This is a summary for Brayden from 9.25 years old to 9.5 years old. Wow! It is incredible to think that I have been a mom for 9.5 years!
EATING
Eating goes on. He still eats a lot of food. He has moved into being concerned about ordering off the kids menu at restaurants because he thinks the meal won’t be big enough for him. Sometimes they are not, but we just share with him and let him have the leftovers–we aren’t quite ready to pay that much more to eat out!
SLEEPING
We did not have a time during this period where he got out of bed at night. Hurray! All good here.
EXTRA ACTIVITIES
Brayden continued on with piano lessons during this time. Brayden has a strong love for playing the piano. He joined the orchestra at school. He goes to school an hour early two days a week to practice with the orchestra. He is playing the viola. He enjoys it. I don’t know how it will look long-term. I think he really likes to play instruments. I will just let him choose what to do long-term.
Brayden is still doing swim team. He has had two swim meets. He was so incredibly nervous before the first one. After it was all over, he said he loved it. He thought he would be dead last in every race, and he wasn’t, so it really boosted his confidence. Swim team is very physically draining–it can make him very tired. He doesn’t always love it, but I think overall he likes it. He tells me I should make anything he doesn’t like for dinner on swim team practice days because he is so hungry he will eat a lot of anything. I thought that was funny.
COOK
Brayden loves to cook. As I mentioned yesterday in my breakfast foods post, he makes pancakes one day a week and then makes eggs for himself each morning. He loves to help make dinner.
TUMOR
Early in this period, Brayden told me he had a bump behind his ear at dinner. I get bumps behind my ear quite frequently when a pour gets clogged. I told him it was no big deal and would go away soon. About 5-6 weeks later, he told me he still had a bump, so I looked at it. This was no clogged pore. It was large. I made an appointment with his pediatrician right away.
His doctor looked at it and said it should be removed. Brayden was not happy with that idea at all. The doctor said it was close enough to a major nerve that he thought it best for a specialist to do it. So we called up our ENT who did McKenna’s ear tubes.
We had an appointment with the ENT for a consultation. He asked Brayden about the history of the bump. Brayden gave him a lot of information. When Brayden was done, the doctor said, “Are you sure you aren’t 25?!?” The nurse laughed and agreed. They were so impressed with his ability to communicate. The doctor said he gets 65 year old men in there who can’t give him any sort of history and just say, “My wife made me come.”
The ENT agreed that the bump should be removed and tested. He couldn’t tell exactly what it was, but thought it was likely not a big deal.
We scheduled the surgery. Brayden opted for in-office rather than operating room. The ENT has a room he can do simple surgical procedures in (that is where McKenna’s tubes were taken out). Brayden chose to have the “happy juice” to help his nerves be calm since he would be awake for the procedure. He was quite nervous about the whole thing. He held perfectly still for the surgery. When the doctor removed the tumor, it was larger than a marble. It was much larger than we realized. Brayden had a couple of layers of stiches and could feel it in the end, but was tough. He couldn’t swim for about two weeks and he had to take it easy on the playground and couldn’t do PE.
We were told we would find out in two days, but after four days we hadn’t heard. My husband did some calling. Our doctor was out of the office, but it was a Friday and we didn’t want to wait the weekend to find out. The results had just come in that morning. We got some answers that made us nervous (I can’t tell you over the phone, the nurse needs to talk to the doctor first…these are all the types of things people say when they have bad news and the doctor needs to tell you). In the end, it was just that it was a very rare condition. I can’t remember the official name, but it is a hair follicle that has gone crazy. He is completely fine!
NOTABLE EVENTS
Other things of interest:
- Brayden is still involved in scouts. He has earned his Bear award. He also won the space derby at our pack meeting! He was excited about that.
- Brayden participated in our school’s fundraiser and ran a mile. He practiced at home and he did better than he did last year. It was really good for him to see his improvement made over a year.
BOOKS
Here are some books he loves (you can see more and keep up on books he reads and loves on my Chapter Books for Boys board. I also have one for girls):
- The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
- Spirit Animals Book 1: Wild Born by Brandon Mull
- White Fang by Jack London
- Percy Jackson (Percy Jackson & the Olympians) by Rick Roidon. He is currently reading this series. He is on the fourth book.
- Eragon (The Inheritance Cycle) by Christopher Paolini. He is currently reading this. He is on the second book.
- Brandon Mull’s Beyonders Trilogy
- Janitors by Tyler Whitesides
- Fablehaven: The Complete Series by Brandon Mull–he read this entire series two times during the summer
- The Candy Shop War
SCHEDULE
Brayden’s Schedule. Something to notice with older kids, as they get older, you allow them to have more of a say over how their time is spent:
7:00 AM–wake up. Eat breakfast. Get ready. Practice piano and viola. Do morning chores. Read scriptures.
Then go to school.
4:00 PM–Home from school. Homework. Free play.
5:30 PM–Dinner. Then time with family.
7:00 PM Start getting ready for bed.
8:30 PM–in bed