Happy 5th Birthday, John

John turned 5 years old today. He claims he's been waiting to be 5 for a long, long time, ever since he was born, in fact. Today that dream came true.

All babies are cute, but John had that little bit extra. People loved Ben's blue eyes and Ava's cheeks. With John, though, it was always The Unbearable Cuteness.



These days, John's still cute. He's also sensitive, smart as a whip, easy to please and a general pleasure to be with. Except, sometimes, for the talking.

John can talk any listener under the table with his long, detailed explanations and recountings of the most minute details of any conceivable topic or event. All day long I hear about the good guys, the bad guys, the machinations of the Transformer, that 4 plus 4 equals 8 and how "one-zero-zero-zero-zero is a REALLY big number, waaaay bigger than 9, isn't it?"

He is also the king of the one liner. For example, Christmas morning he dropped his stocking and ran from the room, yelling, "I have to pee!" All was quiet for a moment. Then we heard him exclaim from the bathroom, "Everybody gets to go pee on Christmas!"

This morning I walked up to him as he ate his breakfast, peanut butter and jelly sandwich. (Which is, by the way, the perfect food, the one he wanted to bring to Christmas at his uncle's). I leaned in and said, "Guess where I was five years ago?"

"In bed?" he guessed, as if I'm ever in bed.

"Yes!" I said, holding up his scrapbook. "I was in the hospital, with John, my little bundle of joy. See, there we are. There's Ben. He was Ava's age when you were born."

I let him look the page over for a moment, then turned back one. "There I was on Christmas day at Uncle Mike's. See how big my belly was?"

"Wow!" he said, dropping his sandwich. "Your stomach was even bigger than it is now! That's amazing! Isn't it??"

Your amazing, kiddo. Stay 5 for a few years, would ya?