9!

Friday my eldest son turned 9.  I can hardly believe it.  I am not too shocked because in our family pics (his personal one), he looks like he's 12 or 13.  He had a great day, was especially excited it was a Friday birthday, took Little Debbie treats to share with his class as per his request, and thoroughly enjoyed his gifts.  He has become quite the expert and assembling, focusing and disassembling his telescope...now to actually find planets and the right phase of the moon to check out.

I made his cake in my traditional "I love my kids so much and must make their birthday cake for them but I am by no means a cake decorator" style.  Love, People!  Each cake is baked with SO. MUCH. LOVE.  It's the planets and stars, duh!

 And here is Matt, perhaps a little embarrassed I photo documented, as he introduces a new Webkinz to a slightly less new Webkinz.  Have you ever heard a reindeer meet an orangutan...I have now.  Very cute and such beastly communication sounds.

Matthew is:

1.  Great at waking up with an alarm clock.  Lucas set one up for him about 3 months ago, and he loves and uses that thing every day.  In fact, when he couldn't figure out how to reset it after it got unplugged and waited patiently...for a few weeks (woops) for us to fix it, he ended up setting it for 5 a.m. and plugging it in to blare loudly in the kitchen as a friendly reminder to snap to it.

2.  A fact dispenser.  He knows so many facts and feels a strong need to share them with anyone.  Add those to his creative mind which makes up its own fact about all sorts of imaginative things which he also share...that's a lot of facts.

3.  A dynamite reader.  His comprehension...of deeper concepts...his speed...wow.

4.  So sensitive.  I hope his brain doesn't shut down at age 11 as I've been warned happens with boys (and maybe girls???) because then his heart might be less sensitive...which would be sad...though involve much less tattling and seemingly random tearing up.

5.  Lower maintenance.  A blessing and a curse for a kid, I think.  If you have more high maintenance people around, the squeaky wheel does get the grease which can be bad, but at least I am aware of this and try to single him out (in a good way).  On the flip side, he gets out of doing lots of stuff he wouldn't want to do because he isn't causing trouble, hurting someone, or pawing all over me.

7.  A friend to anyone.  He is not the least bit stuck up in any way.

8.  A builder, a creator, an artist, an illustrator. a teacher.  Without ever having an assignment, without ever being made to, he just does and creates and does some more.

9.  Patient.  Dinner late?  Other kids talking frantically even when he wants to share?  Little brother desperately wants to play with him?  He almost always can find a different thing to entertain him while he waits, and he has a large amount of patience with little boys who want to do what he wants to do and act how he wants to act.  I feel so blessed when I think of all the things he has taught Ben and how much he reads his books aloud to Ben and Shawn too.  Yay for this big brother!