Nine is fab! 🙂 I notice new levels of maturity and Davies often does amazing, remarkable things. His art and creativity continue to come on in leaps and bounds. He can read. albeit haltingly and in true Davies character is keen to share this skill with Scarlett and is trying to teach her to read too. He often surprises me with mathematical observations and I am given an example every single day in big and small ways of very right our lifestyle is for Davies.
So who is Davies at nine? He still loves Wallace and Gromit, Ben 10, Star Wars but his current passion is The Simpsons. This, as ever with Davies is all consuming – he can recite the entire script for The Simpsons movie, plays Simpsons games on X box and DS, sings Simpsons songs, has taught himself to draw all of the characters (using a great book I borrowed from work on very long loan, tracing paper and websites), made plasticine characters, does a credible Bart impression and with it has gotten a glimpse into American culture and a whole new style of humour.
Davies is still short, still has long hair and his own style of dressing. He has an armful of wristbands collected over the last two years and constantly added to. He likes black tops and red DMs with stars on them.
Davies is interested in bushcraft and survival, Ray Mears is something of a hero and he has his own penknife, little tent, rucksack, firesteel and a burning desire to strike out on his own. For his tenth birthday he and I are attending a Campcraft Survival weekend course.
Davies is sociable and has friends although he is unbothered about ‘best friends’ and the girls he mixes with are treated the same as the boys. He enjoys spending time with Marcus, Ben, Toby, (cousin) Jack, Archie (and his brother Eliot), Chloe, Maddy, Rei but his very best friend remains Scarlett. Their relationship shifts and changes with him quite capable of playing various roles including loving, supportive big brother, highly annoying irritating sibling and absolute equal, all in the space of ten minutes! Davies has a strong relationship with my Dad, who he loves to chat to about life for Grandad when he was a lad, is very adept at getting the best out of Ady and remains very close to me.
Davies is pretty mature and responsible, there’s very little I wouldn’t trust him with. He regularly stays home alone and goes on small errands for me, he has his own mobile and sends cute text messages (usually when he’s supposed to be asleep!). He is a Follow Me Badger and recently was a huge help and support to me at Chatterbooks as my right hand man, perceptive at dealing with people and managing them when needed. Davies has always been empathic and compassionate and continues to be so, he is good with younger children and has a natural coaching style. There is a self contained self condidence which marks him out from other nine year old boys, he is proud of his differences, happy in his own skin and a pretty grounded, sorted person.
I’m very proud of Davies, I’m proud to see the best bits of Ady and I in him, proud of his actions and behaviour reflecting our parenting, proud that the lifestyle choices we have made seem to be working so well for him. Nine is good – Davies loves nine, I love nine 🙂