Happy Birthday Jared

Jared celebrated his 13th birthday yesterday! That means we have two teens now. Rick was im-ing with Max and said TEEN stands for "tempermental emotional eccentric noodlehead". Jared liked that.
So here are some well-known and maybe little known facts about Jared:
1) He was born the day after Debbie's mom's birthday. I tried very hard to get him to be born on mom's birthday -- I moved furniture and vacuumed all morning. And I did have a false start early in the day, but it cooled down until late in the evening. Guess I should have started trying the day before.
2) Jared had red hair when he was born. And it stuck straight up. His cousin Hannah was born 3 weeks later and she has wild curly hair. They are so alike it's scary, and they get along great when they get to be together.
3) When Jared was 3, he cut his head and his dad had to stitch it. We had to lay on him to hold him down. When he was 4 he stuck a lego in his nose and we had to go to dad in the ER to get it out- in the car, he cried (maybe wailed is a better word) he didn't want to go to ELWA ONE (the hospital's radio call name that he heard on dad's handheld radio), but it was no big deal once we got there. When he was 10, he got a cut under his eye when he was swimming. We went to the ER and Dr. Brown sewed it up. Jared didn't flinch.
4) Jared loves to sing (or hum, or whistle). I like to say he has a song in his heart. He especially likes show music, but also SKA and classical. He prefers music with real instruments (unlike his bro Max who likes electronic music).
5) Jared plays the trumpet. He's actually sounding very nice on it these days.
6) For several years, we called him Jared Bear. He probably won't like that I told you that.
7) Jared has lived 10 out of his 13 years in Africa.

8) Jared wants to be an architect or a structures engineer. He finds many interesting ways to prepare for this career (this structure is made of dixie cups and playing cards -who needs toys?). Really, sometimes he amazes us with what he tries to conceptualize.
9) Jared must be about to grow, because his appetite lately has about doubled. He's going to be bigger than his mom very soon!
10) Jared never runs out of questions. Sometimes I tell him that I am very flattered that he thinks I might know the answer to his question, but I am actually not that smart. And I tell him to ask his dad, cuz he's that smart.
11) I was going to stop at 10 but I thought of one more. Jared is really great with younger kids, between the ages of 2 and 5, and they somehow seem to gravitate to him as well. He's got quite a collection of little buddies: Felix, 5 and Isaac Kauffeldt, 4 who they ride to school with in the morning; Daniel, 2 and Nathan Goodnow, 4 our new neighbors; and Hadassah, almost 3 and Jedidiah Dunseath, 5. Even Sis Bindu's grandson T-boy, 5, is always talking about coming to visit Jared.
So that's our Jared at age 13. He's a great kid and we enjoy him very much! I hope you feel like you know him a little better yourself now.