I really try hard to make these birthday blogs about the kids and the things I want to remember or admire about their growth. But real quick, now that my youngest child is officially turning double digits, I am old. I don't make the rules, it's just a fact, and it leaves me feeling quite shocked about it all.
Seriously. I'm aware we had our kids pretty close together, but there's something about my youngest turning 10 and being so far removed from all the baby/toddler/preschool small kid stuff that makes me step back and think....wait...shouldn't we have more of this parenting stuff figured out by now? Thankfully, we really lucked out, cause Zeke really does make it pretty easy (at least for us and our style of parenting). He is rambunctious, daring, adventurous, playful and ornery, so he still keeps us on our toes without a doubt, which has its own challenges. But as far as handling correction, his overall attitude, and desire towards good, he keeps it pretty easy. Sometimes we worry that his desire to do good, and avoid all bad is actually the problem. We've had a couple teachable moments how avoiding problems can sometimes lead to bigger problems, and we've seen a lot of growth in this understanding throughout the year.
It's confounding to me how this rascally, high energy child is also the most sensitive person in our house. I see it frequently, but one morning this week he woke up early, made his bed to look like he was in it, and hid behind his door. I peeked in on him and when I turned to leave after seeing him in his bed, he jumped out from behind his door making me jump and scream. My heart was pounding and I exclaimed "oh my gosh! You are horrible!", while laughing and shaking. He was laughing but then his face fell and he replied "it hurts my feelings when you call me horrible". He knew it was in jest, we have had these conversations, but he has told me, even when joking it always hurts him when anyone says "bad things" about him. I immediately apologized and told him he just got me good and he was back to laughing and telling me how he planned it all out. It's a small example, but the juxtaposition of his feelings with his orneriness is always surprising to me.
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He finally had his first broken bone, well rather, minorly fractured bone. He climbs the highest trees, walks along edges of any cliff he can explore, tries stunts with his bike, runs with abandon, jumps off the couches, and is constantly going at full speed. What adventure led to his injury? Colliding with his friend in a semi made up version of baseball. I cannot express how much this makes me laugh after years of watching him with a tightness in my chest as he took great risks; OF COURSE it's just playing normally with a friend that sends him to the Urgent Care! Thankfully, it was pretty uneventful and only needed a brace for a few weeks.
So I think the moment that stands out the most from this year is when he tested for his brown belt. Once you reach brown belt you are in the "advanced" track for karate, so the testing is no joke. From brown belt forward it is basically levels of advanced training towards black belt. Every time there is testing for any belt you have to show all the strikes, kicks, and blocks. You also have to know a series of moves to demonstrate certain self-defense maneuvers and counter attacks. For example ONE of the ten self-defense maneuvers would be to know if someone tried a "Two hand grab on one arm" he has to step by step perfectly show this response: Step to side, hand to stomach, reverse grab, hand to elbow, turn stepping back with outside foot to throw. Also each belt has progressively more difficult katas, this particular kata had some pretty specific steps and detailed moves; then to get your brown belt you have to name and 'perform' something called "Shih Pa Lo Han Sho" aka "18 hands", which the kids start working on every single week from the beginning belts. To sum it up, it's a lot.
During testing they call up each group of kids that is testing for each particular belt and have them do their testing together. They do these in front of their instructors and all the parents in the dojo. Except this time Zeke was the ONLY kid testing for brown belt, so he had to do ALL of it in front of everyone ON HIS OWN. I don't think I breathed the entire testing, I was so anxious for him. He was the last to test as they work up through the difficulty levels, and after brown they do separate testing altogether. They ask that the parents hold their applause until the end of ALL the testing so they can get through them all, but after Zeke did '18 Hands', the other parents all exhaled and one of them said "yeah, that deserves an applause now" and the other parents all applauded before he even finished testing. His testing took the longest, and he had a room full of people he didn't know watching, and again, had to do it entirely on his own...and he nailed it! We are so proud of him persevering under pressure. He had to grow a lot to get to the point of doing all that by himself when just a year or two before he didn't want me leaving him at karate class because he didn't want to be away from us.
He has a lot of change ahead of him, and while I get anxious about all the changes, I am reminded that I really am confident in his ability to tackle it all and do great. He's moving too fast for me to try to hold too tight, and I think in the year ahead, he really is going to to shine.
