Gimme five

The little gap between his two front teeth is gone. The cheeks are less chubby. His hair is suddenly straighter now, less mad scientist and more boy band.

My little baby is a big little boy now.

Five.

That age when you need to start paying for a lot more tickets and fares. That age which means he is in school now.

The era of nappies and dummies, bottles and prams is gone, replaced by endless snacks and trousers forever tearing at the knees, scooters and bicycles.

Five seems to be the perfect balance of independence that means you get to enjoy your cup of tea (even twice in a day), not trip over your toes or burn your fingers in the middle of cooking dinner just because your child said 'I need to wee!' since now he can actually make a trip to the toilet himself! But he still needs your help dressing since he almost always gets trapped trying to take off his shirt ... And the backs of the shoes always stay tucked in unless you intervene. Z’s actually spent a full day at school wearing shoes on the wrong feet.

He can play with his cars while giving me nonstop commentary as I half listen and read. We can bake together without too much squabbling. 

He sometimes sleeps all through till 6am without a single 'mama' but then often he comes into our room at some point in the night with his many bedtime accomplices, or calls out for me to please come lie down with him. It makes me laugh (mostly) now when there is a night of musical beds with Z coming into our bed and squashing too much so I go to his, and then he eventually comes back to his to squash me some more.

It is that sweet spot when he still wants to be with us and thinks the world of us but can also play by himself and with his friends – the sweet but exhausting clinginess of the baby years and the constant watchfulness of the toddler years has been replaced by a more comfortable companionship.

My car is never clean, always looking like a messy picnic site in a forest with twigs and sticks and leaves strewn along with crumbs and mini cheese wrappers. 

There are random signs with scribbled messages and crookedly drawn arrows stuck with beloved blue tac around the house. There is excessive use of ‘cello tape’ for unending projects.

His love for traffic lights means sometimes he will stop me in the middle of whatever with one of his toy traffic lights saying it's red you can't go! And I'd sooner break a signal on an actual road than in Z's house ... So I'll crib and whine if it takes too long for the light to turn green but I won't break the rules even when I just really need to pee…

The incredible thing about having your own child is how you wouldn't change anything about them - not even the things that are annoying, or the ones that are REALLY annoying and drive you as close to a cartoon character with its head on fire as is possible in reality. And so while Z still gets inexplicably crazy when it comes to washing his face, and delay getting ready for school, still has temper tantrums that are punctuated with hefty little punches or kicks at times, I wouldn't tweak these because he is as near to perfection (to me) as is permissible and advisable.  

All his little tricks and traits make him who he is and the heartbreakingly amazing thing about being a mum is this love, the strongest, purest one. No other relationship can quite compare. 

Oh and the conversations. Just amazing.

'Can you see my imaginations? Can you see my thoughts coming out of my head?' Z asked me the other day at bedtime. Kind of, when you describe them, I told him.

'Which number do people die?' was another one on our walk back from school. 'Which number am I going to die?'

I told him some very, very large number like maybe 102, and he grinned and said, 'maybe 147'.

The other day he woke up and told me, 'Mama I had a scary dream. There were two lights and one had, you know what, two bulbs and one had a fan.'

'Sounds like a funny dream,' I replied.

'No mama. It was not a funny dream. It was a nightmare.' The rest of the day he refused to go upstairs on his own, half scared the ceiling lamp in the hallway would be the one from his nightmare.

Also, my little boy has started to read! Just 3 and 4 letter words but this milestone feels incredible. And write too, in his large funny boy handwriting. He's riding his bike and doing the weirdest tricks. He's also started climbing counters to steal sweets and his best friend has taught him how to climb the window sill in our bedroom and then jump onto the bed. (It's a pretty decent trick I have to admit)

I'm working on my ability to let go, biting my tongue when he's trying new things, maybe trying to ride his bike over a giant root or building a physics-defying tower with his magnetic tiles. Fighting back my instinct to immediately help so that he can continue to grow and learn and be so very proud of it all, just like I am (this is all thanks to my reading parenting blogs and spending too much time on righteous annoying Facebook reels).

I miss the baby stage and those cheeks, I miss that little gap and curly hair a lot. But this big little boy is so amazing that each new level of parenthood unlocked feels like the best one. I hope this balance stays for as long as possible and the days of phones, social media, friends and shut bedroom doors are still a few years away.