Little Big Man

I can't believe Ryan's 5th birthday is in just over two weeks! FIVE! It doesn't seem possible. He's still at this wonderful age where he is both incredibly independent, but still wants and needs help sometimes. I look at him and see his long chicken legs and his long arms and wonder where my little boy went.

Of course, I think Ryan wishes he was a little older and a little bigger. We hear a lot of "it's not fair that Wesley...." whatever it was that Ryan feels was unfair.

This morning Ryan had a lot of "it's not fair" moments. Over the weekend we went shopping for outfits for some family pictures we are having done this weekend. While we were shopping the boys each found a "fun" shirt too. Ryan chose a Sonic the Hedgehog shirt and Wesley chose a Ninjago shirt. This morning Ryan realized that Wesley's shirt glows in the dark and this caused no shortage of tears and four-year-old angst. Never mind that he chose the shirt he wanted. It wasn't fair because in his mind, Wesley got a glow in the dark shirt because he's a big kid.

We got that under control and headed over to Grandma and Grandpa H.'s for the day. Wesley was busy showing Grandma a collection of small toys he brought with him. He was explaining that a couple of the toys came from the dentist's office - one for having his checkup and he got an extra one because  he had to have x-rays done. 

At this point Ryan crawled up into Grandma's lap, positioned himself as much like a baby as he could and said in a heartbroken voice, "I only got one because I'm too small to get x-rays."

Yes, it's a silly thing. Yes, he may have been exaggerating his sadness to get Grandma's sympathy, but my heart broke for him. I wanted to scoop him up and tell him that he'll be plenty big soon enough. That before too long he'll be able to ride all the rides he wants, and to get the big boy clothes. But not to be in too much of a hurry to get big because I still want him to ask to snuggle me, to hold my hand when we cross the street, to tell me he loves me a million times a day.  I still want to be able to pick him up - I haven't been able to pick Wesley up for over a year. It just slips away. I want him to be my little boy no matter how big he one day gets.