Happy 12th Birthday Ryan James Nullmeyer!
Holy smokes, I really can't believe you are this age. How are you just 1 year away from being a teenager? I remember you as a baby the most vividly out of all 4 kids, maybe because you were my firstborn. You've always had a unique temperament, and as you get older I'm seeing more and more of the man you will be someday.
You are: clever, artistic, self-aware, argumentative, hands-on, athletic, messy, mechanical, impulsive, sensitive, moody, competitive. You love: cars, pokemon, friends, playing guitar, junk food, watching hockey, legos, soccer. You hate: taking showers, healthy food, cleaning your room, being bored, having your braces tightened.
In terms of size, you are 56 inches tall and you weigh 86 pounds.
You love soccer and played for an indoor team this year for the first time. I love watching you play! You decided baseball wasn't for you anymore, and while this made me sad, we ultimately let you make the choice to drop out. We want you to find activities that you truly love, and one of those this year was playing the guitar! You've always had an excellent singing voice and good sense of rhythm, so it was no surprise that you took to the guitar so easily.
You are messy and leave your stuff everywhere. Even at this age we are still having to constantly remind you to pick up after yourself. You go from one thing to the next: Whittling pencils into baseball bats, then fiddling with the shocks on an RC car, then looking up the value of your pokemon cards online and trying to create fake ones, then riding your bike, then sketching a car, then playing soccer in the backyard, then microwaving a corndog and forgetting about it, then making a race car out of legos, and on and on.
You have a hard time settling down to go to sleep at night. This has become the only time of day that you will read on your own. It is also when you like to draw using your lightboard.
And you are so talented! You love drawing cars.
You point out cars going down the road and I have no idea what you are talking about, but somehow you are very knowledgeable about anything with an engine. You already have strong opinions about what kind of car you want to drive when you get your license. You received a really special RC car for your 12th birthday and it's literally all you can think/talk about this week.
You tell me things sometimes and I have no idea what you're talking about (anything car-related!), and I wonder how you acquired this knowledge. Case in point:
Your ability to focus on non-preferred activities or topics is low. Being asked to sit and be slightly bored is absolute torture to you, almost painful. However, if something is really fun or interesting to you, you become hyper-focused on it. It becomes all you can think about. I will be talking to you, but I can almost literally see that your mind is elsewhere, thinking about an RC car, something you want to build, or a car you want to look up online.
You found a few amazing friends this year who are also homeschooled. You meet monthly to play chess with them (and trade Pokemon). You also love spending time playing with the boys on our block, riding bikes or electric scooters (or trading Pokemon!). But you can often be found in the garage, talking to the adults or learning engine stuff from your Daddy.
Ryan you are such a special boy and I love you so very much! You are a unique combination of attributes and I pray your good character continues to develop each year. We love you so much and hope you love being 12!
