My baby is turning 10 this week, a fact that he’s been noting to one and all for about the last three months.  There’s a count-down poster to prove it.

Crossing the threshold to double digits seems to have struck a real chord with him. 

When I asked him why, he just focused on the symbolic threshold of double digits.  Oh, and the fact that Guy Lafleur’s number was the number 10.

The decade mark is a threshold for me, too, but somehow it really doesn’t feel like a milestone for me.  I guess because he has two younger brothers, I am still living life as a mother of younger kids and I don’t have the nostalgic sense of an era having past. 

Still, this week Griffin said several things that filled me with pride and demonstrated just how ready he is to be a big ten-year old.

While we were shopping for summer clothes, I asked him what his friends like to wear, and he said, “I don’t really care what other people are wearing.  I just want my shirts to be comfortable.”

Out of nowhere (i.e. I had not just screamed at the kids had a challenging parenting moment), he just said, “It’s really hard to be a mother sometimes, isn’t it Mum?”

After reading Tove Jansson’s Moomin books, he took out his sketch book to copy some of the pictures.  (How much do I love that?!)  Looking at a scene of a wedding, he said, “I’m going to turn this character into a boy because it’s ok if two boys get married.”

This evening, while we were all outside gardening/cutting grass/fixing bikes/riding bikes/being Robin Hoods and saving the neighbourhood from the sheriff’s men, Griffin disappeared into the house.  When I went in to put my flowers in a vase, I found him making a snack.  “I’ve sliced up peaches for all of us to eat outside.  I thought everyone would like them.  I did it without even being asked!”

Before bed tonight, while daydreaming about the presents to come, he said, “I do really like getting Lego for myself, but I like it better when my brothers get it because I get to have fun building it for them, then I get to watch them have fun playing with it.”

My baby.