5 Beautiful Years

I haven't written here in two years. Two years. At my last check in, you had just turned 3 years old. Now your are 5. Half a decade has passed since I danced right into labor while waiting for the pizza guy. Half a decade since you came flying into our lives.

I knew I wanted to sit down today and write this. Now that I'm here, though, I'm finding it hard to find the words. I want to give you something to look back on, something to give you some clues about who you were at this age. So where do I begin?

Well, to start, you are amazing. You're smart, funny, vibrant, quirky, and curious. You make me laugh every day. Some days it's in the way you tell stories, very matter of fact and with a tone of voice that makes you sound like you're trying hard to be so much more mature than you are, with your hands gesturing to make your points. Sometimes it's your terrible knock knock jokes. Seriously, terrible jokes kid. They are so far off from making sense that we can't help but laugh. Sometimes it's the way you giggle when you fart. Yeah, I said it. But everyday, in some way, there's laughter in this house.

You talk all the time. All.the.time. Some days the chatter drives me nuts, but most days it makes me smile at how much you want to learn and how much information you have to share with this world. Your enthusiasm bubbles over and is contagious. You also sing. You sing in the car with me as we run our errands, you sing in your room when you play, and sometimes you even sing as you're falling asleep. Often, those late night ballads are Spanish songs you've learned in preschool. "Tengo muchas cosas en mi mochilla...." Yesterday, with great concern, you asked me what you would sing when you grow up (you're going to be a famous singer, you know) because you were afraid that all the songs would have been sung by then. I promised you that you would have your own song to sing, no matter what, and I truly believe that. Maybe you won't be the next Katy Perry (but who knows, maybe you will!) but you definitely have a story and song to share with this world.

You like horses, all things horses. Your birthday party this year will be at a farm so that you and your friends can have horseback rides. You swim like a fish and you still love it. Year after year, swimming has been your constant. You adore the ocean. If you could walk on the beach every day, you would. You've done amazingly in your Spanish preschool this year and made many great friends. Ezekiel is one of your best buds and you happily tell us, frequently, that his favorite color is red. Yours is currently orange, by the way, although pink comes in a close second. Your favorite stuffed animal changes frequently, and if I asked your favorite food, you'd probably say macaroni and cheese. That's what you chose for your birthday dinner tonight, by the way.

You like bugs. You like dirt. You like finding bugs in the dirt. You also like Disney princesses and unicorns and rainbows. You are so perfectly you.

You also still whine, a lot. You're worried about being a big girl going off to Kindergarten, although you don't always show it. You get annoyed with your folks and roll your eyes like a teenager. With as much as you talk, as capable as you seem, it's easy to forget just how small you still really are. So we have our hard days, we have our struggles. You and I, we're basically stuck together at the hip, some days by choice and others, not so much. Where you go, I go, and vice versa. You're still growing, adjusting to this big world, and truthfully so am I. My world tilted on it's axis when you arrived and I'm still finding my new balance. But in the past 6 months or so I feel like something has finally clicked into place. Most days we revolve around each other in relative harmony, instead of bouncing off each other like pin balls. This makes our days much more fun.

Your relationship with your dad is pretty awesome, by the way. You two have the best adventures. He has taught you how to play video games, how to fly quad copters, how to build PVC forts.  He also reads you bedtime stories, plays dolls with you, and does cool science experiments. He's pretty cool.

Ending these things is always hard. I don't want to be too sappy, but I don't want to be nonchalant either. I could pretty easily go on and on about how much I love you. But let's just say that I think you're a pretty amazing kid and leave it at that, hmm?