at long last

Here it is, almost a full month later and I am just getting around to the birthday post for the boy.

Back in January, I started a five by five challenge with myself to lose five pounds per month for five months until Ty's fifth birthday. It didn't work. I lost momentum and then I lost the ability to care whether my ass was fat or not. In honor of that failed attempt, I'll do five by five for Ty.


#1: Five things I love about you:
1. I love the way you can get me to laugh at the slightest provocation.
2. I love the way your nose scrunches up when you laugh.
3. I love the fascination that you have for babies, all babies and how the world stops when you see one.
4. The way you stand with your thumbs in your front pockets, imitating all of the adult males that you see.
5. Your 50 year old logic, combined with a five year old's spin on things.

#2: Five of your physical traits that I adore and can never get enough of:
1. Little boy fingers. Need I say anything else?
2. The perfect curve to your full belly.
3. Naked pure white, little boy butt, running through the house after your shower.
4. Gangly arms and legs.
5. The feel of your knobby knees and elbows when we're wrestling or snuggling.

#3: Five things you've said that are burned into my soul:
1. "I like to make you laugh, Mom!"
2. "If you don't let me.... I'll tell people that you don't wear underwear!"
3. "You ground when you sink underwater to the ground."
4. First sentence - "It's a hat" - said in a truly reverent form
5. "Last night, I dreamed that I was riding on a train to see God" Scared the living shit out of me seeing as how at that very moment, I was reading a book about a little girl who develops a stigmata and is talking to an angel and slowly dying, inch by inch.

#4: Five things you will grow out of as you get older that will break me when it happens:
1. The need to be close to me
2. Blankie
3. The way you press your face into my neck when you are scared
4. Your funky chicken strut dance
5. The way you run to me, terrified by thunder and lightening, like I am the only safe place in the world.

#5: Five things I hope that you never grow out of:
1. That full-out belly laugh
2. Your quest for knowledge and natural curiosity
3. Your love of books
4. Your cowboy ways
5. The natural, open affection you show for all of us that know and love you.

I love you, baby boy, more than any words will ever tell. Some days, you are the only thing right in my life. Every day, you are the heart and soul that drives me. I live for your smile and when I see your little blondie head at the end of the day, I breathe a sigh of relief that we are together again, without mishap. My world is a much better place since you've arrived.

Happy late, late birthday, cowboy.