My boy is ten.

This one.

The one who *just* looked like this.

And this.

And this.

HOLD ME CLOSER, TONY DANZA.

I can’t even believe my little boy is not little anymore. Not even a wee bit. Nope.

Big. He’s big. So, so big.

And this past year, from age nine to ten, really was The Year of Josh. 

He learned to finally not be afraid of the water.

He scored his first pair of hipster glasses.

He learned to love, live, and breathe the Green Bay Packers.

He played Peter Pan on the big (small) stage.

He ruined a bunch of family photos.

He made the mistake of letting his father shave his head.

He learned to ride a two-wheeler.

He threw his very own block party.

He shared his accent with the world—Eastern European meets Canadian meets Boston. LAAAAABWSTAH.

He mastered Batman: Arkham City.

He spent two weeks traveling through Israel—without me—realizing that he loves lamb chops and kind of, sort of hates schwarma.

He re-read the Harry Potter series for the fourth time over, after finishing up the Harry Potter project.

He played lots and lots and lots of baseball.

He signed up to go to overnight camp for the very first time.

He started a brand-new school where he knew exactly not one single person and immediately made a ton of new friends. He plays basketball (which he never played before) and football (which he never played before) every day. He got an awesome (“MY TEACHER IS A MAN, MAMA!”) new teacher who is teaching him tons of exciting things like long division.

My JoshJosh has always seemed like this complicated puzzle that was handed to me ten years ago today. A puzzle to solve. A puzzle full of awesome, cool, and unusual pieces that just didn’t seem to fit. I had all of the right pieces, I knew I did, but just didn’t know how to put ’em all together properly. It turns out that I didn’t need to do any solving at all—those pieces just needed to fall into place on their own.

And they have. They really have.

A perfect fit.