My sweet baby Tristan,
You are eight years old! No longer a “little” boy, but a boy to your core. How could I call you “little” when I can rest my chin on the top of your head? Not so long now, my son, and we’ll be seeing eye-to-eye literally as well as philosophically — for a week or two, anyway, until you shoot right up past my height!
You are my adventurous spirit, my companion in neighbourhood walks, my artistic soul, my daydreamer. Your imagination is limitless, even if your attention-span is occasionally limited. You love to draw, especially characters from the books and cartoons and video games you love. Your walls are currently full of pictures you’ve drawn of Super Mario and characters from the Bone books.
To say you love Lego is an understatement. You can follow even the most complex instructions, and it won’t be long before you’ve moved beyond Lego and are building our Ikea furniture for us. You love to show off your various Lego creations, mostly exotic ships with secret trap doors and hidden missiles. There is not a room in the house that doesn’t have some bit of Lego that has drifted off of one of your creations.
You, my boy, are an extremely patient older brother to Lucas. You tolerate him colouring on your homework, yanking apart your Lego creations, and otherwise torturing you, with an impressive amount of tolerance. Usually. You don’t mind fetching a snack for him, or reading books to him, or otherwise finding ways of diverting him from mischief while I’m trying to make dinner. Your other brother Simon is your best friend and mortal enemy, and the two of you are locked in a power struggle that sees you bickering for solid hours at a time, only to be followed by cuddling under the same blanket to watch TV together.
In the last year, you have continued to impress us with your scholastic achievements. You read with an easy fluency that still makes my heart swell when I listen to you read out loud, and you speak French with a perfect accent that I could never hope to replicate. At school, you are exceeding expectations in both math and reading, and the only complaints we ever receive from your teacher are when you dig in your heels and decide to show your bullishly stubborn side. Lucky for us, this doesn’t happen too often.
Your best friends are Will and Colin, and you recount tales of recess adventures filled with opposing tribes and ne’er-do-well girls. Girls! You still have no use for them. You love physical play — running, tumbling, climbing, leaping. You come home from school soaking wet and dirty more days than not, but happy in your mess. You recently finished a second year of skating lessons, and you love nothing more than to zoom around the rink as fast as your legs will carry you. When I asked if you wanted to play hockey next year, you considered for a while but thought you might prefer something new instead, like guitar lessons. Be still my heart.
You seem almost incapable of remaining in your chair through an entire meal, so I’m not sure how your teacher manages to keep you in your desk all day. Just when I think that maybe I should be concerned about your absolute inability to restrain yourself, I catch you engaged in reading or drawing or some other creative act and realize that you’ve been absorbed and motionless for impressive stretches. Apparently colouring engages a calming centre in your brain that conversation with your family does not!
Right now you love Super Mario Brothers, Spore, Lego, Star Wars, Alvin and the Chipmunks, the Bone books, Calvin and Hobbes, Pokemon, Garfield and the Vancouver 2010 Olympic mascots. Your favourite foods are McDonalds hamburgers, chicken fingers, pogos, pizza with just cheese, cheddar Sunchips, and sweet red peppers.
You, who were my most finicky eater, have miraculously become my most flexible eater. In the last year, you’ve come to love meatloaf, chili and salad. In fact, there’s very little that I serve that you won’t eat, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am for that! Even vegetables are no longer your enemy.
My sweet baby Tristan, you are eight years old, and I love you with all my heart. Happy birthday, my son. You make me proud to be your mom.
My heart just grew three sizes. What a sweet letter. I hope one day he’ll read it and smile at the thought you put into it, and how well you know him!
Happy Birthday Tristan! 🙂 I agree with Ari that he will cherish these words and memories in future, for sure. Perhaps on his 18th, you can have all these beautiful love letters pasted in a scrapbook together? Oh forget that, when he’s 18 he might not appreciate it. Maybe when he’s ready to get married? LOL. Loved the lego party pics — he must have been in heaven!
Lovely Boy! Lovely Mama!
What a sweet letter! you’ve done a great job Mom!
Happy, happy birthday to Tristan!
That was beautiful, I love reading your birthday messages to the boys 🙂
I’m also apparently still full of post-pg hormones, and cried while reading it!
Have a great day Tristan of the East!!! We would have loved to come to that LEGO party of yours!
Congrats Tristan!
And of course congratulations to Dany, as the proud mother who has make a wonderfull job more than 8 years now.
I agree with Coffewithjulie, and maybe in the future all these letters will be more appreciated than they are now. Touching, really touching words.