Felix is Seven!

I am a month behind on this, but Felix turned seven! For his birthday we took him, Ike, Trixie, and two of Felix's friends to see a very mediocre movie (Abominable).

Felix is a fun and thoughtful boy. He is a lot like me - very methodical in his life and very frustrated when things don't go to plan. He is a great student and excellent (though oddly reluctant) reader and writer.

When Felix is joyful, it shows through his whole body. He celebrates with dancing, and nobody is quite sure where he got that since neither Eric nor I are much of dancers.

He is very into nature and remembers a lot of facts about animals, bugs, and plants. He just had a unit on bats at school. At dinner one night he told us about the smallest bat in the world, and Eric acted incredulous about his facts. Alexa and Google then confirmed that Felix knew what he was talking about. Then Felix told us about the wingspan of the biggest bat in the world, and again, Eric questioned him. And again Alexa confirmed that Felix was accurate.

Although Felix is not hugely interested in reading, he does like to be read to, and he has an impressive vocabulary.

As has basically always been the case, Felix has a very adult palate. He snubs child-friendly foods in favor of things like sushi. There are a few meals that he's not crazy about, but by and large he is the easiest kid to feed.

Felix is an attentive older brother and generally compliant younger brother. He loves to educate his sisters.

This year we've tried a few methods of getting chores done, and right now we are on a system of mandatory chores and optional ones. Felix is making the big bucks doing a bunch of optional chores. And he thinks most things are too expensive and not worth his money, so pretty soon he'll have a ton of cash in his drawers.

And a few pics:

Felix was the only child in his kindergarten class to read all the books in the Battle of the Books program. (Ahem, kudos to his mother for tracking down all those books from all those different libraries!)

Felix enjoys climbing on things and then having his picture taken:

My little nature-boy. This was the first time he completed a Junior Ranger program. He's done one or two since this one. (Again, serious help from me in these endeavors.)

He's not the best hiker, but he's getting better.

He ate a pickled jalapeno at a restaurant with Uncle John. He loves spicy foods.

Another hike with Uncle John.

I sure do love this little boy. I'm not ready for him to get bigger.