To our dragon, dinosaur, animal loving boy...

Here is why you should want a child with an anal retentive personality like Owen...

His shoes can be found neatly organized on the floor of his closet, not strewn about the house.

He doesn't just throw his clothes into the hamper after he takes them off (which, for others of my children I would gladly take at least that), but he examines them to see if they are actually dirty, and if they are not dirty he folds them neatly and puts them back in his drawer! Or if they are stained he will bring them to me to put stain remover on them.

He almost always clears his place from the table without being prompted.

When the baby was still waking up at night, I would sit in my bed and just roll up the dirty diapers, throw them off the end of the bed into the darkness, hoping for them to land somewhere near the door. At some point every morning I realized that someone was picking them all up and actually throwing them away for me. Owen said, "I bet you thought your husband was doing that." And I did. But, no, it was Owen. That's when "Owen's Diaper Service" or "ODS" was born.

Owen has afternoon kindergarten, and Nate has morning preschool. I love running errands with Owen in the mornings. He stays right by the cart, has fun looking at things, but doesn't always ask to buy them. And when the baby gets fussy, he entertains her. Plus when we get home he turns into "Owen's Robot Delivery Service" and he will help put things away where they belong.

Owen is very smart. I feel like I can say that without seeming like I'm bragging, because I don't think I had much to do with it--he just came that way. He already reads. Like reads, reads. And nobody really taught him. He probably read a lot sooner than I even realized (about a year ago), because by the time I knew he could read he was already beyond the "cat" and "hat" variety of words. Somehow all the TV watching and computer gaming he likes to do really paid off! (just kidding. kind of.)(Owen off to his first day of Kindergarten)

Of course his anal retentiveness has its negative side. Opposition in all things right? For example, if you try to challenge his knowledge of prehistoric beings or dragons (or any other knowledge for that matter), he doesn't take it very gracefully. Somewhere along the line though, his Grammy or Pops taught him the phrase, "my mistake." It has been wonderful for him to realize that it's okay to make mistakes and not be right all the time.

Here's to Owen: the service-oriented, detail-oriented, intellectual!