Dear Porter,

Today you turn 5 years old. And at this point I think I’m going to suggest you grab some juice, your blanket and thumb, and sit a spell – because this could take a while.

First, I want to tidy up a little unfinished business in regards to losing your first tooth. I am pretty much the worst mom ever for not properly commemorating such a ridiculously huge occasion. I posted a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it link over on Twitter, but other than that it slipped by without even a word.

Naturally, it was a pretty big deal for all of us, and it was an emotional sucker punch to me to realize that you – MAH BABY! – had a loose tooth. What!? How did this happen? You aren’t old enough to lose a tooth! Not possible! No way! And yet there I stood, watching as all of your 4 1/2 years caught up with me in a single moment.

When it came to the actual tooth losing, you followed a virtually identical sequence of events as your sister: you wiggled it incessantly over the course of the next 24 hours until it was hanging on by a microscopic thread of gumline – the whole time insistent that you could not, WOULD NOT, pull it out. Until you did….

As for some of the other more notable developmental milestones this year, you got up on skis for the first time, managed to get pretty handy with a pencil, taught yourself how to whistle!! and have begun to read.

As for those things that need to be recorded for the sake of posterity and future good-natured ribbing, there are the following:

You are a hoarder. There is no delicate way to put this. A ongoing and seemingly endless stream of items are collected and stored in specified, non-negotiable locations throughout your room. I have managed, on some periodic stealth missions, to sweep your room of all the little sticks, rocks, bark, paper, plastic, but have been less successful in a more comprehensive purge. I fought all urges to buy you a shopping cart for your birthday this year.

With one or two exceptions, you have continued to hold firm on your shorts-only policy. You have managed to turn our dining room into a sweat shop wherein I have had to slave over the sewing machine altering countless shirts of yours from long sleeved to short-sleeved. I have reached the point now where I have threatened everyone within an inch of their lives if they event think of buying you a long-sleeved shirt, and I have resorted to just hacking the sleeves off pajama tops without even bothering to hem them…because I am classy that way. After about a year of refusing to wear socks, you finally decided it was time to give them a try again. And I’ll be the first to go on the record saying that they look quite stylish pulled up snugly to your knees.

I’m happy to report that we have spent a good portion of this year unraveling the mystery heretofore known as The Cute and The Angry (referenced here, here, here and here, oh and here). After much household unrest, we made up our minds that we would set out on the mission of finding ourselves an expert. So, after a couple of meetings and a covert observation mission staged at your preschool, The Child Whisperer (as I refer to her ) began guiding us through the process of decoding your personality. First came a vocabulary list of words: temperament, adaptability, intensity, empathy. Then came the strategies, all of which go a little something like this: When faced with a difficult situation, think through the list of all possible reactions. Now, on that list identify the most unintuitive and instinctively opposite option. Okay, now do that one.

So we worked at it. Sometimes it was a ridiculous mess, but guess what? Sometimes, it actually worked. And somehow, through all this listening and talking and talking and listening, we found some harmony. Yes, I just used the word harmony in relation to our family – yes, you heard me right, I said harmony. Then, high on the aroma of success, I attended a 6-week parenting group that not only allowed me some comiseration, but also brought in some other literature to draw from. And lo and behold, MORE HARMONY!

Let me be clear: we are still loud and messy with our crazy leaking out the seams and over the edges, and there is still plenty of screaming and foot pounding and 4:00-cocktail-needing. BUT, our correction-cycle of meltdown to problem-solving has shortened considerably. Which, in our world is like winning the gold medal of parenting.

You are getting ready to head off to Kindergarten this fall and we are all left scratching our heads at how all this happened so fast. There is part of me that is nervous, and yet another part of me knows that you will do great. You are spooky smart. There is no mincing words on this one. However, each and every one of us in this family comes with quirks. Your dad is a doorknob toucher and I am an intolerant bossypants. Your sister is, um, how do I put this delicately? Precocious? Yes, precocious. And you? Well, you know what you want. And don’t want. And are very clear on these two issues. Always. And I can only hope, that as you enter the cold hard world of Kindergarten that the work we have done and continue to do, will help you cope when things don’t go exactly as you have planned.

There is one last thing I want to add before I wrap things up. This last year, we lost your Uncle Scott. I need to mark this place in time for you because to be perfectly honest you just don’t have the emotional processing power at this point in your life to fully understand the magnitude of this loss. You grasp it on a very pragmatic level – the details of what happened, that he died and that you won’t see him anymore. But the emotional impact of this loss, is still somewhat of an abstract concept for you. Scott was your dad’s big brother. His only brother. He adored you and Stella, as you did him. And although your dad and I have every intention of keeping him alive in both of your hearts and memories, it won’t change the fact that we will all forever miss him and his presence in all of our lives.

And so, there you have it. Year 5. The fun, the goofy, the quirks and all. I could never truly capture all of it, but I will say that I love it when you ask “Mom, could you louder it up?” when we are listening to the radio in the car. And I love it when you tell jokes and do your booty-shaking dance and sing along to the music. I love watching the relationship you are building with your sister – truly sibling-like in every way. And I love you, little man. Happy Birthday.
Love,
Mom