He's Now Five

My "little" man is five. Five.

Wow.

Where does it go? Seriously. I guess it won't be much til I'm sitting here writing "So...My "little man" is twenty. Twenty!"

It's going to go by faster than I can imagine.

Five years ago, I never thought that I'd be a stay at home mom. I'd dreamt of it. Thought that it would be easier for me, less expensive and better for myself and kids to be home with them. Then I'm with them. I don't miss anything, I don't miss them. But I really figured it would be a pipe dream.

Well. Here we are. Five years. Five years I've been home with this little bundle of joy that instills in me so much love, worry, frustration, wonder, anger and joy. All in one day. Sometimes in one hour. Man...kids are crazy! Time is crazy! I think there are times I'm going crazy.

My Logan had a good day. We started at McDonalds for breakfast. Unhealthy, considering my overweight blog last night, but still. It's his day. His choice.

Then we went to playgroup. Had fun, played, sang, caught up with people we hadn't seen in a while. It was good. The kids love the playgroups. But mornings, they don't love me. So we do mostly afternoon playgroups. This one in particular on Thursday mornings I do make a bigger effort to make outside of most mornings.

We had a couple hours to kill between playgroups. Thursdays can be incredibly busy, but we manage. I figured, let's go to Toys R Us. In theory, a great idea, because I can get Logan something ON his birthday that I KNOW he will love. So of course...Logan picked out a Transformer. Shocking eh? But what I'd forgotten is, Olivia's old enough to know when she's left out, but not old enough to understand why. So Olivia got a new baby. So, all was good, all were happy. All couldn't wait to take them out of the box WHILE we were still in Toys R Us. So, I started taking them out of the box, but they took so long to remove, well packed. Here I am, standing at the end of a till, taking the toys out of the boxes, fighting with the packing that they do. It's crazy. Of course, I could feel the stares of the other people in the line up watching me fight with these boxes, probably wondering what type of control my kids have over me that they can't wait until at least the car! Well...it was Logan's birthday. Forget it. I was going to get them out. So I took the rest of the packing, walked out, threw it in the garbage can and finished taking Lo's toys out of his packing. Screw em...they're my kids. I could have made them wait. I chose not to.

(For his birthday, his gift from Mommy and Daddy will be a loft bed. We want him to have more space in his room. We're just torn between which bed we want to get him. Perhaps I will post the choices. People can let me know what they think.)

Then we went to our second playgroup that's by far and wide the kids favorite. They have a gym there and the older kids go into the gym with the facilitators and the babies stay with us mommies where we chat and in some cases, rest our eyes. It's nice. I love it.

We stopped at Safeway, got ourselves each a HUGE decadent cupcake and some hamburgers that I offered to cook outside. Yeah. I offered to bbq these burgers outside in the north wind at -1...with a windchill...but for my son, anything.

We ate our decadent cupcakes with relish and I took a few pictures of them. It was wonderful. Then after that, bathtime, bedtime. And here I sit, making sure that I write down what my son's fifth birthday was.

I think that there are some years of life that are so important in our development. Five is a big one. Five means school, means a little bit more maturity, means chores. Means a bit of responsibility and the time to learn to do things like tie our shoes and ride a bike. Five seems to be a major time for a kid. It feels like a big one to me. Soon, ten, then fifteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty. It's not all that far off.

But I'd like to hold on to my little baby for just a teensy bit longer. Just hold on and not let go until I have to. As much as I can't wait to see what happens in the next fifteen, twenty five, forty years, I really want my son to stay little just a while longer. There's going to be a day he won't want to cuddle or hold my hand. His independence can be such a great relief sometimes, but at the same time, such a sadness grips me because I know he doesn't need me like he used to. And it's only natural...it's normal. I know.

This is as it should be. And as it will be. I will never stop him from being who he needs to be. I'll never discourage his independence...but I still want him to know that whenever he needs me, needs to lean on me, needs me to be his rock, his shoulder to cry on...whatever he needs, I will always ALWAYS be his mommy.

Transformers or not! :)