My Boy is 7

First: let's do some addition!

This is a screen-grab of my archive from the moments before I hit Post on this: If you add the numbers of posts since back when I started, you'll get 1,499. That makes this 1500! I thought that I should make this about the Boy. His birthday was just this past Saturday. And, like Skippy from Disney's Robin Hood, he turned 7 years old:

I bring up Skippy because he represented for me a watershed moment: my brother and I watched this movie often and I remember watching it and being younger than 7, then sharing the birthday, then being older than 7, and reflecting on how quaint I had been. 

On June 10th, 2016, I became a dad in the literal, a breathing-human-needs-you-forever way. I mean, are "parents" born before kids? The title, of course.

My son is wonderful. He's so sweet and compassionate while retaining a rough and tumble exterior. He loves reading and math and comics and Nintendo and dunkleosteus. Bikes and handball and Giannis. He is love. He is joy.

He is his Own Person, strong willed with a volume control issue. Knowing this, that he's confident and self assured, is great. Parenting it poses challenges. It took me all my years to achieve/end up at whomever I actually am, and you're the same, only a kid? He is more strong willed than I ever was, certainly.

I love him so much. 

I rounded up some kick-ass pieces involving him (and some regular ones, too):

1. Cass is born
   
2. Cass Goes to Mexico
   
3. Cass Goes to the Book Fair
   
4. First Birthdays are for the Parents
   
5. On a Tractor
   
6. Birthday Party with Grandpa (and Grandma and Auntie and cuz, too!)
   
7. Birthday in Italy!
   
8. On Bikes!
   
9. Selfies!
   

1500 posts is a lot. Maybe? Feels like it when I look through the posts and realize there are many that I don't remember. Sometimes that seems nice, but am I losing it? Would you remember every single stream of consciousness thing you ever wrote if you wrote over a thousand of them?

Putting it like that makes it obvious. Most of the things written here are not Joyceian stream of consciousness, but even the deeply considered ones have an element of designed brevity.

I wasn't even 30 years old yet when I started this blog. That takes me back.

Here's to the easy toast: 1500 more!