Owen's 7th Birthday

Owen will turn 7 years old today. Shortly after 8:30pm, if you want to get technical. Time has flown since that day when both my parents, my grandparents and some of our best friends waited out the hours in the labor & delivery room at Northside Hospital with us. Since I have no siblings and Todd has only one, our friends present at the hospital were given honorary Aunt and Uncle titles.

In these short and fast seven years, we have watched Owen grow from a little jaundice baby into a big boy who makes us proud. He is smart and excels at math, as well as picks up new spelling words quickly. He can read just about anything we put in front of him now, which is exciting.

He is strong-willed and can't be swayed from his course of action once he makes up his mind. Owen gave up diapers completely (yes, even at night) before he turned two years old. He stopped sucking his thumb cold turkey when he was four years old when he realized he didn't want braces. In spite of tears and many falls, he got back up on his bike repeatedly until he could ride it without training wheels in less than an hour and through many tears of frustration.

Owen is kind. He is quick to put himself in other people's shoes and is very sensitive to other's pain or sadness. He is gentle with animals and will admonish his sister if she is too rough with our pets.

He loves to dance and will break out the moves to music on the radio or his own singing. Owen loves We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions by Queen. For the past two months, he has only listened to Queen's greatest hits in his bedroom as he is falling asleep.

Owen is whimsical and loves to dress up in costumes or have his face painted to take on different identities.

He loves sports and tends to gain attention from softball coaches at batting cages and tennis coaches in camp because he is quick and has excellent hand/eye coordination.

Owen is independent. In Kindergarten, he would get up after his alarm went off and get dressed before brushing his teeth. Many mornings we would find him in the kitchen making breakfast for himself with either cereal in a bowl or waffles in the toaster.

Owen is a brother, a friend, my son, a goofy boy and as he sometimes reminds "just a person who wants have fun."

Today we are driving to North Carolina to see my friend Mary get married on Saturday. Today we get to spend 7 hours in the car with our newly turned 7 year old. Today, we are thankful he is ours and we're celebrating another birthday.