A Year in the Life of Mattson

 

I cannot believe it has been 5 years that this guy has been filling our family and home with so much life. Mattson, you are an answer to our prayers and your exuberance has been healing. This past year you have developed a compassionate side that is very endearing. I love how you love your little brother, pray over your sister (with eyes cast toward heaven) and adore your mother. I'll admit I'm more than a sucker for lines like "You're the most beautiful girl I've ever met." It seems that you got more than just your looks from Daddy.

So, after 5 years of perpetual motion here's to all the laughter, learning, imagining and loving that comes from being your mother.

Mattson's 5th Birthday

We had a quiet birthday celebration, filled with all things adored by Mattson. Start the day with pancakes and special syrup, add purple army cupcakes into school, receive enough sniper gear for a platoon, scooter around the block (2,3,4 times) throw in a little swimming and top it all off with a Nerf war.
It doesn't get much better than that.

Nothing is good...

Not much to report here. We finally got hit with all the sickness I thought we'd missed this winter and it has slowed us down considerably. Matts just broke his 2 week fever on Monday. That's right, 2 weeks, otherwise known as 14 days, which is apparently really not good. He actually never seemed that sick (he was napping almost daily, not eating alot and then would spike a fever between 101 and 104 every night) but otherwise seemed "fine". So I was a little surprised when we were sent to the hospital for tests. As in do not pass go, do not collect a McDonald's shake, go to the Children's Hospital and get a chest x-ray and bloodwork done. I'll leave it to your imagination how exciting it was to restrain Matts with the help of 3 other nurses while they drew blood. Happily, nothing came back positive and with his fever breaking it has hopefully all passed.
So, in light of my sickies, we've been doing a whole lot of nothing.

(Yes, in the blogging world, even nothing is document)

Although he's wearing a diaper in this picture (he just woke up from a nap) I'm happy to report that Gray is now fully potty-trained. Reed broke the accidents by offering a donut every time Gray went successfully in the toilet. Of course, this worked like a charm for our little sweet-monger
***This may also explain why Matts now likes Gray so much, he's gotten a ton of donuts this week***
The good news is that this has given Mattson plenty of new material to work with. Just this morning Matts told Reed and I a 15 minute story about how he had performed brain surgery on a fellow navy guy. The guy had a problem in his brain where the part that was supposed to control his walking was mixed up with the part that controlled the breathing and so he had to perform surgery and take out the bad part through a needle. But, don't worry Matts had 3 nurses to hold the guy down while he performed the surgery which hurt almost as much as having your blood taken.
Where does he get this stuff?

We're buddies

These two guys have become quite the buddies. Matts has developed a sweet, caring side that I have to admit I doubted would develop in this Millenium. He has become quite attentive to Gigi; taking him to the bathroom, giving him cuddles, telling him "it's alright, Mattson's here", reading books to him, and declaring "you're so precious".

In return Gray has turned into a parrot who follows Matts around all day and asks for "My Mattson" whenever he's out of sight.

The infamous Thomas

My "baby" brother Thomas is turning 16 on March 25. On Thursday our awesome neighbors, Jordan and Kelly, called and offered Reed 2 tickets to the ACC tournament on Saturday. Seeing that both North Carolina and Duke would probably be playing I called my mom on a whim and offered the ticket to Thomas. Next thing I know my little brother is flying in to watch the games and before you know it he was gone

(had to get back to his busy life :).

The boys were beyond thrilled and I don't think they left him alone for more than 2 minutes at a time. It was a great weekend filled with basketball, wrestling, stupid movies and did I mention basketball?

Is it Thomas, is it Tyler, I can't tell!

(except for the attire :)

Ready to cheer for the blue devils

Ready...Swish



"Mom, you had 4 boys this weekend, wasn't it AWESOME?"

Yes, yes it was

We love you Tommy boy, thanks for your 48 hour visit.

Proof

Reed wanted to make sure I posted evidence of Grayson's skills.

Note the hands:

Left hand guide, Right hand follow thru
Swish

And the bruiser

Answers to prayers

LEGOS

An answer to every frazzled mother and bored 5 year old boy.

A bucket of legos = unlimited possibilities SNOW

Much needed moisture and endless entertainment and excitement for our two little southern boys what could be better? Well, when nursery gets rough (we're talking table climbing, children wailing, block whacking rough) there's nothing like a good snow storm to end church early.

BROTHERS

There's hope our boys may not actually kill eachother before the age of 12. I walked downstairs to see this:(
But I heard this: Gigi, I'm your big brother and I'll always take care of you (I guess it was a "nice" headlock :)

POTTY-TRAINING: Somewhere in the craziness of the past month this litte man potty-trained himself.

Seriously, what did I possibly do to deserve this?

BASKETBALL

Although we always knew Matts would probably play downlow Reed is thrilled to discover that not only does Gray LOVE basketball, he also has "skills".