Happy 8th Birthday Jake

Yesterday Jake turned 8! On Saturday we had a party with his friends from school at the gymnastics center and yesterday we had a small little family party. Here are some pictures of the gymnastics center party:Jake's Grandma Lynn made him this awesome Pikachu cake for the family party:

Here's Grandpa Pete and the boys:Chloe loves the swing! Isn't this a cute litttle dress. I barely got her in it. She knows and loves the color blue so she was insisting that her dress be blue and the only one we have that's blue looked goofy on her, but I could not talk her out of it. As soon as Justin saw her he said, "Put on the pink one." Chloe said, "K." and marched right back to get the pink one. It was so funny. They definitely have that daddy-daughter bond. It is so sweet.

Chloe made Grandma Lynn's day by sitting on her lap while she ate her cake and ice cream:

Here's Jake with two of his cousins, Tony and Jaxon:Wyatt decided to pick Jake's nose to be funny. I caught the picture before I realized what he was doing and before Jake realized it. See that little glint in his eye.

Mother's Day Video Clip-O-Rama

Here are 4 great video clips from Mother's Day:

This is proof that Chloe can handle 2 brothers and 4 (and counting) boy cousins. She is a rough and tumble girl who loves to laugh.

Also hilarious is the part where Tony asks Wyatt if he knows how to tie and Wyatt says, "No, but Franklin does." To understand how funny this is you have to know the Franklin show. It always begins with the narrator saying that Franklin was growing up and could "count by twos and tie his shoes." I suppose this means I should get on that shoe tying thing.

*Don't forget to go to the bottom of the blog and pause the music and then click on the different windows to be able to play each of the clips

Click to play Make your own Smilebox

Baby Tyce Visits

One week ago today we had the pleasure of meeting The adorable Tyce. What a sweetie pie! The kids loved him. Wyatt was very excited that baby Tyce grabbed his finger. Chloe wanted to hold him so Justin helped her do that. The picture is pretty funny because Tyce looks like he;s almost as big as her. He was 11 pounds at four weeks! That's a few ounces bigger than the boys were at that age. I think he's going to be a big boy! We were making bets about how old Tyce will be when he's as big as Chloe. I bet that somewhere around 6-7 months Tyce will weigh as much as Chloe so we'll have to let her hold him as much as she can before then. Hehe.

The Cute Things Chloe Says

I just had to quickly jot down some of the funny things she's said lately.

A couple days ago Wyatt tried on Chloe's headband to be funny and she looked up at him and said, "Cute!"

Last night she was pointing to her tea party set and saying, "Dis... peas" meaning "This please." So I got it down and opened it up and she started prancing around chanting, "Party, party, party."

Later she got one of her babies down. She pulled off her clothes and peered into her diaper and said, "Nooooooo poopies."

Then, she was in the bathroom with me when I was getting out of the shower and she gave me the brush to brush my hair. After I brushed it she looked at me and said, "Pretty."

She is just talking up a storm and keeps us laughing!

Wonderful Wonderful Mothers' Day

I had the best day! Sorry for the delay... apparently I don't have time.

Mother's day started off in such a sweet way. Wyatt was up first so we played cards and then when Jake got up they gave me their presents which were so wonderful. I need to take pictures of those and post them. Then they sang songs for me and danced and just were the two sweetest little boys ever.

Then when the late sleepers woke up we headed for my Grandma's and enjoyed the day. Here are some pictures.

And how cute are Chloe and Joey or as Chloe refers to them, "Coco and Jojo."

Haircuts, Tonsils and Pictures

The big family news is that Jake just got his tonsils out on Monday and is doing well. There are no pictures of that. The only thing that could have made the whole thing less fun for Jake would have been me running aroung snapping pictures. He is eating again and watching lots of TV.

On Saturday all three kids got hair cuts. This was Chloe's first professional hair cut so I took a bunch of pictures. I didn't want the boys to feel left out, so I took pictures of them as well. The rest of the people were looking at me like I was some kind of nut. Who takes pictures of their school age kids getting haircuts? Chloe was a real trooper during the bang trimming and started to protest when she was trimming the rest of it. I wish I could have gotten a shot of the evil eye she was giving the hair dresser. It was so funny! Here are a few pics.

Jake Before:

Jake After:Wyatt Before:Chloe's First Haircut:Can you see that evil eye?:Chloe and I went to a lovely baby shower for my Cousin Matt and his wife Amy. Chloe got to play with her second, third or whatever number cousin, Carmen. Here's Chloe and I. She was still a little under the weather but has turned the corner and seems to be fully on the mend. She's sleeping well and making up for lost time with food.I took a bunch of pictures of Chloe trying to get a good one for her birthday invitation. The best ones were when Wyatt was making her laugh. Here are a few outakes.

Sick Baby

Chloe has been one sick puppy lately. She has an ear infection and is on her second antibiotic for it. She has had two viruses back to back complete with fevers, one was up to 103.3 under the arm. I thnk she's on the mend and will be going back to daycare today. Yesterday Grandma stayed with her and they had some god quality time together. She was so mad that I left that and kind of blamed Grandma. When my mom asked, "Can I sit my you?" Chloe said, "No." But, she warmed up and even snuggled with grandma a little when her ear was hurting.

These pictures are from one day last week when Chloe insisted on wearing Jake's raincoat. She was just feeling crummy and would cry if I took the coat off of her.

1st Post Placement, Busy Life and Funny Kids

Sorry it's been so long since the last update.
We're all doing fine here except for the colds that have been hanging around for over a week now. We had our first post placment meeting with the social worker. She watched Chloe and asked us lots of questions. She write a long report which will be sent to our agency, translated into Russian and snt to Russia. We do another one when Chloe's been home for 11 months, then another at 2 years and the final one when she's been home for 3 years. She'll be 4 1/2. It seems like that is a long way off, but I know it will be here before we know it.

We've been very busy getting the house ready to put on the market. I showed the kids the pictures of the house on the website that I put together and Wyatt said, "That doesn't look like our house." So, I went to the next page of pictures and he still insisted that it didn't look like our house. So, I finally asked what looks different. He waves his hand over the picture and says, "Look, it's all clean. That's not what it looks like." I had to laugh because he is exactly right.
Jake was asked recently how he know that God is a man. He quickly replied "God's a man's name." Hehe. You know, Doug, Bob, God... MAN names.
This is a perfect example of the boys loving Chloe. She's saying, "No, Wyatt, Jakey, NO." She likes them to play with he and be close by and they like to snuggle, touch and cuddle her like she's a puppy.

Hey, that's Coco's

Chloe is soooo ready to be 2. Her favorite word has been "mine" for quite a while. Now she's also quite fond of correcting you when you tell her something belongs to someone else. This makes us all laugh, especially the boys. She calls herself Coco which we also think is so cute. Here she is in action: (Don't forget to pause the music)

Make your own | Click to play

She also looooves to answer, "no." So, the boys use her as their own Magic 8 ball and they ask her things like, "Should I do my homework? or "Do I have to drink my milk?" because they know they will get an emphatic, "No>"

Where is Spring?

I'm so done with this weather! The past couple weeks have been as cold or colder here than in St. Petersburg, Russia! Here's a picture of the boys in the way into school on Thursday.

Here's Chloe saying, "cheeeeeese." Only 50 days until summer vacation!

Baby Tyce

Introducing....

Tyce Justin Michael Bucy

Born April 4, 2007

8lbs. 6oz. 20 in.

What a beautiful baby!

Happy Easter

Here we all are on our first Easter as a family of five.

We started the weekend by decorating eggs. It was just the kids and I since Justin was out of town for the day. Chloe decided that she should lob the hard boiled eggs across the table. This was very unlike her, but she was bound and determined that she should do it, so after 3 eggs she was done. Jake was very sad that three of his broke and he had little funerals for them. Wyatt just really, really liked the feel of them and has broken several since decorating them. I think next year we'll paint rocks. Haha.
On Saturday we visited with the the Phillips family and Chloe got to play with Justin's cousin's baby who is 8 months younger. Here they are in their first face to face meeting.
Justin's Grandpa Pete got to meet Chloe for the first time. Here's all three kids with their only living great grandpa. These 3 three lucky kids have 8 grandparents, 4 great grandmas and 1 great grandpa. Wow!
This morning they were very excited about their Easter baskets and enjoyed hunting for eggs.
Here's the best picture of Chloe's outfit. It was so much fun to get her all dressed up. The boys were very good sports about dressing up. It's not their favorite thing.
They were also very good in church this morning. Everytime the congregation is told to please stand, Chloe would say, "Kay." very loudly and hop to her feet, it was so funny.
We ended the day with a stop at Grandpa George and Grandma's house. This week was also a very big week for the Bucys. Jay and Erica had their baby on the 4th. I'll be posting all the info as soon as they email me a picture.

The other exciting news this week was that Jake ran into someone in gym and hit his nose very hard. I'm afraid he broke it. We are following up with the ENT next week and then we'll see what else we should do. Poor kid! As if he doesn't have enough sinus troubles.

Oh, just had to add in that the next 10 days in St. Petersburg, Russia are going to be warmer than here in Chicago. What is that about????