Despite Paul’s preference to believe that he was never a baby, today is his 5th birthday.

On August 8th, 2003 Kristen and I drove to Mount Clemens General for Paul’s scheduled birth. Since his sister was a big baby our doctor felt no need to make Kristen wait the typical 2 weeks after the due date. And for good reason. Several hours later baby Paul was born at 9 lbs 2 oz.

If you’ve not spent time with Paul you are missing out. Paul is a blast. He is full of energy, creativity, stories, ideas, and spunk. Paul has some of the best faces you’ve ever seen. Seriously, he can roll his eyes in a way that just cracks me up.

Paul is also a very physical kid. One of our favorite things to do is “wrestle.” Wrestling at our house essentially means that I get on the floor and throw them around for a while. Then Megan and Paul do some massive WWE moves to try to break me.  They’ll jump off furniture or get a running start to dive onto my back. This is also a way I teach them to work together as the only way I’ll allow them to knock me down or pin me (they count to 4 and say, “We win!”) is to work together. While Megan and I always played together, Paul craves this physical contact. You’ll often see him run up and punch me in the stomach or pull my arm or push me or smack me on the butt. Those are all invitations to “fight.”

Here are a few more of Paul’s favorite things.

1. Karate. Paul has earned his first belt and can’t wait to start at his new school in San Diego.

2. Chicks. Paul’s man squeeze is Autumn. It doesn’t matter that she’s babysat him since he was about a week old, he’s madly in love with her. But she’s not his only girlfriend. At one point he claimed he had 100 girlfriends. Play on player.

3. Food. Seriously, the first thing he says when he wakes up is “What can I eat?” Sometimes he’s non-verbal in the morning and he just points to his mouth!

4. The computer. As I’ve talked about before, you’ve not lived until you see this little boy navigate his computer.

5. Superheros. Right now he’s into Pokemon. But he’s also into Power Rangers, Webkinz, and Scooby Doo.

Like his dad, Paul is very sensitive. As much as he likes the spotlight he also gets embarrassed easily. When he is confident about what he’s doing he is very confident. But when he is doing something he’s unsure about and he suddenly realizes other people are watching him, he bolts and hides.

I could go on writing about my son, but all of this is to say… Happy birthday Paul!