Friday, May 30, 2008

Today You Are Five

Dear Five,

Welcome to our home. You'll find everything you need here--provided that what you need is similar to what Four needed: the spontaneous appearance of cupcakes, freezer-burned waffles, and the occasional eggs in shell; a teeming vat of Transformers; and the ability to pause Super Why or Ben 10 Alien Force when you find that rare Something Better to Do than watch four hours of television.

But I must be candid with you. We liked Four. Correction, we adored Four. Four has been our favorite so far, and we'll be sorry to see Four go. Four was smiles and happiness and please and thank yous and hugs for no reason at all. Four listened--at least more than Three did--to our requests, reasonable or not. (I can't say Four always followed through. I can't say he always "eared us"--but Four mastered the Look of Listening.) Four was incomplete Knock-Knock jokes, he was scatological (butt I don't have to poo you that), he read to us at night, and he liked to hide, spin, and race, even though it was never really a race and we never really winned him unless Four beated us.

Four wasn't all good times, though. Four liked to whine--and if there's one request (well, a first request) that we'd make of you, we'd like you to park that at the door along with your muddy shoes, please. Four liked to cry at things we found inconsequential--like not being able to have five more minutes with the sidewalk chalks even though we had already given him an hour or not getting a popsicle at demand or not being able to have a cupcake at breakfast. Four had definite and firm ideas about what he wanted--and we're all about definite and firm ideas, but we'd just ask that you, the much more mature Five, maybe ask for those things before you engage the meltdown. We think that would be really cool.

But despite all the whining and occasional tears at the trivial, Four was a boy. We can't remember a week that Four didn't have a new bruise or a scrape or want a pirate band-aid to cover up some skirmish he had with a stick or a stone. And Four wore his boy-ness like a badge of honor. Sure, Four sometimes liked to pretend that he was a baby. He'd fake "waa" and ask me to bundle him and rock him to fake sleep. He'd crawl around the house and "goo goo" (and then, moments later, mysteriously morph into a panting, barking dog).

And sure, as we mentioned above, sometimes the remnants of baby-ness would get the better of him. But when he heard you were coming, he embraced the boy within and started to put the baby aside. He started talking about things that you would like to do, that he didn't: "Five will jump into a pool" or "Five won't whine as much as I do" or "Five will get to watch scary movies and play Grand Theft Auto." (Sorry, Five, that last bit, not so much gonna happen.)

We're excited you're here, Five, and even though we'll miss Four dearly, we can't wait to see what you'll be like. So please, come on in, take your shoes off, get settled in, and, if you need anything, please ask.

2 comments:

carie said...

Happy Birthday to Finn!

spamchang said...

from the sound of it, i think i need to hurry up and turn five too :p still haven't played GTA...