This is Six

Plees forgiv me

Sorre

I am

Reads the note scribbled in purple lying outside my bedroom in the dark hallway – it makes my heart melt like a marshmallow held over a bonfire even though a spot on my head still throbs from the corner of the magnetic tile that hit it from very clo

se range.

Afterschool play can often end in some tears and things flung about, generally not at me though so this time when Z threw a magnetic tile at me because I had not managed to put it in the exact spot he wanted, I was pretty surprised at how much it hurt my head and my heart.

I sat there for a few seconds clutching my head and then just went up to my room – and when I came out, there was that melty note waiting for me.

Zain is nearly 6 and when I look back at his photos even from last year, it astounds me how different he looks (those round cheeks keep getting slimmer, the ears stick out a bit more, the smile is just as impossibly cheeky – he’s lost two teeth!) and how much he has grown up into this beautiful, silly, smart, sensitive boy with a penchant for jumping out from the shadows to shout BOO at me.

I thought I loved the toddler stage but there is something so magically easy about a child old enough (was it at 3.5, 4 years?) to mostly sleep in their own bed but still call for you once a night every other night to snuggle away the bad dreams, a child who helps carry the bags at the airport rather than scampering off on tiny legs towards the roped off areas. A child who will sulk and moan about not getting what they want at the shop rather than throw themselves on the floor and wail – the conversation isn’t as squeaky as a cartoon squirrel just learning new words but still funny, deep, surprising.

‘What happens if mama gets swapped?’

‘Why do you want to swap me?’ one of those bedtime conversations, a delightful balance of grave and wonky ideas plucked out of the colourful world that all children live in right next to our exhaustingly mundane one.

‘No, I don’t want to. But what if it happens,’ he looks genuinely worried. I give him a cuddle and reassure him that it was a highly unlikely swap.

I still remember when Z was just over two and he actually pulled a small child’s hair at a soft play, I remember the other mum was more horrified than I was (of course I told him off for it but he was still just a little one too) – he is so non-confrontational now that we are working on nudging his self-defence skills up so that he won’t get pushed around.  He is the most mild-mannered kid (obviously the more comfortable he gets around you, the less mild the manners) and I want to lean back in time to tell the horrified mum and myself that they do grow out of the hitting stage.

There are little signs of Z’s work everywhere – while we have managed to continue the Montessori mantra of few toys and avoided clutter, there are scribbles under the dining table, stickers in the weirdest hidden spots like the bottom of the bed or a door knob, his only and best female friend’s (who is now back in Chile after a year of best friendship) name misspelt in small print on his bedside table.

I love how he still loves cars (the traffic light obsession is less but he still loves road regulations and will be watching your every move when you drive so don’t miss out on any indicators or turn too quicky or even think about parking along double yellow lines), I love his focus and how instead of colouring in a drawing he will immediately flip the sheet to make random racecourses and train tracks on the other side.

I love how he loves our trips to Pakistan and last year was as excited as me as the day of our journey drew closer – he had a self-drawn countdown calendar up two weeks before.

I don’t want to forget any of this incredible big little boy stage, the steady and indiscernible slip into becoming my companion, more reliable adventure buddy with incredible insight into life.

I love how he still has the one-off word he pronounces in that cute childlike way – ‘ladyburgs’ instead of ladybugs and my absolute favourite, ‘chocolate chumps’ instead of chocolate chunks.

His reading is brilliant and his school books are now proper stories with words like ‘colossal’ which I still cannot pronounce properly. His writing is better as well but when he’s scribbling his letters and notes, they start from the bottom up and a lot of it is still phonetic rather than actual spellings but I feel really special that I can read Zainese fluently.

He knows a few ‘swear words’ as he calls them (everybody uses them in school, he tells me, our teachers don’t mind us using them – which I’m 99.9% isn’t true or maybe his teachers are just a lot more laidback than one would think). He goes into these phases in which he uses the word ‘shit-eem’ very liberally, his own concoction as it isn’t an actual word so I feel like he can get away with it. Sometimes it makes me laugh other times it makes my head steam like a teapot on the stove [parenting summed up, eh].

He turns six in less than 2 weeks (yep, we’re counting down to that as well on an actual calendar hanging in his cupboard) and he has chosen to do a one-night trip in a (budget) hotel and visit to the transport museum (he told me his 5th birthday party was the worst ever – his only slightly big party with 10 kids and a bouncy castle, the one I prepped for about two months in advance making traffic light cutouts and buntings) and I am actually quite proud of how self-aware he is to choose something that he knows he will enjoy more.

I can’t wait to celebrate in a Premier Inn with you, Z. May you always shine like a super star and may that adorably shy smile on your face when we catch each other’s eyes in the mirror at the barber never fail to melt my heart like butter in a saucepan.