Happy Birthday, Pokemon Trainer Extraordinaire!

My baby is 5 today. There's something about 5 that sounds ominously like the final "click" of the now-closed door to babyhood. It sounds like the harbinger of loose teeth, no training wheels, and "I know what that sign says, Mom!"

Perhaps it seems all the more sudden to me given that The Boy clung to elements of babyness for much longer than my daughter, she of the snark-suitable-for-a-sixteen-year-old.

We still have sippy cups in our cupboard, only recently taken permanently out of chocolate milk rotation. He still loves to snuggle, and his hands creep insistently towards my neck whenever he is tired/sleepy/sad (the neck, of course, being a substitute for some far more comforting parts of my anatomy located a bit lower down. Just call me Jacosta).

He's also wonderfully, yet heartbreakingly, without any emotional armour. He experiences life through his feelings and those around him alternately bask in the glow of his delight and cringe in the face of his grief and wrath.

Perhaps, too, I cling to the image of him as a baby because he is (as far as I know) my last child. I didn't know this when I gave birth to him, and memories of that night have become all the more cherished. Despite the fact that it was the student nurse's first shift on her maternity rotation and my cervix was deemed a remarkable example for her first dilation check.

My darling boy, may you have a fabulous day befitting your age, filled with Pokemon, video games and colouring pictures. Thank you for fitting so perfectly into the The-Boy-sized hole in my heart.