Aww

My three fifteen year old son keeps life exciting. He always has. He learned to crawl in one day and learned to walk the next. Those were some of the worst days of my life. You see your adorable, round-headed little tyke on his knees rocking back and forth and grab the camera in a fit of excitement. You tell your friends and neighbors that exciting things are taking place.

But, he did it a bit differently. The grin on his face as he rocked back and forth soon turned into a frustrated grimace, which soon turned into a growl, which soon turned into a howl. And howl is what that little guy did from 8 AM until 11 PM when he finally got it and crawled around the room until his knees bled. Sighing with relief, we put him to bed and cried ourselves to sleep as we let the stress flow away from us.

But, relief is not what we got. Because he had conquered crawling. He was bored of it. As soon as he got his nine-month-old, chubby, squishy body out of the crib the next morning, he tackled walking in the exact same manner as the day before. By howl.

He is a very independent fella.

This boy got sent home from second grade one day when the teacher realized his temperature was 104.
"I felt sick as soon as you woke me up, and I felt worse when I ate breakfast," he told me.
"Why didn't you tell me? You didn't have to go to school feeling sick."
"Well, I just thought that I would feel better if I took a nap during recess."
"Did you take a nap during recess?"
"Yeah. I laid in the grass in the sun and it felt great."
"But you still didn't feel better?"
"I felt okay, but my friend felt my arm and said I was really hot, and he told the teacher that I was sick."
"I need to give that boy a cupcake."

Last month I took Josiah to the doctor for a physical and discovered he had strep throat and a broken finger. He had neglected to mention these details to me.

Yesterday he told me that he forgot to sign up for the bus for the band trip this weekend. That means I will now get the honor of driving him one hour to play his snare drum for one song and then drive him one hour back home.

Last night he walked in the front door and stood there.
"Mom!" he called. "Can you come here?"
"What is it?" I asked, noting the strange way he was holding something behind his back.
"You know how I always forget to tell you important stuff and you end up doing so much stuff for me like driving me around, waiting for me, washing clothes at bedtime, and dropping stuff off at school?"
"Yes," I said slowly and suspiciously as I began to imagine the gravity of the event that might have been forgotten to make this boy take note of such details.
"Well, I want you to know that I really appreciate it." And then he pulled a lovely bouquet of flowers from behind his back and gave them to me. And it wasn't my birthday.

He made it into the will.