Lets train

Did I ever show you Cecelia's light up princess dress on the old blog? It's seriously amazing.



(Henry loves it, too)


The pouty princess.


My mom made Cecelia this dress for Christmas after seeing something similar on Pinterest, and Cecelia's baby doll has a matching frock minus the electricity. There is a battery pack under Cecelia's skirt and it's seriously the most beautiful princess dress on our most beautiful girl. Biased times two, yes.

Mom has made a dress like this a few times since Christmas, for friends who loved it as much as we do. One dress takes mom ten hours to make but I still think she could totally sell these on Etsy and make a fair amount because they are so unique. She's not totally sure she *wants* to make these over and over again but she's considering it. But Cecelia is one lucky granddaughter to have such a talented seamstress grandma, right?

Tonight I was starting the bedtime routine with Porter when Cecelia randomly requested to wear her light up dress. We were about 10 minutes away from laying Porter down and moving on to the bigger kids' bedtime, but how could I deny little lady a bit of electricity and tulle? I love how she is rough and tough and a total tomboy but she can rock a princess dress with freshly washed curls and an innocent smile like none other, too.



Ah, this child and this dress are both entirely too much. (Too much fun, too much sass, too much sparkle).

He liked his new Vikings shirt more than he is showing. :)


The little girls stayed with their Uncle Bear.


I met up for coffee with one of my favorite people ever - cousin Molly!

Just a quick update on my biggest boy, since Cecelia already got a post and Porter has one coming.

Truman is getting so stinking big, it's just ridiculous. He and Tony went and got hair cuts together this week during Truman's spring break. I about died when I saw how GROWN it makes him. Literally ten years old to me all of a sudden.


We've never done the spikey-with-hair-product thing for him but I think this haircut makes it a necessity!


Also, I think Truman looks more like me at age five...
(this picture was obviously taken more than 7 years ago)


But then I compare these two pictures at Lois's house and hmmmmmmm. Okay, maybe he looks a lot like both of his parents.


One day a few weeks ago, I had a cancellation and got off work a few hours early. I came home, Tony left, and Truman and I got to spent a solid two hours together. Alone. No siblings. Just us two. And it was glorious.

We worked on his April 'family' homework together and he was so proud of his kite.


Then he wanted to send a thank you note to Memaw, because she sent the kids the book 'Mr. Messy' in the mail. She read the book 'Mr. Silly' to Truman's entire class at school when she was visiting for T's birthday. The teacher invited Memaw and also Tony to come in and read to the class, and Memaw's pick of Mr. Silly was a hit. Mostly because of the word 'nincompoop' in the book----a bunch of four and five year olds were rolling on the ground at that one, of course!

So not only did he decide to write Memaw a thank you note for the new 'Mr.' book, but he sounded out all of his words by himself, wrote them out the way he hears them, and then my heart exploded. This is something they are doing in school---stretching out their sounds and we aren't supposed to worry that nothing is spelled correctly at all.

You can kind of read, 'Thank U Memaw For (my) Book.' The 'KM' is a little perplexing, but I think the K was because he wanted to re-write the K in 'Thank' and the 'M' must be 'My'. So proud of my Truman for learning to sound out his own words!



And like I said in my DiTL post, he can read, too! This is seriously so mind blowing to me. One day when we were driving by a road sign he hadn't seen before, Truman said, 'Hey! That sign said ''zoo'' on it.' And it did! What a fun milestone.


Another picture he drew that I adored: 'This is me skiing'. Not the magic carpet and the STEEP hill. LOL. He did ask me to tell him which letters to use here, as you can see.


Something else adorable? Truman said he found the bath letter 'J' laying on the floor one day. So he put the 'J' on my bedside table, grabbed an 'N' for Nate's table, but a '5' on his bed and a '2' on Cecelia's. Then he put a 'P' in Porter's room. Such a thoughtful guy and really into his letters (and our family).


Truman is starting to love drawing, painting, and crafting when he was not at all into these activities prior to school. I'm hoping he continues to love all sorts of crafts.


Do you remember these awesome water paint pages?


Two of my favorite crafts he made at school for their 'spring party.' LOL.


Oh, and Truman went to his first Brewers game with Nate this week! It was a group of four dads from the neighborhood and their oldest kids at the game. I made Truman nap this day so he could stay up late for the game and he had a BALL (no pun intended) with his daddy. I know they didn't watch a lot of the actual game, but at least they had fun and got to experience the ballpark. Truman informed me after that 'At the Bucks game, I did this game when I ran so fast, it was about 18 miles an hour.' Which of course, it was the *Brewers* game (baseball, not basketball, dear) and he did some sort of *throwing* game when he pitched the ball at 18 mph. Close enough!!

The dudes.


And the siblings weren't too torn up about being forced to stay home with mom. Which was probably because I took them to get frozen yogurt right when the guys left, and right before bedtime. I call this picture: Four baseball hats on the most adorable people I know;)


And finally, these two boys of mine are too much. When I see how much Truman genuinely loves his baby brother, I can't help but picture them in another ten years. I hope they continue to love each other and I believe Truman will always be a fantastic big brother. He and CC have their own sweet/intense relationship, but I adore watching the brothers together, too.


Truman told me the other day, 'I really miss Porter when he is at Lori's. I just love him so much, he is so small. The smaller he gets, the more I love him.' I told him that Porter is not getting any smaller, and he corrected himself to say, 'The *bigger* he gets the more I love my brother.' Gah.




Nate and I say this to each other often: "Truman is just such a good kid." And he really is! Love this first born, sensitive, sweet boy so much.