Half a Decade!

I can NOT believe I have a 5 year old.  5 is serious.  Not a toddler anymore, hardly even a pre-schooler.  A 5 year old.  That's half a decade!  And a decade seems like such a long time!  I have been a mother for half a decade. Kinda hard to wrap my mind around.

Before you're a mom, you think that a 5 year old is a "little kid."  You know, kind of helpless, needs mom for everything, sort of babyish.  But oh my goodness how far is that from the truth!  Jack can sound out words, do simple math, write his first and last name, and knows his address.  He knows how, when, and why he should call 911.  He can dive to the bottom of the deep end to retrieve a dive stick and has known how to swing on his own for 2 years.  He has favorite songs, and he sings them all the time--in a singing voice he no doubt inherited from me.  He takes a shower.  A SHOWER!  He can drive a remote control car and ride a bike without training wheels.  He eats Greek yogurt.  No Trix kiddie yogurt at our house-just "grown up" Greek yogurt.  He likes to watch the Discovery channel.  He always talks about "his kids." "Mom, when I have kids, I'm going to make them all kinds of things." "Mom, I'm going to have 10 kids.  When I need to take them places, I'll have a wife to stay with them so I can drive them one at a time."  He teaches his sister things and helps her get dressed.  He cheers her on at swimming lessons and tells her not to be scared and not to cry.  When I'm working in the garage, sometimes he'll go inside for a second and come back out with two glasses of water, one for himself and one for me! He helps me in the garage a lot: he's helping me build a nightstand for his bedroom to put his dinosaur lamp on; he catches my wood scraps when I'm cutting before they fall on the ground, and then uses those scraps to build car bridges and tracks.

Having a little boy is amazing, frustrating, exciting, and scary all at the same time.  (Can we say teenage years?  Driving?  The birds and the bees??  I'm having heart palpitations just thinking about it.) Before I know it he'll be 10.  Amazing....