Max

A few things I love about my oldest:

1. Max is full of enthusiasm and he cannot help but put his whole soul into the things he does. This often means he's screaming with happiness at 6:00 am. A few of the things that make him scream with happiness: watching dolphins at the Baltimore aquarium, watching the lollipop guild sing to Dorothy with their mouths in a crooked way, wrestling (which means him running at me full steam from the other room and ramming me with his huge and hard-as-rock noggin'), playing with cousins, and eating crepes with nutella.

2. Max is so affable. People everywhere love him. I picked Max up from school the other day and ran into his old teacher at the playground while I was waiting for Max's class to finish up. She took one look at me and said, "You must be Max's dad. You look just like him. I love Max. He's always so happy and the kids just loved being around him." That's the way I feel.

3. He cares for his family. Whenever his friends are being mean to Aviva (by, for example, not letting Aviva play), Max always sticks up for her. Always. He'll tell his friends that that's not how he plays, and then he'll go and grab Aviva's hand and say, "Come on Aviva. Come play with us."

And with Leo, he is always so quick to make Leo happy when Leo is crying. One of Max's favorites is to let Leo pull Max's hair. Max cries and laughs at the same time.

4. He hates homework. His homework consists of doing things like "writing the number 4 four times" and "learn the first three digits of your phone number" -- it's not that complicated, even for beginning kindergartners. But he hates it. When I asked him the other day if he was ready for his homework, he said, "I hate homework. I have to do it every day. Every day, dad!" Other things that he hates to do every day: put on clothes, brush his teeth, and go to bed.

5. A few cute stories about Max recently:

• Last night while praying: "Please bless daddy to go to work tomorrow and makes lots of money."
  
• Max said to Kristin the other day, while driving back from Michigan after a week-long trip there, "I can't wait to jump into daddy's arms."
• Max sings in primary at the top of his lungs. He loves him some singing time.