Now You Are Five

Dear Theo,

Five is a big one, eh? Half a decade. An outstretched hand with every finger proudly displayed. 1,826 loops around the sun.

You look so grownup lately. You’ve lost what little baby roundness you had and now you’re all skinny legs and big feet. You don’t sound like a baby anymore, either. You pepper your conversations with big words and thoughtful observations. Sometimes your brain is going faster than your mouth and you stumble over what you’re trying to say, then complain that you can’t get it out – but you always do, eventually, once you slow down enough to put the syllables in the right order.

I’ve always wondered how much of our personalities are innate and how much are shaped by the circumstances in which we grow up, but looking back through your other birthday letters it’s hard not to feel like you’ve always been exactly who you are. The things I want to tell you about yourself haven’t changed much since the first letter I wrote to you when you were two – you’re still funny, still charming, still easygoing and friendly. You’re stubborn, and when you want to master something you don’t give up easily. You still hate sleeping.

Your teachers tell me that you’re doing very well socially – there isn’t a single kid in your class who doesn’t consider you to be their friend. You have a fluidity that lets you move between different groups of peers with an ease that makes me envious. I ask you every day who you played with at school, and I always get different answers – sometimes you’ve gone tobogganing with R, or played house with E and U, or built a pretend castle with M.

One of your classmates says she wants to marry you, but you say you’re never going to get married because you’re going to be a farmer.

This past September you started public school. Downtown. In French. In a class with 23 other kids you’d never met before September. This was a big change from your tiny, homey daycare in Forest Hill, and it certainly wasn’t without its challenges. I kind of approached with the attitude that if we threw you in the water, you’d probably learn to swim – after all, that’s what I did when I was your age, and I turned out ok, right? We had some rough patches this fall and I don’t know if I’d make the same choices again, but I’ll be damned if you aren’t pulling through with mostly flying colours.

We’ve gone through some difficult times this year. One night – maybe the worst night – I was trying to talk to you about your behaviour at school for what seemed like the millionth time and I started crying.

“I just want you to be a good listener,” I said.

You started crying too, and I was sure that you were about to apologize or promise to do better.

Instead, you said, “I just want to be able to do whatever I want.”

I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry harder.

You’re not as easy for me to understand these days. You’re more opaque; I can’t always figure out what you’re thinking or what motivates your behaviour. I know that babies always think they’re an extension of their parents, but for a long time it felt like you were a sort of extension of me, or maybe another iteration of me – I knew you somehow, just like I knew myself. That’s slowly changing, and I know it’s very normal and healthy. You’re moving away from me and becoming your own person with private thoughts and desires and that’s exactly how this is supposed to happen.

But I do miss those moments of communion where I wasn’t sure where my self ended and yours began. Those aren’t exactly the right words, but they’ll have to do for now.

I love you. I love the way your eyes get so big and blue when you’re excited about something. I love your wild imagination (and all the bizarre things I overhear you say when you’re playing pretend). I love your empathy and your thoughtfulness, how you like to pick out presents for people and you always seem to know what they like. I love how you practice French pronunciations in your room, rolling your Rs over and over until you get it just right. I love the moments we look at each other out of the corners of our eyes and burst out laughing just because. I love that your life goal is to get me a spacesuit that matches yours.

Remember earlier when I said you were very much the same person that you always had been? Well, that’s kind of true and not true. I used to always joke about how little interest you had in art – in fact, I mentioned in last year’s letter that you kind of suck at drawing – and all of the sudden now you’re all over it. You love drawing all kinds of things, but your favourite things to create are blueprints and assembly guides. We got you a loft bed and put a little table and chair set under it and now you call that space your “invention dimension.” You’ll happily spend hours under there “inventing” things like a poop factory or a robot that picks up garbage.

So I guess that as much as personalities might seem set and innate and unchangeable, we probably all have the capacity for change, eh?

I feel like this year you’ve taken your first steps in the grownup world. It’s been scary, and it’s going to keep being scary for a while, I bet. I’m helping you choose your path, and that fact obviously carries a lot of weight with it. Lots of times I don’t know what I’m doing and all I can do is make the best decision possible based on the currently available data. But we’re figuring this out, you know? And I’ll keep running along behind you, acting like your training wheels until you can finally steer this thing on your own.

Happy birthday, Theo.

A sketch of our apartment building with a secret fort on top and also two spy planes and a pet frog

Assembly instructions for a robot

Baby’s first Jays game

Baby’s first jazz show

When you fall asleep playing with your dinos

Practicing his nurturing skills

Still really into My Little Pony

Dressed up as a vampire pirate for Hallowe’en because honestly why should you have to choose between the two?

Blowing out the candles at his fifth birthday