You are 6 years old today. On a Saturday no less, what a treat!
You’ve been looking forward to this day for so, so long. The curse of the summer born is being the last of all of your friends to have a birthday; I know there will be a little stab of disappointment when you start back at school and realise some of your classmates are already turning 7, just as you’ve managed to catch up too! Life sucks eh? (Please note when you are my age it will be a blessing).
But today you are finally as big as everybody else and to celebrate we had your party at the (slightly violent) soft play around the corner. It was your choice but also heavily slightly influenced by Mummy, who after years of being a performing clown and pass the parcel constructor, just um… couldn’t be arsed. Sorry darling – one day you’ll understand.
Anyway the main thing is that you loved it. You were delighted with your Lego Ninjago cake and couldn’t wait to get home to play with your presents, no longer needing so much help to follow instructions and construct them – you have grown up so much this past year.
At six you like – Yo Yo bears, Star Wars, Bionicles, talking about farts and poo, castles, space, battles, water pistols, scoring goals, going swimming, pizza, Twister lollies, zip wires, playing racing games on my phone and hunting for the perfect stick.
You really don’t like – Going to bed, the concept to sleep, sitting still, writing (‘It’s SO boring!’), homework, tidying up, vegetables, baked beans, getting dressed (we pay you to get your school uniform on, yes actually PAY YOU £0.20 per day – worth it though), doing anything vaguely helpful and pink and purple (because ‘they are GIRLS colours!’).
Going by the above lists you may have noticed that I have failed abysmally in any attempts at gender neutral parenting. You are a boysy boy with a penchant for casual violence but you have a very sensitive and innocent side too. At night you carefully arrange about 20 ‘special friends’ on your pillow and then sleep in a tiny gap on the edge of your bunk, when I come in to check on you before bed your face is often squashed right up against the bars.
You still make me promise that you can live with us forever and you can’t lie – you just haven’t fathomed the concept yet. If I say you can have ’10 goes’ of your favourite game on the iPad you count them down out loud and hand it back when you are done. It’s never once even crossed your mind to pretend you had more goes left. What a lovely little fool you are!
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