My little baby boy is five years old! Sometimes when he explodes into our bedroom in the morning demanding toast or rattling off the details of some long involved dream, I am surprised by this lanky person who is my son. I tease him, asking him where my baby boy went, and show him that this little bit here, by his belly button, is still my baby. However, he feels very grownup, he tells me that he is almost an adult now, and that I am not the boss of him, both of which are true, really.
This year was yet another birthday cake fiasco. A boy at Francis' party told me that the cake was really ugly. Fair enough -- it's not like he was telling me this with malice from the bottom of his little 5-year old heart -- he was just commenting on what he saw as true. I picked out what I thought was a super-easy design, but much skewering and cementing with icing was involved (there must have been an inch of icing on this baby). I am obviously icing impaired. I resolve yet again to take a cake-decorating course at SAIT.
We had Francis' birthday party at a Gymnastics club because just the idea of hosting 8-10 5-year old at my little 700 sq ft house fills me with terror. So, it was worth every penny to have them not bouncing on my furniture (a certain guest last year found my sewing shears and secretly went to work on my curtains) but rather bouncing on equipment designed for bouncing. Five-year boys have a lot of energy. A lot of enthusiasm. Which is admirable, breathtaking, and exhausting. They are .... so boyish. I've been reading Susan Pinker's "The Sexual Paradox", which explains how men and women are neurological wired to be different, and parenting Stella and Francis really makes Pinker's thesis strike home with me. Stella cuddles her dollys, her stuffies, her blankies ... Francis tries to see how far he can throw them.
Anyway, here's to being Five. To stepping out and asking about how the world works. To having a "best friend". To discovering what is "fair". May my boy never be too big to give his old Mom a cuddle. Happy Birthday, Francis. You will always be my baby, sweetheart.
