Birthday Boy

Tomorrow is Tucker's sixth birthday. I can hardly believe it! He's been so funny this evening that I had to jot down his last words of wisdom as a five year old.

First, he told us that he learned about Martin King Luther, Jr. at school today. It went something like this:

"We learned about Martin King Luther, Jr., no, wait, it was Martin Luther King, Jr. He tried to change the rules and some people didn't like it. One man who didn't like it shot him! Isn't that an ugly thing to do? The rules that Marting Luther King changed were rude laws. Did you know that white people had to go to one school and black and brown people had to go to another school? (he obviously cannot believe that anyone ever thought this was a good idea) And there were bad rules about buses, too. Black people had to sit at the back. Isn't that rude? When that man shot him, he died on December 5th. The same day as Shoeless Joe Jackson, I think. Can we look it up on the computer?"

We did look it up, and we learned that Shoeless Joe did, in fact, die on December 5, 1951. King, however, died on April 4, 1968. My little rainman had his dates mixed up. I'll not even mention the fact that he knows Shoeless Joe Jackson's date of death off the top of his head, and that is perhaps one of his more bizarre informational moments.

Then, we watched The Biggest Loser from Tuesday night. For some reason, Tucker has really gotten into it this season, and he watches and discusses it with us while Keaton makes transformer puppies/stores out of legos. (Yes, with the push of a button it can change from puppy to store. Keaton is quite the little architect. I think there were also little lego dog bones you could buy at the store, but I didn't quite get how that worked.)

On this episode, Jerry, a feeble, elderly man, had to go home. We knew it would be sad because we'd heard from several people who told us they cried like babies at the end. So in the sad moment, Tucker says, "Sometimes when I watch TV too much it makes my eyes water. That's what's happening now." It was so sweet. I remembered he really IS mine - overempathetic even at 5 years and 364 days old.

My baby will be six tomorrow. While it makes me tear up a little to think of him growing up, I sure do like the person he is. We're going to have so much fun with him for the rest of our lives. What a blessing.