{Ayden}

I guess I am finally at my first born. Ayden, boy where do I start? He is growing up faster than I think I would like him to. He is almost nine and wants to be so responsible for things. Just this morning when he was up at 5:30 I was wishing we lived on a farm out in the toolies so I could send him out to milk the cows or feed something. He thrives on tasks to be done and is really pretty capable. He loves baseball but also wants to try playing football this fall. He has a love- hate relationship with reading right now. He loves me to read to him at bedtime, but doesn't so much like to read aloud to me in return. He is going to eat me out of house and home if I am not careful. I bought 5 doz eggs not quite two weeks ago and I am down to less than a dozen. He loves to cook himself a fried egg for a snack before AND after dinner. This kid had three hamburger sliders for dinner and was still hungry so he had a bowl of cereal not 20 minutes after dinner. He is really close to earning his wolf badge for scouts. He only has 4-5 things left to do to earn it. He loves Math at school and is a great speller. He loves to build things and draw out his own inventions. Any scrap of wood he wants to save and build something with it. He was in hog heaven when we were doing the remodeling a month ago. He loved holding all the tools and getting in there with the guys, feeling like he was doing something productive. He is 120% boy. He loves guns, and machines, and tools and sports. He is the one that reminds us to have family scriptures in the morning and he will ask me to read them with him at night too. He is a good big brother, most of the time. He does love to tease and torture his sisters. Much to my, and their, dismay. Ayden is the poor kid that we have made most of our parenting mistakes on and he is resilant and looks no worse for the wear, thank goodness!! Hopefully he will be forgiving of his mother, with the mistakes I made because he was my first!! I love my Ayden and don't know where I would be without him.