Tanner turned 8 years old on June 28, 2019.
It’s been an adventure to see this little guy turn 8 and become a big kid. This past year, Tanner experienced some important firsts! He enjoyed his first coach-pitch baseball team. He lost his first tooth! He went kayaking and snorkeling for the first time. He completed his first year of formal piano lessons. And of course, he went to first grade, and says it was his favorite year of school so far.
A big turning point for Tanner this year was going to Puerto Rico for 5 weeks. He learned some Spanish, made new friends, hiked the jungle, and played on dozens of beaches. The best part of the trip was that he learned how to relax and meditate, tackling lots of issues with his anxiety. He developed a lot of good habits that we’ve tried to build on since then.
He grew big enough to get a bigger bike, started doing more regular chores like being our trash can retriever and mail retriever, and he started taking care of his own laundry on a regular basis. Tanner improved his reading skills by big bounds, taught himself multiplication, learned lots of rules in basketball and how the game really works, and made more friends at school and in the neighborhood.
Tanner’s favorite food is pizza. He will eat most of what we feed to him if it isn’t too flavorful. He still has a hard time with ethnic foods, which is unfortunate because I love ethnic foods and cook them a lot. At least I can always count on him to eat breakfast. It is his favorite meal. He will inhale waffles, eggs, bacon, fruit, etc in the morning, and he gets better and better at making his own breakfast. Another important note about food for Tanner is that we have to be careful that he eats soon after waking up and has frequent snacks throughout the day to help avoid meltdowns. When he is too hungry, he gets too upset to eat.
Tanner’s favorite thing throughout the year was basketball. He loved studying his sports cards and making up basketball plays and teams for recess with his friends. Almost everyday, he had something to tell us about how basketball (or kickball or soccer) went during recess. He was so passionate about everything that happened in each game, and especially upset when kids didn’t follow the real rules to the game. After school, he shot hoops on Roger’s court behind our house every chance he could, either alone or with Dallin. When it was too cold, he shot hoops in the basement with the toddler hoop that he set up on a chair. We also took him to the church to shoot hoops in the winter. In PR, he shot hoops everywhere, too. Also throughout the year, he loved playing other sports like baseball and football, especially with Jeremy and Dallin on the lawn.
Other things Tanner does for fun is create and solve his own math problems, build his own creations with legos, improvise on the piano, play PBS kids games on the computer, read non-fiction books about science and the world, ride his bike, and boss his little brother around. He loved climbing on the climbing tree, swinging on a swing or laying in a hammock to calm down. Tanner is often the calmest when he is making something, like drawing a picture, writing a story or list, or building with something like legos. It is common to hear him singing or beat boxing around the house. He also likes to dance, especially making up his own break dancing moves.
One strength we saw a lot of this year is Tanner’s loyalty to his friends. He had a couple of classmates that he became really close with (and maybe even borderline obsessed with). They were always on his mind! He made little gifts and notes for them constantly. He told us stories about them everyday when he came home from school and always wanted to do stuff for them!
Tanner loves to be the leader. He pays attention to detail as he organizes games and rooms and supplies. He loves to overthink, which is sometimes nice, but often causes problems when other people have different ideas from him. In all reality, he approaches life in very similar ways to me! This is sometimes endearing and fun to see my “mini-me” doing exactly what I would do. And other times it is absolutely terrifying! The only thing worse than having an inner battle with yourself is having a battle with a little human that you created and is excatly like you, but isn’t you!
In May, when we were scrambling to move our family to San Diego, we realized that Tanner’s birthday would occur while we’d be unpacking boxes in our new home and traveling for weddings. Tanner was pretty devastated about it. The thing that bummed me out was that his baptism would not take place in Minnesota like I had fondly anticipated (he wouldn’t turn 8 until after we were gone).
We decided to throw a very early, very last-minute birthday party for Tanner. Very early because it occurred in May, exactly 7 weeks before his birthday. It was even before Dallin’s birthday, which was weird for all of us. But it was really important to Tanner for his dad to be at the party, so doing it early was the only time to squeeze it in before Jeremy began his new job. It was very last minute because when we figured out a time to hold the party, we had 4 days to plan and carry out the gig. Tanner wanted to invite friends that he hadn’t done much with recently or whom he had never had a playdate with. The little party was a big success!!
It was a basketball birthday, and Tanner chose all the activities for us to do. We began with a basketball craft that we found online, and it was a big hit: Mini basketball hoops.
The boys decorated their backboards that I pre-cut out of foam poster board. Then we hot-glued them to red drinking cups. With orange ping pongs, each boy had a complete mini basketball game to play with at the party and to take home! Super simple, inexpensive and fun!
Next, we ate dinner. We served Dominos pizza and a basketball veggie stadium! I used hummus, black beans and mini peparoni to make the dip into a basketball court. I bent the veggie trays into the shape of bleachers and piled them with various foods to look like crowded fans. Tanner and Dallin ate more veggies than anyone else, which I was proud of!
The boys talked about basketball and things they like about Tanner while we ate dinner. It was fun to see him play with his classmates in our home that I had heard so much about throughout the school year!
Pizza. Basketball, Birthday. Friends. Tanner was in heaven.
Some of his friends did a little dance for us! It was so adorable!!
Then we played basketball on the court that belongs to our backdoor neighbors, Roger and Sharon. We were so grateful to them for always letting the boys play there, especially during this party! We were also feeling blessed that the weather cooperated.
Jeremy was the coach. We had red and blue basketball “sweatbands” made out of bandanas for each player to wear so we could tell which team the kids were on. They played 3 on 3 for a little while and it was a pretty close game! Not gonna lie, Tanner was very emotionally invested in the game, which made things a little touch and go to begin with. Jeremy did an amazing job mitigating arguments and preventing meltdowns. Pretty soon, all the boys were fully engaged in playing. It was fun to see how athletic they all were!
Jeremy could see that everyone (except Tanner) was getting tired of playing 3 on 3. So he put together some other basketball games on the fly. He put the kids in a half circle and played fire round shots. Then they played a game of lightning.
Tanner could have played for another hour, but it was time to call everyone in for cake! I ordered a small ice cream cake from Dairy Queen just the day before, which felt so hasty to me. The store actually had a basketball cake topper! With purple and black frosting, it went perfectly with the cake sticks that I made. It was a very simple and succesful Sacramento Kings Basketball cake! Tanner LOVED it.
I love his surprised face!
Just like Dallin’s birthday this year, we did a “fiver” party. This is where everyone brings $5 in lieu of gifts, and the money goes towards one big gift for the birthday kid. Parent feedback was very positive because it relieved a lot of stress from families, esp since we could not give much notice for the parties. It was also awesome for us because we did not accumulate a lot of stuff while preparing to move and we were able to get something we knew Tanner would really enjoy. Tanner loved opening all the envelopes/cards. His friends wrote such nice things to him and drew funny pictures.
Then Tanner got to open up the gift that was from everyone. It was an engineering kit to make lots of different machines!! (Dallin helped wrap the gift and he used most of our tissue paper. 😂Naturally, they had to be thrown everywhere! Woohoo!!)
The kiddos played in the basement while they waited for parent pick up. This friend was a champ at the drums!
After all the excitement, I laid on the couch for a rest. You can see my reflection in the balloons.
We had to box up all the fun from the party with the rest of the things we were packing up to move. The next chance we had to think about Tanner turning 8 was in Colorado, a couple days before his actual birthday. We went out to eat pizza, sang to him and he opened some presents from Nana and Papa.
Then, his actual birthday occurred while we were in Sacramento–the day before the big wedding event. Grandma made a yummy breakfast for him!
That morning we had a fun playdate at the park. Tanner struggled to cope with the fact that he wasn’t having a birthday celebration on his actual birthday. (That kind of thinking/attitude is not something he learned from me! It makes me gag when people mope on their birthday). It was a rough morning. Later that day, he was able to cheer up when he went swimming with Jeremy and Dallin, and he had a really great time! He said, “This is the life!!!”😎
Then we went to the church to set up tables and chairs. We bought pizza for everyone so that Tanner could have his favorite meal and so that we could keep working as we ate.
One of our family traditions is to do a SERVICE project on our birthday. Coming up with a birthday service project this year was tricky for Tanner with the move and the traveling. He ended up helping keep the cousins entertained while the grown-ups worked on decorating for the reception. Tanner was a very good babysitter to Hazel, Lucy and Dorothy. He did such a great job that Aunt Melissa tipped him a couple of dollars! We were super proud of our little leader keeping things under control with the little kids for hours! We also got a cute picture of him with baby girl Garrett when her family arrived.
Grandma had a cake for Tanner that we sang and ate over while we were continued setting up for the reception. There were even some gifts for him to open up!! One of them was a special outing to see a pre-season Kings game with Grandpa Z. A few days later, they went to the game in style and had a blast!!
A big life lesson that I hope Tanner learned from all his birthday adventures is that often, things don’t go the way we hope or plan, and that’s okay. Often, it turns out even better! We had a lot of fun celebrating Tanner in three different states this year. He is such a blessing in our lives! The next thing he had to look forward to was his baptism in September, which I can’t wait to post about soon!!
