Aidan at Ten!

Aidan, today you are 10. Ten years old! You are such a boy now, so grown up and handsome. It is hard for me to reconcile the boy you are now, with the baby I still see with my heart.


Even as you grow, so much of you remains the same. You remain a loving, kind soul. You enjoy helping and taking charge. You are always the first to offer to help me, your dad, your coaches, your teachers. At your parent-teacher conference this past year, your teacher told me that if anyone in the class was hurting or upset, you were the first to jump in to offer kindness. This is part of the reason your teacher chose to honor you with the Catholic Values award for your class – your desire to help others, to be kind to others and help in anyway you can. It is one of your attributes that I remain the proudest.

You also love to be the man with the plan. You like to be in charge. You love rules and enforcing the rules. You like to get a little bit bossy, but it’s just the old soul lurking in you that likes to create order in the world. You are inevitably the child picked to be in charge by your teachers or coaches. It is when you are at your happiest.

Your have tremendous focus. I am constantly amazed by your ability to completely immerse yourself in one subject area. It becomes the object of all your waking attention. You will read about it, talk about it, discuss it all the live long day. This year, we went through several areas of Aidan obsession. For several months, it was Nerf guns. I think you knew anything and everything there was to know about Nerf guns. Names of guns, specifications, models, ammunition requirements, dates made, distance traveled. You name it, you knew it. You discovered videos other boys posted about Nerf gun wars on youtube. That led to all of us spending hours upon hours recording you and your brothers in the Nerf battles of the century. (We also learned that Griffin can do a remarkable death scene.)

After months upon months of all Nerf, all the time, your focus quickly shifted back to your constant love : Legos. And even better than Legos, but Star Wars Legos. Your bedroom remains a shrine to every Lego creation you have ever built. If you didn’t tell me so often that you want to be an architect someday, I would think that maybe your destiny is to work for Lego, fueling other little boys’ dreams like they have inspired your own.

You still love to read. I am grateful to the library for keeping you in books that captivate you for hours upon end. Your favorite television shows are Mythbusters; Dual Survivor and Arthur. Your favorite food is still pizza (and pizza logs!), but you have also fallen in love with a nicely grilled steak You love chocolate, brownies, chocolate chip cookies and any other baked goods I can bake.

You love to play tennis and have asked to continue to play year-round. You played on tennis team and took tennis lessons this summer. You enjoy swimming and did a great job on swim team, switching from freestyle to breaststroke to butterfly with ease. You enjoy taking the dog on a run – just the two of you, jogging through our neighborhood. You love mountain biking or snowboarding with your Dad and hitting tennis balls with me. You played basketball this year and loved attending Ecology Camp to learn all about the outdoors.

You are the leader of our pack of boys, sometimes challenged by the littlest pack member Griffin. You love to play with your brothers, from video games to elaborate Nerf wars to Lego battle scenes. And sometimes, you retreat for some quiet time all on your own. I will find you in your room, building or playing with Legos or reading. As you get older, I find you need that time alone to recharge more and more.

I am grateful that even though you are a boy of ten, you are still my snuggler, my hugger, my love of a boy. You still ask me to come snuggle on the couch. You love to hug (particularly because it makes the puppy howl because he wants to be in the middle of it.) And you will still lay down with me to cuddle for an afternoon rest. I treasure each time I hug you, each time I snuggle you, each time we cuddle. You are full of love and are so generous in expressing it to your family.  You have such a good heart.

Your Dad and I are so proud of the boy you have become Aidan. We love you, so very much.

Happy Ten, to my sweet, loving, growing up much too fast, boy.