Evan at Five

How can it be that you are five? Where did the time go? I can still picture you as the two pound bundle of fire and fiest. Your tiny fists clenched, your will so strong that you survived against all odds.

You are still feisty and passionate. Full of life, full of energy. Yet your sweetness makes me weak in the knees. You are the most apt to say "momma I love you" for no reason except you feel like it. Lately you have sartre calling me your "best buddy ever" or the "best mommy ever". Which I will never argue with. Just the other day you woke up from your nap and looked up at me and said " I need some love from my bug" I then hugged you until you begged me to stop.

You still love ladybugs and Ringo and cacti. And they, plus about twenty other buddies have to join you in bed each night. For some unknown reason you have taken to wearing a touque to bed each night, which really makes me giggle. You wrap your arms around my neck and sing at the top of your lungs every night. I cannot tell you how much that makes me smile.

While you still love music, you have stopped singing the National Anthem. That makes me sad. I loved it when you would just break it out when ever the mood struck.

You have an amazing capacity for sports. You remember teams, cities, logos, colors. Your favorite teams are the Kings, and pretty much any team that wears red. Which makesnit difficult when you want to root for the Red Wings or the Canadiens.

Your vocabulary becomes more astounding each day and I firmly believe you will do somthing in life where talking is important. It has been well documented that you really do say the funniest things.

This year we started T-ball and hockey. You do have focus issues as you are usually too busy talking to anyone who will listen about whatever it is on your mind. I love watching you in the outfield talking to the apposing teams coaches. They usually smile, nod and sometimes laugh outnloud.

You like to call yourself Jack Johnson, or Eli Manning to your brothers Anze Kopitar and Peyton Manning. You also like to pretend to be literary characters, you are often Jack (of Magic Tree House fame) or Harry Potter. For reasons unknown to me, Ryan is always Annie or Hermione Granger.

Your reading is coming along so nicely. I am amazed somedays by the sight words you have and listening to you sound out words as you see them or try to write them. You recently told me that the thing you love most about school is learning. I hope you feel that way for the rest of your life. That is why I have been agonizing over sending you to our local public school. While it is considered to be a great school I fear that too much emphasis is placed on testing and conforming to what politicians believe is important and not what is best for the children and the way children learn. I am 90% sure where you will end up next year, and no matter which school it will be somewhere that appreciates your uniqueness.

You are so special my little man, so full of life, so full of opinions, so unabashed. You are vibrant, technicolor, a tornado, a tsunami of passion, you are larger than life. You are Evan at Five.