Happy Fifth Birthday, Sava!

Dear Sava,

We tucked you to sleep about an hour ago, and when you wake up tomorrow, you will be able to tell everyone that you are FIVE. You already told everyone today that you are FIVE.

Your birthday today was an epitome of the past year. It was bookended by a small disappointment--you throwing up breakfast, after whining for over an hour that you did not want to eat all, which has been a refrain in the morning all year--and an encompassing sense of exultation--a lovely birthday party with all of your best friends, and recognition by everyone, especially your parents, that you have, somehow, grown into a wonderful human being who cares about other people and about whom others care deeply. Here are just a few of the things we have watched you do this year:

 * You cultivated some wonderful friendships in and outside of school that we hope will last even as you continue on to kindergarten, and leave some of those friends behind. You love to play legos with Levi, hold hands with Kyle, act silly with Tyler, and run around with Gabriel. They all care for you deeply, and appreciate you for the sweet, friendly boy you are.

 

 

 * You grew into the caring, thoughtful big brother that Raya adores and loves to follow at every step. You often give her one too many tickles and/or smother her while trying to hug her, but her adoration of you is nevertheless boundless. You are learning from her how to assert yourself in the real world, while she is learning form you how to love and respect the people around her.

* You saw a boy play the violin at the farmer's market, and decided that you wanted to play the violin yourself. Six months later you continue to insist that playing the violin is something you want to do, and we watch in awe as you learn something of which we have no experience. I doubt that anything can give me greater satisfaction than watching my first-born child reach for something I have never even considered doing. It's scary and inspiring at the same time.

* In the course of the last few months, you've transitioned, seamlessly, from 'reading' picture books with us exclusively to enjoying a range of chapter books. You loved the two Winnie-the-Pooh books first, and then Peter Rabbit, Pippi Longstocking, Charlotte's Web, James and the Giant Peach, and George's Marvelous Medicine. (Your mommy will blog about our experience with all these books one of these days.) You also currently love the Henry & Mudge series by Cynthia Rylant, which still have plenty of pictures but also feature the type of sweet realistic stories that appeal the most to you.

* At school you've learned to write some cursive letters and, thanks to morning games with dad, you add and subtract like a little data-analyst in training.

* Not all is exactly rosy, lest you compare notes when you grow up between this post and your memories of your fifth year and you notice a discrepancy. For all of your wonderful kindness and thoughtfulness, which truly distinguish you among your peers, you are still impossibly difficult to "feed." No one really feeds you, but the truth is that if we could, we would. We do sit at the table with you every single day, three times a day, and, if it's a good day, we coax you and talk with you and try every distraction in order to get you to finish what we consider a decent meal; and, if it's a bad day, we threaten 'consequences,' chastise you, give you ultimatums, sometimes even raise our voices. You have become especially picky in the last couple of months, and there are days when we blame you for feeling like failures because we just can't think of a way to make you eat, and we can't imagine sending you to bed without a decent meal. While parents of your peers read books and take classes on how to discipline your friends, we ransack our brains on what "love and logic" to apply in order to make you understand that you can't go to school and play and learn properly without also eating well. When I get most dejected, I go back to The Highly Sensitive Child book, which illuminated your character for me so beautifully a couple of years ago, and I seek to remind myself that you are a wise soul who will, sooner or later, figure out this eating thing. Until then, your dad and I ache with love for you.

By the time I write my next happy-birthday post, you will have started Kindergarten and will have entered a whole new phase of life experience and education. We look forward to seeing you grow in new ways that we can't even begin to imagine, and we hope to be able to preserve the deep love and mutual respect that mark our relationship right now.

We love you, sweet son. Happy Fifth Birthday.