so the kids could swim and we could get some dinner.  We decided against the restaurant thing, with four tired kids and all, and Uncle Dave was nice enough to run out and get pizzas.  We took the kids swimming at the pool, well at the waterslide park.  What a little kids dream, big kid too for that matter.  The kiddie pool had two waterslides, bubblers, a raining thing and more!  It was shallow enough for the kids to play safely and the waterslide was awesome.  After one trip down with Jay, Tuck said, "Tuck, by himself."  We'd catch him at the bottom and the smile was huge stretching across his face!

We stayed in the pool for a good 45 minutes and even Brooklyn was loving it.  She loves bubbly water and watching all the other kids play!  She'll be a step behind Tuck before too long I'm sure.  Jay took Tuck up the big waterslide, although I don't think they were supposed to, and he loved that too!  What a super cool hotel, very kid friendly and we all had a blast.  The kids were spent after that and had been playing hard all day!

After our dinner party back in our adjoining rooms, a few stories were read and the kids all got to bed around 9pm.  Brooklyn crashed before that but she was a champ too!

Brooklie and I got up around 6am and headed down to the breakfast area so we didn't wake Tuck and Daddy.  I had a great cup of coffee and we just hung out.  She woke a few times to nurse last night since we shared a bed so I knew she wasn't super hungry right away.  Meacy and the kids showed up after a little while for breakfast and we hung out with them.  We mashed up a banana for Brooklie because she was trying to eat all our food and she devoured it.  She wants big people food for sure!

At 8ish, we walked back to the room and I started knocking on the door...it took about 3 minutes before Jay opened the door, they were still sleeping.  Well Tucky heard us come in and jumped up and said, "play time?"  Yes, it was playtime.  Jay got him some breakfast while he played with Evelyn and Spencer.  Shortly after we put on bathing suits and headed back down to the pool while Brooklie took a nap.  They picked right up where they left off last night and were flying down the waterslides and playing bubbles.  I was tired just trying to keep up with them!

After swimming, we packed up and drove over to StoryLand to go for it again.  I had borrowed a double stroller from a friend and we had it packed!  I decided to bring Brooklyn car seat so she could nap better and be shaded from the sun.  There was a gentle rain in the morning so people were slow coming up like us making for no lines!  We hit the antique cars, then the bamboo shoots log flume and got about five rides straight.  Tuck was loving it!  Brave little bugger.  Then we ran over to ride the circular rapid ride and Dave, Jay, Evelyn and Tuck went.  Meacy and Spencer hit the roller coaster I think, and Brooklyn and I took pics.

We had a nice lunch in between rides and that is where Tuck found the mini geisers!  We let him go for it and took of his shirt, socks and shoes.  The kids was soaked and spent a good hour chasing water spouts.  Evelyn and Spencer joined in as well and they were having so much fun.  I fed and changed Brooklyn and just hung out in the shade while they played.  After about 45 minutes I walked over and changed Tucky because his lips were turning purple, although he didn't want to stop.

We hit the rollercoaster again, the flying shoes, then walked up the hill to the flying fish and farm tractors.  It was pretty warm out so I had to really shade Brooklyn but she did so well.  She didn't fuss or cry, she hung out and watched the action and took a few naps.  We were starting to fade and finally at 4:45pm, we took the train all the way back to the entrance and all met up again.  We saw Mother Goose and Cinderella.... yeah gotta spend some more time with Nursery Rhymes with Tucky... we've been read Truckery Rhymes a lot but that doesn't help the traditional stories...haha

The kids were so spent but I thought if we let Tuck have a short swim and fed him, he fall asleep in the car and we could just transport him to his bed, same for Brooklyn.  This was great in theory but he started to get a little naughty as we were eating dinner and we needed to get on the road.  The timing should have worked great for Brooklyn too but she was a little over tired and screamed...  Tuck fell asleep after about 1o minutes and I had to pull over and rock Brooklyn a few times!  So not totally according to plan, but we did get them in to bed no problem when we got home.

What a fun few days!!!  We had such a great time with Meacy, Dave and the kids and might have just started an annual trip!