Love letter to Simon, Age 5

My dearest darling Simon,

You are five years old today. Five! And you are five times as sweet, five times as smart, and five times as silly as you’ve ever been.

This has been a wonderful, busy, exciting year for you. Just after your last birthday, you welcomed your baby brother Lucas into your life with open arms. I kept expecting you to fuss or complain or show any sign of stress at suddenly being displaced as the baby of the household, but you have been nothing but your usual adorable (and adoring) self. You love being a big brother, and you seem quite content to be the middle child. You’d probably prefer that Lucas stop pestering you when you play on the computer, but you’re otherwise happy to play with him and let him crawl all over you. You especially like entertaining him in the car, and battle with your brother about who’s turn it is to sit beside Lucas.

You started Junior Kindergarten in September, and you never looked back. You were not at all worried about starting school, and you seem to be doing extremely well. When we speak to your teachers, they have nothing but praise for you. I laugh when we leave school every day to a chorus of voices calling out to you, and we occasionally tease you by calling you “Mr Popularity.” In fact, you are already on your second girlfriend, and you recently scandalized your older brother by announcing that you’d kissed a girl at school — necessitating a long chat about what we do and don’t do at school, during which mommy had to take frequent breaks to re-compose her stern face.

You are one loquacious kid; I’ve said that you could talk the paint off the walls or the feathers off a duck. You speak in full, eloquent sentences with a vocabulary far beyond your five years. And you talk and you talk and you talk. You make us laugh sometimes with the way you can say in 300 words what could have easily be said in 10. (I have no idea where you get that from.)

Simon, you are my charmer and my romantic soul. You love hugs and kisses and all forms of affection. You’re a ham, and love to make crazy, expressive faces. You also have a wicked temper, but only when you aren’t getting your own way. Like your mother, you need sleep and food on a regular basis or you get pouty. Most of the time, though, you are your own sunshine factory, and your smile lights up our days.

You’re a lot like your daddy in that you’re not much on physical exercise, even though you’ve gamely endured the skating and gymnastics lessons to which I’ve subjected you this year. You prefer swim lessons, but I think you’ll take to skating a little better next year. It took us a lot of cajoling and a new bike to get you riding a two-wheeler with training wheels this year, but once you got going, riding your bike in the driveway was one of your favourite things to do before the snow began to fall.

If we let you, you’d happily play on the computer or on the Wii all day long. This year, your tastes have matured in lockstep with your older brother’s as you traded up from Star Wars to Pokemon and SpongeBob. You still love superheros, as evidenced by your Batman birthday cake this year.

Happiest of happy birthdays, my sweet, smiling Simon! You fill our days with sunshine and laughter and warmth, and I can’t wait to see what the year ahead holds for you.

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