Dear Brayden,

Today you are eight. Eight is a big deal. You aren’t a little kid anymore. Not a teenager for a long while (thank goodness). When we have get togethers with friends who have younger kids, I’m not sure you know what to do. Too old for the kids, too young for the adults. Eight sounds crazy. I’m not even sure I feel old enough to have an eight year old son.

This year you have grown in so many ways. Your reading has flourished, and now you read chapter books. Sometimes the words you are able to read surprises me. How do you know these things? Math is a little “so so” and you have struggles with remembering some facts and math rules sometimes, but you’re chugging along just fine.

Your love for sports has grown so much this year. Basketball is your favorite, we’ve learned. It was your first year playing in a rec league, and you became a whole new person out on the basketball court. You were a leader of sorts and I’m curious to see if that little love for basketball spark will grow. Sometimes though, you like to make up your own moves instead of trying to learn the right way to do things. Instead of practicing layups, you always wanted to do reverse layups. Instead of practicing jump shots you like to practice trick shots. Your soccer skills are improving as well, though you claim you don’t really like it much. But baseball is in between the two of those, and I think you’re going to stick with that one. The level above t-ball is a little slow, but I know each year that you play, it will get more and more exciting for you and we are so happy that you love to be involved in athletics.

You still love art, of course. Drawing, coloring, writing stories. Very short stories that sometimes don’t make it past the first page. Because of course, your attention span is as it’s always been. Short. You change your mind about doing something sometimes before you even start doing it. And once you do start doing something, it’s not long before you move on. We’ve learned that’s what to expect, but it does get a little bit tough sometimes.

You have only lost four teeth, and two of them had to be pulled right after your birthday last year. We don’t know too many other kids who didn’t lose any teeth until they were seven, but I was okay with that. I love baby teeth. There aren’t any other loose ones at the moment. Apparently you are a late tooth bloomer.

Your love for food is ever growing. And the list of things you won’t eat is still relatively small. Peppers, onions, tomatoes, kiwi. Not much else. You could eat as much as a teenage boy I think, if we’d let you. But we don’t 🙂 You are a mother’s dream because you never complain about what’s put on the dinner table, we never have to worry about what we might be able to find you when we go out to eat, and packing your lunch for school is a breeze since you like such wide variety of things. You love “fancy” food that makes you feel like a grown up, and you love kid food too. Let’s hope some of that rubs off on both of your other brothers.

Some of your favorite things to play with are legos, and building lego sets. Pokemon card and trading them. Jumping on the trampoline as long as there is someone else jumping with you. Listening to your Adventures in Odyssey stories that we have put on an old iPod. Making up “dude perfect” plays. Any electronic device—video games, taking pictures with an old camera, playing games on the computer. Having play dates (which don’t get to happen very often these days!).

Recently you’ve been totally in Harry Potter. We have listened to a few books on CD while driving here and there and you are really getting into it. I think it will be a few more years before we let you listen to the other half of the series though as it starts to get a little bit scary. You love talking about Quidditch and the main characters and I think it’s fun to see you get excited about the story. It’s magical and whimsical and it’s good for the imagination. You aren’t confused about whether or not anything in real life can happen like it does in the books.

You are still so easy going and go with the flow. You don’t complain very much about things. You love wearing sporty clothes and tall socks. You love attention. You make friends very easily. You love swimming and playing with water. You are very generous and don’t mind giving things away or sharing. You memorized 150 Bible verses in two years and that’s so incredible. You have gotten the State Rd Eagle award once this year and also have gotten multiple certificates for being helpful on the bus. You love the color green, under armour, backpacks that go over one shoulder, comfy athletic shorts, flip flops, playing kickball, contests, fruit, meat and free samples at Wegmans. You love one on one time with us. You like going out to eat (who doesn’t?!) You love special sports drinks like Gatorade or Powerade.

You’re such a good kid, Brayden. We can’t wait to see the young man you grow up into.  Happy birthday, big guy.

Love, Mom