Dear Brayden,

Today you are seven. What?? Seven. You’re entering those few strange years between young childhood and tween-land, where the baby teeth start falling out (notice I said the word start, since they still haven’t yet fallen out), where you come downstairs with your clothes already on for the day, and when your armpits will probably start smelling not too long from now. We are entering the phase in your life where your moldability is a little bit less, and where we have to trust that God will keep your heart.

In a year, you have learned how to read so well, it astonishes me. We went last year from a handful of sight words to blowing the sight word expectations of first grade out of the water. What a joy to listen to you read. You surprised your teacher when she tested you, and you surprise me still when you read some of the words that you do.

Sometimes you are super quiet. Other times, not so much. But you are never as loud as your brother, that’s for sure. You have a slow, laid back side. But you always need to be entertained or you act completely bored out of your mind. I know every year I write on your birthday post how you are terrible at playing by yourself. And every year, that fact remains true. You would much rather the company of somebody over nobody at all, and your preference for that somebody would by far be an adult who wanted to play with you. And you can never just play with a simple toy–you always want to be doing something elaborate–making this fancy craft, building something complicated out of legos, writing a book, making a movie, building a big elaborate fort.  Something that requires a lot of commitment, but mostly on the adult’s part, because you like to come up with the idea and then watch someone else do it. Perhaps this says something a bit of your future, and that necessarily isn’t a bad thing.

You just started playing baseball this year, and you love it. You told me you’d like to keep playing. You enjoy the camaraderie amongst your teammates. You smile that they goof around with you and that you are part of a team. You’re looking forward to soccer starting later this month as well, and as always, I am so proud to watch you play. Your heart though is in art. You just love anything that has to do with it, but mostly you like “projects”. You do love drawing for sure, but the thing that gets you most excited is an art project of any sort, and extra bonus points if there is an adult doing it with you. Your friend party this year was at Miss Peggy’s art studio, and you were most excited that you got to choose making wax hands as one of your projects. You’ve been talking about it for months.

You have a kind heart. You look out for your friends and stick up for them. You aren’t a tough guy and don’t like to be too rough. You don’t like getting hurt and you have a pretty low pain tolerance. That’s why you never wrestle with Carter, or with friends and we never have to worry about too much rough housing with you.  You are a super messy kid and you leave a disaster zone everywhere. Your clothes are a mess–if I send you up to change your shirt or into pajamas, I go up later into your room and it looks like a tornado went through. Stuff everywhere. The toy room is crazy messy constantly and you just are terrible at cleaning up. You get sidetracked, you get distracted (on purpose), you wander around not knowing what to pick up. Your attention span is still nearly zero.  And you hate when we are home for the day and have no plans on the calendar. You wander around aimlessly all day, asking a billion questions, half of them repeated questions and sometimes it drives us insane!

You love legos–more specifically lego sets. You love to follow the directions and put the set together step by step, and you are great at doing them. You love Star Wars. You love playing the Wii, Xbox, iPad and computer and anything else electronic for that matter. You’d rather be doing that than anything else. You ride your bike so well, and every once and awhile Daddy takes you out for a long ride–I think the last long one you guys went four miles. We give you a quarter for each mile you ride.  You still haven’t lost a tooth yet, but have a second tooth completely grown in behind your bottom baby tooth, so tomorrow you have to go get it pulled.  You’re a little nervous about that, but you are very excited to finally have a lost tooth. I think almost everyone in your class has lost a tooth, and most of the kids have all “first” teeth already long gone. In my opinion though? Keep those baby teeth as long as possible. .  they are so cute and little and I love them dearly.

You still love drawing pictures for people, and always want to bring them a picture with something they love. You were supposed to have a playdate a few weeks ago with a friend who plays on the Blue Jays for his baseball team. So you colored him a blue jays picture, complete with string so he could hang it over a doorknob. You color pictures for your coach, your teacher, any friends that you will be seeing. It’s your love language for sure, and it brings you great joy. Recently, you’ve been drawing pictures and then writing short little stories about them. Your spelling is a disaster, but I love reading them and seeing how your mind spells out words. It’s complete happiness watching your own child start writing on their own, even if 80% of the things are spelled wrong.

You are a follower, and an observer. But you like to do things your own way as well. You like making up your own rules to things. You can’t tie your shoes yet, but want to learn how to do it and always ask if we could practice at all the wrong times. Five minutes before leaving for church. Three minutes before we have to leave for baseball. You are getting pretty good at picking out your own clothes, and try to match colors. Today you picked out Carter’s outfit as well and did a fabulous job matching orange shorts to a t-shirt with some orange in it as well. You love basketball shirts with no sleeves. You love comfy shorts. You love to have no socks on. You still love taking baths.

Of course, you are still our best eater. The list of things you won’t eat is so small, we could count it on one hand. You love going to Wegmans when they have all the free samples–salmon burgers, special cheeses, scallops wrapped in bacon, greek yogurt with granola, smoothies, and anything else under the sun that they give you for free samples. It makes your whole day. This year, you did AWANA and learned so many great Bible verses. You memorized without complaining, and you ended up finishing a whole book, plus part way into the second one. We let you buy lunch a few times a month, and you love looking through the menu choosing the meals you will buy. We never let you buy on pizza or macaroni and cheese day, because I’d rather you have something fun, and you definitely pick the fun things–you love when they have shrimp poppers, or french toast sticks, baked chicken with garlic mashed potatoes and gravy. I love your joy for foods of all kinds, but your daddy and I are sure we’re going to have to teach you to be a smart eater as well and to learn to eat healthy stuff too. We know how much we love food and we don’t want to pass that on too much to you!!

You want to do everything under the sun–you bring home flyers all the time from school for this and that and ask to do all of them. Lacrosse, Football, Chess Club (which we did let you do), Summer Camps, Jazzercise, this and that and everything else. It’s a bit overwhelming, and usually the answer is no, but we try to pick and choose a few things that we know you will definitely like.

You are good in math and never have a hard time with your homework. Sometimes you get a little mixed up when you rush, but we’ve been so proud of you to come home with a bunch of math tests with big 100%s on them. The few times you’ve missed problems are always because you get a little sloppy and rush through things. Trust me, I know how that is . . . I used to be the same way. Your gym teacher says you have great potential and called you a little stud athlete, your music teacher things your instrument playing is great though apparently she thinks your singing could use a little work, and art by far is your favorite “special” of course, though we haven’t gotten any comments from your art teacher because she only gives you a grade at the end of the year. Your regular classroom teacher thinks you are a great kid, but of course, you need lots of reminders to stay on task, not talk so much, and to not approach her every two minutes with a story you want to tell her. I think you’ll struggle with that for a long time–you are so social and are just bubbling over with things to say to people.

You still would like a sister. You love spaghetti and meatballs, eggs and watermelon the best out of all foods. You love the color green. You are an early riser. You love singing and know the words to a ton of songs. You love your friends dearly and are very loyal. You are sensitive and sweet and get upset if something bothers you. You love attention. You love going to school. You love so many things and there are so many things we love about you. You’re great. . . we’re happy to have such a kind-hearted obedient kiddo.

Lots of love today, on your seventh birthday.

Love, Mom