lucidlotuslife

Oh, my little punk.  What a long way we have come in three teeny, tiny years.  Long legs, legos and laughter.  Grumpy pants, screaming fits and flailing fists.  You have grown faster even than ‘they’ said you would.  Faster than I would have liked.  I’d like to put you in my pocket and keep you near forever.  Or at least back in the pouch you used to be able to ride around in, taking it all in with those bright eyes.  But that’s laughable now, my gangly gorgeous big boy.

You are a force of nature.  Your happiness knows no bounds and can turn on the thinnest edge of a wisp of a mere suggestion of some ethereal something that only you can see or hear.  That pure joy switched instantly to a fountain of tears or a shriek of rage.  And can turn back just as quickly to the sunny side.  Life is never colorless with you in it.  You are a bright yellow swath across the gray and rainys.  Sunshine.  You are mine.

You love building with Legos.  You told me, I don’t like to cuddle with you, I just like to build.  You build rockets and castles and guns.  You love to shoot.  Anything can become a gun or a sword to you.  Anyone having us over knows to lock up anything resembling a stick.  You think cranes are the coolest, but really love monster trucks, diggers and garbage trucks too.  You love puzzles.  Especially on the iPad.  You are all about the iPad and have mastered all the games.  Because you?  Are smarter than a third grader.  And you’re a creative thinker like your dad.  You can problem solve and figure and reason.  Except for when you can’t.  Which is to say, when you can’t be bothered.

You will ingest any sort of fruit pretty much whenever you have access to it.  Most especially raspberries and avocados. Every other food – meh.  You prefer snacks to food and are usually up for pretzels, chips or crackers.  You love vanilla ice cream like your mom.  But you always want it with a cookie.  You inhale spicy, which is what you call pepperoni.  But you often discard the rest of the pizza.

Dora is your girl.  You like Diego, Gaspard & Lisa, Team Umizoomi and Wordgirl too.  But it always comes back to Dora.  You really love Wall-e, Bolt, Up, Rio and A Bug’s Life.  You loved Dumbo, but I deleted it because it’s weird and creepy and I didn’t think you’d want to watch it again.  You still ask about it.  Obviously.

You love going to Pump it Up, Jr., playing with your friends anywhere, reading books like Stellaluna and Going on a Bear Hunt and your first comic book, Tiny Titans(I may have, ahem, pushed that one a bit).  Your favorite song is Baby Beluga.  You often ask for Puff the Magic Dragon, which bums me out because I don’t know all the words and it’s so damn depressing.  You always ask for the monster story, which is just a bastardized version of Monsters, Inc.  You eyes were as big as saucers the other night when I told you Jack and the Beanstalk and I could hardly keep from laughing and kissing every inch of you because it was just that adoraballs.

You say silly things like, depends on the weather and then laugh hysterically.  We laugh too.  When I drop you off at school you always tell me to come back in no time.  You say, let’s do this which I suspect you got from me.  You also say awesome, which I know for certain you got from me.  At bedtime you sometimes ask me to tell you all the things.  And then I tell you all the reasons I love you.  Which takes a while.

You have a thing about monsters and ghosts.  Except you call them ghosteses.  Which slays me.  You are always hunting monsters and ghosts and wanting the fight the bad guys.  You are a superhero.  You are also a storyteller.  You tell me long, involved stories as we drive around the city.  You love to show off your skills like running fast, coughing into your arm and how strong your muscles are.

You are in your own world.  You are a lolly-gagger, a dawdler, a  dilly-dallyer.  There is no modern term for what you are.  You stop to smell the flowers.  Every, single, individual one.  You notice all the details that I never see.  You find magic in every step you take and a potential party in each place you go.  Don’t ever lose that.  But also be on time.  It’s a goal.

You are a screamer and a fit haver extraordinaire.  Doozy doesn’t even come close.  I have hauled your fishtailing hiney out of too many places to name and sweated buckets shoving your insanely strong, tiny body into the constraints of your car seat.  We have both yelled, screamed and cried.  We’ve both said we were sorry, hugged and held hands.  It won’t be the last time.  I’ve told you so many times that I love you even when you don’t make the right choices, you now tell me the same.  And it’s true.  Both ways.

You’ve made my life so very much more difficult and so very much more worthwhile.  I love you up, down, around the town.  Happy birthday, bubs.