48 months: I am the walrus

Dear Little Ring,

Yesterday I was having an absolute crumb of a day, so blah, so lethargic, so lacking motivation. I couldn’t figure out why, and then, it struck me.

Just hours remained of my baby being a baby.

I love seeing your every growing milestone; I love your wild personality that gets wilder with age; I love the crazy, random conversations your growth has invited me into. But yesterday, the realization that my baby was no longer a baby, no longer a toddler, but a proper, young boy – closer to independence than mama reliance – I’m not going to lie, it stung.

In proper, good, Little Ring fashion you turned that sting into a flutter of love.

To most, you are not much of a hugger (your papsy credits your German roots for that). But every day, multiple times a day, you give mama hugs. Kisses, however, are few and far between. You’ve been wiping those suckers off your face practically from the get-go.

Been squirming out of mama kisses from day 1.

But yesterday, you planted not one, not two, but seven (yes, I counted them) kisses on your mama – puckered lips, sound effects, and all.

I <3 you kid!

And so…

Dear Little Ring,

Today you are four years old.

That’s four years of melting my heart; four years of everyday smiles; four years of belly-aching laughs; four years of blowing my mind; four years of the purest love possible.

Rock of Little Ring Ages: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4.

Every day with you is an adventure, whether I’m trying to convince you not to ride your bicycle down a flight of stairs (we can thank daddy and Road Bike Party for that), or running after you, who is running after all the runners on the boardwalk, trying your mightiest to keep those, tall for a four-year-old but still quite small in the grand scheme of runners, legs of yours moving superhero fast, or saving the world one superman, spiderman, batman dress-up session at a time.

Ohhh, the things you do for us, hey 😉

You are smart, oh my goodness, you are smart. Riding a pedal bike, no training wheels, at three-and-a-half, wow. Calling mamsy and papsy’s bluff multiple times a week, grr. Memorizing book after book after only one quick reading, seriously can I have that brain? Reading off the unit numbers for every suite on our floor like a human abacus, again the brain. Singing “I Am The Walrus” at the top of your lungs.

Yeah, that’s pretty freaking cool!

Naturally your birthday party was a road bike party, bike decorating, and tour-de-France style technical courses and all!

And the things that come out of your mouth. Oh my goodness, so random, so funny. Like at breakfast this morning, out of the blue, you said: “When I was one, I was a bear; when I was two, I was a crocodile; when I was three, I was a dog, now I’m a cat.” And apparently when you’re five, you’ll be a penguin! Seriously, where do you get this stuff???

The big words you’ve started using in your sentences: ferocious, apparently, frustrated…

Regaling us with your dreams in great detail every morning, sometimes happy, sometimes scary, most often with dinosaurs….

The times you sense frustration and you tell mummy or daddy to take a deep breath and breathe – the very thing I tell you in the midst of a 10.0 meltdown. Which, by the way, you do have. We need to work on those…

The times you want nothing to do with our words and look us straight in the eye as you put your pudgy little index finger up to your mouth and express an emphatic “shhhh…” Or just blatantly tune us out and continue on your merry way…

All of that is the greatness of you.

There is no other adventure I’d rather be on than the adventure of Little Ring.

Ps. Today was a GREAT day! xoxo

Love mama

“My dear young fellow,’ the Old-Green-Grasshopper said gently, ‘there are a whole lot of things in this world of ours you haven’t started wondering about yet.”
~ Roald Dahl, James and the Giant Peach