"A Whole Hand"

He's obsessed with keys and locks right now, and garage doors that open with remotes. I'm fairly certain he would happily dwell IN a garage, provided it opened with a key and/or clicker.

 

He loves Cars and Star Wars, Scooby Doo, and Megamind, and dinosaurs. Always dinosaurs. He can't get enough of Grand Central Terminal, the Mets, crap that glows in the dark, magnet blocks, spelling, somersaulting, and this one gray hoodie that I can NEVER LOSE.

He visits my office just once a year, but that doesn't stop us from forever talking about the NEXT time he's going to come, and what will happen then, and will we get donuts again, and can he get ice from the special machine, and can he see the helicopters again? What about the Statue-a Limerty?

He came out of his shell a lot this year, and while I would never APPLAUD rebellion, inside, I secretly cheer when I see him testing limits, and taking risks, even in his own cautious way.

He knows more about the solar system than I do, and laughs when I desperately try to explain how Pluto was, like, seriously a planet at one point. He used to be a diehard fan of the color yellow (whatever that may actually BE to him, seeing as he's colorblind with a few colors), but he's switched allegiances to blue, since "yellow is for the babies, actually." The "actually" kills me dead, yes.

He loves his sister to pieces, and in his "All About Me" book at school, his "What Makes Me Sad" line was, "When my sister doesn't hold my hand." (COULD YOU DIE.)

He's all lean and lanky, and his wrists look like real-people wrists, not like the giant sumo baby ones they once were. Just when I worry he's getting too big, too fast, he tells me he wants to go "cractice" his song for his "gradulation," and I breathe a sigh of relief, because he's still -- a little bit -- my baby. (Even if gradulation is rapidly approaching.)

Happy 5th Birthday, buddy.