The Young Prince Is Six Today

Dear YP:

I keep wondering when you will be old enough to start reading and comprehending all the stuff I write here, and when you will start howling at my laying bare your many exploits for the whole world to see. 

I am inclined to think that won't happen, as you have long displayed a fairly exhibitionist streak –  ever since you started walking, pretty much, with the notable milestone at age 2 where you horrified the neighbor one afternoon by slithering through the open door where we were talking and streaking across the front yard.  It was autumn, and cold, and you were stark naked and a half-acre away before you decided to come back. And I know you have an inordinate fascination with seeing yourself on the Internet; you were nearly as obsessed with flickr as you were with starwars.com for a while there.

I feel sort of dumb marking your milestones in text … it’s like I’m signing a yearbook. Hey! Well, it's been a great six years, we had fun! Stay sweet! Have an awesome summer!

Honestly, it’s been an overwhelming six years. Longer than that, even. I remember finding out you were going to be a boy and being horrified. I didn’t know anything about boys! Nobody in my family had boys! I was predestined to completely screw you up because all I knew about little boys was that they were obnoxious twits who liked to run around and yell a lot.  I called my grandma, who’d had the last boy –- my uncle, my mom's brother, the guy who lived with us and stuck a lizard in my face when he was out of college and I was in kindergarten. And she said boys were easier and I would be fine and that I'd see, it was going to be more fun than I'd ever had. But, see, she’d had your grandma for a daughter. I get the feeling that having a Tasmanian devil as a second child would have been easier.  I finally decided that it was just all going to be up to your dad to make sure you got whatever little boys needed. 

He’s done a damn fine job, I think.  And I’m thinking my grandma had to be right, because I think my ratio in raising you has been about 90-6-4 in terms of laughter to rage to panic.

And for all the aggravation, for all the hair I pull out over you acting up in school, for all the times I yell at you for not listening, not focusing, not sitting up or sitting down or sitting still – dude, you are so much more than I ever would have dreamed of asking for.  You are funny, yet considerate of others’ feelings. You are fearless unless it is a food you’ve never tried. You are enthusiastic and impatient and bossy and independent and you hate it when other people act just like you.

And you are smart. You read more – and harder things --  than I did at your age. You can add into double digits. You connect facts and ideas and remember things that blow my mind. You are way more cognizant of world events than I was. I remember turning six. I remember kindergarten. And I was pretty sharp. I was ahead of the other kids in my grade. I wasn’t a patch on what you are.  Except I think I was better at sitting down and shutting up.  But you’d have to ask your grandma. She’d probably say no, just to spite me.

You have excellent taste in movies. You are the only kid I know who saw Army of Darkness and said, “Hey! That’s what the robot said in Day the Earth Stood Still! Did you hear that Mama? Did you?” And then laughed hysterically for the next half hour, and at the end of the movie demanded to see it again immediately.

We have so much fun together and even when you’re howling furious at me it is clear that you understand it isn’t forever and that we will both get over it and sure enough, 10 minutes later you have called me up into your room because a really great song came on the iPod you hijacked from me after giving it to me for Mother’s Day and you want someone to dance with.

I hope you keep hugging me.  You hug me and I tell you it is the best part of my day. You agree and then you give me extra hugs and kisses for my pockets and tell me to be sure and take them out when I’m at work and need to be happy. I don’t know where you got this, but I absolutely love it. And then you spill your water on the floor. And I don’t even care.

Six years has flown by.  I remember your dad and I used to wonder what you’d sound like when you would talk. It never occurred to us that what you’d have to say would be this interesting this soon.

I hope you’re having as much fun as we are. Happy birthday, little man.

Comments

[modernfairie]

I cried when I read this! Happy Birthday Young Prince!!!

[Katherine]

Aw! Snerf snerf. You guys are the best. Once again I must say that if I could be guaranteed a kid half as great as yours, I'd reverse my entire stance on spawning. :)

Happy birthday, sprog!

[Heather]

You are killing me with the sweetness. Happy birthday, you cutie pie!!

[K]

Because of you, I'm now running upstairs to hug MY young prince.

[Sparkling Cipher]

Dang! I'm late. Happy belated B-day to the little man.

[Sharidan]

I'm real late, but real touched... HappyBEBElated B-Day YP!