11 feels significant. I don’t exactly know why given just last year was your big first decade, a milestone that is well recognised by every parent of every ten year old.
Perhaps 11 feels more significant because it may be the start of the lasts of many things. Perhaps it’s the last year that you’ll get so stupendously apprehensive, excited and nervous all at the same time in the thrilling few seconds before you tear open a pack of footy cards (and sadly as of time of publication you still don’t have the collage of Jacob Weitering). Or the last time you will walk through the door after school, shoe laces untied every single time (one can only hope). It may be the last year you wear your oodie non-stop from the start of winter to the very end, or the last time you are keen for your mum to volunteer at school events such as kitchen class, before the teenager mum-cringe factor takes over.
11 might be the year that you cross over from kid to big kid. Who knows? The fact that you are now the same shoe size as your mum is a telling sign. But you’re definitely the best 11 year old son I have ever had! Here’s your dossier from life as a ten year old, never to be repeated again.
Basketball life = slurpee life
Still loves (or should I say expects!) to get a slurpee post every basketball match. Or even better a Maccas voucher for player of the match.
The year I spent a significant portion of my salary on footy cards
I wonder what you enjoy more….the thrill of getting a good card or the thrill of the anticipation in case you might get a good card. I have seen all the tricks you go through before you tear open the packet…crossing fingers and toes, blowing on the packet, mum must be outside your room or inside your room or just hover above your room…you have even gone as far to try choose a packet with a crease in the corner…meant to symbolise good cards perhaps?
What I do know is that your favourite activity at school is footy swapping club, your albums accompany you to play dates, that you will spend hours sorting out the thousands of cards, provide a full breakdown of stats on a particular player’s card and give me such a sense of joy when I watch your face as you delight in the ecstasy of childhood footy card dreams.
Getting a little bit sports mad
This last year you really seem to have become a typical Australian sports fan. You seem to know every footy player’s vital statistics, love going to a game of footy, basketball and even cricket! You are even willing to wake up at the crack of dawn in the middle of winter for 7am school athletic twice per week. This year you made it into district cross country for the first time, and whilst you never made it further to regionals, coming 17th out of 100 kids was pretty good going, running well under 5 minutes a kilometre for the 3km course. Saturday and Sunday mornings spent shouting from the basketball spectators area and watching you get muddy on the footy field have been some of my absolute weekend highlights. I remember the first time you started playing basketball and you barely moved on the court…fast forward to now and you put your guts and soul into your basketball games. I have only been to one footy game with you at the MCG, and what a cracker it was…Carlton beating Hawthorn by one point!
Maybe this will be the year I give up on tied laces
I don’t like being a quitter……but even I need to accept that I will never win the goal of getting you to tie your laces and keep them tied. Or maybe one day you will be a grown man wearing grown up fancy mens shoes and I will look back on these photos and yearn for days of untied shoe laces, skinny legs and knees covered in boyhood dirt.
The torn school uniform look
Almost every second day you come home with a torn shirt or a hole in some part of your uniform somewhere. Luckily you don’t mind wearing a bit of a patchwork school uniform, as if I was replacing every item that was torn, I would have gone broke ages ago.
Another year of covid
Of course covid has to make it into your birthday blog post, third year running. In this respect it will be quite a momentous year for you to look back on, as it was the year you were vaccinated against a once-in-a-lifetime (lets hope!) pandemic that you have lived through. There were masks, more home school and in February this year you were the first member of our family to finally be hit with the virus. Luckily it was quite mild, with about one day of man-flu-like symptoms and then another six days of the rest of us having to avoid you like the plague.
The sweet tooth that keeps getting sweeter
This year you lost the last of your baby teeth, but your adult teeth still have a preference for sweet foods. You’re always begging for a coke (with sugar as you emphasise every time), spend your money on buying overpriced disgusting cheese-flavoured chips at the airport and had no problem eating every morsel of sugar overloaded on your plate of fairy pancakes at Feekah cafe.
The art of lying
In December last year your sweet tooth got the better of you. Your basketball coach (Ian Alder) gave your team a giant Christmas stocking filled with those disgusting floor coloured lollies. You asked to keep the stocking in your bedroom and a few days later, I discovered a mass stash of empty lolly wrappers under your bed. You vehemently denied eating them and brought out the tear works as you loudly demanded to know “who ate all my lollies?!”
A couple of days later, you meekly admitted that the guilty culprit was in fact you! When I told your uncles Hughie and Avi about this episode, they branded you as amateur and said you need to learn to hide the lolly wrappers in the neighbour’s bin.
For the love of food
You’re just like your mumma when its comes food….. sharing a love for cooking, expressing your joy at eating your favourite foods (like frozen grapes) and enjoying our weekly Sunday morning ritual of home made crepes. The next few months will be the last time I get to volunteer and take part in your fortnightly kitchen classes and I will miss these times a lot! I hope you continue to help me prepare dinner as your are such an expert at finely chopping and dicing all the salad ingredients.
The annual mention of yet another hospital visit
In last year’s blog post I breathed a sigh of relief when there was no mention of at least one annual hospital visit, a regular occurrence in the life of Jake. But just to keep me on my toes, you decided this year to revisit one of your not so amenable hobbies – a hospital staycation. In early December, after a week of no diagnosis from GP visits, you were admitted to Cabrini emergency department with excruciating pain. Luckily it was ‘only’ a severe sinus infection, but one so bad that it required two days of IV antibiotics in hospital. Jake, I tell you what…I will make a deal with you. If you can go through the entire next year with no hospital visits, I will buy you a few icy poles to make up for the ones you get when you visit a hospital. Seriously kiddo, there are easier ways (and ones that give your mum and dad less grey hair) to get a sweet treat.
Jake quirks
These are the ten-year-old quirks I want to remember. The way you wear your oodie with one arm sticking out of the neck. Your favourite way to lie on the playroom floor with the blanket. Eating bananas sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. Watching your favourite movies over and over, no matter how many times you have already watched them. Your silly grin and way you hold your hands after I take away ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ at night when it’s time for lights off. As a ten year old boy you insist on covering your eyes every time there is any kissing in any movie, although I have a feeling this quirk is about to soon disappear. And let’s not forget your favourite response to just about every question anyone asks you….”meh”
There were some new ways of your life that were introduced this year, such as not letting me come into your bedroom or bathroom while you are getting changed. I knew this day was coming, for privacy and your sense of body perception is about to take on a whole new meaning in your life.
Let’s go 11!
I can’t wait for your 11th year that is starting. For whilst there may certainly be stormy teenager stuff around the corner, I have a sneaking suspicion that the parts of Jake that make you just you are going to stick around for a while. You have an uncanny sense of humour and the most hilarious facial expressions I have ever come across. You possess this sweet tender spirit, the only one in our family to know exactly when to offer me a hug and mean it. Your pet peeve is the kitchen bin being left open. Your super power is convincing me to add a lolly to your school lunch box way too often. Your best possible dinner is McDonald’s or Nando’s followed by a Maxibon. Your worst possible dinner is tuna lasagne. Your latest thing is trying to convince me to let you stay up later at night. Your favourite dad is Duck. And your biggest fan, for now and for always into eternity is me!
Jake’s birthday wish list
A birthday interview – 11 years old
- Who is your best friend? Angus
- What is your favourite subject at school? Sport
- What is your favourite colour? Green
- What is your favourite food? Big Mac
- What’s your worst food? Broccoli
- What is your favourite digital game? 4 guys
- What do you like to do with Evie? Nothing
- What do you like to do with mummy? Play games
- And daddy? Also
- What is your favourite birthday gift? Jordans
- What do you want to be when you grow up? A vet
- What makes you happy? Candy
- What makes you sad? Evie
- If you could have three wishes in the world what would they be?
- To have more wishes
- To be Michael Jordan
- To be Christian Petracca (Melbourne AFL player)
- What is something you are really good at? Sport
- What is something you would like to improve? How will you do it? Footy skills. I will go to the park and practise
- What is your favourite book? Diary of a Wimpy Kid do it yourself (birthday gift)
- What is the best part of your birthday? Presents
- If you could change one thing in the world what would it be? To remove pain
- What are you grateful for in life? That I have a lucky life
- Who is someone you admire and why? Dr Strange because at the beginning he wasn’t the best and when he learned how to do magic he became the best (movie – Dr. Strange)
- What do you think is important to do to keep our earth safe from climate change? Stop littering
- What is something important that your parents have taught you? Not to waste money
- What is something important that a grandparent has taught you? You need to be kind to someone who comes to your house otherwise they wont want to come back
- Do you have a favourite memory? When I went to Thailand – everything about it, like the massive buffet and giant pool
- What is your favourite footy card in your footy card album? Carlton trophy – Harry McKay
- If you could tell the future, what is something you would like to know? How my next birthday goes
- What is something you have done in your life that you are proud of? Being good at basketball and footy
- If you were an animal, what would it be? woof woof
- What is something about you that many people don’t know? That my favourite colour is green
- If I gave you $100 now what would you buy? new wall paper for my room
- What is one goal that you would like to achieve when you are 11 years old? How will you do it? Backflip on the trampoline, I will practise
- Who will win the grand final this year? Collingwood sadly
- What do you want to do when we go to South Africa? Get a maid
- If you could get any birthday present in the world, what would you want? A ferarri
- What do you think has changed most about yourself from being ten to turning eleven? I have improved a lot in video games
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