About the Boy...

Thomas turned 7, somehow.
Thomas is brilliant in reading (6th grade, at least), maths (fractions, percents) and can show amazing insights.

He can tie his shoes
and microwave a decent bag of popcorn. He is extremely careful and can't stand the word, "blood." He is gentle and compassionate with babies and animals, except flies which he wants to incinerate with a bug-zapping tennis racket.

Thomas has Selective Mutism, which means he can't talk to you if he's anxious. He may be anxious for minutes or months. SM is like stage fright, but someone simply asking, "How old are you?" or "What's your name?" can render him unable to speak. We never made any announcement of it, he was diagnosed at about 4.
It runs in families. Nothing causes it except happy genes linking up with other happy genes. It's mostly in kids and mostly in girls, about 1 in 100. Usually, by 8 or so, they learn how to compensate and get around it and Thomas is doing great. He actually gets in trouble at school for talking too much.

He has lovely friends and I secretly enjoy having to clean up the mess they make when they come over and color the patio and make elaborate train set-ups and build airport towers and eat every chicken nugget, corn chip, icy pole and and lolly in the house. Huh, the juice is gone, too.

Seven was his Pool Party.
About 4 years ago, I was at Toys R Us at the end of summer and they had beach balls for 99 cents and 90 percent off. I knew he'd have a pool party some day.

It was a total blast. We invited every kid in his class and their families to the town pool and almost everyone accepted. We went through 16 pizzas, 3 bags of rainbow popcorn, all the leftover Halloween (and ahem , Easter) candy we brought and 2 cases of soda.
The palm trees had streamers blowing from them and the vanilla cake had a chocolate cake beach ball floating in blue jell-o.

The town pool has three pools: ababy one, a big one with lap lanes and this 2-3 feet deep one perfect for kids. It was on Sunday from 4:30 and we almost had the place to ourselves. Along with the beach balls, the kids dove for glo-sticks and we made up silly races.
Not into public competition, Thomas snorkled and gave orders.
It was a beautiful day. It's been a wonderful 7 years.
Give or take.