Six years ago today, during a humid heatwave, we unexpectedly found ourselves with someone who wasn’t scheduled to arrive till after the Wicca book proofs were handed in um till after the first draft of the green witch book had been handed in er till the nursery was ready well till we were fully unpacked from the move for another nine weeks.

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SIX!

Six years ago he was born nine weeks early, and we’ve been trying to keep up with him ever since. (That thing about preemies sometimes being slower at milestones and having to adjust gestational/chronological age expectations? Totally untrue in our case.)

Our boy can read; there is no keeping anything secret in written form any more. He hangs over the back of my desk chair and reads forum posts or e-mails I write aloud ( “Why did you say that? What does that mean?”). His Nana and Granddad bought him a subscription to Chickadee magazine, and he reads the joke pages to us with great gusto. He is a wizard with Lego kits (particularly with the 8-12 range) and also with designing his own stuff. He runs, jumps, climbs, asks insightful yet difficult questions, eats a lot (two breakfasts are de rigeur in our household), and grows about an inch a month, or so our eyes and the jeans we had to roll up a few months ago and now show his anklebones tell us. He writes very well and clearly, and his drawing skills have exploded this past year.

He is cheerful, positive, and optimistic. He has a very healthy sense of self-worth and justice, for which I am very grateful. At the same time, over the past year we’ve seen him develop a different kind of self-awareness that has led to uncertainty about some of his skills, something I think is due mainly to being in school and comparing himself to others. He very definitely has a tendency to not want to try something at all if he thinks he’ll fail at it, which is why he still can’t successfully ride his two-wheeler bike alone. We support him and encourage him as much as we can, but ultimately he has to feel ready to take a new step himself.

He hopped into our bed at 5:45 this morning to open his presents. The baby gave him a Thor action figure. He was awestruck and wanted to know how the baby (a) knew he liked Thor (we are all big mythology fans as well as comics fans) and (b) told us to buy it when she was still inside me! We gave him a copy of Lego Clone Wars for the Xbox, which he had put on his Official Birthday List.

Both sets of grandparents are coming over for a family party in about half an hour, and everything is either prepped for supper or being handled by other people so I intended to sit back and have a nice relaxed afternoon. I made an ice cream cake at the boy’s request (designed by him, too: Oreo cookie crumb crust, a layer of vanilla ice cream, a layer of homemade peanut butter sauce, a layer of chocolate ice cream, homemade chocolate ganache on top, and there will also be whipped cream dolloped atop each slice), so I’m looking forward to that as well.

Also, this morning we had a fabulous dress rehearsal for our cello recital tomorrow. It’s been a really good day so far, and I imagine it will only get better.