My Baby is 5- the Viking Chronicles

Y’all, this is more of a milestone for me than turning 40. My baby is 5 years old. I don’t think my heart can stand it. When I first started blogging, he looked like this. And then this happened, and next thing you know we were here. And he was watching Downton Abbey with me just yesterday. And now five. Five means he’s not a baby anymore, and he’s not even an older toddler. He’s a full on kid, and his pudgy cheeks and round belly are shrinking away before my eyes. I am not OK with this. On any level.

This kid is such a hot mess. He is all curiosity, energy, movement, and snuggles. He takes on the day every day, and does not want to surrender even for sleep.

This is the kid that we had to create a custom lid for his crib because he could escape from it long before he could walk, and would do all sorts of dangerous feats including climbing up to the top bunk bed and jumping over to the dresser to push everything off. Because it’s just fun to see stuff fall and break.  And within 48 hours of the safety lid being installed, he had learned how to reach under the side rail and unlatch it and let it down. He would not be contained.

He’s the kid that will not be stopped by childproofing. The doorknob covers that the home improvement guy told me would “definitely work”? I found them cracked in half littering the hallway within a half hour of installation. We had a little more luck with super glueing and then duct taping them together. But even those were eventually pried off by his persistent little MacGuyver hands.

This is the kid that I found at 3 AM in the bowels of the basement with his brother’s nearly sacred Lego model builds. He was down there playing happily and he’d been eating on a container of ice cream that he’d sniped out of the deep freezer. I have no idea how long he’d been down there, but the ice cream was completely melted by the time I found him.

I love to hear his take on the world- he sees life with such clarity and it’s refreshing and so funny. He makes me laugh every day (and most times he’s not even trying.) He lives to play and pretend, but he still crawls into my lap nearly every day to get hugs. Growing up does have its downsides- last week, he outgrew Mama kisses. I caught him wiping off his bedtime kiss on his pillow.

“Did you just wipe off my kiss?”

“I don’t like wets”

“Oh. Sorry. I’ll give you a dry kiss next time.”

“Those are wets too.”

*sigh* My little Viking man is growing up and I don’t think my heart can handle it. It’s a good thing that I absolutely adore five year olds…even if I have to sneak into his room and kiss him after he’s asleep.