Just Stay Like This

Six was a wonderful year. A total sweet spot. It was the perfect balance of being able to do things for himself but still wanting his mom around. It was this wonderful age of being able to have conversations about more than the most recent Lego movie, though there was a lot of talk about the Lego movie. It was the first year where he enjoyed going to the movies and asked to see things. It was a year where we went on adventures as a family and there weren’t as many “I’m scareds”.

Six was the year he became a kid and not a baby or a toddler or a preschooler but a kid with opinions and thoughts and ideas and dreams who could express them.

Six was all the wonderful cuddles of previous years without the tantrums (ok so maybe there were still a few of those). It was finding things we enjoyed doing together. Discovering Harry Potter and then staying up late to watch the movies. It was cooking in the kitchen and it not feeling like a disaster waiting to happen.

Six was wonderful. I loved everything about six. And I don’t want it to go. Not that I don’t want him to be seven but I don’t want to lose all of the wonderful things about six. I want him to stay just as sweet as he is, a little boy who loves Mickey Mouse and meeting characters and who still wants to sing Snuggle Puppy at night. I still want him to want to cuddle on the couch with me and curl up by the fire and read Harry Potter. I want him to stay the kind, caring, compassionate, overly sensitive soul that he is.

And yet seven feels like a step away. First grade. Big school. Bus rides. Every change feels like a sentence. Longer and tougher than I imagined.

And every day I find myself thinking as I see him running off the bus into my arms or when I see him lying on the couch with the covers up to his nose and his stuffed animal tucked under his arm, I think to myself, “just stay like this”. Just don’t change too much. Don’t lose the softness and the snuggles and the smiles. Don’t let life change you too much. Stay sweet my sweet boy, just stay like this.