To Timmy, at 9 Years Old

Timmy,

Wow.  I am completely blown away by you at this moment in time.  Every day you are becoming more and more you, and you are amazing.

You are playing baseball constantly.  This Spring you played AAA in House, continued playing Warriors Travel (where you are playing up age wise), and then made the all-star team (which means baseball for practically 21 days straight, just one or two days off thrown in there!).  I don't know how Coach Dad is keeping up with you, but I love that you are spending all of this time together.

You are also getting private coaching lessons from Coach Pudge, a local high school coach who is also involved with RHLL.  Your skills have really progressed this calendar year, it's been so fun to watch!  You are still taking and enjoying piano lessons too, and you played flag football this Spring as well!  Sometimes I'm worried that you are over scheduled, but you have never once asked to stop any of your activities, never say you're tired, and only sometimes say you wish practice would be rained out as we're going over your days schedule in the morning.  When you're not scheduled you just want to be on your ipad, so I prefer having you scheduled.  To help remember this crazy season, your weekly schedule was:

Sunday - Practice with Coach Pudge, then practice with Warriors
Monday - Piano lessons
Tuesday - House Practice
Wednesday - House Game
Thursday - House Game
Friday - Football Practice
Saturday - Football Game followed by House Game

You've played in two Warriors tournaments so far, this hit was in the first tournament.  (I wasn't excited at all.)

Fueling up at a team lunch before a tournament game!

Your football season was fun to watch.  You had a practice position on offense and defense, and the first game of the season you played every down.  The coach told you that you had the highlight of the season with this play

Before your first game

Team Captain for the last two games

For the middle of the season you only got to play defense, and you were pretty good!  You got a lot of flag pulls and were great at staying in position.  The last two games you had a few more chances on offense, and these two plays are from the Semi-Final game, which you played against Josh, Preston, and Drew's team.  (Your house baseball team made it to the Semi-Final game as well; two strong seasons!)

You got past Josh on this run but then Drew got your flag.

The all-star season is not going the way we would want it to, but it's showing what great character all you boys have!  You guys are a really young team, there are definitely better seasons ahead of this team, and it's so great to watch your individual triumphs and improved play!  Here's one highlight for you during a scrimmage.

Your school year was a little rough this year.  You didn't like your teacher from the start and that never really improved.  (For the record, we agreed with your most of your opinions.)  You did start coping with it better eventually.  You really got into reading, you flew through chapter books at school, and brought some new series home to read with Tyler and I.  I believe you finished off the Magic Treehouse series, as well as all of the I Survived books, and most of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Captain Underpants.  Your great memory still serves you well for studying for tests in history and science.  You are fighting memorizing your times tables and it is slowing you down a little in math, but you understand all the concepts.  You still love writing stories, but you've gotten low grades because you don't use capital letters and punctuation, and you're rushed handwriting is awful.  When I told you that it was just laziness and rushing you were highly offended, but it's been such a repetitive issue this year that you've lost electronics privileges multiple times over it.  Electronics are a priority issue for you so when we remove them from your day, you slow down and do what you're supposed to do.  Your end of year project is to make a playground for the 5th graders ducklings out of recycled materials and you are loving working on that.  You've learned and grown a lot this year, it's just been harder then it needed to be!  A bunch of fads raced through elementary school this year and you were into all of them; this meme sums them up!

Dabbing, Bottle Flipping, Making Slime, and Fidget Spinners

You are so helpful around the house, and usually with a good attitude.  In the morning I can count on you to get yourself and Tyler 100% ready for school.  There have been a few mornings lately when I've gone to work before you're even awake, and Daddy has said you are both walk-out-the-door ready when he's come down.  When asked, you clean the basement up, with very little stashing, all by yourself.  I'll load stuff up on the stairs and you run it up to the right rooms for me.  You jump out of the car to bring the trashcans up the pipestem for us when we get home.  I still can't get you to use the hamper on your own, or heck, half the time you don't even use it when specifically reminded to put your clothes in the hamper as you are heading up the stairs for your shower!  I have to call you back to your room to do it when I go to check.  Same for your baseball clothes drawer, you will get ready for practice and practically empty the drawer looking for something, and then leave all the clean clothes strewn around your room!  You do not really do this with your regular clothes in the morning, so I don't know what the deal is with this!  95% of the time you are an excellent big brother.  My heart melted a few nights ago at bed time, when I turned around from putting some clothes in your drawer and saw this:

You probably do 85% of the work of taking care of Sonic, as far as feeding him, letting him in and out, chasing him when he escapes, and getting things from him that he shouldn't have.  You enjoy chasing him around the main floor of the house and playing fetch with him diving into the pool.

You are a great friend, and your friendships with Caleb, Nate, and Nathan are as strong as ever.  We were all hopeful that the Pavlus' would move to Fox Mill, you house shopped and got your hopes up every time you saw a for sale sign go up near us.  Unfortunately they moved to Ashburn instead, but you are excited for him and like his new house.  Caleb was on our baseball team again this Spring so you've seen plenty of each other lately.  We will be sure to get you lots of time together to keep your friendship strong.

The Three Doritos are still a thing, you guys have a blast together. (And you finally decided to start riding your bike!)

You call me on my phone sometimes, and I love it.  I'll be at work and my phone will ring and it's you!  You're usually asking me if you're allowed to do something that you're grounded from, or looking for something and hoping I know where it is.  It makes my day to hear from you in the middle of work!

You've gotten into a new app called musical.ly where you can make short music videos.  It's really user friendly and you can easily cut scenes and time things out to the music.  It's fun to see your creativity and how much you enjoy watching your friends' videos too.  This is one of your earlier ones, they keep improving every time.

Watching you grow up has been one of the most amazing experiences of my life.  Keep doing a good job Tim-Tim.