This is Gavin.  He is my son.  He turned 8 years old a month ago and is going into 3rd grade this fall.  He is such a good older brother to his sisters – he plays with them and helps them get drinks of water when they can’t reach the cups.

Last week, Tristan cut Gavin’s hair into a faux hawk.  It looks SOOO cute!  Gavin would like the hawk to be purple, but we have tried to dye it with semi-permanent purple twice now, and it just rinses right out each time.  Does anyone know of a good semi-permanent dye that will stay-put in “virgin” hair?

Gavin is such a crack-up!  He loves to tell jokes and make funny faces with his soft freckle-covered cheeks.  Seriously, I love to kiss his cheeks (and he still lets me most of the time).

He wants to be an adult soon – he wanted to show me that his feet and hands are almost as big as mine.  I said that he was right (but I silently wished that he was wrong).  How has he gotten so big so fast?

I love his curiosity.  2 nights ago, we were sitting on the couch together – just the 2 of us.  He told me in a very serious voice that he didn’t know what he was going to be when he got older.  Gavin is a planner like me – he likes to know what’s coming and when.  Here’s how the rest of the conversation went:

Me:  “It can be hard to know what you want to do when you get older, but you can think and pray about it a lot, and that will help you to figure it out.  What do you like to do?”

Gavin:  “I like to play video games – I wish I could play video games for my job.  And I would like to make video games.

Me:  “That would be really cool.”

Gavin:  “What did you want to be when you were a little girl?”

Me:  “When I was really young, I wanted to be a mom.”

Gavin:  (in awe) “And you are!  You are a mom.”  (his face lighting up)

Me:  “And when I was a little older, I wanted to be a singer.”

Gavin:  “And you are that too!  You are a singer!  (huge smile on his face)

Me:  “And for a short period of time, I wanted to be a ballerina.”

Gavin:  “Oh…but that’s really hard.”  (said in a consoling voice)

Me:  (laughing)  “Yup, it’s pretty hard.”

Gavin showed me something so profound in this conversation.  I have done the things in my adult life that I once dreamed of doing as a child.  I haven’t done them perfectly or on as grand a level as my perfectionist self would have liked, but I have done them, and continue to do them.  Anything else that I add to these dreams from here on out, is purely above and beyond the original goals.  If I live out my goals (past and present), that will give him hope for his own.  If we only show our kids broken dreams, they might start to believe that is all the future holds.

Thank you Gavin for believing that I’ve accomplished some big things – and for telling me so simply that I have.

Oh, and thanks for helping me carry out my first dream.  I love being your mommy:)

Love,

Stephanie May*