Bubba and his besties

*Please excuse the sentence fragments and dangling prepositions in this post.

**And also, this is really not relevant to anyone but me and maybe Kimberly. It's mainly for me . . . so I don't forget.

I don't think boys have "besties" or "BFFs". When he reads this, Bubba will probably just roll his eyes and say, "How about just friend, Mom."

Anyway . . . we've spoken a bit about how big Bubba is for his age. He's 10. And not even 10 1/2 . . . just 10. He's finishing up 4th grade. He's only about 5 inches shorter than me. I'm every bit of 5'6". . . maybe a tiny bit over. We wear the same size shirts. Sometimes, if I get the ladies' cut, my shirts are too small for him. His feet have long since outgrown mine . . . and I don't have a small foot. Just this weekend, we bought him some water shoes and had to buy a men's size 10.

As big as he is, his heart is bigger. He's that gentle giant. He's got the most tender spirit. He's calm . . . he just likes to hang. He doesn't usually get rowdy. And somehow he has the ability to empathize. Not just pity . . . empathize. He gets it most of the time. There are times when I think we have a 20 year old locked inside a 10 year old's body.

Bubba has this one buddy that he loves to hang out with. There are actually 3 of them, but we're just getting to know the other boy and I don't have any pictures of them together.

I love watching him spend time with his buddies. Mainly because it's a sight to see. T, who is pictured here, is almost completely the opposite of Bubba. Obviously, he's different physically, but T brings out a side of Bubba that we don't often see. The 4th grade side. And I love it.

They play and act silly and even get crazy. Just like you're supposed to when you're 10.

We don't have field day at our school, we have Buddy Day. The idea is to pair up with a buddy and go around playing games against each other. At Buddy Day, Bubba, T, and the other T all walked around together and played games together.

One of the games was getting on either side of a large exercise ball and pushing against each other to see which side could push the other further backwards. Kinda like the opposite of tug o war.

The two Ts paired up on one side of the ball and Bubba was on the other. It was funny to watch the Ts double team him. He won that one, but the Ts easily beat him in any event that involved foot races.

They worked together to play tug o war against some 5th graders and won. I'm sure the 5th graders weren't thrilled at being beaten by the 4th graders.

I took this one a couple of weeks ago while we were on the 4th grade field trip. This picture makes me smile because the boys got a kick out of the fact that T could have a 6 or 7 inch advantage and still be shorter than Bubba. I loved hearing their laughs and seeing their grins.